Prof. Dr. Dr. Günter Stock, President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Trained in medicine, research at the University in Heidelberg on “The limbic system” especially nucleus amygdalae. From 1983 to 2005 responsible for research and development in the pharmaceutical industry, Schering AG, Berlin, from 1989 to 2005 as member of the board of directors. Member of various scientific and supervisory boards.

Levitzki started with Cu(II) polyhistidine as a model oxidase and the validation of the induced fit hypothesis, on Concanavalin A. Later he worked on negative cooperativity and allosteric regulation of enzymes. In the 1970s Levitzki switched to signal transduction, pioneering the radiorecptor assay for beta-adrenergic receptors (1974) and the identification of the beta-adrenergic protein by affinity labeling (1978), the mode of coupling of receptors with adenylyl cyclase (1978) and the receonstitution of the beta-adrenergic receptor dependent adenylyl cyclase from purified components. In 1988 he pioneerd the field of signal transduction therapy, using selective tyrosine phosphorylation inhibitors (tyrphostins/TKIs) against EGFR, Her2,PDGFR,Jak2 followed by the development of targeted delivery of long chain dsRNA to cancer (2002 onwards).He is currently Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University, heading the Unit of Cellular Signaling, continuing his research on signal transduction in cancer.

Ada Yonath is a Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) Kimmel Professor for Structural biology, who determined the ribosome three-dimensional structure and showed how antibiotics paralyze it. She graduated the Hebrew University, earned PhD at WIS, postdoced at Carnegie-Mellon University and MIT and spent a sabbatical year at the University of Chicago. She has been and still is directing the Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure at WIS since 1988. In parallel, during 1980-1986 she has been a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, and during 1986-2004 she also headed Max-Planck-Research-Unit in Hamburg, Germany.

Research Field: Chemical, biochemical, pharmacological and toxicological aspects of the biotransformation of nitrogen-containing functional groups in drugs and drug candidates; developement of prodrugs in particular of amidines and guanidines; characterization of the newly discovered mitochondrial amidoxime reducing component (mARC) in humans as drug metabolizing enzyme; modulation of the nitric oxide pathway; phenanthridines as cytostatics. Former professional experience: 1973 - 1978 Various Positions at the University of Marburg 1980 - 1986 „Hochschulassistent“ (C1), Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Freiburg 1986 - 1990 Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Marburg

Professor Krzysztof Jozwiak is Head of the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Neuroengineering of Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland. Following graduation in 2000 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Gerontology Research Center at National Institutes of Health USA, under the supervision of Irving W. Wainer. In 2005 he started his second postdoc in the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw in prof. Slawomir Filipek group. In late 2007 he assumed the Associate Professor position at the Medical University of Lublin. Prof. Jozwiak’s main research interests focus on elucidation of molecular mechanisms of interactions between medicinal molecules and their protein targets, development of new methods for both experimental and theoretical characterization of drug-receptor interactions and their applications in medicinal chemistry projects.

Dr Harren Jhoti is President and co-Founder of Astex Pharmaceuticals, an integrated biotechnology company that has pioneered Fragment-Based Drug Discovery over the last decade. As the initial Founding Chief Scientific Officer of Astex, and in his subsequent roles as CEO and now President, Dr. Jhoti has been a key innovator in the development of this drug discovery technology. He has also received several awards including being named a ‘Technology Pioneer’ by the World Economic Forum in 2005 and as the ‘Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year’ by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2007. This has resulted in Dr. Jhoti having been featured by TIME magazine and CNBC. Before setting-up Astex in 1999, Dr. Jhoti was previously Head of Structural Biology and Bioinformatics at GlaxoWellcome in the UK (1991-1999). He obtained his BSc and PhD Degrees from London University (1981-1989) and performed post-doctoral research at Oxford University (1989-1991).

Hans-Joachim Böhm is Global Head of Chemistry at Roche and Center Manager for the Roche Pharma Research and Early Development Site Basel. Prior to this, Hans-Joachim Böhm was President and Research Site Head of Roche Palo Alto from 2006 to 2008. Hans-Joachim Böhm also headed Non-clinical Development at Roche Basel from 2005 - 2006, the Discovery Chemistry Department from 2002 - 2004, the Discovery Technology Department from 2000 - 2001 and the Research Informatics Department in Basel. Before joining Roche in 1996, Hans-Joachim Böhm worked for BASF in Ludwigshafen as Computational Chemist from 1988 - 1996 and for Siemens in Munich in field of Microelectronics from 1985 - 1987. He obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe in 1984.

Stephen Hanessian obtained his Ph.D. degree at the Ohio State University. After seven years at the Parke-Davis Research Laboratories in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Montreal where he has held the McConnell and NSERC Medicinal Chemistry chairs. His research interests are in organic, bioorganic, and medicinal chemistry. He has published over 500 papers and 45 patents on aspects of total synthesis of natural products, asymmetric synthesis, design and synthesis of medicinally important compounds, supramolecular assemblies, carbohydrates, reagent design and methodology, and computer assisted organic synthesis. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the A.C. Cope Scholar (1996), C. S. Hudson (1982), and M. L. Wolfrom (1993) awards from the American Chemical Society, the Gold Medal from the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada (1996), and the Killam Memorial Prize for natural sciences (1997). He is the first recipient of the Alfred Bader (Aldrich) award (1988), and the Bernard Belleau Award in Medicinal Chemistry (2001) from the Canadian Society for Chemistry. He received the Chemical Institute of Canada Palladium medal in 1988. In 1998 he was elected as Officer of the Order of Canada. He is one of the 2002 recipients of the Queen Elisabeth Golden Jubilee medal. In 2008, he was elected Foreign Member of the National Academy of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia. In February 2011 he received the first Prize of excellence in Science from the FRQNT (Québec) and he was recently honored with the 2012 Ernest Guenther Award from the American Chemical Society, the IUPAC Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry, 2012 (announced) and the Montreal Invivo Prize for innovation, 2012. Professor Hanessian holds joint appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine. He is also the Director of the Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology Graduate Program at UCI. He presently holds the Isis Pharmaceuticals Research Chair at the University of Montreal. Website: http://osiris.corg.umontreal.ca

Sharan K. Bagal received her MChem in 2001 from the University of Oxford, where she subsequently completed her DPhil in chemistry in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Sir Jack Baldwin and Dr. Robert Adlington in the field of biomimetic natural product synthesis. Sharan then moved to Professor Samir Zard’s group at the École Polytechnique in France as a postdoctoral researcher studying xanthate-based radical chemistry. In 2006 she joined Pfizer Global Research and Development, Sandwich, UK as a medicinal chemist and is now a Senior Principal Medicinal Chemist at Pfizer Neusentis in Cambridge, UK. Her research interests encompass all aspects of medicinal chemistry, related in particular to protein kinases and ion channels where she has been directly involved in the invention of two compounds currently undergoing clinical trials. She also has a particular interest in the design of compounds that penetrate, or are restricted from, the central nervous system and has delivered several reviews and presentations in this area. Sharan has co-authored more than 15 papers and patents.

Stuart Conway is a Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Oxford and the Fellow in Organic Chemistry at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. He studied Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Warwick before undertaking PhD studies with Prof. David Jane at the University of Bristol. Stuart completed post-doctoral studies with Prof. Andrew Holmes FRS at the University of Cambridge working on the synthesis of inositol polyphosphates. In 2003, Stuart was appointed as a Lecturer in Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of St Andrews and in 2008 he took up his current position. Stuart’s research focuses on the development of molecular tools to enable the study of biological systems. Recently this has included the synthesis of molecules to aid the study intracellular calcium signaling, wavelength-orthogonally caged neurotransmitters and the development of bromodomain inhibitors.

Current title and position: Dr. Christian Ottmann, Group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society. Research field: Small-molecule modulation of 14-3-3 Protein-Protein Interactions, Chemical Biology. Education: 1993-1998, study of biology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, 1999 Diploma in biology. Former professional experience: 2003 Ph.D. at the Center of Molecular Plant Biology, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. 2004 Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Structural Biology. Since 07/2006 Group Leader „Modulation of 14-3-3 Protein-Protein Interactions“, Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, Dortmund, Germany.

Youssef L. Bennani is currently VP-R&D, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Canada) Inc. He previously served as Vice-President of Drug Innovation (Integrated Discovery chemistry and DMPK) at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA, USA for 7 years. Over the past ~20 years, he successfully led several of research programs in therapeutic areas such as neurology, metabolism, immunology, infection [bacterial, viral and fungal], and oncology, delivering more than 25 new molecular entities reaching various stages of pre-clinical, human clinical development and market stages. To date he communicated over 125 publications and is an inventor on more than 50 patents. His education consists of a Doctorate degree (PhD) in chemistry from Universite de Montreal (S. Hanessian), and post-doctoral studies The Scripps Research Institute (K. B. Sharpless), in La Jolla; as well as a MBA from LFGSM, in Chicago.