Ben Davis got his B.A. (1993) and D.Phil. (1996) from the University of Oxford. During this time he learnt the beauty of carbohydrate chemistry under the supervision of Professor George Fleet. He then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Bryan Jones at the University of Toronto, exploring protein chemistry and biocatalysis. In 1998 he returned to the U.K. to take up a lectureship at the University of Durham. In the autumn of 2001 he moved to the Dyson Perrins Laboratory, University of Oxford and received a fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford. He was promoted to Full Professor in 2005. His group's research centres on the chemical understanding and exploitation of biomolecular function (Synthetic Biology, Chemical Biology and Chemical Medicine), with an emphasis on carbohydrates and proteins. In particular, the group's interests encompass synthesis and methodology; target biomolecule synthesis; inhibitor/probe/substrate design; biocatalysis; enzyme & biomolecule mechanism; biosynthetic pathway determination; protein engineering; drug delivery; molecular biology; structural biology; cell biology; glycobiology; molecular imaging and in vivo biology. This work has received the 1999 RSC Meldola medal and prize, the 2001 RSC Carbohydrate Award sponsored by Syngenta, an AstraZeneca Strategic Research Award, a DTI Smart Award, a Mitzutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award, the 2002 Philip Leverhulme Prize, the 2005 Royal Society Mullard Prize and Medal, the RSC 2005 Corday-Morgan Medal, the 2006 International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics Young Investigator Award, the 2008 Wain Medal for Chemical Biology, the 2008 American Chemical Society's Horace S. Isbell Award, the 2009 Elsevier Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry, the 2009 RSC Norman Heatley Award, a 2009 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the 2010 the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan, (SSOCJ) Lectureship Award and in 2012 both the RSC Bio-organic Chemistry Award and the first UK recipient of the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.

Prof. Dr. Annette G. Beck-Sickinger University of Leipzig Bioorganic Chemistry and Biochemistry Institute of Biochemistry Education: University of Tübingen (Dipl. Biology, Dipl. Chemistry, Ph. D. Organic Chemistry) ETH Zürich, Univ. Copenhagen (Post Doctorial Studies) Vanderbilt University (Guest professorship) Research Fields: • structure-activity- relationships of peptide hormones and G protein coupled receptors • protein modification to study function and interaction A tight connection of chemical methods, bioorganic synthesis and molecular biology tools, including cloning, receptor mutagenesis, protein expression and cell biochemistry is applied. Whereas in the first field, the application goes towards medicinal chemistry, identification of novel targets and novel therapeutic concepts, the second field is related to biomaterials, novel approaches to modify proteins and concepts for improved enzyme catalysis.

Ronan O’Hagan is Executive Director of Oncology Discovery at Merck Research Laboratories where he leads discovery efforts with a particular emphasis on enabling and enhancing immune-­‐modulatory therapies in cancer. Ronan joined Merck in 2011 to lead Target Identification and Validation for Merck Oncology and built an early discovery pipeline including a mixture of biologics and small molecule programs. Prior to Merck Ronan spent 10 years in biotech working on early target discovery, small molecule and biologics drug discovery, and translational research. During this time he helped to lead 3 programs from project initiation through IND enabling studies and subsequently into clinical development. He did his post-­‐doctoral work at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute with Dr. Ron DePinho, working on the development of mouse models of cancer for use in novel target identification and translational studies. Ronan is currently on the Board of Directors of the Structural Genomics Consortium, and the Scientific Advisory Board for the Chemical Probes Portal.

Prof. N.Meyer (MD, PhD) is an onco-dermatologist. He works as the head of skin cancers unit of the Toulouse University Cancer Institute, and conducts research on characterization of melanoma biomarkers, and tumor immune escape. He participated as an investigator in more than 30 clinical trials on skin cancers and currently leads 2 early clinical trials on immune-checkpoints inhibition for the treatment of melanoma or skin epidermoid carcinoma. Prof. N. Meyer is part of the Toulouse cancer research center (namely CRCT - centre de recherche en cancérologie de toulouse).

Dr. Xiaodong Wang is the Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery and a Research Associate Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interest has been primarily focused on the discovery of small molecule inhibitors targeting on kinases including Mer receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK), MELK, PIP5K1C, KRAS, and IP kinases. They have also been working on other targets such as IDH1, CIB1, and Myc. She received her PhD from University of Pittsburgh in 2002. She worked at Array BioPharma Inc. at Boulder, CO and Genomic Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) at San Diego, CA prior to joining UNC-CH in August 2008.

Stefano Crosignani studied Chemistry at the University of Pavia (Italy) and earned a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), under the supervision of Dr. Bruno Linclau. In 2003 he joined Serono (later to become Merck-Serono) where he stayed until 2012, working as medicinal chemist and discovery project leader on different target classes (kinases, GPCRs, proteases) implicated in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. In 2012 he joined iTeos Therapeutics, a Belgian biotech company just starting its operations, as Head of Medicinal Chemistry. iTeos was founded in 2011 as a spin off of the Ludwig Cancer Research (LICR) and of de Duve Institute at University of Louvain (UCL) and is focused on the discovery and development of innovative therapies in cancer immunotherapy.

Gisbert Schneider studied biochemistry and computer science at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. After several post-doctoral research activities he joined F.Hoffmann-La Roche Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland, where he headed the cheminformatics group. From 2002-2009 he was full professor of chem- and bioinformatics (Beilstein Endowed Chair) at Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. Currently, he is full professor of computer-assisted drug design at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He is an elected Fellow of the University of Tokyo. Schneider coined the terms “scaffold-hopping” and “frequent hitter”, and has published more than 300 articles and five textbooks on molecular design. His research activities concentrate on method development for virtual screening and de novo drug design.

Since joining Evotec in 2002 I have led multiple discovery phase projects including hit expansion, hit to lead and lead optimisation working in collaboration with a range of clients from academia, biotech and large pharma. I have been responsible for leading and coordinating cross-functional activities of drug discovery teams across a range of disease areas including cardiovascular, metabolic, inflammation, anti-bacterials and oncology. Prior to joining Evotec, I gained my PhD in synthetic chemistry from the University of Bath followed by a Royal Society Postdoctoral fellowship at the ETH in Zurich working with Prof D. Seebach. In 1998 I took up a lectureship at the University of Birmingham where I conducted research into synthetic methodology and asymmetric catalysis. In recent years I have developed a strong interest in Innovation and LEAN-Sigma approaches to the development and optimisation of processes and working practices leading to my recent accreditation as a LEAN Sigma Business Green Belt. I have contributed to more than 50 scientific publications and patents.

Bernard Barlaam graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, France. He then completed a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Samir Zard at University Paris XI Orsay and spent a year of post-doctoral research with Prof. Steven Ley at the University of Cambridge. In 1994, he joined Zeneca Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca), working in Inflammation. In 1999-2000, he undertook a secondment in AZ Wilmington (USA), then moved to Oncology. He is currently Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry, IMED Oncology at AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK. His responsibilities include leading the Medicinal Chemistry on multiple drug discovery projects including a number of projects targeting kinases as potential cancer therapies. He has been involved in the delivery of several of clinical candidates and is the author/inventor of ca. 70 patents and publications.

Stefan Laufer PhD, is Full Professor and Chair for Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry at Tuebingen University. He received his degrees from Regensburg University. After 10 years in Pharmaceutical Industry (Head Drug Research, R&D Director Merckle GmbH) he joined in 1999 Tuebingen University as Chairman Pharm./Med. Chemistry. His research interests are anti-inflammatory and cancer drug discovery with various targets (COX-1,2,3, LOXs, mPGES1, cPLA2, p38, JAKs, JNKs, CK1d, mtEGRFs). Three compounds from his lab entered clinical development phases. Prof. Laufer chairs the ICEPHA (Interfaculty Center for Pharmacogenomics and Drug Research) and TüCADD, Tuebingen Center for Academic Drug Discovery. He authored more than 365 publications, 14 books/bookchapters and is inventor in 42 patent families.

Nicolas Soldermann studied chemistry at Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Mulhouse where he obtained his Diplôme d’Ingénieur Chimiste de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse, France, majoring in medicinal and bioorganic chemistry and a Master in Sciences in organic and macromolecular synthesis from the University of Haute-Alsace, France. He then moved in 1998 to Switzerland to the University of Neuchâtel for a PhD in organic chemistry with Prof. R. Neier. In 2002, he moved to Stanford University in the US for a Postdoc with Prof. P.A. Wender. Nicolas joined Novartis in 2003 in the Global Discovery Chemistry department as an investigator in medicinal chemistry and since then worked in Hit-to-Lead and Lead Optimization project for several diseases areas such as neurosciences, autoimmunity & transplantation and oncology. He led several projects from exploratory to late stage lead optimization yielding several clinical compounds including leniolisib currently in phase 2 for APDS. Nicolas spent about 10 years in the autoimmune and Transplantation field and since 2015 he is a Senior Investigator / chemistry group leader in Oncology and Immuno-Oncology.

Prof. Benoit Déprez, PhD, MBA Benoit received a degree of pharmaceutical sciences from the Faculty of pharmacy of Lille and a PhD in medicinal chemistry in the Lab of André Tartar at the Institut Pasteur de Lille. With André, he created the High Throughput Chemistry laboratory of the Institut Pasteur de Lille, which became in 1997 the chemistry department of Cerep. After 3 years spent at Cerep as Head of Chemistry, he moved to Devgen, a Belgian start‐up, where he set up a Drug Discovery unit using C. elegans. Benoît Deprez is currently Professor at the University of Lille and heads the Drug Discovery Center based at the Institut Pasteur de Lille. His research interests focus on drug discovery and target validation in infectious and metabolic diseases. He is co-founder and scientific advisor of APTEEUS, (awarded in 2016 at the Concours Mondial d’Innovation). He is correspondent member of the Académie Nationale de Pharmacie and author of more than 100 papers and patents. H-factor = 26.