Dr. Florian Montel grew up in the south east of France and received his Master’s degree from the school of Chemistry of Montpellier in 2001. He obtained his Ph.D. at Sanofi-Aventis in 2005 in Paris under the supervision of Dr. Robert Lett from the University of Paris VI for the total synthesis of Cyclostreptin (FR182877). He joined Novartis in Basel in 2005 for a post-doctoral position for the design of new insecticides. After that, he spent 8 years at UCB in Belgium being project leader of CNS projects (epilepsy, cognition, pain or Parkinson’s disease, etc…). He was also implied in the development of PET ligands; his work led to the finding of the first human PET tracer for the SV2A receptor. Since 2014, he is project leader in the Medicinal Chemistry department at Biberach an der Riss in Germany, leading Respiratory or CNS projects for various indications. For four years, he also leads the Boehringer Ingelheim opnMe team, the new Open innovation portal of the company. He received various award at UCB as the best youngest scientist and later for the most innovative scientist of the company and at Boehringer Ingelheim with the AAI award for the opnMe.com launch in 2018.

Gianluca Sbardella graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' (Italy) in 1993 and received his Ph.D. from the same University in 1997. In 2001 he joined the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Salerno, where since 2016 he is Full Professor in Medicinal Chemistry. During his career, Gianluca was Research Fellow at the Drug Chemistry Center of CNR (Italian National Research Center) in 1997, Research Fellow at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) - Italian National Institute of Health in 1998-1999, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' in 2000, Italy, and research associate at the University of Siena, Italy, in 2000-2001. In 2004 he spent a sabbatical period as visiting professor at the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1994 and 1998 Gianluca was awarded with the Italian Pasteur Institute “Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti” Award. In 1995 he was awarded with the Italian Federation of Chemical Industry (Federchimica) Award. In 2008 Gianluca was awarded with the Farmindustria Italian National Award for Research Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry. In 2019 he received the Golden Seal of the Italian Chemical Society (società Chimica Italiana). After an early interest in the discovery of antiviral drugs, his research currently regards most aspects of epigenetic drug discovery, spanning synthetic strategies, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, biophysical techniques. He is Author of over 110 papers on high-impact international MedChem journals, 3 book chapters, 3 patents (PCT) and over 120 communications in international congresses, comprising 30 invited lectures. He is Vice Rector for International Relations, Coordinator of the PhD program in Drug Discovery and Development, and member of the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Commission of the University of Salerno. From May 2017 he is the National Representative for Italy in the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI). He is currently the President of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society (Divisione di Chimica Farmaceutica della Società Chimica Italiana)

Dr Russell Craft completed his degree in chemistry at the University of Sussex and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. at the same university under the supervision of Prof. Philip Parsons working on a radical cascade approach to the total synthesis of α-Cyclopiazonic acid. After a brief hiatus from chemistry in the construction industry, he worked at Evotec as Senior Scientist and he is currently employed at Symeres as a Project Leader in the drug discovery department. Russell is also a member of the EFMC best practices working group.

After studying organic chemistry at the University Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, Stéphanie Guéret completed her PhD from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2011, where she achieved the total synthesis of the spiroimine unit of the Spirolide family of natural products. She then joined the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Basel, Switzerland as a presidential postdoctoral fellow and developed a new class of cyclic peptidomimetics. After her postdoctoral studies, she took a Senior Research Scientist position at AstraZeneca to join the AstraZeneca-Max Planck Institute Satellite Unit, embedded in the group of Prof. Waldmann in Dortmund, Germany in 2015. Together with a small team of students and scientists, she led major projects of the satellite unit focusing on the synthesis development of mixed macrocycles “PepNats” to modulate protein-protein interactions, the use of “new modalities” such as stabilized peptides to address the TEAD transcription factor and integrating chemical biology and medicinal chemistry to address and understand New Modalities as novel drug compounds. In 2019, she moved to Gothenburg, Sweden to work on small molecule projects for liver diseases from hit to lead optimization. Recently, she was promoted to Associate Principal Scientist focusing on small molecule medicinal chemistry in the field of cardiovascular, renal and metabolism diseases. Her current research interest is synthetic and medicinal chemistry with broadening towards chemical biology to solve key questions on how to move forward novel chemical entities towards drug-like compounds.

Stefan Laufer is Professor and Chairman for Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry at Tuebingen University. He received his degrees from Regensburg University. After 10 years in Pharmaceutical Industry, he joined in 1999 Tuebingen University as Chairman Pharm./Med. Chemistry. His research interests are anti-inflammatory and cancer drug discovery with various eicosanoid (COX-1,2,3, LOXs, mPGES1, cPLA2) and protein kinase targets (e.g. p38, JAKs, JNKs, CK1d, mtEGRFs, BTK, ATM, AurKa) . 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 and is co-founder of two start-up companies. As part of this work, a proprietary kinase inhibitor collection is established (TüKIC, 10.000 cpds, >1 Mio data points). He is associate editor of the ACS Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, authored more than 500 publications, 15 books/bookchapters and is inventor in 42 patent families with >330 national applications. 4 compounds from his lab made it to first into man studies.

Dr. Florian Montel grew up in the south east of France and received his Master’s degree from the school of Chemistry of Montpellier in 2001. He obtained his Ph.D. at Sanofi-Aventis in 2005 in Paris under the supervision of Dr. Robert Lett from the University of Paris VI for the total synthesis of Cyclostreptin (FR182877). He joined Novartis in Basel in 2005 for a post-doctoral position for the design of new insecticides. After that, he spent 8 years at UCB in Belgium being project leader of CNS projects (epilepsy, cognition, pain or Parkinson’s disease, etc…). He was also implied in the development of PET ligands; his work led to the finding of the first human PET tracer for the SV2A receptor. Since 2014, he is project leader in the Medicinal Chemistry department at Biberach an der Riss in Germany, leading Respiratory or CNS projects for various indications. For four years, he also leads the Boehringer Ingelheim opnMe team, the new Open innovation portal of the company. He received various award at UCB as the best youngest scientist and later for the most innovative scientist of the company and at Boehringer Ingelheim with the AAI award for the opnMe.com launch in 2018.

Gianluca Sbardella graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' (Italy) in 1993 and received his Ph.D. from the same University in 1997. In 2001 he joined the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Salerno, where since 2016 he is Full Professor in Medicinal Chemistry. During his career, Gianluca was Research Fellow at the Drug Chemistry Center of CNR (Italian National Research Center) in 1997, Research Fellow at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) - Italian National Institute of Health in 1998-1999, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' in 2000, Italy, and research associate at the University of Siena, Italy, in 2000-2001. In 2004 he spent a sabbatical period as visiting professor at the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1994 and 1998 Gianluca was awarded with the Italian Pasteur Institute “Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti” Award. In 1995 he was awarded with the Italian Federation of Chemical Industry (Federchimica) Award. In 2008 Gianluca was awarded with the Farmindustria Italian National Award for Research Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry. In 2019 he received the Golden Seal of the Italian Chemical Society (società Chimica Italiana). After an early interest in the discovery of antiviral drugs, his research currently regards most aspects of epigenetic drug discovery, spanning synthetic strategies, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, biophysical techniques. He is Author of over 110 papers on high-impact international MedChem journals, 3 book chapters, 3 patents (PCT) and over 120 communications in international congresses, comprising 30 invited lectures. He is Vice Rector for International Relations, Coordinator of the PhD program in Drug Discovery and Development, and member of the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Commission of the University of Salerno. From May 2017 he is the National Representative for Italy in the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI). He is currently the President of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society (Divisione di Chimica Farmaceutica della Società Chimica Italiana)