Chas Bountra is Head of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), Professor of Translational Medicine, and an Associate Head of Medical Sciences at the University of Oxford. Prior to coming back to Oxford, Chas was Head of Biology at GSK. He has therapeutic expertise in neuro-psychiatry, gastro-intestinal, inflammation and cancer, and “know- how” of all stages of the drug discovery and development process. He has given over 300 invited lectures. In 2012 he was voted one of the “top innovators in the industry”. His current research is aimed at determining the 3D X ray structures of novel proteins, generating novel small molecule inhibitors, using these to dissect disease networks and hence identifying new targets for drug discovery.

Helmut Buschmann studied chemistry at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen, Germany and also obtained his PhD there, in organic synthesis, with Prof. Hans-Dieter Scharf. He started his career in pharmaceutical research in 1992 at Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen, becoming Head of the Department of Synthetic Chemistry in 1996, and then, in 2001, Head of Chemical Research. From 2002 to 2008 he was Research Director of Laboratories Dr. Esteve, Barcelona. Since then he has been teaching medicinal chemistry at the RWTH Aachen. He is also a member of Pharma Consulting Aachen and is Chief Scientific Officer of Savira Pharmaceuticals GmbH. His current research interests are focussed on lead optimization of CNS and antiviral drugs, as well as multiple ligands in various disease areas.

Joaquim Magalhães da Cunha, a graduate computer engineer from University of Minho is the current CEO of Health Cluster Portugal (www.healthportugal.com), a hub for competitiveness that brings together companies, universities and hospitals with a market view in the economic areas related to health and to the improvement of health care. A significant part of his professional career was dedicated to CASO - Consultores Associados de Organizações e Informática, Lda (www.caso.pt), a consultancy and software company that he founded and has been its CEO. He was also founder of MinhoDigital SA, a regional cluster experience in the ICT sector, and Nanologic (www.nanologic.eu) the first Portuguese company fully dedicated to the development and production of parts and tools for micro and nano technologies.

György G. Ferenczy obtained his PhD in computational chemistry from the Eötvös University of Budapest. He post doc’ed at the Oxford University, UK and at the University of Nancy, France. He joined to Gedeon Richter as a computational chemist and was appointed to a group-leader in 1996. He moved to Sanofi Budapest in 1999 prior to joining to the Strasbourg Drug Design Group of Sanofi as a group leader. From 2012 he is a senior research fellow at the Semmelweis University and from 2013 at the Research Center for Natural Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interest includes the development and application of computational tools for extended biochemical systems, and in particular studying molecular interactions relevant for drug discovery. He is the author and co-author of over 50 scientific papers and book chapters.

György M. Keserű obtained his Ph.D. at Budapest, Hungary and joined Sanofi-Aventis heading a chemistry research lab. He moved to Gedeon Richter in 1999 as the Head of Computer-aided Drug Discovery. He earned D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 2003 and he was invited for a research professorship at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Since 2007 he was appointed as the Head of Discovery Chemistry at Gedeon Richter. He contributed to the discovery of the antipsychotic Cariprazine® that is under NDA filing. From January 2013 he serves as the general director of the Research Center for Natural Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, drug design, and in silico ADME. He has published over 160 papers and more than 10 books and book chapters.

Sabine Hadida, PhD: Sabine obtained her BS (1989) in Pharmacy from the University of Barcelona (Spain) and her PhD in Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry (1994) from the University of Barcelona (Spain) under the direction of Dr. Mercedes Amat. From 1995 to 1997, she conducted postdoctoral research on fluorous chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh with Prof. Dennis Curran. In 1997, Sabine began her professional career at Combichem Inc. (subsequently Dupont Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Deltagen). In 2002 she joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. in San Diego where she led the chemistry efforts on Cystic Fibrosis. Since 2013 Sabine holds the position of senior director and head of chemistry at Vertex San Diego.

Paul Leeson is a medicinal chemist with more than 35 years experience in major pharmaceutical companies. He obtained BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at Sussex University. His industrial career began at Smith Kline and French Research Laboratories, and has taken him to Merck Sharp and Dohme, then to Wyeth (USA), and from 1997-2011, AstraZeneca, where he was head of medicinal chemistry at the Charnwood site and leader of AstraZeneca’s Global Chemistry Forum. Since 2011 he has been a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline. His drug discovery contributions have been in the cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation therapy areas. He has a special interest in compound quality in relation to pipeline attrition.

Paul-Peter Tak received his medical degree cum laude from the Free University in Amsterdam and was trained as an internist, rheumatologist and immunologist at Leiden University Medical Center, where he also received his PhD. He served as Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at the Academic Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam (AMC) for 12 years. Since 2011 he is Senior Vice President and heads ImmunoInflammation R&D at GSK. He is Site Head of GSK R&D in Stevenage, Co-chair of GSK’s Scientific Advisory Board, Board Member of GSK’s Scientific Review Board, the Platform and Capabilities Investment Board, and the ImmunoInflammation and Infectious Diseases Franchise Board. He is Chair of the Research Directors Group at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

Current title and position: AstraZeneca Professor of Systems Biology, University of Manchester Director Manchester Center for Integrative Systems Biology, University of Manchester Director Manchester Doctoral Training Center Integrative Systems Biology, University of Manchester Professor of Synthetic Systems Biology, SILS, University of Amsterdam Professor of Microbial Physiology, AIMMS, VU University Amsterdam Research field: Systems biology Education and professional experience: Chemistry then Biochemistry; plus some mathematics, physics and medicine. PhD in Thermodynamics and control of biological free energy transduction, University of Amsterdam. Postdoc University of Padova. Visiting scientist at the National Institute fo Health, Bethesda, US. Staff scientist Netherlands Cancer Institute, Professorships at VU University Amsterdam, University of Manchester and the University of Amsterdam. One of the prime movers of systems biology internationally. Member of the Italian Academy of Sciences

I obtained a B. S. degree in Chemistry from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) in the Dominican Republic. For my Ph. D., I trained in Bioorganic Chemistry with Prof. George Gokel at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. I then trained in enzymology as Postdoctoral Scholar with Prof. Stephen Benkovic at the Pennsylvania State University. I worked as an Assistant Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Currently, I am a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas (UNLV). My laboratory works in the development of quantitative approaches to understand Bacillus and Clostridium spore germination. We are also developing inhibitors of spore germination as a new paradigm in the prevention of bacterial infections.

Professor Fernando Albericio is holding various appointments: Full Professor at the University of Barcelona, Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, and Honorary Research Professor at the University of KwalaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa). His major research interests cover practically all aspects of Peptide Sciences and their application in the discovery and development of new bioactive substances. His group also is being involved in the development of new strategies for drug delivery. He has published over 700 papers, several review articles, more than 45 patents, and co-author of three books. He is editor of several scientific journal and acting in the editorial board of several others.

Current position: Professor of Chemistry and Earth, Ocean, & Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1 Research Field: Marine Natural Products Chemistry - Isolation, Structure Elucidation, Biosynthesis, and Synthesis of biologically active marine and terrestrial natural products Education and Employment: Academic Degrees: University of Alberta, Honours BSc in Chemistry, 1969 University of California, Berkeley, MSc in Chemical Physics, 1970 University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), PhD, 1975 Employment Since Graduation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Boston, Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry, 02/1975-06/1977 University of British Columbia - Vancouver, Professor, Chemistry & EOAS, 07/1977 - present

Dr. Tesfaye Biftu received his PhD from Brandeis University in chemistry and MBA from Rutgers University in management. After a brief career in academia, he first joined Merck and Co. as a medicinal chemist and later went to CytoMed Inc as a Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry. He returned back to Merck in 1995 where he continued his career, currently as a project leader. Dr. Biftu has published or presented over 60 papers and is an inventor or co-inventor of over 70 US and international patents in various areas of drug discovery including inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, metabolic disorders and infectious diseases. Dr. Biftu Lectures at Jefferson University School of Pharmacy.

Dr. Sam Bonacorsi obtained his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 1995 in the area physical organic chemistry. Following a one year post-doctoral fellowship at Syracuse University, he accepted a research chemistry position with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in Princeton, New Jersey. Sam is currently a member of the BMS-Discovery Chemistry Platforms Group and serves as the Director of the Radiochemical Synthesis Group. His research interests are focused on the design of radiolabeling approaches that incorporate isotopes into molecules of pharmaceutical value. More recently, the BMS radiochemistry group has become increasingly involved in PET synthesis activities. The group’s efforts resulted in the discovery of an LPA1 PET ligand with lung imaging applications. Outside of research, Sam operates a fruit farm alongside his wife and 5 children and enjoys numerous outdoor activities.

Scott is currently Head of Computational Toxicology at the Swedish Toxicological Research Center. Prior to this appointment he was Global Head of Molecular and Genetic Toxicology and Chief Scientist at AstraZeneca. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Scott was at Pfizer Central Research in Groton specializing in reactive metabolite research to support INDs, new drug registration packages and marketed products. Scott received his postdoctoral training in Molecular Toxicology at the Institute for Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm as an NIH Fogarty International Scholar. Prior to that, Scott performed his doctoral dissertation research at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the area of metabolic activation of xenobiotics to chemically reactive species.

Current title and position: Professor at University of Basel and senior scientist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), Basel, Switzerland. Research interests: Cultivation of protozoan parasites and differentiation processes. Control of African sleeping sickness through collaboration with African partners. Drug discovery and development for malaria and African sleeping sickness. Education: 1973 Ph.D. in Biology in 1973, University of Basel, Switzerland 1974-76 Postdoctoral studies at the University of California Irvine, USA. Positions held: 1976 – 1986 Scientist in the Protozoology Group at Swiss TPH. 1987 – 2013 Head of the Unit Parasite Chemotherapy and Deputy Head of Department Medical Parasitology & Infection Biology at Swiss TPH.

Erick M. Carreira was born in Havana, Cuba in 1963. He obtained a B.S. degree in 1984 from the University of Illinois at Urbana­Champaign under the supervision of Scott E. Denmark and a Ph.D. degree in 1990 from Harvard University under the supervision of David A. Evans. After carrying out postdoctoral work with Peter Dervan at the California Institute of Technology through late 1992, he joined the faculty at the same institution as an assistant professor of chemistry and subsequently was promoted to the rank of associate professor of chemistry in the Spring of 1996, and full professor in Spring 1997. Since September 1998, he has been full professor of Organic Chemistry at the ETH Zürich. He is the recipient of the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry, Nobel Laureate Signature Award, Fresenius Award, a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, Merck Young Investigator Award, Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award, Pfizer Research Award, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award. He is also the recipient of the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology Annual Award in Teaching and a Richard M. Badger Award in Teaching. His research program focuses on the asymmetric synthesis of biologically active, stereochemically complex, natural products. Target molecules are selected which pose unique challenges in asymmetric bond construction. A complex multistep synthesis endeavor provides a goal-oriented setting within which to engage in reaction innovation and design. Drawing from the areas of organometallic chemistry, coordination chemistry, and molecular recognition, Carreira's group is developing catalytic and stoichiometric reagents for asymmetric stereocontrol.

Dr. Chawla received his B.Sc. from Johns Hopkins University in Biomedical Engineering in 1989, and his M.D., Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. He completed his graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Mitch Lazar, and joined the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Evans at the Salk Institute for his postdoctoral studies. He became an Assistant Professor in 2003 at Stanford University, and is currently an Associate Professor of Physiology and Medicine in Cardiovascular Research Institute of the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Chawla’s work has contributed to our understanding of how innate immune participates in tissue homeostasis. His laboratory discovered novel functions of type 2 innate immunity in the regulation of white and brown adipose tissue, and liver metabolism. More recently, his laboratory has demonstrated that type 2 innate immunity orchestrates the regenerative response of tissues after injury by controlling the proliferation and differentiation of tissue resident stem and parenchymal cells.

Chris Chipot was born in Paris, France in 1967. In 1990, he received a M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Nancy. In 1994, he obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Nancy under the direction of Bernard Maigret. He subsequently joined the group of Peter Kollman at the University of California, San Francisco. He then moved to the NASA Ames Research Center, where he investigated interfacial phenomena with Andrew Pohorille. In 1996, he was recruited by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and obtained his habilitation in 2000. Since 2006, he has held the position of Research Director at the University of Lorraine with a joint appointment at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests range from the structure and function of membrane proteins to developments of intermolecular potentials as well as novel strategies for free-energy calculations.

Clara Christ is a computational chemist at Bayer Pharma AG in Berlin where her research is focused on drug design in the therapy area oncology. Besides giving computational chemistry support in all stages of research projects she has been working on improved methods in the areas of de novo design, structure property analysis, and binding affinity prediction. She holds a MSc (2005) and PhD (2009) degree in chemistry from ETH Zürich. During her PhD with Wilfred van Gunsteren she has developed a method to calculate multiple free energy differences from a single simulation.

Arthur Christopoulos (BPharm, PhD) is a Professor of Pharmacology in the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Monash University, Australia) and a Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He is a world leader in the development of techniques that facilitate the detection and quantification of drugs that act at allosteric receptor binding sites, distinct from the natural hormone-binding site, and of signal-pathway-biased agonists. His research crosses academic and pharmaceutical industry boundaries, and incorporates computational and mathematical modeling, medicinal chemistry, structural biology, cellular biochemistry and signal transduction, and in vivo animal models of behavior.

Stuart Conway is a University 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 in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Bristol. Stuart completed post-doctoral studies with Prof. Andrew Holmes FRS at the University of Cambridge. In 2003, he was appointed as a Lecturer in Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of St Andrews and in 2008 he took up his current position. Between March and August 2013 Stuart was a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology. Stuart’s research focuses on the development of molecular tools to enable the study of biological systems. The group’s work was recognised by the award of the 2012 Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia by the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.

Pier Giorgio Cozzi studied chemistry at the University of Milan where he received his Laurea degree in 1989. After spending four years as a research associate in Lausanne (Switzerland), he was appointed Assistant (1994) and then Associate Professor (2001) at the University of Bologna. The development of new, enantioselective catalytic reactions (organometallic and organocatalytic), the design of new chiral ligands, and the development of enantioselective variant of famous named reactions (Nozaki–Hiyama-Kishi-Takai reaction, Reformatsky reaction), and organocatalytic stereoselective SN1-type reactions, are his preeminent interests. Prof. Cozzi has been visiting professor in the University of Aachen (Germany), Neuchàtel (Switzerland), Ottawa (Canada), Basel (Switzerland), Aarhus (Denmark), Hong Kong, and GuangZhou (China), and he has participated in two European Networks in the Sixth Framework Program Priority; the European LigBank, and the IBAAC projects. He was the coordinator of the program CATAFLU.OR in the Fp7 and is participating in the ITN BioChemLig and MolarNet projects. He is on the International Advisory Board of ChemPlusChem and AsianJOC. In 2010 has published the Author Page in Angewandte Chemie.

Helena Danielson is Professor of Biochemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden since 2002 and Chief Scientific Officer of Beactica AB. She is a specialist in enzyme-based drug discovery and molecular recognition. Her education includes a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering at Lund University (1982) and, as a Fulbright scholar, a Master of Science in Biochemistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA (1984), and a Ph. D. in Biochemistry at Stockholm University (1987). As a postdoc at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm Helena Danielson started a research project on HIV protease as a drug target for AIDS, and has since expanded her research to other enzymes and diseases, more recently also with an interest in membrane receptors and neurological drug targets. Helena Danielson has focused on developing enzymology for drug discovery, and in particular biomolecular interaction analysis for detailed studies of enzyme-inhibitor interactions and other important recognition processes in the life science area. Helena Danielson co-founded Beactica AB in 2006. The company is a specialist drug discovery company that generates novel drug leads from low molecular weight fragments by integrating biomolecular interaction analysis with in silico molecular docking techniques.

Prof. Dr. Iwan de Esch did his PhD research at the Department of Pharmacochemistry, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 1998, he became research associate at the Drug Design Group of the University of Cambridge. He is a co-founder of De Novo Pharmaceuticals (2000) where he worked as a group and project leader. He returned to academia in 2003 and is now professor at the Medicinal Chemistry Department of VU University Amsterdam. The group focuses on two research lines, namely G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and Fragment-Based Drug Design (FBDD). Prof. de Esch is co-founder of IOTA Pharmaceuticals Ltd (2007) and Griffin Discoveries BV (2009). In 2011, he was awarded the Galenus Research Price for his work on FBDD.

M. Emilia Di Francesco has more than a decade of drug discovery research experience with Merck Research Laboratories, where she served in the Italian, UK and Boston research sites. During her career she led medicinal chemistry projects in several different therapeutic areas, including antiviral and oncology. She has made contributions to two compounds in the Phase I / PhaseII Merck portfolio, and was involved in the successful development of Raltegravir, the first in class HIV integrase inhibitor. Since 2012 she joined the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA as the group leader for the medicinal chemistry team in the newly founded Institute for Applied Cancer Science (IACS). Together with the team at IACS she is focusing on metabolism and epigenetic targets and leveraging the clinical and basic research expertise at MD Anderson with the goal of developing novel therapies for cancer patients. Di Francesco received her Master Degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Rome La Sapienza and her PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Ian Paterson.

Stephen Douthwaite studied biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Wales in Cardiff (1976), and turned his research interests to protein synthesis soon afterwards when he joined the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in West Berlin (1977-81). He has a PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark and was a postdoc at the University of California in Santa Cruz (1984-87). He presently holds a position as Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark.

Chad Elmore is the Director, Head of Isotope Chemistry for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. His group is responsible for delivering long-lived and stable isotope labeled compounds in support of in vivo and in vitro studies. He has worked for 17 years in the field of isotope chemistry at both AstraZeneca and Merck and Co. He obtained his PhD from the University of Illinois-Champaign, Urbana and his BS degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Paul Fish is Professor and Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at the UCL School of Pharmacy, and leader of the Drug Discovery Cluster based within the School. His research activities are focussed on the design and synthesis of small molecule drug candidates and the identification of new small molecule Chemical Probes for Bromodomain (BRD) and Histone Methyl Transferase (HMT) epigenetic protein drug targets. He undertook PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham and subsequently moved to the USA where he performed postdoctoral research at Harvard University and then Stanford University. He started his career in drug discovery in 1994 as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry and through his research he has helped to co-discover and deliver drug candidates across several therapeutic disease areas, some of which have gone on to advanced clinical studies. He moved to the UCL School of Pharmacy in 2012.

Alois Fürstner (1962) studied at the Technical University of Graz, Austria, where he got his Ph.D. in 1987. After postdoctoral studies in Geneva, he finished his Habilitation in Graz before joining the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim, Germany, in 1993 as a group leader. Since 1998, he is Director at that Institute and is also affiliated with the Technical University of Dortmund. His research interests focus on homogeneous catalysis and applications thereof to the synthesis of structurally challenging bioactive target molecules.

Director, Malaria DPU, Diseases of the Developing World, GlaxoSmithKline F. Javier Gamo is an expert in parasitology and antimalarial drug discovery. Javier completed his PhD working in microbial biochemistry and molecular biology at the Faculty of Medicine-Biomedical Research Institute, Spanish Research Council. He joined former GlaxoSmithKline (former Glaxo Wellcome) in 1995 and since then has leaded and carried out different projects in the drug discovery area. In 2002 he started to work in the GSK antimalarial program developed in collaboration with the Medicine for Malaria Venture (MMV). Since then, he has leaded and collaborated actively in different target based projects and in 2008 he started to lead a program based on phenotypic screening for antimalarial lead discovery that carry out the identification of all the antimalarial compounds present in the GSK screening collection after testing more than 2 million compounds.. Following internal efforts, GSK is applying recent developed in vitro and in vivo filters to identify the most promising series in order to select preclinical candidates. Javier is also leading an internal effort to share TCAMS among the broader antimalarial community accordingly with the Open Innovation approach GSK initiated some years ago.

Ged is Co-Founder of Convergence Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on the development of next generation pain therapeutics based in Cambridge UK. He is presently Head of Chemistry and Preclinical Development and a member of the Executive Management Team. Ged is responsible for Medicinal Chemistry, DMPK, Safety Assessment and Manufacturing supporting both Discovery and clinical projects. Ged has over 20 years Drug Discovery experience including 12 years in Pain Discovery. He has been responsible for more than 12 development candidates including multiple phase I and II assets for pain. Prior to the launch of Convergence Ged was Head of Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline where he built and led a department of 40 chemists that pursued all aspects of drug discovery up to clinical candidate nomination. Ged has over 100 patents and peer reviewed publications to his name and is a member of the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Committee of the RSC and the RSC Ion Channels conference organising committee.

Christopher Goldring has more than twenty years of experience of molecular bioanalysis, working with cell culture and in vivo models. He leads the molecular and cellular toxicology group within the MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science (CDSS), a leading UK centre led from the University of Liverpool, with a critical mass of scientists studying mechanisms of adverse reactions to drugs, and which is the coordinator of the Mechanism-based Improved Prediction of Drug-Induced Liver Injury (MIP-DILI) IMI programme. He also plays a leading role in a new UK Regenerative Medicine project, developing innovative methods for the assessment of the safety of stem cells themselves. He has current MRC, Wellcome Trust, BBSRC, IMI, and Stem Cells for Safer Medicines support. He is programme director of the Pharmacology degree programme at Liverpool, and he leads Masters teaching programmes on Safety Pharmacology and Stem Cells in the IMI Safescimet training programme.

Dr. Grese received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Northwestern University in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991. After two years as a NIH postdoctoral fellow at UC-Irvine, he joined Eli Lilly in 1992 as a Senior Organic Chemist. He has held a variety of scientific and management positions within the Discovery Chemistry and Research Technologies division at Lilly, accepting his current role as Chief Scientific Officer for Lead Generation and External Innovation in 2010. His independent research contributions have focused on drug discovery in the area of nuclear hormone receptors and in the therapeutic areas of osteoporosis and diabetes. He has also been influential in the design and development of new scientific strategies and technologies to enable Lead Generation.

Dr Uwe M. Grether, Principal Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd. Basel, Switzerland. Uwe received his Ph.D. in chemistry under the direction of Prof. Herbert Waldmann from the University of Karlsruhe in 2000. From 2000-2001 he carried out postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Prof. James D. White at the Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. In 2001, Uwe joined the Medicinal Chemistry section of F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd. Basel, Switzerland as a research chemist. Over the years he has contributed to a number of drug discovery programs for the treatment of metabolic, cardiovascular, kidney and more recently ophthalmic diseases. Uwe worked as team member and Lead Chemist covering both early and late stage research and reaching advanced stages up to phase 3 clinical trials. He is co-author of more than 60 patent applications and research publications.

Honorary Professor Dr. Helmut Grubmüller, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Head of the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Department Research field: Theoretical Biophysics Study of physics TU Munich (1985), diploma in physics (1990), visiting scientist University Urbana-Champaign (1990/91), PhD TU Munich (1994), visiting scientist CENG Grenoble, France (1994), postdoctoral fellow University of Munich (1994-1998), EMBO Fellow ETH Zurich, Switzerland (1997), independent research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (1998-2003), German habilitation in physics (University of Göttingen, 2002), Associate Professor EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland (2003), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (since 2003), Honorary Professor for Physics at the University of Göttingen (since 2005).

For the last 15 years my research career has been focused on ion channels in excitable tissue. I have had a continuous interchange between basic and applied science and currently hold a dual affiliation being Principal Scientist at Lundbeck A/S and Honorary Professor at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition I have drug discovery experience from various scientific positions at different biotech companies. I have worked with research strategies for identifying new ion channel targets and have extensive experience as project manager of pre-clinical drug discovery projects from identification and validation of target to phase 1.

Christian Heinis studied biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) where he also did a PhD in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dario Neri. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Dr. Kai Johnsson at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL) and in the group of Sir Gregory Winter at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Professor with tenure track for Bioorganic Chemistry at EPFL and since 2009 he is holding a professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. The general research interest of Christian Heinis is the development of novel and innovative therapeutic strategies using chemical and biological methodologies and tools. Christian is a scientific founder of the start-up company Bicycle Therapeutics.

Dr. Georg Jaeschke, Distinguished Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel Switzerland. He received his chemistry education at the University of Freiburg, ETH Zurich (PhD) and Harvard (Post-Doc) before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in Basel, in 1998. His research has mainly been devoted to the areas of neuroscience in particular to glutamate receptors. He was leading the chemistry project teams that discovered the NMDA-2B selective antagonists EVT101 and EVT103 (currently in phase I and phase II clinical trials) and the mGlu5 negative allosteric modulator RO4917523 (currently in phase II studies for Fragile X and depression). He has received several prices including the research price of the German Fragile X Society (2008), the Roche Pharma CEO Award (2008), the Roche Inventors Recognition Gold medal (2012) and the Leo Sternbach Award (2013). He is an author of more than 80 patents and publications.

Professor Reuben Jih-Ru Hwu is a Chair Professor of National Tsing Hua University and president of Asian Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (2012, 2013). He was a former Dean of College of Science (2007–2010). The honors bestowed upon him include Fellow of Asian Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (2013–), Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (2005–), Fellow of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2000–), and Fellow of The Third World Academy of Sciences (1999–). After receiving a Ph.D. degree of Stanford University (1978–1982), he served at The Johns Hopkins University, Academia Sinica, and National Central University. He publishes more than 190 articles in reputed international journals and obtains 42 patents. Current research interests include drug design and synthesis, development of DNA-cleaving agents, and invention of nano-biomaterials for drug delivery.

Han-Young Kang received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of Professor Roberts M. Coates in 1986. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Yoshito Kishi at Harvard University (1986-87). After working as a senior researcher at KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology)(1987-92), he moved to Chungbuk National University in 1992, where he was promoted to a Professor in 2001. He served the college of Natural Sciences, Chungbuk National University as a dean (2010-2012). In 2013, he also served as the president of the Korean Chemical Society. His research interests include the development of synthetic reactions and synthesis of biologically important compounds.

Anake Kijjoa is a Professor of Chemistry and Head of Chemistry Department of the Biomedical Sciences Institute of Abel Salazar (ICBAS), University of Porto, Portugal. He received his BSc (Pharmacy) from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand in 1974 and PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 1980. After taking a position as Assistant Professor at the Biomedical Sciences Institute of Abel Salazar (ICBAS), he received a post-doctoral fellowship to work with Professor Werner Herz at the Department of Chemistry, The Florida State University at Tallahassee, Florida, USA. His research field is isolation, structure elucidation and biological activity evaluation of Natural Products from plants, marine sponges and soil and marine fungi.

Dr Jesper Lau studied biology and chemistry at University of Southern Denmark. After his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1990 and a research visitor stay in the group of Professor Barry Trost at Standford University in California, he joined Health Care Discovery at Novo Nordisk. Jesper Lau has long term expertise within combinatorial chemistry, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery but has since 2002 been engaged in protein and peptide engineering. The main focus has been establishing technologies to improve the therapeutic properties of endogenous peptides and proteins. During +20 years in pharma he has optimised numerous leads to clinical candidates within diseases in the central nervous system, growth hormone disorders and especially within diabetes care with particular interest in glucagon like peptide 1 (GLP-1) where he was project responsible for once weekly GLP-1 and is first inventor of semaglutide.

Dr. Eric Lingueglia, 47, is Director of Research at INSERM. He completed his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Prof. Michel Lazdunski and worked for two years in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is studying ion channels for over 20 years, and leads since 2007 the "Ion Channels and Pain" team at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology of the CNRS - University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. His team investigates the properties and the role of ion channels in pain by combining molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, pharmacology, and animal behaviour. Dr. Lingueglia has a special interest in Acid-Sensing Ion Channels (ASICs), which are excitatory (depolarizing) cation channels activated by extracellular protons and largely expressed in the pain pathway. Dr. Lingueglia’s team is especially using animal venom-derived peptides that specifically block these channels to clarify the role of ASICs in pain perception and modulation, and to better understand their molecular and functional properties.

Jessica is co-founder and Director Medicinal Chemistry at Sprint Bioscience, leading the in-house chemistry team and responsible for the Vps34 inhibitor program. Her research focus is fragment- and structure-based drug discovery targeting various cancer metabolism pathways. As co-founder she has been in charge of developing the FBDD and medicinal chemistry strategies at Sprint Bioscience. She has been responsible for the lead generation program of PFKFB3 inhibitors and at present she is the project leader for the Vps34 inhibitor program. Previous she has had positions at Swedish Orphan Biovitrum as Chemistry Team Leader in Oncology and Inflammation working with structure-based lead generation and at Pharmacia working with diabetes, metabolism and obesity. Jessica graduated from Uppsala University with a M. Sc in Chemistry.

Dr. Dustin J. Mergott received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1998. He then received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2004 from the University of Michigan under the guidance of Professor William R. Roush, and subsequently completed a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Harvard University in the lab of Professor Eric N. Jacobsen. Dustin joined Lilly in 2006 where he is currently Principal Research Scientist and Medicinal Chemistry Group Leader. While at Lilly, Dustin’s research has focused on Alzheimer's Disease and Oncology. He has played a key role in leading Lilly’s BACE inhibitor research program and is a named inventor on multiple U.S. patents covering BACE inhibitors.

Filippo Minutolo is an associate professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Pisa (Italy). His main research interests include drug discovery in the fields of anti-cancer agents and nuclear receptors ligands. He studied Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Pisa until 1992. In 1993, he got an ENI fellowship to attend a triennial graduate school at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, enclosing a visiting research period (1994–1995) in the group of Ben L. Feringa at the University of Groningen (NL). In 1996 he received his PhD in Chemistry and then got a postdoctoral appointment (1997–1999) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), where he worked in the research group of John A. Katzenellenbogen. In 2000 he became a researcher at the University of Pisa and since 2006 he has held his current position.

Marc Mosrin was born in 1981 in Bourges (France). After undergraduate studies at the Paul Cézanne University in Marseille (France) and in Basel (Switzerland), he joined the group of Prof. P. Knochel at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (Germany) in 2005. He obtained his PhD in 2009 on the regio- and chemoselective functionalization of aromatic and heteroaromatic compounds with applications to the synthesis of biologically active compounds. Since 2009, he has worked as team leader in herbicide research at Bayer CropScience in Frankfurt (Germany).

After a PhD in organic chemistry obtained from the University of Zurich (1983) , D. Obrecht spent two years of postdoctoral studies working in Prof. R. E. Ireland’s group at the California Institute of Technology on the total synthesis of avermectin. He then joined the Central Research Laboratories of F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basle where he worked on several drug discovery projects. In 1989 he started a project with the aim to find small molecule peptidomimetics of exposed protein epitopes. In 1993 he was awarded Roche Lecturer, and 1994 he started a combinatorial chemistry project which he headed in 1996. End of 1996 he co-founded Polyphor with his brother Dr. Jean-Pierre Obrecht. The main expertises of D. Obrecht are synthetic organic chemistry with particular emphasis on macrocycles, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. He is currently CSO of the the company Polyphor and author of 65 publications and 32 patents, including key patents on the Protein Epitope Mimetics (PEM) Technology and products.

Dafydd Owen has fifteen years of experience as a medicinal chemist in the design and synthesis of drug-like molecules for Pfizer at its Sandwich UK and Cambridge MA research sites. He is currently an Associate Research Fellow within Pfizer Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry where he leads a leads an outward looking, academically collaborative group for Pfizer, researching chemical probes for epigenetic targets. He obtained his first degree at Imperial College in 1994 before moving to the University of Cambridge to gain a PhD under the supervision of Professor Steve Ley in 1997. Having won a research fellowship for postdoctoral work, he spent 1998 with Professor Leo Paquette at Ohio State University. During his research career has delivered over fifty invited lectures and is also an author on over thirty research papers and patents. He has made contributions to three compounds currently in Pfizer’s Phase I/II portfolio. In 2009 he was the recipient of a Pfizer Worldwide R&D People Leader Award. In the same year he was selected as an ACS Organic Division Young Industrial Investigator, receiving his award at the 2009 Fall ACS National Meeting in Washington DC.

Jake Plattner, Ph.D. is currently Senior Vice President of Research at Anacor Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Plattner received his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois in 1968 and went on to complete his Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. He then joined Pfizer, Inc. as a research chemist working in the areas of analgesics, antipsychotics and prostaglandins. In 1977, Dr. Plattner joined Abbott Laboratories as chemistry Group Leader and progressed through increasing levels of responsibility to become Vice President of Anti-infective Research in 1992. In 1998, he joined Chiron Corporation as Vice President of Small Molecule Discovery Research. He took his current position at Anacor Pharmaceuticals in February, 2004. His research interests include drug discovery in the areas of anti-infectives, anti-inflammatories, neglected diseases and boron chemistry.

Dr Hassen Ratni is Senior Principal Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel Switzerland. He received his chemistry education at the University of Geneva (PhD) and Tokyo (Post-Doc) before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in Basel, in 2001. After an initial period working in cardiovascular and metabolic disease, his research has mainly been devoted to the areas of neuroscience (for example neurokinin receptors, or V1a receptor antagonist now in human clinical trials, phase II, for autism). In 2005, he participated in a secondment within the Roche group at Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Gotemba Japan, in the field of renal disease. He is currently the discovery project leader of the SMN program aiming for a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. He is an author on more than 75 patents and publications.

Adam Renslo, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Associate Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF. Research in the Renslo Laboratory spans target identification through lead optimization, with an emphasis on infectious disease and neurodegeneration. The Renslo group applies fragment-based approaches for lead discovery and is pioneering new drug delivery technologies. Dr. Renslo is a co-author of ~60 scientific articles and an inventor on 8 issued US patents. Previously, Dr. Renslo served as Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Vicuron Pharmaceuticals, where he led chemistry teams in antibacterial and antifungal discovery programs. His group identified multiple clinical candidates, including the investigational antibacterial PF-708093. His scientific training was in synthetic organic chemistry with Rick Danheiser (Ph.D., MIT) and in molecular recognition with Julius Rebek, Jr. (Postdoctoral, TSRI).

Esther Schmitt is a Director and head of the microbiology group in the Natural Products Unit of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel, where she joined in 2001 after a post-doctoral position in fungal genetics. The expertise in induction of secondary metabolism, synthetic biology and biosynthetic pathways is used to discover novel natural products and to support pre-clinical research.

Prof. Peter Scott is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Michigan, and Director of the University of Michigan PET Center. His group conducts research aimed at discovery of new biomarkers for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, and development of new radiochemistry methodology. Prof. Scott grew up in England and received his BSc (with first class honors) in Medicinal Chemistry from Loughborough University (2001), and his PhD in Organic Synthesis (with Dr. Patrick Steel) from the Durham University (2005). Dr. Scott then moved to the USA to conduct postdoctoral research in Organometallic Chemistry at the University of Buffalo (2005 – 2006, with Prof. Huw Davies), and in Radiochemistry at the University of Michigan (2006-2007, with Prof. Michael Kilbourn). Dr. Scott worked for Siemens Molecular Imaging and Biomarker Research (2007 – 2009) before returning to the University of Michigan in 2009 after being appointed to the faculty of the Department of Radiology. In 2012 he was appointed to the Interdepartmental Program in Medicinal Chemistry and promoted to Director of the PET Center.

Dr. Shalev Ben-Ami is a post-doctoral fellow at the Weizmann institute of Science in Israel, working in the laboratory of Prof. Ada Yonath on the structural and biochemical aspects of antibiotic resistance. Dr. Shalev Ben-Ami received her PhD in Chemistry from the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel, working in the laboratories of Prof. Timor Baasov and Prof. Noam Adir. Her PhD work focused on structural investigations of eukaryotic and prokaryotic ribosomes for rational development of ribosome-targeted drugs aimed at treatment of bacterial and protozoan infections and nonsense-mediated genetic disorders. For her work, Dr. Shalev Ben-Ami has received the prestigious Chateaubriand fellowship awarded by the French ministry of science as well as the Schulich prize for scientific excellence among research students and the Klartag memorial prize for excellence in biochemistry research.

Artur M. S. Silva, full professor of organic chemistry, University of Aveiro, Portugal https://sites.google.com/site/artursilvaua/ He studied chemistry at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) where he graduated in chemistry physics in 1987. In 1993 he received his PhD in chemistry at Aveiro University. He began his independent career at Aveiro University as an Assistant Professor in 1994. He was appointed to Associate Professor with tenure in 1998 and Full Professor in 2001. Professor Artur Silva has published over 400 papers several book chapters. He belongs to the advisory board of European Journal of Organic Chemistry, Mediterranean Journal of Chemistry, E-Journal of Chemistry and of Green and Sustainable Chemistry. His research interests range over the chemistry of polyphenolic and nitrogen heterocyclic compounds, with special emphasis on the development of new synthetic routes, and also on the organocatalytic transformations. However, the second passion of his research is centred in the isolation and structural characterization of natural products from diverse terrestrial and marine sources.

Dr. Silverman is Vice President, Discovery Biology at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. Cubist is focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel therapies for acute, hospital based use, with a particular emphasis on new antibiotics for the treatment of drug resistant infections. Dr. Silverman received a Ph. D. in Microbiology from Harvard Medical School and completed postdoctoral training at Yale University before joining Cubist as a bench scientist in 1997. In his time at Cubist he has contributed to the discovery of three novel antibiotics that have entered clinical development, including serving as the biology lead for the discovery of Surotomycin, currently in Phase 3 trials for treatment of C. difficile. In addition, he and his collaborators have pursued studies into the mechanism of action of the lipopeptide antibiotic daptomycin and the mechanisms of resistance to this clinically important antibiotic.

Richard B. Silverman, John Evans Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA Research areas of interest: investigations of the molecular mechanisms of action, rational design, and syntheses of potential medicinal agents acting on enzymes and receptors, particularly directed at neurological and neurodegenerative disorders. B.S., chemistry, Pennsylvania State University; Ph.D., organic chemistry, Harvard University (David Dolphin); Postdoctoral research, Graduate Department of Biochemistry, Brandeis University (Robert Abeles) Assistant Professor of Chemistry (1976), Associate Professor of Chemistry (1982), Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology (1986), Northwestern University; John Evans Professor of Chemistry (2004)

Andy is currently Executive Director, Discovery Chemistry at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey. His primary responsibility is the design and synthesis of novel therapeutic agents in support of Neurology and Infectious Diseases drug discovery. Andy received his BSc (Hons) from the University of Tasmania in 1984 and his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Sydney in 1989. He then pursued postdoctoral research in natural products total synthesis with Professor Phillip D. Magnus at the University of Texas at Austin prior to joining Schering-Plough in 1991. At Schering-Plough and Merck, Andy’s research has focused on the design and synthesis of enzyme inhibitors, ion channel modulators and G-protein-coupled receptor agonists and antagonists to treat neurodegenerative disease, infectious disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Jan Steyaert holds a Ph.D in Applied Biological Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He made his PhD at the protein engineering department of Plant Genetic Systems (currently Bayer Crop science). After a postdoc at the International Livestock Research Institute (Nairobi, Kenya), he started his own lab in Brussels. As a full professor at the VUB, he is currently director of the Structural Biology Brussels lab and vice-director of the VIB Structural Biology Research Center. Recent work involves the use of single domain antibodies (nanobodies) for structural biology. Nanobodies that faithfully mimic the effects of G protein binding were used to obtain diffraction quality crystals and to solve the very first GPCR structures in their agonist-bound active state. More interesting, his lab identified nanobodies that stabilize the β2AR•Gs complex. One of these nanobodies was used to obtain the high-resolution crystal structure of this complex, providing the first view of transmembrane signaling by a GPCR.

Thomas Trieselmann was born in Hannover, Germany in 1971. He received a diploma degree in chemistry from the University of Hannover in 1996 and a PhD degree from the University of Marburg under the direction of Prof. R.W. Hoffmann in 1999. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Ian Paterson at the University of Cambridge, UK in 2000, he joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 2001 as a principal scientist in the department of medicinal chemistry in Biberach, Germany. Since then Thomas Trieselmann has led various lead identification and lead optimization projects in the cardiometabolic disease area.

• Professor of Molecular Toxicology, Head of the Section of Molecular and Computational Toxicology VU-University Amsterdam (1985 - ) • Head of the Department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPS), and Director of AIMMS, the Amsterdam Institute for Molecules, Medicines and Systems (www.aimms.vu.nl) • General research interests: Roles molecular and computational toxicology can play in drug discovery, development and safety assessment, More specifically: Toxication/detoxication mechanisms; chemically reactive metabolites, in silico and in vitro prediction and screening of ADME-Tox properties, (biocatalytic) metabolite production and profiling, translational biomarkers of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) • Amongst others he is coordinator of SafeSciMET, an IMI-JU consortium for ‘A Modular Education and Training programme for Translational Safety Sciences for Medicines’ and WP-Leader in two other large IMI-JU projects: eTOX and MIP-DILI. • Amongst others, he was awarded with the European ISSX Scientific Achievement Award (2006), an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen (2011) and he is Life Time Honorary Member of ISSX.

Dr. Jörg Vollmer joined Nexigen GmbH in October 2011 focusing on the development of innovative peptide therapeutics targeting difficult to access disease-relevant proteins in oncology. He has more than sixteen years of experience in scientific research and drug development. Previously he held management positions at Coley Pharmaceutical developing nucleic acid-based immune modulatory therapeutics, and at Pfizer concentrating on Antisense- and siRNA-based nucleic acid therapeutics.

Current title and position: Principal Scientist in Oncology Medicinal Chemistry at AstraZeneca Research field: Current research interests are drug discovery and physical property control, optimisation of binding kinetics, new methods of hit generation with a focus on intractable targets and the application of organic chemistry to biological problems. Author of over 50 papers and patents and work leading to the discovery of 12 candidate drugs. Education and former professional experience: BSc in chemistry from the University of Manchester, UK in 1996. PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Manchester, UK in 1999, working with Timothy Donohoe. 2000-2001 Post-doctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin in the group of Philip Magnus. 2001 – 2011 Medicinal Chemistry Team Leader at AstraZeneca in the oncology and cardiovascular groups.

Thomas Wirth is professor of organic chemistry at Cardiff University. After PhD studies (TU Berlin, with Professor S. Blechert) and a postdoctoral stay in Japan (Kyoto University, with Professor K. Fuji), he started his independent research at the University of Basel (Switzerland). In the group of Professor B. Giese, he obtained his habilitation supported by various scholarships. He took up his current position at Cardiff University in 2000. He has been invited as a visiting professor to a number of places, including the University of Toronto in Canada (1999) and Chuo University in Tokyo (2000), Osaka University (2004), Osaka Prefecture University (2008), and Kyoto University (2012) in Japan. In 2000, he was awarded the Werner Prize from the New Swiss Chemical Society and a JSPS Fursato award in 2013. His main research interests concern stereoselective electrophilic reactions, oxidative transformations with hypervalent iodine reagents, including mechanistic investigations, and organic synthesis performed in microreactors. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/chemy/wirth.html

• Currently Associate Director and group leader in the Medicinal Chemistry Department at Takeda California in San Diego. • BSc (hons) and PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK. PhD carried out under the supervision of Prof. Alan Spivey (now Imperial College London) in the field of natural product synthesis. • Two periods of postdoctoral study, one at Florida State University with Prof. Robert Holton, and a second with Prof. Gerry Pattenden at The University of Nottingham. Started industrial career at Astex Technology (now Astex Pharmaceuticals) in 2001. • Moved to Eli Lilly in San Diego in 2009 and then to Takeda in 2012. • Expert in Fragment Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) and structure based design, but experienced in all aspects of small molecule drug discovery, leading multiple programs from initial hit through to IND.

Alexandra Maria Moita Antunes 1. Education - Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, 2003. - M. Sc. (Industrial Organic Chemistry), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, 1998, - B.Sc. (Chemistry), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 1994. 2. Main Research and Professional Experience  (Jan2014-present) Principal Researcher (2013 FCT Investigator Programme) Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico (CQE-IST)  (2012-present) Invited Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, Instituto Superior Técnico  (Sept2008-Dec2013).Assistant Researcher (2007 Ciência Investigator Programme), Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico (CQE-IST)  (2007-Jul2008) Invited Assistant Professor, Chemistry Department, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.  (Oct2006-Jul2008) Assistant Researcher, REQUIMTE/CQFB, Chemistry Department, Universidade Nova de Lisboa  (Oct2004-Sept2006) Post-Doc grantee, Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico (CQE-IST)  (Oct2002-Sept2004). R&D Chemist, BIAL, Porto, Portugal Responsible for the NMR facilities and for the structural characterization (NMR, EA, IV, and MS) of all chemicals prepared in the R&D Department.

Steve joined Constellation in 2008 and his current work is focused mainly on bromodomains. Prior to Constellation he worked at Amgen in Cambridge, and before that at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He received a PhD in physical chemistry from MIT, and did postdoctoral work with Thomas Steitz at Yale University.

Rhona Cox has been Associate Principal Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at AstraZeneca R&D Mölndal, Sweden, since 2011, working in the respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity research area. Prior to this, she worked at AstraZeneca in the UK for eight years. She obtained a DPhil in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Oxford with Professor Sir Jack Baldwin, and followed this with post-doctoral research in the group of Professor Robert M. Williams at Colorado State University.

Maurizio Delcanale. Head of the Chemistry Research and Drug Design Department at Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA since 1999. The department includes Medicinal Chemistry and is part of the Preclinical R&D of Chiesi. He received his Laurea Degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Parma in 1982. He has over 30 years experience as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, working on several drug discovery programmes, in CNS and muscolo-skeletal diseases, and in early development projects, as Chemical Synthesis director and responsible for the process development. His recent researches focus on chronic inflammatory respiratory diseases and optimization of compounds for inhaled delivery, in particular new bronchodilators and anti-inflammatory drugs.

In 1998, Erin received a B.S. in Chemistry from Wesleyan University, where she conducted research in synthetic organic chemistry with Professors Peter Jacobi and Albert Fry. In 2003, Erin obtained a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked on bifunctional asymmetric catalysis with Professor Marisa Kozlowski. Erin is currently a Principal Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at Amgen in Cambridge, MA, USA. Her research efforts have focused on neuroscience, inflammation, and oncology targets.

Current Position: PostDoctoral Research Scientist in the Department Drug Design & Optimization at the Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Saarland University, Campus C2 3, 66123 Saarbruecken, Germany Research Field: Medicinal Chemistry, Infectious Diseases, Quorum Sensing, Anti-virulence Strategies, Click Chemistry Education and former professional experience: 2003-2009 Study of Chemistry at the Darmstadt Technical University, Germany. 2009-2012 Doctoral Thesis in the working group of Prof. Dr. Harald Kolmar at the Darmstadt Technical University, Germany. Title of thesis: ‘1,2,3-Triazoles: A Multitool in Biomolecular Chemistry’.

Ricardo J. Ferreira was born in Abrantes, Portugal in 1980. In 2004, he graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Lisbon. In 2009, he attended the Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry Course from which he obtained his M.Sc. degree in 2011. In 2010, he joined Prof. Maria-José U. Ferreira group with a research fellowship to develop computational models that would provide additional insights on multidrug resistance mechanisms under the orientation of Dr. Daniel J.V.A. dos Santos. Currently, as a Ph.D. student, his research interests involves structural and functional interaction of P-Glycoprotein/lipid bilayer systems with substrates and efflux modulators, namely through molecular dynamics, molecular docking and free-energy calculations, along with phytochemical isolation and characterization of new macrocyclic diterpenes from Euphorbia species and development of an computer-assisted optimization of the macrocyclic diterpenic core through chemical derivatization.

Prof. Dr. Peter Gmeiner Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany Peter Gmeiner’s lab aims to design, synthesize and biologically investigate chemical probes and drug candidates for aminergic and peptidergic G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). The Gmeiner laboratory has substantial experience in the discovery of bioactive molecules and contributes to highly attractive developments in CNS-active drugs. Prof. Dr. Peter Gmeiner received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of Munich. From 1987 to 1988 he was a postdoc at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. He subsequently returned to Munich as a research associate at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Upon receiving his Dr. Habilitus in 1992, he was appointed at the University of Bonn as a Professor of Pharmaceutical. Since October 1996, he has been chaired Full Professor of Pharmaceutical / Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Elena Gómez studied Chemistry at the University of Barcelona (1993-1997) and got her MSc in Organic Chemistry at the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, 1998). She obtained her PhD at the University of Barcelona in the field of Pharmaceutical Chemistry (2004) and she spent 2 years as a postdoctoral student at PCB (Parc Científic de Barcelona) dealing with the chemistry of heterocyclic systems and Multicomponent Reactions. She then started to work at Almirall in the Medicinal Chemistry Department where she is working as a Senior Scientist focused on drug design and synthesis.

Sabine Hadida, PhD: Sabine obtained her BS (1989) in Pharmacy from the University of Barcelona (Spain) and her PhD in Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry (1994) from the University of Barcelona (Spain) under the direction of Dr. Mercedes Amat. From 1995 to 1997, she conducted postdoctoral research on fluorous chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh with Prof. Dennis Curran. In 1997, Sabine began her professional career at Combichem Inc. (subsequently Dupont Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Deltagen). In 2002 she joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. in San Diego where she led the chemistry efforts on Cystic Fibrosis. Since 2013 Sabine holds the position of senior director and head of chemistry at Vertex San Diego.

Dr. Nils Hansen is the CEO and founder of Vipergen ApS. He is the principal inventor of the enabling YoctoReactor® and Binder Trap Enrichment® drug discovery technology platforms. He previously worked for Praecis Pharmaceuticals Inc., (Waltham, MA, USA) and Symphogen A/S, (Copenhagen, Denmark). Dr. Hansen earned his Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000 and his M.Sc. in Chemistry and Biotechnology from the University of Aarhus, Denmark in 1996.

Adam is currently an Associate Director and Project Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at Theravance Biopharma, having worked at the company (formerly Theravance and Advanced Medicine) for 14 years. During his time in industry, Adam has worked on a number of projects ranging across GPCRs, transporters and enzymes. These programs have been successful in producing several clinical candidates, as well as numerous patents and publications. Adam holds a first class degree in chemistry from the University of Nottingham, conducting his undergraduate research work under the supervision of Dr Mike Hey and Professor Gerry Pattenden. Following his B.Sc., he stayed at the University of Nottingham to earn his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, working under the guidance of Professor Nigel Simpkins. Following the award of a prestigious Glaxo Wellcome post-doctoral fellowship, Adam conducted his post-doctoral studies under the guidance of Professor Barry Trost at Stanford University, before starting his career in industry in 2000.

Robert M. Jones obtained a B.Sc honours degree in Chemistry in 1990 from the Christopher Ingold Laboratories at University College London followed by a Ph.D. awarded in July 1995 from the same institution (Professor Peter J. Garratt). He then moved to the United States where as recipient of a NIDA Fellowship he spent three years at the University of Minnesota (Professor Philip S. Portoghese) working on new indolomorphinan derived kappa opioid antagonists. His industrial career began in 1998 at Cognetix Inc, in Salt Lake City, Utah working on the isolation, characterisation and synthesis of small molecule mimetics of naturally occurring conotoxins. Rob joined the Medicinal Chemistry Department at Arena Pharmaceuticals, San Diego, CA in June 2002 where he initiated hit to lead and lead optimization chemistry campaigns on orphan GPCRs for treating type 2 diabetes. Rob is currently Associate Vice President of Chemistry at Arena and is cited as an author/inventor on 70 issued and published patent applications and over 100 published papers and abstracts.

Stefanie D. Krämer, Ph.D. • Current positions: Senior Lecturer (habilitated) in Biopharmacy; Senior Researcher and Responsible for Small-Animal PET platform in Radiopharmaceutical Sciences, both at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. • Research fields: Small-Animal PET, PET kinetics, PET imaging of immunogenic hotspots; permeation of drug-like compounds across biomembranes. • Teaching: Biopharmacy, Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism at the ETH. • Education: Pharmaceutical Sciences. • Former professional experience: PostDocs at Sanofi Recherche, Montpellier (France) and King’s College London (UK).

Martyna Krzykawska-Serda obtained her Ph.D. (Oct. 2013) in biophysics from the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University in Poland. Currently she is working at Biophysics Department at WBB&B JU as research assistant. Additionally she is member of Malopolska Translational Medicine Centre in Krakow, Poland. She held a research Erasmus fellowship at Chemistry Department, Coimbra University, Portugal. At Jagiellonian University she conduct scientific research on photodynamic therapy (in vitro and in vivo) with cooperation with Department of Chemistry. She is also a specialist in small animal imaging techniques e.g. EPR and USG. Her activities are also focused on combination of basic research and clinical trials.

Christopher Luckhurst is a medicinal chemistry team leader at BioFocus, a Charles River company, with project leader responsibility for integrated drug discovery programmes. He has 17 years of drug discovery research experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and, over the past 3 years, BioFocus. He has led medicinal chemistry efforts in several therapeutic areas, including respiratory and neurodegeneration programmes, predominantly at lead optimisation but also at lead generation. He has experience of improving prediction of toxicological outcomes in development via liaison with safety assessment to improve compound quality and tackle attrition in projects across therapeutic areas. Chris studied biological chemistry at the University of Nottingham and undertook PhD studies with Prof. Ian Paterson at the University of Cambridge in the field of natural product synthesis.

Prof Ana Martinez is Research Professor at the Biological Research Center (CIB) of Spanish National Council for Research (CSIC). She is tenured staff of this research organization since March 1990. Her interest is focused on neurodegenerative disorders drug discovery and development, leading numerous research projects on the medicinal chemistry and rational drug design of new drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal cord trauma and multiple sclerosis. Active areas of research involve neurogenic drugs, and protein kinases cAMP-specific phosphodiesterases, AChE and BACE inhibitors. She is graduate and master on Organic Chemsitry, and PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Complutense University of Madrid. She has developed her work in the Medicinal Chemistry Institute-CSIC since 1983 till april 2004. Since February 2002-January 2008, to complete a technology transfer process, she joined to NeuroPharma as R&D Director. Recently, she is co-founder of ANKAR PHARMA, a spin-off which goal is full the gap between basic drug discovery and clinical trials for neurological diseases.

Dr. Michael Michaelides is currently Head of Oncology Chemistry and Senior Research Fellow at Abbvie. He joined Abbott Laboratories in 1988, after receiving his doctorate in Organic Synthesis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his career at Abbott, now Abbvie, he has carried out research in the areas of Neuroscience, Immunoscience and Oncology. He has contributed to the invention and advancement of several clinical candidates, including the dopamine agonist adrogolide for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and the multi-targeted kinase inhibitor linifanib for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Marko D. Mihovilovic graduated in technical chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology in 1993, also receiving his doctorate from the same university in 1996, in the field of organic synthetic chemistry. Post-doc placements as an Erwin Schrödinger scholarship holder then followed at the University of New Brunswick (Canada; 1997) and the University of Florida (USA; 1998), in the fields of biocatalysis and molecular biology. Returning to VUT, he set up his own research group in 1999. He completed his habilitation in 2003 in bio-organic chemistry and was appointed Associate Professor in 2004. Marko Mihovilovic has been Head of the Institute for Applied Synthetic Chemistry at VUT since 2013 and was recently appointed as Full Professor for Bioorganic Synthetic Chemistry (February 2014).

Pavel Mykhailiuk was born in Kerch, Ukraine in 1984. In 2000 he won a bronze medal at 32nd International Chemistry Olympiads, IChO (Copenhagen, Denmark). In 2008 he received PhD at Technical University of Karlsruhe (KIT, Germany) after working with Prof. Anne Ulrich. After coming back to Kiev, he joined Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University (Ukraine), where he currently works as a Docent. Independently, in 2009 he joined “Enamine LTD” company (Ukraine). In 2011-13 he worked as a Head of custom synthesis department, and since 2013 he holds a position of Chief Scientific Officer. Pavel´s research interests include fluorine-containing compounds, conformationally restricted molecules, 3D-shaped unnatural scaffolds and their application in medicinal chemistry. He is co-author of ca. 60 research manuscripts, 1 patent and 1 book chapter.

Frank Narjes is currently Associate Director in the Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity iMed in AstraZeneca Sweden, heading the Lead Generation Section in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. Prior to joining AstraZeneca in 2009, Frank was a Senior Investigator at IRBM - Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Rome. He has 20 years experience in antiviral and respiratory drug discovery projects from the early phase up to the clinic. Frank received his Doctoral degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Hamburg and spent two years as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the group of Professor Overman at UC Irvine.

Anneli Nordqvist received her M.Sc. in engineering chemistry from Umeå University, Sweden. After working at Biovitrum with in silico prediction of Caco-2 cell permeability she joined the group of Prof. Anders Karlén at Uppsala University where she obtained her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 2011. Her PhD work include organic synthesis, virtual screening and both ligand based and structure based drug design within the field of antituberculosis drug discovery. During the last year of her PhD she also worked as a consultant in computational chemistry at the CNS & Pain unit at AstraZeneca, Södertälje. Anneli currently hold a position as Associate Principal Scientist in Computational Chemistry within the cardiovascular and metabolic disease unit at AstraZeneca, Mölndal. Her research interests are focused around GPCR drug discovery and the application of computational methods to facilitate drug discovery research.

Daniel Oehlrich received his MChem in Chemistry from the University of Exeter, U.K., in 2001. He subsequently in 2004 received his Ph.D. from Warwick University, U.K., under the supervision of Prof. Michael Shipman, where he was successful in the total synthesis of Luminacin D, a natural anti-angiogenic molecule. He did postdoctoral studies at University of Manchester, U.K., where he worked for Prof. E. J. Thomas; the topic of the work was “The Target Synthesis of Novel Anti-Alzheimer Compounds”. He joined the Department of Medicinal Chemistry of Johnson and Johnson in 2005, initially in Toledo, Spain, before transferring to Janssen Research and Development, Beerse, Belgium, in 2009. He is a senior scientist and project team leader in medicinal chemistry currently working on the synthesis of novel BACE1 inhibitors and previously researching positive allosteric modulators for mGlu2 and novel GSMs.

Christian A. Olsen was born in Copenhagen (Denmark). He received his PhD in 2004 from the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and after independently working on the development of novel peptidomimetic antimicrobial agents at the same institution, he joined Prof. Ghadiri’s group at The Scripps Research Institute in 2007 to pursue postdoctoral tenure. In 2010 he joined the Faculty at the Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Denmark as associate professor and in 2014 assumed the position of professor at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Professor Olsen has published 45 peer-reviewed primary research and review articles in international journals. His research interests include foldamers, macrocyclic peptide-based HDAC inhibitors and quorum sensing modulators, as well as investigation of lysine deacylase substrate specificity.

Philippe Panchaud is currently Associate Director, Senior Lab Head Medicinal Chemistry at Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd in Allschwil, Switzerland. Since nine years, he has been contributing first as team member and later as project team leader to new antibiotics discovery programs ranging from hit identification and lead optimization to preclinical candidate selection. Philippe received his MSc from the University of Fribourg in 2000 and his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Bern in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Philippe Renaud. He then pursued postdoctoral research in natural products total synthesis with Professor Paul A. Wender at Standord University before joining Actelion in 2005.

I received my PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles with a thesis on the total synthesis of Ouabain. I continued my research on the synthesis of natural products at MIT with Prof. Mo Movassaghi before moving to the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, US. After few years working on hit-to-lead and lead optimization projects, I moved to Novartis Basel where I contributed to build the antibody drug conjugate (ADC) platform. I currently lead the chemistry team in Basel responsible for innovative ADCs for oncology indications.

In 1993, I obtained a first class honours degree in Chemistry at the University of Southampton and then remained at Southampton to complete a PhD studying radical cascade reactions under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Kilburn. I joined Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, now AstraZeneca, at Alderley Park in 1997 where I have been involved in the delivery of a number of clinical candidates across the Oncology, Diabetes and Inflammation therapy areas. I currently hold the position of Medicinal Chemistry Team Leader / Senior Medicinal Chemist in the Oncology Department where I am responsible for leading the Medicinal Chemistry on multiple drug discovery projects including a number of projects targeting kinases as potential cancer therapies.

David Rodríguez has a Postodoctoral Fellowship from the Sven och Lilly Lawski Foundation in the laboratory of Jens Carlsson at Stockholm University (Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics). He joined the research group after obtaining his Ph.D. in the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 2012. A biochemist by training, his research activity has been focused in molecular modeling and drug design on G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). Currently, his main interests involve the development of novel homology modeling and structure-based virtual screening approaches for GPCR drug discovery, and the study of GPCR oligomerization in cellular signaling, all of them in close collaboration with experimentalists.

Fanny Roussi is a pharmacist. She performed a PhD in medicinal chemistry in Pr. H.P. Husson’s team in Paris. After a post-doctoral experience in Oxford, in Pr. J. Baldwin’s group, she joined the French CNRS as a researcher. Since September 2014, she is the team leader of a phytochemistry and medicinal chemistry group at the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (Gif sur Yvette, France). Her field of research is the total and hemi-synthesis of natural products isolated from plants with biological properties.

Current title and position • Principal Scientist Medicinal Chemistry Berlin, Bayer Healthcare Research fields • Oncology and Women’s Healthcare projects both in lead optimization and hit-to-lead phase Education and former experience • PhD: Supervisor Prof. F. Bohlmann (TU Berlin), “Synthesis of natural products” • Postdoc: Supervisor Prof. M. F. Semmelhack (Princeton University), “Palladium-mediated cyclizations” Industrial career: • Start at former Schering AG (since 2006 Bayer AG) in Medicinal Chemistry Berlin • Exchange program with Berlex Biosciences (Richmond, CA, USA, 2006-2007) • Since 2007 Medicinal Chemistry Berlin, Bayer Healthcare • Broad experience in steroid chemistry, macrolactones/epothilones, hit-to-lead • Project team leader of several lead optimization programs

After studying in Freiburg and Heidelberg, Germany and Dublin, Ireland, Henning Steinhagen graduated in Organic Chemistry (minor degree in molecular genetics) from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 1998. He then joined the group of Prof. E.J. Corey at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA where he worked as postdoctoral fellow. After that he continued his career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1999, working in Discovery Research in Medicinal Chemistry at Bayer, Wuppertal and after 2002 at Aventis / Sanofi-Aventis in Frankfurt as Director of Medicinal Chemistry. In 2009, he joined Grünenthal in Aachen, Germany where he currently acts as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Drug Discovery. In this function he is mainly responsible for small molecule research which is directed in the area of CNS / pain and inflammation. Additionally, in the last years he acted as program manager being responsible for the buildup of the second therapeutic area inflammation at Grünenthal ranging from target assessment to clinical trials. Throughout his 15 year spanning career in the pharmaceutical industry, 25 lead structures, 10 preclinical candidates and 3 PhI candidates were identified under his guidance. Apart from his industry affiliation, Henning is an invited lecturer at the RWTH University Aachen since 2011. Henning contributed to ca. 45 publications, patents and editorials in various fields and therapeutic areas.

EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS 1997: PhD in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Milan (Italy) and University of Amsterdam (NL) 1993: Degree in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Milan (Italy) PROFESSIONAL experience 2010-today: Senior Research Scientist, Epigenetic Program Project Leader, Drug Discovery Program, Dept. of Experimental Oncology, European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy. 1998-2010: Senior Research Scientist, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Discovery Research Oncology, Nerviano Medical Sciences, Nerviano (Milan), Italy. 31 pubblications 11 patents

• Director in Medicinal Chemistry at Global Drug Discovery, Bayer Pharma AG • Research Field: Drug-Discovery in Oncology • Studied Chemistry at the University of Munich • Thesis on Natural Products in the Group of Prof. W. Steglich at the University of Munich • Postdoc on Total Synthesis in the Group of S. J. Danishefsky at Columbia University, NY • Medicinal Chemistry at Bayer HealthCare in Antiinfectives, Cardiology and Oncology

Marta Westwood, obtained Ph.D. in 2013 in nanomaterials from Cranfield University. I joined UCB in 2011 as a senior scientist within the Structural Biology group led by Alaistair Lawson. For the past three years I have been developing expertise in small molecule drug discovery using a fragment based approach. I have also been involved in the assay development for a novel antibody-enable drug discovery approach. Prior to joining UCB I was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich to study the mono and multilayer films used to encapsulate active ingredients for a controlled and site-specific delivery within the GIT. During my time at IFR I worked on numerous projects including a commercial project for Pfizer focused on AFM imaging of proteins and polysaccharides. I have also been part of the team under the leadership of Claudio Nicolletii investigating the outcome of consumption of the probiotic L. casei Shirota in subjects with Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis.

Jennifer Woodring is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate and NSF IGERT Nanomedicine Fellow studying organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry. She received her BS in chemistry from The College of New Jersey in 2009. Currently, she is working with Prof. Michael Pollastri in the Laboratory for Neglected Disease Drug Discovery at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on hit-to-lead medicinal chemistry by using a target repurposing approach on piclamilast and lapatinib derived analogs to target human African trypanosomiasis and other protozoan diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis.

Russian-born Dr Olga Zubkova has 20 years of experience as a carbohydrate and medicinal chemist. The Senior Research Scientist of the Ferrier Research Institute (Victoria University of Wellington) completed her PhD in chemistry at Rostov University. She was appointed to a research scientist role at the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Rostov and after Perestroika moved to New Zealand. After arriving in New Zealand, Dr Zubkova joined Industrial Research Ltd in 1994 and has since been involved in numerous research and commercial projects. This year Dr Zubkova joined the newly established The Ferrier Research Institute where she is a Project Leader of “Novel clusters of Heparan Sulfate”. Her field of expertise is the synthesis of sulfated Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) – Chondroitin Sulfates and Heparan Sulfates (HSs) as well as the design and synthesis of HS glycomimetics and dendritic clusters. She is particularly interested in the potential of HSs to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The most active derivatives, identified by her team at the Ferrier Institute, provided lead compounds for the preparation of potent inhibitors of BACE-1 as novel therapeutic agents for Alzheimer’s disease.