Confirmed Speakers

W. De Borggraeve is professor at KU Leuven in the division of Molecular Design and Synthesis. He obtained his diploma in 1998 and his doctoral degree in 2002 at KU Leuven in the field of organic synthesis. As a postdoc with FWO-Vlaanderen, he joined the groups of W.D. Lubell in 2003 and of C. Toniolo in 2004 to work on the synthesis and NMR analysis of peptidomimetics. He rejoined KU Leuven in 2009 as assistant professor after working for a short time as a patent examiner at the European Patent Office in The Hague. He was appointed associate professor in 2012 and professor in 2016. His current research interests involve methodology development using in situ generated gases and development of PKD inhibitors as well as anti-epileptics.

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Professor David Fairlie is Head of the 200 strong Division of Chemistry and Structural Biology in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. He was an undergraduate at University of Adelaide, did postgraduate research in chemistry at Australian National University in Canberrra and University of New South Wales, postdoctoral research at Stanford University and University of Toronto. He is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and previously an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. He is node leader of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging, which is aimed at understanding the molecular basis of immunity and a chief investigator of the Centre for Inflammation and Disease Research. He has founded or co-founded 4 startup companies, consulted heavily with pharmaceutical companies in USA and Europe and raised $150M in R&D funding. David’s interests are at interfaces of chemistry and biology, especially drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and immunology. He has published 380 journal articles in multiple branches of chemistry (medicinal, biological, organic, inorganic, computational) and biology (biochemistry, pharmacology, immunology, virology, neurobiology, oncology, parasitology) and has trained over 100 postgraduate students for careers in academia, industry, government and hospitals. His research group of 32 are half medicinal/organic chemists and half cell biologists, immunologists and pharmacologists that work on chemical design, synthesis and structure to modulate protein-protein interactions, cell signalling pathways and animal models of human disease.

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Anna Grandas studied Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, where she also received her PhD (1985). After a postdoctoral stay at Prof. M. H. Caruthers laboratory (University of Colorado at Boulder) in 1988, she returned to the University of Barcelona, where she was first appointed as Lecturer (1989) and later became Professor of Organic Chemistry (2007). Over these years her research has mainly focused on the development of methodology for the synthesis of oligonucleotide and peptide conjugates.

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Burkhard König received his PhD from the University of Hamburg. He continued his scientific education as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. M. A. Bennett, Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University, Canberra, and Prof. B. M. Trost, Stanford University. Since 1999, he has been a full professor of organic chemistry at the University of Regensburg. His current research interests are the development of synthetic methods involving photoredox catalysis.

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Nuno Maulide was born in Lisbon in 1979. He graduated in Chemistry from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 2003 and obtained a Master’s degree at the Ecole Polytechnique in 2004 and a Ph.D. from the Université catholique de Louvain in 2007. Following a Postdoctoral stay at Stanford University, he began his independent research career as a Max-Planck Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Germany) in 2009, before resuming his current position as Full Professor for Organic Synthesis at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 2013. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Bayer Early Excellence Award (Chemistry) in 2012, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize in 2013, the EurJOC Young Researcher Award in 2015 and the Springer Heterocyclic Chemistry Award in 2018 and has also received an ERC StG in 2011, a ERC CoG in 2016 and a ERC PoC in 2018. His research interests are broadly defined around the area of highly reactive intermediates, rearrangements and total synthesis.

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Peter Meier studied chemistry in Basel, Switzerland, to receive his diploma in 1994. He moved to Geneva to join the group of Prof. E. Peter Kündig to work on the development of new chiral auxiliaries and ligands for the asymmetric catalysis and received his PhD in 1999. From 1999 to 2001 he joined the group of Prof. Dale Boger at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, working on the total synthesis of Rampolanin. He returned to Basel in 2001 to start his career within Novartis in the Combinatorial Chemistry Unit where he actively contributed to the transformations in this field, from technical development to library design, outsourcing of the production and library performance analysis what impacted numerous pipeline projects. In 2016 he joined the newly formed Hit Generation Sciences group at Novartis where he is currently involved in the application and further development of the DNA encoded library approach as well as compound optimization up to proof of concept studies in early drug discovery projects.

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Pascale Moreau obtained her Master Degree in biophysicochemistry and cellular and molecular biology under the supervision of Pr. Gérald Guillaumet and Pr. Michel Monsigny (Orléans, France). She received her Ph.D from the University of Orléans (France) in 1993 under the supervision of Pr. Gérard Coudert working on the synthesis and reactivity of 1,4-benzodioxine derivatives. She joined Pr. Victor A. Snieckus’s group at Waterloo University (Canada), as a postdoctoral fellow in 1994-1995, working on macrocycles synthesis and directed ortho-metalation. During a second post-doctoral position at Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Marne-la-Vallée, France) she focused on asymmetric synthesis. In 1996, she moved to Blaise Pascal University (Clermont-Ferrand, France) as a lecturer in the group of Pr. Michelle Prudhomme working on hemisynthesis of rebeccamycin derivatives. She was appointed as a Professor in 2007. Her current research is devoted to the development of new bioactive heteroaromatic compounds.

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Thomas Böttcher is leading an Emmy Noether research group in the field of Chemical Biology at the University of Konstanz. His research focusses on the chemistry of bacterial interactions and developing chemical tools to modulate bacterial behavior. Böttcher studied Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich. In 2009 he finished his PhD in the group of Stephan Sieber and shortly thereafter cofounded the start-up company AVIRU for anti-infective drug development. Supported by a Leopoldina research fellowship, he moved in 2011 to Harvard Medical School for postdoctoral research with Jon Clardy and returned to Germany in 2014 to establish his independent research group in Konstanz. He received the 2018 Thieme Chemistry Journal award and is elected member of the German Young Aacademy (Die Junge Akademie) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

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Dr James Bull is a University Research Fellow at Imperial College London. He obtained an MSci degree and the Raphael prize from the University of Cambridge, then spent a year at GlaxoSmithKline. He returned to University of Cambridge to obtain his PhD under the supervision of Professor Steven Ley. In 2007 he joined the group of Professor André Charette as a postdoctoral fellow at Université de Montréal. He joined Imperial College London in 2009 as a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow, and in 2011 was awarded an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship. In January 2016, he was awarded a Royal Society URF. His research targets methods for the synthesis of new chemical motifs that may be practically applied in drug discovery, to provide new design elements and extend available chemical space. His research has a particular focus on the divergent synthesis of heterocycles.

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Adrian Dobbs obtained his BSc and PhD (with Professor Keith Jones) from King’s College London and then undertook postdoctoral research at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium (with Professor Istvan Marko) and with GlaxoSmithKline. He was then appointed as Lecturer at the University of Exeter (2001), senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London (2006) and then full Professor at the University of Greenwich (2013-date). He is a former Secretary & Treasurer of the Heterocyclic & Synthesis Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and recipient of the RSC Inspirational Member Prize (2015). Research interests are heterocyclic chemistry, total synthesis and medicinal chemistry centred around neglected diseases, such as leishmaniasis and mesothelioma.

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TITLE AND POSITION
Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Head of Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

RESEARCH INTEREST
Drug discovery, medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, in-silico drug design, virtual high-throughput screening, enzyme inhibitors, organic chemistry, molecular pharmacology

EDUCATION AND FORMER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES
- 1994 M.Sc. in Pharmacy
- 1999 doctoral thesis in the field of Medicinal Chemistry
- From December 2010 on: Full Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana
- From. Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2011, Dean in the Faculty of Pharmacy, and member of the University of Ljubljana Senate
- From 2011- Head of Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia


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Dorota Gryko studied chemistry at the Warsaw University before moving to the Institute of Organic Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences, where she received her PhD degree for studies with J. Jurczak in 1997. Following postdoctoral studies at the North Carolina State University with Jonathan Lindsay (1998–2000), she started her independent research in the Institute of Organic Chemistry PAS which led to her “habilitation” in 2008. In 2004, he performed a short stay at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Prof Jonatnan Sessler. In 2010, he became Associate Professor and then titular Professor granted by the President of Poland. Her research interests are broad ranging from catalysis to medicinal chemistry.

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After completing my PhD in organic Chemistry in 1997 under the supervision of Prof Joachim Thiem at the University of Hamburg (Hamburg/Germany), I went for my post-doc to Stockholm University (Stockholm/Sweden) with Prof Per J. Garegg and Prof Stefan Oscarson. In 2002 I moved to Göteborg University (Gothenburg/Sweden) where I started to lecture organic Chemistry and then to develop my independent research. In September 2005 I received the Docent degree in organic chemistry from Göteborg University. After a year in the Arrhenius Laboratory at Stockholm University, focussing on research and a brief interim at UCD (Dublin/Ireland), I joined Bangor University (Bangor, Wales/UK) in September 2007 as lecturer in organic chemistry. Currently, I am senior lecturer in chemical biology at Bangor University.

My main research interests are on synthetic carbohydrate and glycoconjugate chemistry, glycobiology/glycoimmunology (vaccines), glycodendrimers, carbohydrate protein-interactions, antiadhesives as alternative approach to antibiotics, bio-actives from plants (e.g. saponins) and marine organisms.

Publication metrics (ID A-3090-2010): 42 journal articles, 2 reviews, 2 book chapter, 1 policy document, 2 patents; Number of citations: ~1450; h-index: 20 (5/2018)

Teaching range: Fundamental and advanced organic chemistry including asymmetric synthesis and retrosynthesis, glycobiology, NMR and software packages (ChemDraw, MNova), chromatography. PBL, video assisted and interactive learning.

Honours: Elected participant of the Swedish Summer Institute for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 2005 (Council of the Renewal of Higher Education, SE)

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Florence Mongin obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1994 from the University of Rouen (France) under the supervision of Prof. Guy Queguiner. After a two-year stay at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of Lausanne (Switzerland) as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Manfred Schlosser, she returned to the University of Rouen as an Assistant Professor in 1997 (HDR in 2003). She took up her present position in 2005 as Professor at the University of Rennes (France) and was appointed Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France from 2009 to 2014. Her present scientific interests include the functionalization of aromatic compounds with recourse to bimetallic bases or combinations. In particular, lithium-metal bases derived from 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine, with metals such as cadmium, copper, cobalt, iron, magnesium and zinc, allowed many aromatic heterocycles to be functionalized.

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Luke Odell was born in Tamworth, Australia in 1981. He graduated with an Honours BSc. in Forensic Science from the University of Newcastle, Australia in 2002. He completed his PhD studies at the same university under the guidance of Professor Adam McCluskey in 2006 working on the synthesis of enzyme inhibitors. In 2006, he took up a postdoctoral position with Professor Mats Larhed at Uppsala University. Since 2011, he has been an Associate Professor at Uppsala University and in 2016 he was appointed as a Senior Lecturer. His research interests include microwave-assisted chemistry, heterocyclic chemistry, PET chemistry and medicinal chemistry.

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Zsolt Szakonyi (born 1969) received his Master's degree in Pharmacy in 1992. He undertook his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry in the group of Professor Ferenc Fülöp and held his Ph.D. Degree at the University of Szeged (Hungary) in 1998. He joined the research group of Prof. Norbert De Kimpe at the University of Ghent, Belgium in period of 1999-2000 as a postdoctoral Research Fellow by FWO. He became Associate Professor at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Szeged in 2007. His research interests center on stereoselective synthesis of monoterpene based bi- and tridentate building blocks, beta-amino acid derivetives, aminodiols and saturated 1,3-heterocycles with a special focus on homogeneous stereoselective catalysis.

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Paul Alsters obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) in 1992 with Prof. G. van Koten. He did postdoctoral work in the laboratory of R.O. Duthaler at Ciba-Geigy in Basel (Switzerland). He joined DSM in 1993, where he worked until April 2017 as a principal scientist within DSM Ahead. Since May 2017, he works at InnoSyn (www.innosyn.com) on the Brightlands campus in Geleen (The Netherlands), where he is principal scientist "Chemocatalysis". His main areas of interest are development of scalable break-through methods for new or existing products, and liquid-phase catalysis, with an emphasis on C-X or C-C coupling reactions and oxidation catalysis.

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Jeroen Bomon graduated as Bioscience Engineer in Chemistry and Bioprocess Technology at Ghent University in 2014 with a Master thesis under the supervision of prof. Matthias D’hooghe and prof. Tom Desmet, combining the fields of organic synthesis and biocatalysis. In 2015, he joined the organic synthesis research group in the University of Antwerp in the framework of a PhD study under the supervision of prof. Bert Maes. Jeroen’s current research interests focus on the transformation of biorenewable lignin derived phenolic compounds into building blocks for the production of fine chemicals.

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Andreas Brunschweiger studied Pharmacy at the University of Kiel (Germany), and obtained his PhD in the group of Prof. Christa Müller at the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2007. After conducting postdoctoral research in the same group in a collaboration project with UCB Pharma, he joined Prof. Jonathan Hall's research group at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2010. There, he was involved in the design and application of chemical biology tools to study microRNA biology, and the design of short oligonucleotides as microRNA inhibitors. In 2013, he took up his present position as a group leader at the TU Dortmund University. His current research interests include the development of synthesis methodology for DNA-encoded small molecule screening libraries. Focus molecules are heterocyclic, drug-like structures.

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Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon is a Faculty member of the Sackler School of Medicine and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at the Tel-Aviv University. The general focus of her research is on signal transduction mechanisms mediating chromatin remodeling and gene expression. Her education in the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), B.Sc. in Chemistry (cum laude) and D.Sc. in Biophysics and Electrophysiology (Molecular mechanisms underlying the Voltage dependent Sodium Channel activity). She was a Visiting Researcher in Columbia University, focusing on chromatin remodeling mediating long-term memory. Prof. Cohen-Armon is an editor and reviewer in several scientific journals, and the inventor of granted patents on treatment of addiction and on cancer therapy. Currently she focuses on developing a small molecule into an anti-cancer drug, based on a recently identified mechanism causing an exclusive eradication of human cancer cells.

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Darren Conboy is currently in the final year of his PhD under the supervision of Prof Fawaz Aldabbagh at Kingston University London. Darren began his PhD in 2016 at the National University of Ireland Galway, where he also obtained First Class BSc (Hons) in Biopharmaceutical Chemistry (ranked first position in his class). A native of County Sligo, Ireland, Darren’s current research interests focus on the synthesis of heterocyclic small molecules with medicinal applications.

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Lidia Feliu completed her PhD degree at the University of Barcelona in 2000. During this period, her research was focused on the total synthesis in solution of marine pyridoacridine alkaloids with antitumor activity. In 2001, she obtained a two-year postdoctoral position at the University of Montpellier as Marie Curie Fellow. The postdoctoral research allowed her to start working on solid-phase peptide synthesis and combinatorial chemistry. In 2003, she got a Marie Curie Reintegration Grant and moved to the University of Girona. She joined the LIPPSO group as lecturer and became Associate Professor in 2008. Her current research is focused on the design and the synthesis of peptides with biological activity, mainly antimicrobial or antitumor. She is interested in linear and cyclic peptides bearing natural or non-natural amino acids (D-, triazolyl and biaryl amino acids), depsipeptides, lipopeptides and peptide conjugates.

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Viktor O. Iaroshenko was born in 1980 in Kiev, Ukraine. He received his MS in chemistry (2003) and PhD in organic chemistry (2009) from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University (Ukraine) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sci. Andrey A. Tolmachev. 2009-2013 he was a group leader (assistant professor) at the Chemistry Institute, University of Rostock, Germany. 2013-2014 he was a visiting research assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA. Presently he is a Principle Investigator and a head of Laboratory of Homogeneous Catalysis and Molecular Design at Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. His scientific interests include drug discovery, application of fluorine and phosphorus chemistry in molecular and drug design, combinatorial chemistry, chemistry of heterocyclic compounds, element organic chemistry and green chemistry. He is co-author of more than 75 papers.

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Ngarita Kingi obtained her M.Sc. in Chemistry from Södertörn University of Stockholm, Sweden. After her graduation in 2006 she joined Vironova Medical in Drug Development where she is presently working as a Senior Scientist. For more than 10 years she has worked with the discovery and development of small molecules for the treatment against viruses such as HIV, Herpes and Influenza. Currently she is evaluating the reagent P2S5·2C5H5N and its capabilities for thionating biologically active small molecules.

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Dr Ivan Kondratov graduated from the University of Kyiv (Ukraine) in 2004 with a Master Diploma and got his PhD degree (Candidate of Chemical Sciences) from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) in 2008. He continued his academic career at this Institute and became a Senior Researcher in 2011. During 2009-2011 he was a guest scientist at University of Münster, Germany (research group of prof. G. Haufe). In 2011 he started working for Enamine (Kyiv, Ukraine) as head of laboratory and currently he is a Principal Scientist of Medicinal Chemistry. At Enamine he is mostly responsible for Med Chem related projects as well as design of target libraries as well as development of advanced building blocks for Drug Discovery. He is an author of 30 original papers.

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Edward Korshin was born in Kazan (Russia) in 1958. He graduated Kazan University in 1980 and obtained his Ph. D. degree in Organic and Heteroatom Chemistry from the same University in 1986 under supervision of Prof. Yaakov Levin. Then, he continued his studies at the Arbuzov Institute of Organic and Physical Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences (Kazan) as a Research Scientist, and has been promoted to the position of Senior Research Scientist in 1989. In 1994 Edward Korshin immigrated to Israel and re-started his scientific carrier there. In 1995-1998 Dr. Korshin worked as a researcher (temporary position) at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). After a short stay at the John Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA) as a Post-doctoral Fellow of Prof. Gary Posner (1998-1999), he returned to Israel and joined the research group of Mario Bachi (Weizmann Institute of Science) as a Staff Scientist. From 2005 till the end of 2015 Edward Korshin worked as a Senior Staff Researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Additionally, he served as a consultant for a few small pharmaceutical companies in Israel. In 2016 Edward Korshin joined the Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University (Ramat Gan, Israel) as a Senior Researcher. Dr. Korshin is an author of about 60 research articles, patents and reviews. His current research interests include a development of chemist-friendly synthetic methods in heterocyclic and organic chemistry, total synthesis of natural bioactive compounds and their structurally simplified bioactive analogues, anti-diabetic, anti-cancer and cardioprotective drug research. Dr. Edward Korshin is still an active experimentalist, pursuing various research projects as well as training M. Sc. and Ph. D. students in the art of organic synthesis.

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Soňa Krajčovičová was born in 1991 in Bratislava (Slovakia). In 2015 she obtained MSc. degree in Organic chemistry at Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) with the diploma thesis devoted to synthesis of carbocyclic nucleoside analogs (supervised by assoc. prof. Kamil Paruch). After graduation, she joined Ph.D. program in Organic chemistry at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Palacký University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). Her current field of interest is development of synthetic methodologies for conjugation of biologically active molecules using polymer-supported chemistry (supervised by assoc. prof. Miroslav Soural). Within her Ph.D. study, she was awarded with DAAD fellowship and had spent 4 months at Georg-August Universität in Göttingen (Germany) under supervision of prof. Manuel Alcarazo, working on a research project devoted to electrophilic transfer reagents based on hypervalent sulphur. To date, she is the first author or co-author of 8 publications.

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Born in Barcelona (1950), graduated in Chemistry in 1972, received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona in 1976 with a Thesis dealing on synthesis and pharmacological evaluation of thienomorphans. He was Visiting Research Fellow in the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in the course 1978-79, working in the synthesis of immunomodulators. In 1980 attained a position of Assistant Professor in the Organic Chemistry Department of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Barcelona University and Full Professor at the same Department from 1993. He has been Academic Secretary , Head of the Department and Head of Studies of the Chemistry Degree. The research topics developed along these years has been:
- products with interest as drugs in collaboration with a several pharmaceutical companies, yielding 32 patents.
- processes catalysed by thiamine or other thiazolium salts; It was described by the first time the formoine reaction, a new biomimetic total synthesis of monosaccarides from formaldehyde; it was also studied in deep the mechanism of the benzoin/aciloin condensation catalysed by such salts in mild basic medium and the extension to other synthetic processes;
- synthesis and study of new organic materials, including monomeric and polymeric crown ethers for complexation of radioactive cations in nuclear central waste in the Radwas Project of the European Community, systems with liquid crystal properties, perfluorinated polymers and design, synthesis and study of properties of photonic crystals formed by functionalization of colloidal monodisperse latex.

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Dr Agnese Chiara Pippione obtained her PhD in Biological and Medical sciences in 2013, after three years PhD fellowship in University of Varese, Italy. Since then, she has been recruited by University of Torino through postdoctoral fellowships related to drug discovery projects. She has worked for six years in the research group of Medicinal Chemistry at Department of Drug Science and Technology, coordinated by Prof. Donatella Boschi and Prof. Marco Lucio Lolli. The group was funded in 2013 from the European Union within a project aimed to the discovery of new chemotypes able to inhibit the transcription factor NF-kB. The group focused also on other pharmacological targets, as Dihydroorotate Dehydrogenase (DHODH), aldo-keto reductase 1C3 (AKR1C3), prolyl isomerase Pin1 and glutamic acid receptors; the application of heterocyclic systems mimicking acidic functions of lead molecules remains the main approach used for the design of active compounds. Dr Agnese Chiara Pippione has a background in Medicinal Chemistry, with training and expertise in discovery of new small molecules as potential active compounds. Her research concerns the design, synthesis, characterization and biological applications of new molecules, in particular it focuses on the study of acidic hydroxylated pentatomic heterocyclic systems, and their bioisosteric properties connected to carboxylic and other acidic functions. Dr Agnese Chiara Pippione is author of 17 publications on scientific journals and participated to three international congresses as oral speaker. She held the position of teaching assistant in medicinal and organic chemistry laboratories and tutored several master and PhD students during their training in laboratory for master/PhD thesis preparation.

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Mathilde Quertenmont studied chemistry at Université catholique de Louvain where she graduated in 2016. She then began her PhD in the research group of Professor István Markó thanks to F.R.I.A. funding. In 2017, she joined the research group of Professor Olivier Riant and continued her PhD on electrochemistry in collaboration with Professor Kevin Lam.

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Dr Clementina M. M. Santos graduated in Chemistry (1996), obtained her Master in Sciences in Chemistry of Natural Products and Foodstuffs (2000) and received her PhD in Chemistry (2007), all at the University of Aveiro (Portugal). She began her career at Institute Polytechnic of Bragança (Portugal) in 2000 as Assistant and as Assistant Professor in 2010. She has published over 30 papers and 11 book chapters. Her research interests range over the synthesis of chromone and xanthone derivatives and evaluation of their biological properties, especially the antioxidant and antidiabetic activities.

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Fiona Scott graduated from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, with an MChem Chemistry with Drug Discovery. This included an industrial placement year with Corden Pharma working on the delivery platform for Patisiran, the first-in-class RNA interference drug approved by the FDA last year.

She is now a third year PhD student at Sussex Drug Discovery Centre within University of Sussex, Brighton, under the supervision of Prof. Simon Ward working on the development of new chemical probes for elucidating cancer pathways.

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Artur Silva obtained both the BSc (1987) and the PhD (1993) degrees at the University of Aveiro. He joined the Department of Chemistry of the same University in 1987 and was appointed to Auxiliary Professor in 1996, Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2001. He published more than 637 SCI papers (h = 46), 1 e-book and 44 book chapters, 3 patents and delivery more than 57 lectures in scientific meetings. He supervised 29 PhD students and 39 MSc students; he participate / has participated in 21 financed Portuguese and European projects and in 8 bilateral financed projects with European Research Groups. He belongs to the editorial board of 6 scientific journals. 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 and metal-catalysed transformations. The second passion of his research is centred in the isolation and structural characterization of natural products from diverse terrestrial and marine sources. But all these scientific activities it is supported in his strong knowledge on NMR spectroscopy. The third axis of their research are focused on the synthesis of biologically active oxygen and nitrogen heterocyclic compounds, as well as on the evaluation of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor and antimicrobial activity in collaborations with other Portuguese and International research groups. He is the director of the QOPNA research centre (150 researchers), president of the Portuguese Chemical Society, member of the Executive Board of EuCheMS and Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences. He is the Vice-rector for research, innovation and 3rd cycle.

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Sabrina Touchet obtained her PhD in 2010 in organic synthesis from Université de Rennes 1 (France) under the supervision of Drs. François Carreaux and Bertrand Carboni working on the development of new ways to access α-aminoboronic acids and heterocyclic ring. During her PhD, she performed a short stay at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadephia under the direction of Pr. Gary Molander. After her PhD, she joined the group of Biological Chemistry of Pr. Rudolf Allemann at Cardiff University (UK) where she worked on sesquiterpene synthases. In 2014, she joined the group of Pr. Jean-Daniel Brion at Université Paris-Sud and worked on the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds as inhibitor of NMDA receptor in the treatment of children epilepsy. In 2016 she became Maître de Conférences (Lecturer) in organic and medicinal chemistry at Université de Lorraine (Nancy). Her current field of interest is the development of methodologies for the synthesis and functionalisation of chiral heterocyclic compounds of biological interested using novel reagents (chiral bimetallic complexes mainly magnesium based) for selective metalation.

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Alexia Visseq graduated in 2016 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse (Mulhouse, France) as a chemical engineer and also obtained her M.Sc. in chemical synthesis from Haute Alsace University (Mulhouse, France). Since then, she is carrying out a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry under the supervision of Professor Fabrice Anizon and Dr. Isabelle Thomas at Clermont Auvergne University at the Chemistry Institute of Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand, France). Her research interests focus on the synthesis of new selective protein kinase inhibitors for the treatment of mechanical allodynia.

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