Confirmed Speakers

Professor Darren J. Dixon studied Chemistry at the University of Oxford, where he received his Master's degree in 1993, and his DPhil in 1997 for work supervised by Prof Stephen G. Davies. After postdoctoral work with Professor Steven V. Ley CBE FRS, he joined the faculty at the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge in 2000. In 2004 he took a Senior Lecturership at The University of Manchester and in 2007 he was promoted to Reader. In 2008 he moved to his current post at the University of Oxford where he is Professor of Chemistry and is the Knowles-Williams Fellow in Organic Chemistry at Wadham College. His research programme is centred on catalysis and synthetic organic chemistry, and focuses on the development of new catalyst-enabled (enantioselective) synthetic methodologies and their application in complex molecule synthesis. He is the recipient of various awards including the Novartis Chemistry Lectureship, Swiss Chemical Society Lectureship, JSPS Fellowship, Royal Society of Chemistry’s Catalysis in Organic Chemistry Award and the 2023 Tilden Prize. He serves on the Consulting Board of Editors of Tetrahedron/Tetrahedron Letters, on the Board of Directors of the Medicinal & Bioorganic Chemistry Foundation, and on the Board of Editors of Organic Syntheses. He is co-founder, director and CSO of Cortex Organics Ltd, an independent spin-out of Oxford University, specializing in new innovative route development and challenging molecular target synthesis.

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M. Christina White received a B.A. degree with highest honors in biochemistry from Smith College. After a one-year stint in the biology graduate program, she received her Ph. D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in chemistry with Gary Posner as an ACS Medicinal Chemistry Pre-Doctoral fellow. She was a NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Eric Jacobsen and is currently the Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The White group discovers catalysts for preparative, site-selective C—H oxidation reactions for broad use in chemical synthesis. They were the first to demonstrated that there is enough information encoded in the aliphatic C—H bond through its local environment (electronics, sterics, stereoelectronics) to enable site-selective C–H functionalization. The White group has contributed 5 commercial catalysts that are broadly used academically and industrially to add oxygen, nitrogen and carbon to C(sp3)-H bonds in natural products and N-heterocyclic pharmaceuticals. Collectively, the White group’s reactions and selectivity principles pioneered the impactful area of late-stage C—H functionalization.

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Bhaskar C. Das is a Tenured Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Long Island University, New York. Dr. Das also holds adjunct professor position at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, The Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, and The Wake Forest School of Medicine, North Carolina. He did his Ph. D in synthetic organic chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India, and M.Phil. from Delhi University India. He received his Postdoctoral training from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-MA and Harvard Medical School (HMS)-MA and University of Tennessee-TN. Dr. Das directs The Laboratory of Boron in Brain Biology at LIU and his research interests are to develop with/without boron containing small molecular probes/ (radio ligands) to study biology of Retinoic acid, Metabolic and oxidative signaling pathways for brain development to identify biomarkers and development of novel pharmacological agents for Neurodegenerative, Neuro-regenerative, and Neurodevelopmental diseases and Brain cancer-GBM. He has been active in training physicians and scientists at all levels. He has 38 world patents and 109 Peer-reviewed publications. He is reviewer, editor and associate editor on many international journals and also reviewer of many national and international funding agencies (National Institute of Health-NIH, National Science Foundation-NSF, VA, Alzheimer Associations, American Heart Association-AHA, Belgium, Bulgaria, India, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Spain Ministry Science and Education). Based on Dr. Das’s contribution to boron research in June 2014, he received prestigious “Boron in the Americas Award” (for Exceptional Service To Boron Research and Commitment To Excellence) and many national and international awards [2014 , Awarded as International Fellow of the JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 2011Research Collaboration award (British Pharmacological Society) University of Aberdeen, UK, 2009-Young Investigator Award (Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Center excellence)].

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Yoshihiro (“Yoshi”) Ishihara was born in Japan but raised in Montreal, Canada, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry at McGill University. He then obtained his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Phil S. Baran at Scripps Research (La Jolla, California, USA), working on natural product synthesis as well as methodologies involving heteroaromatic compounds. He started his industry career as a medicinal chemist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals (San Diego, California, USA), working on both hit-to-lead and lead optimization for ion channel programs (cystic fibrosis and NaV1.8 for acute pain). He is currently at Vividion Therapeutics as a Senior Scientist, working on chemoproteomics, library design, and medicinal chemistry for oncology and immunology targets. His current interests lie in deepening his understanding of the role of various functional groups in medicinal chemistry. He is a co-author of over 20 journal articles and a co-inventor of over 15 patents.

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Tracey Pirali is full professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Piemonte Orientale. After the degree in pharmacy in 2004, she gained her PhD under the guidance of Prof. Gian Cesare Tron. She joined the group of prof. Jieping Zhu (Paris, CNRS) and of prof. Michael Greaney (Edinburgh, School of Chemistry) as a visiting scientist. Her laboratory is active in the field of drug discovery and in the translation of academic research into pharmaceutical application, with a focus on oncology, dermatology and rare diseases. She is particularly interested in the use of deuterium, protein degraders, soft drugs and multicomponent reactions and in their application in drug discovery. In 2016 she co-founded ChemICare, a spin-off company committed to the development of calcium channel modulators for the treatment of rare genetic diseases: the most advanced candidate has received two orphan designations from EMA. In 2012 she was awarded the Farmindustria Prize by the Italian Chemical Society. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European School of Medicinal Chemistry and coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus EMOTION. She is author of more than 60 papers and inventor of five patents.

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Michael Willis is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. He graduated from Imperial College, University of London, before moving to the University of Cambridge for his PhD studies, working with Professor Steve Ley. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University working with Professor David Evans. In 1997 he returned to the UK and he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath. He moved to Oxford in January 2007, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2013. His research interests are based around the development of new catalytic processes and their application in synthesis, which has recently included the development of new catalytic reactions using sulfur dioxide and related sulfur reagents.

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Johan is currently working as a Director of DMPK and Clinical Pharmacology at CTC Clinical Trial Consultants in Uppsala Sweden. Within this role, Johan functions as a Scientific Advisor for both preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetics. Johan has in total 20 years of industrial experience within the field of DMPK and has conducted many predictions of human pharmacokinetics and doses, both for the support of compound selection and first-in-human clinical trials. Before joining CTC, Johan worked at AstraZeneca and Medivir in Sweden and at Roche in Switzerland. Johan is a certified Pharmacist, PhD in Pharmacology, and an Associate Professor (Docent) from Uppsala University. He is an author/co-author of approximately 30 peer-reviewed publications and several patent applications. He is a member of the Swedish Pharmaceutical Society, where he is a board member of the pharmacokinetic and metabolism section.

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Nicola is a principal scientist in oncology DMPK at AstraZeneca, Cambridge, UK and has over 29 years of industrial experience in the drug discovery field. A physical organic chemist by training Nicola gaining her PhD at the University of York, UK working in the group of Professor John Lindsay-Smith studying porphyrins as models for peroxidases and cytochrome p450s. She joined the Structural and Physical Sciences Section at Zeneca at Alderley Park, Cheshire UK where she became Physical Chemistry group leader with responsibility for providing physicochemical property support for all discovery projects at the site including Oncology, Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Inflammation areas. Nicola is currently a DMPK Design Leader within Oncology R & D at AstraZeneca, Cambridge, UK where she works on discovery projects ensuring molecules are designed with good druglike properties. Nicola’s interests include the study of ADME properties and understanding their relationship to molecular structure, covalently binding drugs and the design of molecules targeting the brain.

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Dr. Grégori Gerebtzoff is Director at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR). He leads the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) Data Science team since 2020. His team focuses on two main areas: (i) data science and ADME(T) modeling, to extract and generate knowledge from the data generated within the Pharmacokinetic Sciences (PKS) department, aiming at supporting decision making, refining experimental design and improving the understanding of translatability of PK data from the bench to the patient; and (ii) application development and data engineering, by offering custom solutions to increase efficiency, reproducibility, quality and compliance of the data and models generated within M&S and PKS. After completing his M. Sc. in Structural Biology in Montpellier (France) and obtaining his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Basel (Switzerland), Dr. Gerebtzoff spent 8 years at F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche) in various departments including CADD, Preclinical Safety and Research Informatics. He joined Novartis in 2015 in the M&S group within the PKS, Translational Medicine department.

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Andrés Olivares-Morales, Pharm.D, Ph.D. is an accomplished drug developer and leader with more than ten years of experience of applying modeling and simulation to accelerate drug discovery and development. He is a pharmacist from Chile and holds a PhD in Pharmacometrics from The University of Manchester in the UK. Since 2016 Andres works at Roche, first as a DMPK Project leader and currently as a Clinical Pharmacologist, where he leads the design and execution of translational clinical pharmacology, M&S and PK/PD strategies across projects to transform molecules into medicines. Andrés’ research is focused on the development and application of mechanistic physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) and PK/PD models for translational purposes, precision dosing, and in special populations such as pediatrics, where he has significantly contributed to the field in terms of research publications, abstracts and conferences presentations both as lead, co-author and invited speaker.

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Professor Bill Morandi studied at ETH Zürich (2003–2008), receiving a BSc in Biology and a MSc in Chemical Biology. From 2008 to 2012, he pursued his PhD in organic synthesis at the same institution in the labs of Professor Erick M. Carreira. Afterwards, he moved to the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) for a postdoctoral stay with Professor Robert H. Grubbs. From 2014 to 2018, he was an independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max-​Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim, Germany), before subsequently returning to ETH Zürich as a Professor in 2018. He is currently Full Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry and heads the Institute of Organic Chemistry (Laboratorium für Organische Chemie) at ETH Zürich. His research program targets the design and development of new catalytic reactions for the synthesis of small molecules and materials, as well as the valorization of renewable feedstocks and waste material. He has received numerous awards, among them a Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry, the Carl Duisberg Memorial Prize from the German Chemical Society and a selection as a C&EN's Talented 12. He is currently an Associate Editor for Organic Chemistry Frontiers, a journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

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Cristina Nevado graduated in chemistry at the Autónoma University of Madrid in 2000. In October 2004 she received her PhD in organic chemistry from the same University working with Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren in late transition metal catalyzed reactions. After a post-doctoral stay in the group of Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Germany), she joined the University of Zürich as an Assistant Professor in May 2007. In 2011, Cristina was awarded the Chemical Society Reviews Emerging Investigator Award and the Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in recognition of her contributions in the field of synthetic organic chemistry. In 2012 she received an ERC Junior Investigator grant and has been awarded the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society. In 2013 she became Full Professor at the Organic Chemistry Institute of the University of Zürich. Rooted in the wide area of organic chemistry, her research program is focused on complex chemical synthesis and new organometallic reactions.

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Bartholomäus Pieber (Bart) studied chemistry at the University of Graz and Graz University of Technology (Austria). In 2015, he completed his PhD thesis that focused on synthetic chemistry in continuous flow regimes in the group of Prof. C. Oliver Kappe at the University of Graz. Following his doctoral work, he moved to Prof. Peter H. Seeberger's lab at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam (Germany), where he studied radical fluorinations using heterogeneous photocatalysis. Bart started his independent research career in 2018 at the same institution as a Liebig fellow of the German Industry Fond and became a lecturer at the University of Potsdam. Since summer 2023, Bart is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Research in his group focuses on visible-light mediated reactions and spans from the design of heterogeneous photocatalysts and photoactive transition metal complexes to the development of chromoselective photocatalytic reactions.

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Ryan Shenvi is a Full Professor at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. His laboratory works at the interface of catalysis, complex molecule synthesis and structural biology. Ryan was born in Wilmington, Delaware and earned his B.S. degree with honors and distinction in chemistry as a Schreyer’s Scholar at Penn State University, where he conducted research with John Desjarlais and Raymond Funk. Ryan earned his Ph.D. in 2008 from The Scripps Research Institute as an NDSEG Fellow under the supervision of Phil S. Baran, and undertook postdoctoral studies as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with E. J. Corey at Harvard University. He serves as Advisory Editor on the Angewandte Chemie Scientific Advisory Committee, Executive Editor at the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis and as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Tetrahedron Chem, ACS Central Science and Accounts of Chemical Research.

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Dr Kazuhiro Abe is an Associate Professor, currently serving at the Cellular and Structural Physiology Institute, Nagoya University, Japan. With an extensive expertise in the fields of X-ray crystallography, Cryo-EM, membrane proteins, and P-type ATPases, he has made significant contributions to the understanding of cellular and structural physiology. Dr. Abe's academic journey began with a Bachelor of Science degree from the School of Science at Hokkaido University in May 1999. Driven by a passion for scientific exploration, he pursued further education and obtained his PhD in Science from the Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University, in May 2004. His outline of research is to determine structures of proton pumps by electron crystallography.

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Dr. Rebecca Ebenhoch is a Senior Scientist in the MedChem department of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG in Biberach, Germany. Her fields of expertise are X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, membrane proteins and structure-based drug design. Dr. Ebenhoch's academic journey started in 2011 when she studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen and Konstanz. Driven by her passion for structural biology, she completed her PhD at the University of Frankfurt in 2019, focusing on the structure determination of pharmaceutically relevant targets using various methods. This was followed by a PostDoc at the SGC in Oxford, where she worked on the structure determination of membrane proteins using cryo-EM. In 2020, she moved to Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG and established the cryo-EM platform for structure-based drug design.

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Dr. Fay is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Mol. Bio. at the University of Maryland school of medicine. He has a longstanding interest in membrane proteins and his research efforts are centered primarily on the intersection of the pharmacology and structural biology of membrane proteins. Dr. Fay graduated from Reed College 91, and received is PhD from OHSU in 2012. He did a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Jack Riordan on CFTR before promotion to Research Assistant Professor at UNC chapel hill prior to his current appointment.

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Harini Krishnamurthy is currently a Principal Scientist in the Protein and Structural Chemistry group at Merck. She received his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Michigan State University, employing NMR and MD simulations to study the interplay between dynamics, rigidity, and activity in a hyperthermostable enzyme. She then joined Eric Gouaux's lab at the Vollum Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, where she worked on the SLC family of transporters. Her career path in the industry started in 2011 when she joined Heptares Therapeutics and gained extensive experience with structure-based drug discovery against GPCR targets. In 2014, she joined Merck's Structural Chemistry group to help build Merck's capabilities in the membrane protein structure determination arena. Since then she leads several projects in different therapeutic areas working with cross-functional teams and branching into cryoEM, helping the group to achieve the aim of structurally-enabling any target regardless of complexity.

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Niginia Borlinghaus was born in Hildesheim, Germany, in 1995 and studied "Life Science" with a focus on organic chemistry at the University of Konstanz. From 2019 to 2022, she did her doctoral studies at AbbVie Germany in Ludwigshafen in the department of Neuroscience Discovery Research in collaboration with the University of Konstanz (Prof. Dr. Wittmann) on organic reactions in water enabled by surfanctants. During that time, she did a visiting scientist at the AbbVie headquarters in Chicago, working on implementing different parallel synthesis platforms, and joined the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roudtable in a focus group on "Chemistry in Water". After her Ph.D. thesis, Niginia Borlinghaus worked at Merck KGaA in Buchs, Switzerland, in process development for approximately a year and has recently joined the newly founded team of Enamine Germany in Frankfurt as a senior synthetic chemist.

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Josep Cornella (Pep) was born in La Bisbal del Penedès, a small town in south Catalunya. He graduated in chemistry in 2008 from the University of Barcelona and carried MSc studies in the Department of Organic Chemistry studying the chemistry of allylboron reagents. After completing his masters thesis, he moved to the United Kingdom to pursue doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Igor Larrosa (QMUL). In early 2012, he earned his PhD working on the use of aromatic carboxylic acids as aryl donors in metal-catalyzed decarboxylative reactions. He then moved back to Catalunya, where he joined the group of Prof. Ruben Martin (ICIQ) as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed novel transformations involving Ni-catalyzed C–O bond activation and carbon dioxide insertion into organic molecules. In 2015, Pep obtained a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship to carry out further postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute, California, USA. During this time at Scripps, he worked on the discovery and implementation of new transformations based on the concept of “redox-active esters” as practical and readily available partners for Ni- and Fe-catalyzed C–C bond forming reactions. In spring 2017, he was appointed as a Max Planck Group Leader in the Department of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

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Timothy Noël is a researcher in the field of synthetic organic chemistry and technology, with a particular interest in the delicate synergy between the two fields. In 2004, Tim earned his MSc degree in Industrial Chemical Engineering before pursuing his passion for synthetic organic chemistry, which led him to complete his PhD in the field at Ghent University in 2009. Following his PhD, he traveled across the Atlantic as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Professor Stephen L. Buchwald at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he gained valuable experience and expertise in flow chemistry. Upon returning to Europe, he joined Eindhoven University of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2012, and later became an Associate Professor in 2017. In 2020, Tim was promoted to Full Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he is now the Chair of Flow Chemistry. His research in the area of flow chemistry was recognized with several awards, including the DECHEMA award (2017), the Hoogewerff Youth Prize (2019), the IUPAC-ThalesNano Flow Chemistry Award (2020), the KNCV Gold Medal (2021), ERC Consolidator Grant (2022), the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (2022) and the ChemSocRev Pioneering Investigator Lectureship (2023). He is the editor in chief of Journal of Flow Chemistry and the president of the Flow Chemistry Society.

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Prof. Paradisi graduated with a BSc in Chemistry and then a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Bologna. In 2002 she joined the group of Prof. Engel at University College Dublin for her post doc and started working in the area of Biocatalysis. She got her first academic position in the School of Chemistry in UCD in 2006 where she remained till 2016. She was recruited then by the University of Nottingham as Associate Professor in Biocatalysis and promoted to Full Professor in 2019. In the same year however, she was offered the Chair of Sustainable Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bern and relocated to Switzerland. Her work focusses on developing eco-friendly and ultra-efficient biotransformations for the synthesis of high-value chemicals, to increasing the applicability of biocatalysis.Flow-biocatalysis and enzyme immobilization are core technologies of the Paradisi Lab.

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Dr Alexander Birkmann is Head of Project, Portfolio Management and Strategy at AiCuris, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to delivering novel antiviral therapies to patients with weakened immune systems. He was part of the Bayer spin-out that founded AiCuris. Alexander is a biologist by training and holds a PhD in molecular virology from the laboratory of Bernhard Fleckenstein at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He started his career at Bayer in 2002 as a laboratory head in antiviral drug discovery. Following the founding of AiCuris in 2006, he assumed the role of project leader for pritelivir, an innovative antiviral drug for the treatment of herpes simplex virus infections. Under his leadership, he successfully guided the project through the non-clinical phase and into Phase 2 clinical development. In 2015, Alexander was appointed Head of Research at AiCuris, overseeing all virology and bacteriology research activities until 2023. He then transitioned to his current role, leading AiCuris' project management and business development functions. With more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, he has demonstrated expertise and leadership throughout his career and has authored or co-authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals.

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Dr. Dimitar Gotchev received a B.S. with honors in chemistry from the University of Zimbabwe and a Ph.D. in organic synthesis from North Carolina State University with Prof. Daniel L. Comins. He then completed his postdoctoral research with Prof. Amos B. Smith, III at the University of Pennsylvania. Dimitar began his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at GlaxoSmithKline in Collegeville, PA. He then transitioned to the biotechnology sector with a move to Trevena, Inc. where he was most notably a team member and inventor of Olinvyk™ (oliceridine) for the management of severe acute pain. Following a brief period at Teva Pharmaceuticals, he then joined Arbutus Biopharma where he currently serves as a Director in Medicinal Chemistry. Over the course of his career, Dimitar led drug discovery programs across several therapeutic areas including CNS, oncology and virology. He and his team have advanced multiple clinical candidates for the prevention of HBV and coronavirus infections. He is an active member of the local scientific community and served as the President of the Philadelphia Organic Chemists Club.

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Dr. Rao Kalla is currently working as a Senior Research Scientist at Gilead Sciences and is focused on anti-viral drug discovery. Dr. Kalla received his M.S. and Ph. D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Hyderabad, India. He then moved to New Mexico State University for a postdoctoral position to design and synthesize bifunctional chelating agents with Prof. Jeff Arterburn. Rao started his medicinal chemistry journey at CV Therapeutics, then moved to Gilead Sciences. Over the course of his 20+ year career, Rao has led and contributed to chemistry efforts across several therapeutic areas, including GPCRs (adenosine receptors), cardiovascular (ion channel inhibitors), kinase inhibitors, and oncology. During the pandemic, Rao moved into virology therapeutics to support COVID treatment efforts and contributed to the discovery of Obeldesivir. He continues to work in virology research. Rao is a co-author of nearly 25 peer-reviewed publications, is a co-inventor of over 40 patent applications, and has presented his work at various national and international conferences. Rao enjoys gardening and hiking with his wife and two children in beautiful California.

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Priscilla earned her PhD in Bio-organic Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Following postdoctoral training in viral immunology at Scripps Research, she established her own research group combining chemical and pharmacological approaches to address fundamental and translational problems in virology. Her research interests and goals are centered on discovery and validation of new antiviral targets, identifying alternatives to combination therapy for avoiding antiviral resistance, and investigating the function of lipid membranes in RNA virus replication. She likes running and hiking, and when having kids meant finding a hobby she could do while watching the kids, she learned how to knit from her first graduate student. She is a strong advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science. After many years at Harvard Medical School, she recently moved with her research group, husband, and three children back to the West Coast where she is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

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Christian P. R. Hackenberger studied chemistry at the Universität Freiburg and the UW Madison/Wisconsin (M.Sc. with Prof. Samuel Gellman) and performed his doctoral studies at the RTWH Aachen with Prof. Carsten Bolm. After a postdoctoral stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Prof. Barbara Imperiali, he founded his own research group at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2005 as an Emmy Noether fellow. In 2012, he was appointed as Leibniz-Humboldt Professor and Department Head for Chemical Biology at the Leibniz-Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP Berlin) and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His group develops highly selective chemical and chemoenzymatic strategies to functionalize proteins and antibodies to generate protein-based therapeutics against cancer, Alzheimer and viral infections. In addition, he pioneered the development of cell-permeable antibodies for intracellular targeting. He is a co-founder of the Munich-based company Tubulis, which engineers better tolerable cancer drugs, especially antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), using conjugation technologies from his lab, in particular the P5-labeling platform. Recent awards include the Leonidas Zervas Award from the European Peptide Society (2018), the Xiaoyu Hu Memorial Award from the Chinese Peptide Society (2023) and the Protein and Peptide Astra Zeneca Award from the Royal Society (2023). In 2020, he was the first recipient of the Falling Walls breakthrough of the year award in the Life Sciences, recognizing his contributions to develop next-generation biopharmaceuticals.

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Philip received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 2016, working in the laboratory of Professor Steven V. Ley FRS FMedSci. There, he studied methods for continuous synthesis with organometallic reagents using flow chemistry techniques, and worked on synthetic approaches towards the total synthesis of the marine natural product muironolide A. Philip carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of Oxford in the group of Professor Michael Willis, developing Cu- and Pd-catalysed methods for substrate cross-coupling. Philip was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to work in the group of Professor Robert Knowles at Princeton University, where he developed a number of photochemical methods for substrate activation through proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET), saturated heterocycle synthesis, and alkene hydroamination. Philip joined BicycleTx in Cambridge, UK in 2023 as a Senior Scientist in the synthetic chemistry group, where he is leading internal efforts in the production of non-canonical amino acids to supply medicinal chemistry programs.

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Vijaya Pattabiraman is a Co-founder of Bright Peak Therapeutics and serves as Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Pattabiraman has made seminal contributions to Bright Peak’s technology and brings in extensive expertise and know-how in peptide and protein sciences. He has more than 15 years of experience in biomolecules, small molecules discovery and development for academic and translational research. He is co-inventor on multiple patents and has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications, book chapters in the field of chemical protein synthesis, peptide antibiotics and small-molecules therapeutics. Dr. Pattabiraman has fostered many academic and biotech collaborations and leads a multi-disciplinary global team. He is also a co-founder of Synple Chem, a start-up focused on automation in chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Alberta, Canada and performed his postdoctoral studies with Prof. Bode at University of Pennsylvania, USA and at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

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Alain Wagner is a Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research, where he leads the BioFunctional Chemistry team at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Strasbourg. Alain earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Strasbourg and conducted post-doctoral research at Affymax Research under the guidance of Professor Peter Schultz. Alain Wagner's current research revolves around the utilization of biocompatible chemical reactions with diverse applications. One aspect of his work involves detecting and quantifying reactive metabolites or xenobiotics within living organisms. Another facet centers on the advancement of cleavable linkers and payloads with novel or synergistic mechanisms to improve the safety of Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs). A third area of focus explores a groundbreaking chemistry-based approach in microfluidic technology, enabling the analysis and sorting of extensive populations of single cells based on their secretory activity. In 2016, Alain co-founded Syndivia, a startup committed to improving treatment options for cancer patients with solid tumors. The company leverages the unique properties of targeted DAR1 antibody-drug conjugates to enhance tumor penetration and stability. In 2021, he co-founded MicroOmiX, a startup focused on developing advanced single-cell-based technologies to expedite the development of antibody and cell-based therapies. Alain is the author of 180 peer-reviewed publications, holds 30 patents, and has played a pivotal role in the founding of five startups.

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Prof. Maria Paola Costi is the team leader of the Drug discovery and biotechnology lab at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. PhD in Medicinal chemistry in 1989 and visiting professor at UCSF (University of California San Francisco) in different periods 1991-1996. Her expertise is in the field of the design of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology applications (fluorescence, functional/structural technologies, proteomics) in particular on protein-protein interaction disrupters. Her international collaborative research team is focused on folate dependent enzymes in cancer and parasitic diseases. A recent new topic is the Hippo pathway by targeting the YAP:TEAD complexes. She is collaborating to the development of one anti-lesihmania drug and one anticancer drug. About 200 research papers, book chapters in international journals and patents. Member of the MITO oncology group, translational science, and other networks and foundation (Paul Erlich Network, European Science Foundations -ESF). She is the coordinator of several collaborative projects as European projects, AIRC funded projects and more recently she is the Chair of the COST Action on OneHealthdrugs (CA21111). Co-founder of two start-up (TydockPharma srl and Quadrel srl).

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Luca Gobbi has over two decades of experience in the drug discovery industry. Currently, he serves as an Expert Scientist and Group Leader in the Medicinal Chemistry department at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland. Luca obtained his diploma degree in chemistry from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland, where he subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Professor François Diederich in 2000. After postdoctoral studies with Professor Steven V. Ley in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2001 he joined F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in the Pharma Research and Early Development unit. Luca’s research interests span from medicinal chemistry to PET tracer discovery, with a focus on the central nervous system. He has made significant contributions to the discovery of novel PET tracers for imaging pathologic protein aggregates in neurodegeneration, enzymes, ion channels and receptors. Luca is a co-author of nearly 40 peer-reviewed publications, and a co-inventor of close to 70 patent applications.

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Isabelle Krimm is Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research, where she heads the Small Molecules for Biological Targets team at the Lyon Cancer Research Center. Isabelle Krimm obtained her PhD in Chemistry, where she focused on structural biology and the resolution of protein structures by NMR. Isabelle Krimm's current research focuses on the design of small molecules targeting proteins. Her team uses structural biology (NMR and crystallography) and fragment-based screening to guide the discovery of new protein inhibitors. She is particularly interested in using small molecules as research tools to better explore the functions and conformational landscape of proteins. She has co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, holds 2 patents and founded a start-up.

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Christian Kuttruff is currently a Director in Medicinal Chemistry (ad-interim) at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG. He studied chemistry at the Technical University of Munich and completed his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under the supervision of Professor Dirk Trauner at the University of Munich. He did his postdoctoral research with Professor Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), focusing on the total synthesis of ingenol. In 2014, he joined Boehringer Ingelheim as a medicinal chemist and worked as a project leader in the areas of respiratory diseases, immune-oncology and immunology. He then moved to BI’s Global Business Development & Licensing department where he was responsible for strategic partnering for the TA Inflammation and NCE Technologies before assuming his current position.

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Oscar Mammoliti was born and raised in Aosta, in the Italian Alps. He attended the University of Turin, where he graduated in Chemistry in 2003. He then moved to the UK, where he obtained his PhD from the University of Shouthampton in 2006, under the guidance of Professor Jeremy D Kilburn. His doctoral studies focused on Organic and Supramolecular Chemistry. Just after his PhD, he joined the biotech industry, in Belgium, to work at Galapagos as a Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry. Medicinal Chemistry has been his passion ever since. At Galapagos, he quickly rose through the ranks to become Senior Scientist, then Team Leader and ultimately Group Leader. He led several programs mainly in the areas of Cystic Fibrosis, Autoimmune diseases, and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, contributing to various molecules entering development. He also had a brief stint at the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee, were he contributed to the TB therapeutic area as Medicinal Chemistry Group Leader. Since February 2022, Oscar joined Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) as Senior Principal Scientist in Global Discovery Chemistry. He is author of 15 peer reviewed papers and inventor in 15 patent applications. In his time away from work, Oscar loves to spend time with his family, ride his race bikes in the beautiful bike paths of Belgium and play chess.

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Michael G. Hahn has more then 23 years of experience as a medicinal chemist in design and synthesis of potential drugs candidates for BAYER at Wuppertal research site. He did his Ph.D under supervision of Professor H-.J. Altenbach 1999. Having won a research DAAD fellowship for postdoctoral work, he spent 1999-2000 with Professor Steve Ley FRS at Cambridge University, UK. He has been recognized through the Bayer Drug Discovery Award 2013 (Mosliciguat, sGC activator Inhale for the treatment of PH), 2015 (BAY 2253651 a TASK-channel blocker for the treatment of OSA) and recently with the Friedrich-Stolz Award (2022; Discovery of modulators of the soluble guanylate-cyclase (sGC)). He was the responsible and inventive chemist for six clinical candidate nomination since 2011. He is author/co-author on over 60 research papers and patents.

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Erik obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry at the University of Michigan in the research group of Prof. Will Pearson, working on the total synthesis of poly-hydroxylated alkaloid natural products. He then joined the labs of Prof. Barry Trost at Stanford University as a NIH Post-doctoral fellow where he applied palladium catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation chemistry to the synthesis of natural products. In 1999, Erik moved to Indianapolis to join Eli Lilly and Company as a Sr. Organic Chemist. Over the past 25 years, Erik has contributed to Lilly’s drug discovery efforts in the areas of neuropsychiatric disorders, obesity, diabetes, pain, and neurodegeneration. He has contributed to the discovery of 9 molecules that have advanced into human clinical development and is recognized as an expert in GPCR-targeted drug discovery. He is currently an Associate Vice President in Lilly’s Discovery Chemistry organization.

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Dr. Ana Minatti, PhD currently holds the position of Scientific Associate Director in the Medicinal Chemistry department at Amgen. Ana completed her undergraduate and PhD studies at the University of Bonn (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Karl Heinz Dötz in the field of Organometallic Chemistry funded by the German Chemical Industry Association. In 2006, Ana joined the group of Prof. Steve Buchwald at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow where she became passionate about transition-metal catalysis. She started her career as a Medicinal Chemist at Hoffman La-Roche in Palo Alto (CA) and then moved to Amgen in Thousand Oaks (CA, USA). In the last 14 year, Ana has worked in many therapeutic areas and contributed to the discovery of six clinical candidates - one of which is now marketed as the first KRASG12C inhibitor – Sotorasib (LumaKRAS). Ana has been awarded as an ACS Young Investigator and she is an inventor/co-author on 45 patents and publications. Ana is not only a recognized scientific leader within Amgen. She also manages Amgen’s Integrated Drug Discovery Partnership with Evotec and was a key player in the successful integration of the company Nuevolution – a Copenhagen-based pioneer in DEL technology - after its acquisition by Amgen in 2019. She has now made Denmark her permanent home and works out of our Amgen Research Copenhagen site.

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Originally from France, Fred obtained his PhD in the UK at Imperial College under the mentorship of Pr Tony Barrett in the field of combinatorial chemistry. Then moved to California SanDiego for a postdoc in Natural Product synthesis with Pr K.C Nicolaou where with the team completed the first total synthesis of Thiosptrepton. Joined Novartis Basel CH in 2002 as a research investigator in Medicinal Chemistry in Transplantation research. Fred was involved in the discovery and bringing Mayzent (Multiple sclerosis) to the market and lead the team that discovered Leniolisib (Joenja) the first and only Pi3K delta approved outside of Oncology indication. In 2011, Fred relocated to Cambridge US in CardioVascular and Metabolism Medecinal Chemistry leading the Heart failure platform. In 2018, Fred became global head of Chemistry Oncology. Fred is associated with More than 25 clinical candidates and more than 10 compounds in the clinic such as first design molecular glue DKY709, KRAS G12C (Ph 3), first YAP/TEAD PPI disruptor, first WRN helicase inhibitor ... Fred area's of interest are CIP's (compound of Induced Proximity) and co-lead the scholar program with Pr. Stuart Schreiber paving the path for discovery of novel CIP's using DEL technology.

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