Confirmed Speakers

Atwood Cheung is a Principle Scientist at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, MA. Prior to joining Novartis, Atwood began his drug hunting career at Exelixis in California synthesizing his first kinase inhibitors. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the laboratories of Prof. Marc Snapper at Boston College, and his Bachelors of Science in Chemistry from University of California at Berkeley. He currently conducts research in respiratory and cardiovascular drug discovery.

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Andrew K. Dilger is currently Senior Research Investigator II at Bristol Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ, USA. During his 8 years at BMS, Andrew has been focused on the discovery of drugs for cardiovascular diseases. Prior to joining BMS, Andrew completed his doctoral research in 2009 with Professor Steven D. Burke at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, completing the total synthesis of (-)-dictyostatin. Andrew then took up a postdoctoral position with Professor David W. C. MacMillan at Princeton University where he discovered a novel -arylation of ketones.

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Since 2015 Riccardo Giovannini is Director Medicinal Chemistry at Boehringer Ingelheim, Biberach, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Camerino (Italy). At the end of 1998 he started his career in the pharmaceutical industry by joining the medicinal chemistry department at GlaxoWellcome Italia. In 2005 he joined Boehringer Ingelheim Italia as Group Leader at the Chemistry Research Centre and two years later he was appointed Department Head. In 2010 he took the responsibility as Managing Director of Boehringer Ingelheim Research Italia, a company focused on pre-clinical research; he kept this responsibility until 2014. His research has prevalently been devoted to the areas of neuroscience and inflammation, contributing as research project leader to the identification of several clinical candidates. Riccardo is co-author/co-inventor of over 70 publications, patents, posters and oral presentations.

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Dr Uwe M. Grether, Senior 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, neuroscience and more recently ophthalmic diseases. Uwe worked as team member and project leader covering both early and late stage research and reaching advanced stages up to phase 3 clinical trials. He is co-author of more than 120 patent applications and research publications.

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Dr. Wooseok Han is currently a principal scientist in the Global Discovery Chemistry group at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2005, Dr. Han joined Chiron, which was immediately acquired by Novartis. Since then, he has continued his professional career as a medicinal chemist in the fields of oncology and infectious diseases at NIBR in Emeryville, California. After moving to the Cambridge site in 2018, he has been working on cancer research. Dr. Han received his B.S. in chemistry from Yonsei University and completed her M.S. in organic chemistry from Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea. In 2003, Dr. Han obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Toronto and joined the Dale Boger group as a post-doctoral research fellow in The Scripps Research Institute, where he studied the total synthesis of complestatin for 2 years.

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Dr. Naoyoshi Noguchi is currently a Principal Scientist in Drug Discovery Chemistry Laboratory at SCOHIA PHARMA, Inc., in Japan, which was established as a carve-out biotech company from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. In 2009, he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry under the direction of Prof. Masahisa Nakada at Waseda University. During 2009-2017, he had worked in Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. as a medicinal chemist. During this period, he was assigned to Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute in New York and took the lead in the cancer metabolism project with Prof. Lewis C. Cantley. In 2017, he joined SCOHIA PHARMA, Inc. and has been engaged in medicinal chemistry research in several target classes mainly for the treatment of cardiovascular, metabolic, and renal diseases.

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Matthew Perry is an Associate Principal Research Chemist in the Early Respiratory and Immunology department based in Gothenburg Sweden, where he works in the area of respiratory diseases, with interests in Asthma, COPD and IPF. Matthew studied at Oxford University staying on to do a PhD with Professor Jack Baldwin. Matthew had post-doctoral positions with Professor Leon Ghosez in Belgium (as a Royal Society European fellow) and then Professor Anthony Pearson in Cleveland Ohio. He began his industrial career with Fisons Pharmaceuticals in Loughborough UK over 30 years ago, subsequently working there with Astra and AstraZeneca before moving to Sweden in 2011.

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Norbert Schmees is director at Nuvisan Innovation Campus Berlin GmbH. This company was recently started out of a part of the Bayer research in Berlin. His current research is focused on the discovery and development of new small molecule therapies for cancer immunotherapy. He studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, made his PhD at the Max-Planck-Institut in Mülheim/Ruhr and went for a Post-Doc to Cambridge University /UK. He is now working for more than 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, primarily in medicinal chemistry. He was project lead in several programs that delivered clinical candidates in the field of inflammation, women’s healthcare and cancer. He is author and inventor on more than 80 publications and patents.

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Fredrik Zetterberg is since 6 years Director of medicinal Chemistry at Galecto Biotech, a small biotech company focused on the development of galectin inhibitors for treatment of fibrosis, inflammation and cancer. He obtained his Master of science degree from Gothenburg University 1994, PhD from Uppsala University 1998 working with Pr. David Tanner and Pr. Pher G. Andersson and then moved on to work for AstraZeneca. There he contributed in different roles to several clinical candidates in the cardiovascular and metabolic field. He also discovered Cleviprex ® (clevidipine) during a university project work in collaboration with Astra. In addition he is co-supervisor of PhD students, advisory board member for a Master program in Medicinal chemistry and regular guest lecturer at Lund University. He is author and inventor on >70 publications, patents, posters and oral presentations at international conferences.

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