Confirmed Speakers

Cathleen Crudden is the Allie Vi Douglas Distinguished Research Professor, Queen’s National Scholar and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at Queen’s University, and holds a cross appointment as a Research Professor at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) in Nagoya Japan. She received her PhD in 1994 from the University of Ottawa with Dr. Howard Alper, and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with Dr. Scott Denmark before returning to Canada in 1996 as an Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick. She moved to Queen’s in 2002 as an Associate Professor before becoming full Professor in 2010. Her work in catalysis and materials has received significant acclaim, and recent work identifying a new class of carbon-based SAMs has been called "game changing" and "the new gold standard" by international experts.

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Tanja Gulder studied chemistry at the University of Wuerzburg where she received her diploma in 2004. After earning her Ph.D. with distinction under the supervision of Prof. G. Bringmann in 2008, she pursued postdoctoral studies with Prof. P. S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA, USA). After her return to Germany, she started her independent career in 2011 supported by a Liebig fellowship of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie at RWTH Aachen. In 2014, she moved to TU Muenchen as a Emmy-Noether-research-group leader and got appointed the Heisenberg-Professorship of Biomimetic Catalysis in 2018. Since 2020, she is the Chair of Organic Chemistry at Leipzig University. Her laboratory is dedicated to biomimetic catalysis (enzyme mimicking) with special focus on halogenations and its application in the synthesis of natural products and therapeutics.

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Cristina Nevado graduated in Chemistry at the Autónoma University in 2000. In October 2004 she received her PhD from the same university working with Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren thereafter joining the group of Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Germany) as a post doctoral associate. In May 2007 she started her independent career as an Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Zürich. 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 in 2013 was awarded the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society and was directly promoted to Full Professor. In 2019, she received the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Organometallic Chemistry and in 2020 the Excellence Research Trajectory Award of the Royal Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ). Among her many contributing roles to the community, Cristina is currently Senior Associate Editor for ACS Central Science, Organic Syntheses and Science of Synthesis. 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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Marcos García Suero was born in Noreña (Asturias) in 1981. He was graduated in Chemistry from the Universidad de Oviedo in 2003 and introduced to organometallic chemistry in the laboratory of Prof. José Gimeno and Prof. Pilar Gamasa. In February 2009 he obtained his PhD degree at the Institute of Organometallic Chemistry Enrique Moles (Universidad de Oviedo), where he worked under the direction of Prof. José Barluenga and Prof. Josefa Flórez on Fischer carbene chemistry. During the summer of 2005 he joined the laboratory of Prof. Andrew Myers at Harvard University working on the synthesis of novel tetracycline antibiotics as a PhD visiting student. In May 2010 he moved to the University of Cambridge to work with Professor Matthew Gaunt on copper(III) catalysis and methionine bioconjugation as a Postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellow and in October 2014 he started his independent research career at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) within the CELLEX-ICIQ starting career programme. During his time at ICIQ, he has received the JSP Travel Award 2018 from the Swiss Chemical Society to attend the 54 Bürgenstock Conference, the Merck Sigma-Aldrich Young Researcher Award 2018 from the Royal Spanish Chemical Society (RSQE), the 2019 Thieme Chemistry Journal Award, the Young Investigator Award 2019 by the EuCheMS Division of Organic Chemistry, and the Young Investigator 2020 by Lilly-RSQE. His group has been recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR) as Emerging Group SGR 2017-2019 and pioneered the generation of radical carbenoids, carbyne equivalents and metal-carbynoids. In December 2019, the European Research Council (ERC) awarded Dr. Marcos García Suero with a €2M ERC Consolidator Grant to develop the project “New Carbon Reactivity Rules for Molecular Editing” (CARBYNE). In June 2020, after being evaluated by ICIQ’s Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Suero was promoted to Senior Group Leader.

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Jawaher Alnawah obtained her BSc in Chemistry in 2011 from King Faisal University (KFU) with First-class honours. Upon graduation from university, she was hired as a full-time faculty member at KFU with a full scholarship from Saudi’s government to pursue her doctorate in Organic Chemistry. In 2015, she completed the Academic Intensive English Communication Program (IECP) and the Academic intensive English program (AIEP) at UCLA. In 2017, she obtained her MRes in Organic Chemistry with Drug Discovery at UCL with merit. In early 2018, she began her PhD studies in the Willis lab at the university of Bristol on “Exploring the Potential of Diels–Alderases in Abyssomicin C biosynthesis as Biocatalysts”.

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In 2016, Piotr Banachowicz obtained his master’s degree at the Jagiellonian University under the supervision of Dr Jarosław Wilamowski and Dr Szymon Buda. He is currently a last-year Ph.D. student in The Stereocontrolled Organic Synthesis Team under the supervision of Prof. Jacek Młynarski and Dr. Szymon Buda. During his doctoral research, he was working on the application of nucleophilic selenium species in tandem transformations and total syntheses of natural products. In the last years, he was also engaged in projects related to the synthesis of small organometallic magnets and conducting the organic reaction in the micelles.

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Thibaud Brégent obtained his B. Sc. diploma at the University of Rennes 1 in 2015. Then he moved to Strasbourg and joined the group of Pr. Françoise Colobert for his Master’s internship to work on the synthesis of bioactive terpenes. After receiving his engineering degree from ECPM Strasbourg and Master degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Strasbourg, he started his PhD in 2018 in the COBRA Laboratory in Rouen under the direction of Pr. Thomas Poisson. He is currently working on photocatalyzed EZ contra-thermodynamic isomerization of alkenes.

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Originally from Poland, she moved to Ireland with her parents and sister in 2006. She obtained her Honours Bachelor of Science degree with specialisation in Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology from University College Dublin in 2017. She then joined Professor Pat Guiry’s group in the same university to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry. She is currently in her fourth year.

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Jenny Desantis obtained her MSc in Medicinal Chemistry and Technology of Drugs at the University of Perugia (Italy) in 2013 and the Ph.D. in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2017 from the same institution. During her training years, she spent three months at the GlaxoSmithKline (Harlow, UK) for a training in analytical chemistry and pharmaceutical development and then four months at the medicinal chemistry lab. of the Spanish national research council (IQM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain). After the PhD, she moved to the research group of Prof. Gabriele Cruciani at the Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology of the University of Perugia (Italy) where she worked as PostDoc for three years. Currently, she is PostDoc at the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua (Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Arianna Loregian. Her research activity has been focused on the design, synthesis, and identification of new small molecule compounds endowed with defined pharmaceutical relevance as well as on the hit-to-lead optimization of promising compounds in the field of antivirals, anticancers, and antiprions. More recently, her research was entirely devoted to the design and synthesis of proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) as degradation inducers of different disease-related target proteins, such as androgen receptor (prostate cancer) and coronavirus proteins (COVID-19).

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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) where he is also currently Head of Department. He is a former Secretary & Treasurer of the Heterocyclic & Synthesis Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and currently a committee member of the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry . He was the recipient of the inaugural 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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Jorge Escorihuela received his PhD in Chemistry at Universitat Jaume I of Castellon (Spain) in 2009. After a postdoctoral stage in the Institute of Molecular Recognition and Technological Development (IDM), he worked at Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands) with Prof. Zuilhof. Later, he moved to Universitat Politècnica de València as a postdoctoral researcher and focused his research on polymeric materials as proton exchange membranes for fuel cell applications. In 2019, he joined the Organic Chemistry Department at Universitat de València as an Assistant Professor in the group of Prof. Santos Fustero. His actual research interests include organic synthesis, click chemistry, computational chemistry and PEM fuel cells.

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Patricia García Domínguez graduated in Chemistry at the Universidade de Vigo. In 2012 she obtained her PhD at the same university working under the supervision of Prof. Ángel Rodríguez de Lera and Prof. Rosana Álvarez Rodríguez. After finalizing her postdoctoral stay in the group of Prof. Cristina Nevado (University of Zurich, 2013-2015), she joined the Universidade de Vigo where she currently works on the total synthesis of natural products and on the development of new transition-metal catalyzed reactions.

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Prof. Dr. Olga García Mancheño, professor for organic chemistry at the University of Münster (WWU): She obtained her PhD in Chemistry in 2005 at the University Autonomous of Madrid under the supervision of Prof. J.C. Carretero. After her postdoc in the group of Prof. C. Bolm at RWTH Aachen, she carried out her habilitation at the WWU Münster. In 2013, she was appointed at the University of Regensburg and, in 2017, at the WWU Münster as professor for organic chemistry. Her research aim at developing new, efficient synthetic methodologies in organic chemistry, with especial focus on the design of novel catalytic systems and their application in homogenous catalysis, including photocatalysis and asymmetric anion-binding catalysis. Selected Awards: ERC Consolidator Grant (2017), ORCHEM Prize 2016, Young Researcher Award WWU Münster (2013), Thieme Chemistry Journal Award 2012, Extraordinary Doctorate-Award 2006 (U.A.M.), Lilly Investigation Award, Spanish II Edition (2004).

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Dr. Francesca Ghirga received the master degree in Medicinal Chemistry in 2010 at Sapienza University of Rome and obtained the PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (XXVI) in 2014. Her primary research interest is centered in organic chemistry, with a particular focus in the fields of natural products chemistry. From 2014 to February 2020, she is a Post-Doc at Italian Institute of Technology (CLNS@Sapienza). The Post-Doc position at IIT give her the possibility to advance the research experience in organizing an organic chemistry laboratory, in guiding a research team (PhD students and Post-Doc) and leading multidisciplinary projects and research groups. Research performed at the CLNS@Sapienza covers a number of challenging projects ranging from synthetic chemistry to biodistribution studies. A number of projects on natural products drug discovery have been developed, also in collaboration with scientists from CLNS@Sapienza and outside Italy under the framework of COST collaborative network of the H2020 program. Her expertise in organic synthesis allowed the optimization of active Hits up to Lead compounds or, at least, Lead candidates by improving potency, stability, physicochemical features, chemical properties, and metabolic/pharmacokinetics parameters. Among the challenge projects on the identification of bioactive natural products, she was involved in the field of target therapy against cancer and antibiotic resistance and most of the discovered compounds are currently patent protected. In particular, she contributed, as inventor, to the discovery of a natural compound as inhibitor of the HH pathway which has been patented and successfully completed the preclinical phase for the treatment of specific types of brain, pancreatic and skin cancers. Since 2018, she is the task leader of the Joint Lab CLNS (IIT)-CrestOptics Project 2b 2018 – 2021 for the Rational Design of Tau Tangle-Selective Near-Infrared Fluorescent probes. In this regard, combining her expertise in organic synthesis with computational modelling, she rationally designed and synthetized a selective fluorescent marker which is currently patent protected. In 2021, she was awarded and are managing a fellowship “BE-FOR-ERC”, which is part of the “SAPIExcellence” Programme, an initiative fielded by Sapienza University, for the development of a research project in the oncology field as principal investigator. She is the author of 54 publications and 5 patents.

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Ben graduated in 2017 from Heriot-Watt University with a first-class MChem degree, which included a year in industry working at F. Hoffmann La-Roche in Basel, Switzerland contributing to small molecule drug discovery. Additionally, his final year research project was conducted with Dr. Ai-Lan Lee, working on dual gold and photoredox catalysed C-H activation. Following this, he undertook a summer placement at Genentech, San Francisco, working on the development of a novel ring expansion variant of the Smiles rearrangement. Subsequently, Ben moved to the University of Bristol to undertake his PhD with Prof. John Bower, which is focussed on the development of Pd-catalysed aza-Heck cascades and their application to complex natural product targets.

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Saranna obtained her BSc in Chemistry in 2017 from University College Dublin, Ireland, during which she spent a semester at University of California, Berkeley, USA as an exchange scholar. She then joined the group of Professor Declan G. Gilheany at University College Dublin to undertake her PhD, which is focused primarily on asymmetric Grignard synthesis. She is due to complete her PhD studies in September 2021.

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Dr Maria Maneiro did her PhD in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Concepción González-Bello at the Centre for Research in Chemical Biology and Molecular Materials from the University of Santiago de Compostela. During her PhD, she worked on the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of new inhibitors of enzymes involved in metabolism, virulence, and resistance mechanisms of bacteria for the treatment of multi-resistant bacterial infections. In 2016 she did a short predoctoral stay in the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Dr. Gonçalo Bernardes. After obtaining her PhD degree, in 2018 she joined the group of Prof. Ed Tate at Imperial College London as postdoctoral fellow working on the field of Targeted Protein Degradation. Since April 2021 she is a postdoctoral researcher in Gonzalez-Bello’s group and her research is based on the development of innovative approaches to combat bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

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Ophélie Montiège was graduated in 2019 her master degree in organic chemistry from Le Mans Université in France. She is currently a PhD student in 2nd year at the Institut des Molécules et des Matériaux du Mans. Ophélie Montiège is currently working on the first total synthesis of 22-membered macrolactones called chaxalactins under the supervision of Prof. Anne-Sophie Castanet and Dr. Anne-Caroline Chany.

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In 2000, Victoria graduated in chemistry at the University of Malaga in Spain. Soon after, she started her professional career in the UK and worked for about 10 years first as a drug discovery chemist at Maybridge (Thermo Fisher Scientific) where she was promoted to senior chemist, then as a synthetic organic chemist at Edinburgh Pharmaceutical Processes. She then moved to Germany and worked for nearly 8 years as an analytical chemist for Analytica Alimentaria. In early 2021 she accepted a position as analytical chemist at EU-OPENSCREEN. In addition to performing quality control studies for EU-OPENSCREEN’s commercial collection of about 100.000 screening compounds, she is responsible for managing the integration of compounds provided by academic medicinal chemists.

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Thomas J. J. Müller studied chemistry at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) from 1984 to 1989, obtained his diploma in 1989 and completed his Ph. D. in 1992. After a post-doctoral stay with Prof. B. M. Trost at Stanford University in 1993/1994, he returned to Germany. From 1994-1999 he developed his independent research at Technical University Darmstadt and LMU as a Liebig and DFG scholar. After his habilitation in 2000 and a short time as a lecturer at LMU he was an associate professor of organic chemistry at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg from 2002 to 2006. Since 2006, he is a full professor and director of insitute at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Since 2019, he is the spokesman of the DFG-funded Research Training Group 2482. His research interests encompass synthetic heterocyclic chemistry, functional chromophores and their physical organic chemistry, and the design of novel multi-component and domino reactions. He is an author of more than 300 journal articles and book chapters. His current h-index is 49 (Web of Science) or 52 (Google Scholar).

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In 2013, I obtained my master’s degree in Chemistry and subsequently started my PhD under the supervision of prof. dr. G.A. van der Marel and dr. J.D.C. Codée in the Bio-organic Synthesis group of Leiden University. As of June 2019, I am working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemical Biology group of prof. dr. A.J. Minnaard at the University of Groningen. In 2020, I successfully defended my PhD Thesis “Synthetic carbohydrate ligands for immune receptors”.

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In 2018, Louise RUYET graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes (ENSCR) and received her master’s degree in molecular chemistry. In the course of her studies, she joined the laboratory of Pr. Kevin Ryan at CCNY (NYC, USA) for an internship and worked on the synthesis of potent olfactory receptor antagonists. Then, she had the opportunity to gain expertise in organometallic chemistry during her research stay in Mauduit’s Group at the University of Rennes I (France). She is currently in her 3rd year PhD at the COBRA Laboratory (UMR 6014, Rouen INSA and Rouen Normandy University, CNRS, Rouen, France) in the “Fluorinated Biomolecules Synthesis” group under the supervision of Dr. Tatiana Besset and Pr. Thomas Poisson. Her research interests focus on the development of new methodologies in organofluorine chemistry and the design of new transition metal-catalyzed transformations (C−H bond activation).

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Dr. Upendra K. Sharma received his PhD from CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, India in 2011. Thereafter, he worked as an assistant professor for a short period at the National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India. In 2013, he joined the research group of Prof. Erik Van der Eycken as a postdoc at the University of Leuven, Belgium followed by postdoctoral stints with Prof. Steven Ley (University of Cambridge), Prof. Timothy Noël (University of Eindhoven) and Prof. Shu-Li You (SIOC, China). In 2020, he joined KU Leuven as a senior research expert where the main focus of his research is the development of new synthetic methodologies in combination with enabling techniques. Until now he has published 60 research articles in reputed international journals as well as co-edited a Springer series book on flow chemistry of heterocycles and a Wiley book on multicomponent reactions towards heterocycles. His current H-index is 26.

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Rik is currently a fourth year PhD student and received both his B.Sc. and M.Sc degrees from KU Leuven, Belgium. In 2016 he conducted a research internship at Max Planck Institute for Coal Research under the guidance of PD Martin Klussmann where he was introduced to experimental studies on radical philicty. In 2017 Rik joined MolDesignS as a PhD student under prof. Wim De Borggraeve. During his doctoral research he is working on method development in medicinal chemistry with a passion for radical chemistry.

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Pedro Villar studied a bachelor in chemistry in the University of Vigo and then completed his formation with an international Master in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling. He finished his PdD studies entitled "On the boundaries of computational organic chemistry: From pericyclic to enantioselective cyclizations and transition metal catalysed reactions" very recently, on March 2021, in the research group of Ángel Rodríguez de Lera in the University of Vigo. Furthermore, during the course of the doctorate, he stayed three months in the group of Franziska Schoenebeck in Aagen, Germany.

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Jonathan Fray received his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1983 and, after two years with Prof Barry Trost at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, joined Pfizer Central Research. He worked in Human Medicinals Discovery for 24 years before moving to the University of Nottingham, where he taught organic and medicinal chemistry. In 2015 he joined Concept Life Sciences as a Lead Chemist. He is an author on 49 publications and inventor on 25 patents.

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I studied chemical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences NTA in Isny, Germany from 2007 to 2011. From February 2010 to February 2011, I carried out my diploma thesis within the medicinal department at Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna, Austria. The main focus was to synthesize 5- and 6-membered pharmaceutically active compounds. After receiving my diploma, I went for a PhD in Organic Chemistry within the group of Prof. Dr Jörg Pietruszka in the Institute for Bioorganic Chemistry at the HHU in Düsseldorf, Germany from October 2011 to March 2016. During that time, I was working on the development of laccases as catalytic species within the asymmetric synthesis of C-C couplings. From March 2015 to June 2015, I was performing an inter-doc within the group of Prof. Dr Shinobu Itoh at Osaka University, Japan working on the application of metal clusters for synthetic approaches. As a postdoctoral co-worker within the groups of Prof. Dr Marsden, Prof. Dr Blacker, and Prof. Dr Turner at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester from August 2016 to September 2017, I was part of a collaboration project called Chem21 involving several European universities and pharmaceutical companies with the aim of introducing biotechnology into today`s manufacturing process of medicines. After a short intermezzo with PharmaCytics in Nijmegen, Netherlands, I am an application scientist & regional sales manager within Magritek Ltd in Aachen, Germany since April 2018 working on the development and sales of Spinsolve benchtop NMR systems.

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