Confirmed Speakers

Ben L. Feringa obtained his PhD degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands under the guidance of Professor Hans Wynberg. After working as a research scientist at Shell in the Netherlands and the UK,he was appointed full professor at the University of Groningen in 1988 and named the Jacobus H. van't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences in 2004. In 2008 he became KNAW Academy Professor and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. He is foreign member of the US National Academy, the Royal Society UK, The German National Academy Leopoldina and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Feringa’s research has been recognized with a number of awards including the Koerber European Science Award (2003), the Spinoza Award (2004), the Norrish Award of the ACS (2007), the Paracelsus medal (2008), the Nagoya gold medal (2013), ACS Cope Scholar Award 2015, Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize (2015), The 2016 Nobel prize in Chemistry.

Feringa’s research interest includes stereochemistry, organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, molecular switches and motors, self-assembly, molecular nanosystems and photopharmacology.

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E.W. “Bert” Meijer is Distinguished University Professor in the Molecular Sciences, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and co-director of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems. After receiving his PhD degree at the University of Groningen with Hans Wynberg, he worked for 10 years in industry (Philips and DSM). In 1991 he was appointed in Eindhoven, while in the meantime he has part-time positions in Nijmegen, MPI-Mainz, and Santa Barbara, CA. Bert Meijer is a member of many editorial advisory boards, including Advanced Materials and is associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Bert Meijer has received a number of awards, including the Spinoza Award in 2001, the ACS Award for Polymer Chemistry in 2006, the AkzoNobel Science Award 2010, the International Award of the Society of Polymer Science Japan in 2011, the Cope Scholar Award of the ACS in 2012, the Prelog Medal in 2014, the Nagoya Gold Medal in 2017 and the Chirality Medal in 2018. In 2020 he is knighted by the king to be Commander in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He is a member of several academies and societies, including the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, where he was appointed to Academy Professor in 2014.

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Johannes Broichhagen studied chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and graduated in 2010 with honors. He then joined the group of Dirk Trauner at LMU Munich to dive into Chemical Biology and obtained his PhD in 2014 “summa cum laude”. Next, he was working with Kai Johnsson first at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne as a PostDoc and later at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg as a Departmental Group Leader. Since March 2020, he joined the Leibniz Forschungsinstitut fuer Molekulare Pharmakologie in Berlin as a Junior Group Leader and is affiliated as a Guest Professor with the Humboldt University for Summer 2021 to teach Organic Chemistry. His research interested is focused on chemical approaches to visualize endogenous biomolecules.

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Julie Karpenko studied chemistry at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine) and the Côte d'Azur University (France). She performed her PhD studies (2011-2014) at the University of Strasbourg (France) under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Hibert, working on the development of fluorescent probes and PET radiotracers to study the oxytocin GPCR.

Then she joined the group of Prof. Kai Johnsson (EPFL, Switzerland) as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, working on the development of calcium-sensitive sensor proteins and chemical indicators to monitor and integrate calcium spikes in cultured neurons and living animals.

In 2016 she joined the team of Dr Dominique Bonnet (Integrative Chemical Biology) at the Laboratory for Therapeutic Innovation, University of Strasbourg as associate professor in organic and pharmaceutical chemistry.

Her research interests lie in the field of fluorescent turn-on molecular probes for bioimaging, drug discovery, and medical diagnostics.

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Leila Motiei obtained her M.Sc. in Chemistry from Bar-Ilan University, Israel in 2003. She then moved to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California where she worked with Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri as a research assistant (2004–2006). Her research involved the study of antibacterial cyclic D,L-α-glycopeptides. In 2007, she returned to Israel to conduct her PhD studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science under supervision of Prof. Milko E. van der Boom studying the exponential formation of molecular-based assemblies. Since 2012, she has been an associate staff scientist in the group of Prof. David Margulies at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Her research interests focus on developing pattern-generating fluorescent molecular probes, turn-on fluorescent probes, targeted protein surface receptors, and biomimetics of signaling proteins.

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Prof. Dr. Herman S. Overkleeft (12-04-1969) studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD degree in 1997 on his Thesis ‘Azasugars. Synthesis and evaluation as glycosidase inhibitors’ (promotor Professor Dr. Upendra Pandit). He performed postdoctoral research with Professor Dr. Jacques van Boom (Leiden University, 1997-1999) and Professor Dr. Hidde Ploegh (Harvard Medical School, 1999-2001). Since 2001 he is Professor and head of the Bioorganic Synthesis (BIOSYN) group at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Leiden University. The research of the BIOSYN group focuses on the design and synthesis of peptides, nucleic acids and carbohydrates, their hybrid structures and their structural analogues. These compounds are applied in-house and through numerous collaborations in biological and biomedical research. Specific focus is on the development of activity-based probes for chemical biology research, predominantly on proteasomes and glycosidases. His work on modulators of glycosphingolipid metabolism has yielded a largest and comprehensive glycomimetics library and resulted in the creation of the biotech start-up company, Azafaros, whose aim is to develop new therapeutics for neuropathic Gaucher disease (www.azafaros.com). Overkleeft is recipient of a VICI (2003), an ERC AdG (2011) and (with Carme Rovira and Gideon Davies) an ERC Synergy grant. He was awarded the KNCV Gold Medal (2008), a Wilhelm Friedrich Bessel Forschungspreis (2012), and the Jeremy Knowles Award (2015). In 2018 he was elected member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Since 2017 he is the Scientific Director of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry.

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