EFMC-YMCS 2020

Dr H. Ratni is an Expert Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry, at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland. He received his PhD at the University of Geneva and did a post-doc at Tokyo University before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in 2001. His research has mainly been devoted to the areas of neuroscience (e.g. V1a receptor antagonist now in human pivotal clinical trials, phase III, for autism). In 2005, he participated in a secondment within the Roche group at Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Gotemba Japan. He was the chemistry discovery project leader of the SMN program aiming for a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy leading to the discovery of Risdiplam (awaiting FDA approval by May 2020). His current focus is on gamma secretase modulator for Alzheimer disease. He is an author or co-author of more than 115 patents and publications and received the following awards: - 2014: Roche Leo Sternbach Award for Innovation in Chemistry. - 2016: Gold medal at the Roche Patent Inventor’s recognition event. - 2019: Paper of the year award by the Society of Toxicology (DDTSS) - 2020: Roche CEO Award for Excellence - 2020: Senior Industrial Science Award by the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS)

Pablo Rivera-Fuentes obtained his PhD (2012) degree in chemistry from ETH Zurich, working under the supervision of Prof. François Diederich. His dissertation was awarded the ETH Medal in 2013. After postdoctoral appointments at MIT (with Steve Lippard) and the University of Oxford (with Harry Anderson), he started his independent career at ETH Zurich in late 2015. Since August 2019, he is tenure-track assistant professor of chemical biology at EPFL. His lab was awarded an ERC starting grant in 2018 and the Eccellenza grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2019.

Angela Russell is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. She gained her MChem degree from the University of Oxford in 2000 and her DPhil in Organic Chemistry in 2004. In 2007 she was awarded a Research Councils’ UK Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry jointly between the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacology in Oxford. In 2018 she was made Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. Her work lies at the interface of Chemistry, Biology and Medicine and aims to discover new small molecules and mechanisms to manipulate cell fate and translate them into therapeutic agents, particularly for degenerative diseases and cancer.

Catarina Dias was born in Lisbon in 1989. She completed her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Universidade de Lisboa in 2018, after being granted a PhD Studentship in Industry, co-sponsored by Cipan,SA. Her thesis focused on the synthesis of new carbohydrate-based molecules with therapeutic potential against infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, recognized by FCiências.ID excellence award and SPQ award. During her PhD, she had the chance to strongly develop her passion on Medicinal Chemistry through an industrial placement in Eli Lilly R&D facilities in the UK, and later, on the 12th Swiss Course on Medicinal Chemistry in Leysin. During her academic years, she authored 10 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 5 book chapters. Catarina has always been fascinated with research and innovation in organic chemistry within the industrial context. She is currently part of the R&D department of CIPAN, where she works alongside a team that continuously seeks to improve current synthetic processes of tetracycline antibiotics, as well as developing and optimizing technology for new products.

Sanja Djokic is a 3rd-year student of Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She defended her master’s thesis under the title „Synthesis and antiproliferative activity of the new pyrazole pseudo-C-nucleosides with the furano-lactone ring as a sugar mimic“, at aforementioned faculty in 2017. She works as a Research Trainee in a group of professor's Velimir Popsavin, a correspondent member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are the total synthesis of natural products and their analogs and the synthesis of biologically active compounds.

Philippe Gilles obtained his Bachelor and Master of Science degree in Chemistry at the KU Leuven. During the master’s program, he took the opportunity to broaden his expertise through a 6-month internship at the former DuPont fluoroproducts division (now Chemours). In September 2015, Philippe started his research activities in the group of Professor Wim De Borggraeve (KU Leuven) in the framework of his master thesis and studied catalytic carbonylation chemistry applied to the synthesis of helix mimetics. In December 2016, Philippe was granted a FWO Strategic Basic Research scholarship enabling him to perform doctoral research on the development of PKD inhibitors as anti-cancer agents. In fall 2018, Philippe spent a 5-month stay at the cheminformatics group of Prof. Thierry Langer (University of Vienna), working on virtual screening and chemical modeling.

Kris Meier obtained bachelor and master degree in chemistry from ETH Zürich. He performed his master thesis in the group of Prof. François Diederich on novel PKB inhibitors to investigate sulfur-arene interactions. Already during his studies, he was working in Hydrior AG, were he stayed for two more years afterwards developing new surfactants. In 2016 he started his PhD at the University of Bern in the group of Prof. Jean-Louis Reymond, focusing on the synthesis of novel 3D building blocks obtained from the generated database (GDB) project and their usage in medicinal chemistry.

Daniel Merk is a medicinal chemist focusing on the development and characterization of nuclear receptor modulators. He obtained his PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2015 and subsequently became junior group leader in Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry at the same institution. Between 03/2017 and 02/2019, Daniel conducted postdoctoral studies at ETH Zurich in the field of computer-aided drug discovery (with Prof. Schneider). In 2019, he received his Habilitation in Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry from Goethe University Frankfurt and currently is independent group leader in at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry of Goethe University.

Jessica is originally from Wolverhampton, UK, and completed her MChem degree from the University of Oxford in 2016. Jessica was an undergraduate at St John's College and completed her Part II project in the Russell group, synthesising photoaffinity pulldown probes for target identification studies for use in treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Her DPhil project focuses on the design and synthesis of chemical tools to probe the function of tripartite motif-containing proteins under the supervision of Professor Stuart Conway at the University of Oxford.

Lena Trifonov earned her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the Bar-Ilan University Israel, in 2019, where she pursued research with Professor Arie Gruzman. Her graduate work focused on the design, synthesis and pharmacological evaluation of novel peptidomimetics for treatment of cardiovascular disorders. Currently, started her postdoctoral fellowship at the Tuberculosis Research Section (TRS), National Institutes of Health (NIH) USA, under the supervision of Dr. Clifton Earl Barry, III.

Dr. Tom van der Wel studied Life Science & Technology and Chemistry at Delft University of Technology and Leiden University (The Netherlands). He did his PhD in chemical biology at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry at Leiden University under supervision of Prof. H.S. Overkleeft and Prof. M. van der Stelt. In January 2020, he successfully defended his thesis ‘Chemical genetic approaches for target validation’ and obtained his doctoral degree. In this work, he focused on the development of chemical genetic strategies to study target engagement and aid in preclinical target validation. Currently, Tom works as a postdoctoral researcher and is involved in preclinical selectivity profiling of drug candidates, in collaboration with a partner from the pharmaceutical industry. His research interests focus on the development of chemical and genetic tools for target discovery and validation.