28th International symposium: Synthesis in organic chemistry

Harry L. Anderson completed his PhD with Jeremy Sanders at the University of Cambridge UK in 1990 and carried out postdoctoral work with François Diederich at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He has led an independent research group at the University of Oxford since 1995. His research interests include the investigation of porphyrin-based molecular wires, cyclodextrin polyrotaxanes, insulated molecular wires, encapsulated π-systems, template-directed synthesis, multivalent cooperativity, porphyrin nanorings, polyynes, cyclocarbons, nonlinear optical chromophores and functional dyes.

Emily is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, where she first became interested in chemistry as a high school student. She graduated from Williams College in 2002 as valedictorian with highest honors in chemistry. After spending a year at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar in the lab of Prof. Steven Ley, she pursued graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) at Harvard University, receiving her PhD in 2008. Her graduate work with Prof. Eric Jacobsen focused on the development of asymmetric catalytic transformations and their application in the total synthesis of complex molecules. From 2008–2011 she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the lab of Prof. Christopher T. Walsh. Her research in the Walsh lab involved elucidating and characterizing biosynthetic pathways for the production of small molecule sunscreens by photosynthetic bacteria. She also received training in microbial ecology and environmental microbiology as a member of the Microbial Diversity Summer Course at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole during the summer of 2009.

Emily joined the CCB faculty in 2011 and is currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Her research focuses on deciphering microbial metabolism and its role in complex microbial ecosystems like the human gut microbiome. Using chemical knowledge and tools, Emily and her group seek to discover new microbial enzymes and metabolites as well as elucidate their biological roles.  Their research program has been recognized with multiple awards, including the 2011 Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research, the 2012 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the 2013 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the 2019 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in Chemistry, and the 2020 Alan T. Waterman Award from National Science Foundation.

Liam Ball completed his Master’s degree at the University of Bristol in 2009, and obtained his PhD from the same institution in 2014 under the supervision of Dr Chris Russell and Professor Guy Lloyd-Jones FRS. Liam moved with Prof. Lloyd-Jones to Edinburgh for postdoctoral research, before beginning his independent career at Nottingham in 2015. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021, to chair in 2024, and currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Alicia Casitas received her PhD in 2012 at University of Girona under the supervision of Prof. Xavi Ribas and Prof. Miquel Costas. She pursued postdoctoral studies at Max-Planck-Institut für Köhlenforschung (Germany) in the group of Prof. Alois Fürstner (2013–2015) and at Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ, Spain) in Prof. Julio Lloret-Fillol’s group (2016–2018). In July 2018, she moved to Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi (IQCC) in Girona as a junior group leader funded by a Junior-Leader LaCaixa Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since July 2019 Alicia is an Assistant Professor (W1) in Organic Chemistry in the Faculty of Chemistry at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). Her research interests include fundamental organometallic chemistry studies and the development of sustainable synthetic methodologies towards bond-forming reactions with first-row transition metals

Josep Cornella (Pep) was born 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 UK 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.  

In summer of the same year, he obtained a Max Planck Research Group Leader (MPRGL) position in the same Institute, to create and lead the Sustainable Catalysis Laboratory. 

Miquel Costas is full professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry of the Universitat de Girona (UdG) and research group leader in the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis (IQCC). He obtained his PhD from the University of Girona in the group of Prof. Antoni Llobet and performed post-doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota in the group of Prof. Lawrence Que Jr. He returned to Spain (UdG) with a Ramon i Cajal contract and since 2003 is professor of Inorganic Chemistry. His current research interests are the exploration of coordination chemistry and homogeneous catalysis applied to selective oxidation catalysis, taking nature as inspiration for reactivity and catalyst development.

Alessio Ciulli studied chemistry in Florence, Italy, and obtained his PhD as a Gates Scholar from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2006. After postdoctoral research as a College Research Fellow at Cambridge and a brief visit at Yale University in the USA, he returned to Cambridge to start his independent laboratory in 2010 upon the award of a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship. In 2013, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant and moved to the University of Dundee, UK, where he was promoted to full professor in 2016. He has received numerous prizes and awards for his discoveries, including the EFMC Prize for Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia (2015), the ICBS Young Chemical Biologist Award (2015), the RSC Capps Green Zomaya Award (2016), the RSC MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship (2016), and the Prous Institute - Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery (2022). In 2023 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). He is the scientific founder of Amphista therapeutics, a targeted protein degradation company spin out of his laboratory, and the founder and director of the University of Dundee’s new Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD) which opened its laboratories in January 2023.  The Ciulli research group designs and develops small molecules inducing targeted protein degradation and modulating protein-protein interactions. Their research takes a multidisciplinary approach including organic and medicinal chemistry and computational tools to design and developed high-quality molecules; structural biology and biophysics to study binary and ternary complexes in solution and reveal structural and dynamic interactions; and chemical biology, biochemistry, proteomics and cell biology to study the cellular impact of our small molecules into relevant cellular systems and disease models, Ciulli is passionate about translating fundamental research via collaboration partnerships with the biopharma industry and by creation of spin-out companies.

Christian Heinis studied chemistry/biochemistry at ETH Zurich. After his PhD in the research group of Prof Dr Dario Neri at ETH Zurich, he did two post-docs, the first with Prof Dr Kai Johnsson at EPFL in Lausanne and the second with Sir Gregory Winter at the LMB-MRC in Cambridge, UK. He joined EPFL in 2008 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2015. Christian Heinis is co-founder of the companies Bicycle Therapeutics and Orbis Medicines. His research focuses on the development of drugs based on cyclic peptides. An important goal of his team is to create cyclic peptides that are membrane-permeable and/or orally available.

Chris Hunter was born in New Zealand and educated at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a PhD in 1989.  He was a lecturer at the University of Otago till 1991, when he moved to the University of Sheffield.  He was promoted to a chair in 1997, and in 2014, he took up the Herchel Smith Professorship of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Motomu Kanai started his academic career as an assistant professor at Osaka University in 1992. Then, he moved to University of Wisconsin for postdoctoral studies with Professor Laura L. Kiessling. In 1997 he joined Professor Masakatsu Shibasaki’s group in The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) as an assistant professor. After being a lecturer (2000~2003) and associate professor (2003~2010), he is a professor at UTokyo (since 2010). He has received The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists (2001), Thieme Journals Award (2003), Merck-Banyu Lectureship Award (2005), Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (2008 and 2010), Thomson-Reuters The 4th Research Front Award (2016), and Nagoya Silver Medal (2020). His research interests entail designing and synthesizing functional (especially, biologically active) molecules.

Sarah is a Reader and UKRI Future Leader Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Following the award of her PhD, Sarah took a position as a Senior Scientist at GlaxoSmithKline in the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies team. She later moved back to academia and started her own independent research group in 2020. Sarah’s research focusses on engineering biocatalysts for applications in sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Dr Mattia Silvi obtained his PhD in 2015 at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) under the supervision of Prof. Paolo Melchiorre. He then moved to the University of Bristol in the group of Prof. Varinder K. Aggarwal as a Marie-Curie Fellow (2016-2019). In 2019, Mattia was appointed tenure-track group leader at the University of Nottingham, where he was promoted to assistant professor (2022) and finally to associate professor (2023). Mattia is the recipient of a 2023 Thieme Chemistry Journals Award, a 2022 ERC Starting Grant and a 2020 EPSRC New Investigator Award. His research focuses on photochemistry and radical chemistry.

Nicholas Turner is Professor of Chemical Biology, former Director of the Centre of Excellence in Biocatalysis (CoEBio3) and co-Director of SYNBIOCHEM. His research interests span biocatalysis, directed evolution of enzymes and synthetic biology. He has published >450 papers/patents with an h-index of 89 and ca. 28,000 citations. He is a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards and consults widely. He has received many awards for his research achievements and held an ERC Advanced Grant (2017-2023). In May 2020 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and in 2021 he became a Member of Academia Europea (MAE).
The Turner group (www.turner-biocatalysis.com/) is at the forefront of research aimed at creating new enzymes for application as biocatalysts for chemical synthesis. We employ both protein engineering and directed evolution methods in order to develop biocatalysts with tailored properties such high stereoselectivity, improved activity and enhanced stability. These biocatalysts have been applied to the synthesis of a range of target molecules especially pharmaceuticals.

Peter Zhang received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and pursued postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started his independent career at the University of Tennessee in 2001 and later transitioned to the University of South Florida in 2006. In 2015, Dr. Zhang joined Boston College. His research has been dedicated to formulating metalloradical catalysis (MRC) as a fundamental concept and general strategy to guide the development of metalloradical systems for controlling the reactivity and selectivity of homolytic radical reactions and exploring their applications in organic synthesis.

Zhiwei Zuo earned his B.S. in chemistry from Nanjing University in 2007 and completed his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2012 under the supervision of Prof. Dawei Ma at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), focusing on natural product synthesis. He then joined David MacMillan's group at Princeton University for postdoctoral research in photoredox catalysis. In 2015, Zhiwei began his independent career at ShanghaiTech University and returned to SIOC in 2020. His research focuses on catalytic reactions for constructing molecular complexity, particularly utilizing ligand-to-metal charge transfer for selective C(sp3)–H and C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond functionalization. He has received several prestigious awards, including the TAN KAH KEE Young Science Award and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Young Scientist Excellence Award.