Confirmed Speakers

Present Positions:
Theodore William Richards Research Professor, Harvard University, l999-2004 T. W. Richards Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Harvard University, 2004-present Professeur Conventionné, Université Louis Pasteur (now Université de Strasbourg), Strasbourg, 1995-present

Education:
Harvard College, B.A., 1950
California Institute of Technology, Ph.D., 1953 (with Linus Pauling)
Oxford University, Postdoctoral Fellow, 1953-55 (with C.A. Coulson)

Professional Career:
National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Oxford University, 1953-55
Instructor 1955-57, Assistant Professor 1957-60, Associate Professor 1960, University of Illinois
Associate Professor 1960-63, Professor 1963-66, Columbia University
Professor, Harvard University, 1966-1979
Professeur Associé, Université de Paris-Sud, 1972-73
Professeur, Université de Paris VII, 1974-75
Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University, l979-1999
Professeur Associé, Université de Paris-Sud, 1980-81
Professeur, Collège de France, Paris, 1980-81, 1987-88
Professeur Associé, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, 1992, 1994-95
Eastman Professor, Oxford University, 1999-2000
Linnett Visiting Professor, Cambridge University, Fall 2003

Honors & Awards:
Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Chemistry from Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2011
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2013
Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2013
Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur, 2014
Doctor Honoris Causa, Bar-Ilan University, 2014

Memberships:
American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1966
National Academy of Sciences, 1967
International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, 1967
Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (foreign member), 1991
The Royal Society, U.K. (foreign member), 2000
Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2013

Research Field:
The research of Dr. Karplus is in theoretical chemistry, including the electronic interpretation of NMR and ESR spectra of molecules, the development of techniques for the evaluation of molecular properties, and the formulation of detailed models for chemical reactions. His recent work is concerned with molecules that play an important role in living systems.

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Dr Gregory Craven obtained a first class chemistry degree from the University of Oxford where he worked with Prof Tim Donohoe on novel benzyne chemistry. He then worked as a research assistant with Prof Itaru Hamachi at the University of Kyoto developing chemical probes for super-resolution imaging of live neurons. Following this, he undertook his doctoral studies at Imperial College London – working with Dr David Mann and Profs Alan Armstrong and Ed Tate. His PhD focussed on developing new methods for conducting covalent fragment-based drug discovery. After graduating in 2017, he is currently undertaking a PhD prize fellowship to further develop his doctoral work.

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Göran Dahl received his PhD in Biochemistry at Uppsala University in 2009 where he studied the kinetics of viral enzymes using biochemical- and SPR based technologies. He then held a position as Distinguished Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim RCV GmbH & Co KG, responsible for biophysical chacaterization of the binding of small molecules. Since 2011 he is working as an Associate Principal Scientist at the Department of Structure, Biophysics and Fragment-Based Lead Generation at AstraZeneca Gothenburg, Sweden. He has extensive practical and theoretical experience in obtaining and using binding kinetic data in drug discovery projects.

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Menachem Gunzburg is an SPR scientist at the Monash Fragment Platform at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Menachem completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, under A/Prof Geoff Howlett and A/Prof Matthew Perugini, studying amyloid-protein interactions. He was a post doc at Bar Ilan University, (Israel) with Professor Elisha Hass, and then at Monash University with A/Prof Jackie Wilce, developing bicyclic peptide therapeutics using SPR. In 2015 Menachem started working on FBDD using his experience in SPR at the FBDD platform directed by Professor Martin Scanlon at Monash University.

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Joy Petrick graduated with a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Rostock in 2015. For her Masters project she worked on structural characterization of lipopolysaccharides in the lab of Prof. Otto Holst at the Research Centre Borstel, Germany. During her studies she did an internship at the pharmaceutical company Grindeks, Riga, Latvia. In 2016 she started her PhD at the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research. She is working on an FBDD project under supervision of Dr. Wolfgang Jahnke and Dr. Andreas Marzinzik. It is a Marie Curie fellowship within the training network AEGIS (Accelerated early stage drug discovery).

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Gerrit Sitters, an applied Physicist with a PhD from the VU University in Amsterdam for which he received a Dutch “best thesis award”. During his PhD he co-invented and developed several novel Dynamic Single Molecule analysis methods. Two of these methods have been brought to market by LUMICKS, a spin-off company that was founded in 2014. LUMICKS has currently sold over 50 instruments and has over 40 people employed. As a product manager Gerrit is responsible for the technology roadmap of the different instruments.

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Chaohong Sun is a Sr. Principal Research Scientist at Abbvie, where she leads the fragment based drug discovery team and the global protein sciences small molecule target team. Chaohong obtained her Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1998. She started at Abbott Laboratories as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow under Dr. Stephan Fesik and then became a staff research scientist in 2000. In her current role, her teams are responsible to support all small molecule projects across different therapeutic areas at Abbvie using protein biochemistry, biophysics and fragment based drug design.

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Frank Becker studied biology and started his scientific career as student at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne, Germany, working on the ubiquitin system in plants. After a postdoc at the University of California, working on protein translocation, he took over a position as group leader at GPC Biotech AG, where he implemented yeast genetic tools for compound target interaction screening. In 2008 he founded jointly with Stefan Hannus Intana Bioscience GmbH.

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Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Principal Investigator, Molecular Biophysics, University of Toronto

Research field: Epigenetics - Chemical Probes for Drug Discovery.

www.thesgc.org/biophysics

He received his Ph.D. from McGill University (1997) and postdoctoral training at Concordia University, Canada. He later joined Affinium Pharmaceuticals where he worked as Associate Director of Protein Science.

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Director, Simons Electron Microscopy Center, New York Structural Biology Center and COO NanoImaging Services.
Research fields: Structural Biology, TEM Automation
Education: PhD (University of Chicago); Previously: The Scripps Research Institute

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Gabe Lander has been solving the structures of macromolecular machines by cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) for over 12 years, using 3D structures to shed light on how protein assemblies interact with the cellular environment. Gabe received his B.S. in biochemistry from Binghamton University, and performed his graduate studies at The Scripps Research Institute jointly under Bridget Carragher, Clint Potter, and Jack Johnson. Gabe then performed his postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley, applying his streamlined cryoEM methodologies to investigate the properties of microtubule dynamics and the mechanism of protein degradation by the 26S proteasome. As an Associate Professor at The Scripps Research Institute, Gabe’s group uses the latest cutting-edge cryoEM instrumentation and innovative processing algorithms to determine the molecular bases for heart diseases, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, and cancers. Gabe is a recipient of an Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health, and is a Searle and Pew Scholar.

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Wen-ti Liu joined the cryo-EM lab of Holger Stark in Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in 2009 and received her MSc and PhD there. After her study, she stayed as a junior postdoc focusing on optimizing biochemistry as well as cryo-EM for macromolecule complexes. She joined NovAliX in 2016 as the project manager for cryo-EM and participated in the establishment of the cryo-EM platform on site. Since then, she has been working extensively on proteins of high pharmaceutical industry interest.

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Giovanna Scapin is a Principal Scientist at Merck & Co., Inc. She graduated Magna cum Laude in 1985 from Padova University (Italy) with a degree in Organic Chemistry, and 1989 she received her PhD from the same university with a thesis in Structural Biology. In February 1990 Giovanna joined the laboratory of Dr. James C. Sacchettini at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx (NY), as postdoctoral fellow, and subsequently as Instructor. In 1997 Giovanna joined Merck and Co., Inc, where she provided crystallography support for diabetes, inflammation and oncology targets. In 2016 she joined, as visiting scientist, the Simons Electron Microscopy Center at the New York Structural Biology Center. She is now back full time at Merck, to introduce and apply CryoEM techniques to drug discovery projects.
Since 2010, Giovanna is an active member of the organizing committee for the International School of Crystallography.

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Miles Congreve is Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at Heptares Therapeutics, having previously held leadership positions at Astex Therapeutics and GSK. At Heptares Miles leads a group of over 40 scientists and is responsible for delivery of the company’s drug discovery pipeline. Miles has a background in structure and fragment-based drug design, participating in the discovery of several agents currently in advanced clinical trials including Lanabecestat, Vofopitant and Onalespib and is a co-inventor of the marketed drug Ribociclib (Kisquali). Miles obtained a BSc in biological chemistry from Leicester University and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from Cambridge University. Miles is co-author of over 140 publications and patents. In 2015 Miles was co-recipient of the RSC Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize for the seminal contributions to GPCR drug discovery made by Heptares.

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Matthew Eddy received his PhD in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Professor Robert Griffin. During his PhD, Dr. Eddy developed new approaches for using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in the solid state to determine structures of membrane proteins in cellular-like environments. Following his PhD, Dr. Eddy joined the laboratories of Professors Raymond Stevens and Kurt Wüthrich at The Scripps Research Institute as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Eddy used an integrative structural biology approach to study the structures, conformational dynamics, and functions of human G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), focusing on the application of nuclear magnetic resonance to improve our understanding of GPCR allosteric function.

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Xin Huang, Ph.D., is Head of Structural Biology at Amgen. His group (at Cambridge, MA & South San Francisco, CA) has been working on structure based drug discovery and development of both small and large molecules for various therapeutic areas such as oncology, inflammation, neuroscience, and metabolic disorders. Dr. Huang joined Kinetix Pharmaceutical in July 2000 and Amgen in December 2000 as a result of Amgen’s acquisition of Kinetix. Prior to pharmaceutical/biotech industry, Dr. Huang was a postdoc with Prof. Michael Eck at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Huang holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University.

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Anass JAWHARI holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry & structural biology from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France), obtained with Honours under the supervision of Professor Dino Moras (IGBMC & French academy of Science). He worked as research associate at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, US) and at the Gene Center (Munich, Germany) before joining Transgene as Research Investigator. He is now Chief Scientific Officer at CALIXAR. He has 20 years’ experience in research & development projects related to molecular aspects of Cancer & infectious diseases. Anass is also member of different membrane proteins consortiums (GPCR, ion channels, transporters) and board member of CALIXAR and Chem2Stab (Chemistry to Stabilization) consortium. Anass also serves as editor and reviewer for peer review scientific journals and co-organizer for conferences such as BIT (China) or AFC (France).

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Roxine Staats is a PhD student working under Professor Michele Vendruscolo at the Center for Misfolding Diseases in the Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge. Her research focusses on the kinetic characterisation of the molecular pathologies of Parkinson's Disease for the design and optimisation of small molecules which inhibit the aggregation of the neuronal protein α-Synuclein.

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Dr. Whitty is Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Boston University, where he joined the faculty in 2008. He spent the previous 14 years at the biopharmaceutical company Biogen, most recently as Director of Physical Biochemistry, where he led a group responsible for the structural, biophysical and mechanistic study of drug targets, and protein and small molecule drug candidates. He obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry at King’s College, University of London, and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, after which he performed postdoctoral work at Brandeis University with Professor William P. Jencks FRS before joining Biogen in 1993. A major focus of his current research is the development of approaches for the discovery of small molecule inhibitors that block protein-protein interactions, and especially the use of synthetic macrocycles and covalent inhibitors for this purpose. A second area of research is the quantitative analysis of activation and signaling mechanism of growth factor receptors, primarily using as a model system the receptor tyrosine kinase RET.

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Dr. Shilin Xu obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014 where he worked on developing small molecules for kinase protein under Prof. Ke Ding. Following this, he joined the lab of Prof. Shaomeng Wang at University of Michigan as postdoctoral research fellow. He is working on the design and synthesis of inhibitors targeting the Menin-MLL protein-protein interaction.

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Tapan is Head of Methods & Analytical Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb. His current responsibilities include Biologics Analytical Method Development & Validation, Biologics Impurity Center of Excellence, and Analytical program management. Prior to joining BMS, he was at Pfizer Biotherapeutics R&D. Tapan is a member of American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and served AAPS in various roles including Chair of the Biotechnology Section. He is also a member of Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) and CASSS.

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Karyn O’Neil is the CSO, Arō Biotherapeutics. She was previously the Venture Leader for Centyrex, a J&J Venture focused on designer protein platform technologies. She is co-inventor of the Centyrin patents, and has led the team focused on advancing the Centyrin platform since its inception. Karyn’s team applied protein engineering, nucleic acid chemistry and chemical conjugation technologies to enable Centyrin – mediated intracellular delivery of nucleic acid cargos in a cell specific manner. Karyn joined Centocor/J&J in 2001 where, prior to working on Centyrins, she held positions of increasing responsibility, ultimately becoming a Director of Antibody Therapeutics. There she played a leadership role in the discovery & optimization of multiple clinical candidates.

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James "Jim" Wells focuses on understanding and modulating signaling processes in human cells through protein and small molecule design. His lab seeks activators as well as inhibitors of signaling molecules, including proteases and kinases, and uses them to study the consequences of triggering specific nodes of signaling circuits. He is especially interested in the inter-protein circuitry of pathways involved in cell death and inflammation, and the intra-protein allosteric circuitry that governs how distant functional sites in one protein communicate.

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