Scientific Program

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 lecturer and in 1988 full professor at the University of Groningen and named the Jacobus H. van 't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences in 2004. He was elected Foreign Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he was appointed Academy Professor and he was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. Feringa’s research has been recognized with numerous awards including the Körber European Science Award (2003), the Spinoza Award (2004), the Prelog gold medal (2005), the Norrish Award of the ACS (2007), the Paracelsus medal (2008), the Chirality medal (2009), the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award (2011), the Humboldt award (2012), the Nagoya gold medal (2013), the ACS Cope Scholar Award (2015), the Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize (2015), the August-Wilhelm-von-Hoffman Medal (2016), The 2016 Nobel prize in Chemistry, the Tetrahedron Prize (2017) and the European Chemistry Gold Medal (2018). In 2019 he was elected as a member of the European Research Council. Feringa’s research interest includes stereochemistry, organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, molecular switches and motors, self-assembly, molecular nanosystems and photopharmacology.

K. N. Houk received his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard, working with R. B. Woodward. on experimental tests of orbital symmetry selection rules.  In 1968, he joined the faculty at Louisiana State University, moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 1980, and to UCLA in 1986.  From 1988-1990, he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation.  He was Chairman of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1991-1994, the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry from 2009-2021, and now a Distinguished Research Professor. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and recently was awarded the Roger Adams Award of the American Chemical Society and election to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Houk is an authority on theoretical and computational organic chemistry, and has published more than 1400 research papers and a textbook with Pierre Vogel.

Tanja Weil joined the Max Planck Society in 2017 as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP), heading the division “Synthesis of Macromolecules”. She studied chemistry (1993–1998) at the TU Braunschweig (Germany) and the University of Bordeaux I (France) and completed her PhD at the MPIP working with K. Müllen in 2002. From 2002 to 2008 she managed different leading positions at Merz Pharmaceuticals GmbH (Frankfurt) from Section Head Medicinal Chemistry to Director of Chemical Research and Development. In 2008 she accepted an Associate Professor position at the National University of Singapore. Tanja Weil joined Ulm University as Director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry III / Macromolecular Chemistry in 2010. She has received competitive funding and awards at both national and international level including the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society, a Synergy Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), the Science Award of the City of Ulm and the Netherlands Supramolecular Chemistry Scholar Award. She is a member of the senate of the German Research Foundation, a member of the senate of the Leibniz Association and an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Her scientific interests focus on polymer synthesis to control material-cell-interactions to solve current challenges in biomedicine and material science.

Karl Anker Jørgensen received his Ph.D. from Aarhus University in 1984. He was a post-doc with Prof. Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University, 1985. In 1985, he became an Assistant Professor at Aarhus University and in 1992 he was appointed as Professor. His research interests are the development, understanding and application of asymmetric catalysis mainly in the field of asymmetric organocatalysis

L.-C. Campeau is the Head of Small Molecule Process Research and Development at Merck & Co., Inc. He is originally from Canada and received his Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa under the supervision of the late Keith Fagnou. He first joined Merck in 2007 in Montreal, Canada and relocated to New Jersey in 2010. During his career, he’s led teams from Discovery to Commercialization, including enabling technologies investments, and was recently co-lead of Merck’s PCSK9 development team. He’s passionate about improving human health and believes that chemistry can change the world, one reaction at a time.

Richmond Sarpong is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley where he and his group specialize in synthetic organic chemistry. Richmond became interested in chemistry after seeing, firsthand, the effectiveness of the drug ivermectin in combating river blindness during his childhood in Ghana, West Africa. Richmond described his influences and inspirations in a TEDxBerkeley talk in 2015 (Face of Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIsY87-zkXA). Richmond completed his undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and his graduate work was carried out with Prof. Martin Semmelhack at Princeton. He conducted postdoctoral studies at Caltech with Prof. Brian Stoltz. At Berkeley, Richmond’s laboratory focuses on the synthesis of bioactive complex organic molecules. 

Yoshiaki Nakao studied chemistry at Kyoto University (PhD in 2005 under the tutelage of Profs. Tamejiro Hiyama and Eiji Shirakawa), Yale University (Prof. John F. Hartwig), and the Max-Planck-Institut fuumlr Kohlenforschung (Prof. Manfred T. Reetz). He has been a faculty member at Kyoto University since 2002 and is currently a full professor. He is interested in developing new reactions, reagents, and catalysts to streamline organic synthesis.

Joanna Wencel-Delord was educated in chemistry at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes, France and she received her PhD in 2010 from the University of Rennes 1, France (Dr C. Crévisy and Dr M. Mauduit). After postdoctoral studies with Prof. F. Glorius at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Germany) and a temporary assistant professor position (ATER) at the University of Strasbourg (Prof. P. Compain), she joined CNRS in 2013 as an associate researcher and in 2021 she has been promoted to Research Director. Her research focuses on the transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric C–H activation, synthesis of axially chiral compounds, and chemistry of hypervalent compounds, including original hypervalent bromines. Her recent awards and distinctions include Bronze Medal of CNRS 2020, ERC-SG (2020), Guy Ourisson 2020 award attributed by Cercle Gutenberg, and Prize M. Julia for Emerging Talents, French Society of Chemistry, Organic Chemistry Division, (2018). She has published 63 articles and is the author of 2 patents.

Jonathan Reeves received a B.S. in chemistry from Hope College in Holland, MI in 1997. He then obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Professor Peter Wipf. After two years as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University with Professor David R. Williams he joined the Chemical Development department at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, CT in 2004, where he is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow.  

Teresa M.V.D. Pinho e Melo studied Chemistry at the University of Coimbra, where she graduated, got her MSc and her PhD in Organic Chemistry. She was Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool (1992-1993). She received her Habilitation in Organic Chemistry in 2003. Teresa Pinho e Melo is currently Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, Group Leader of the Organic Chemistry Group of the Coimbra Chemistry Centre (CQC) and collaborator of iMed.ULisboa and CFisUC. She was President of the Division of Organic Chemistry, Portuguese Chemical Society (2016-2017) and Director of the Department of Chemistry, University of Coimbra (2015-2019). Her research interests are mainly in the area of synthetic and mechanistic heterocyclic chemistry and medicinal chemistry. Her research encompasses the development of new synthetic methodologies by exploring the chemistry of reactive intermediates (aza- and diazafulvenium methides; azo- and nitrosoalkenes; azadienes), allenes and small ring heterocycles. She is particularly concerned with the development of synthetic routes to new bioactive molecules namely spiro-penicillanates with antimicrobial activity, tetrapyrrolic macrocycles for photodynamic therapy and theranostics of cancer and chiral 6,7-bis(hydroxymethyl)-1H,3H-pyrrolo[1,2-c]thiazoles as new P53 activators.

Francesca Paradisi graduated with a BSc in Chemistry and then a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Bologna. In 2002 she joined the group of Prof. Engel at University College Dublin for her post doc and started working in the area of Biocatalysis. After a brief stint in Enzolve Technologies, a spinoff company, she got her first academic position in the School of Chemistry in UCD in 2006 where she remained till 2016. She was recruited then by the University of Nottingham as Associate Professor in Biocatalysis and promoted to Full Professor in 2019. In the same year however, she was offered the Chair of Sustainable Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bern and relocated to Switzerland. She is the recipient of the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Award 2021 jointly sponsored by the Swiss Chemical Society and Syngenta for her ground-breaking work in developing eco-friendly and ultra-efficient biotransformations for the synthesis of high-value chemicals, dramatically increasing the applicability of biocatalysis.

Robert Waymouth is the Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University.  He received B.S. in Mathematics and B.A. in Chemistry from Washington and Lee University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Caltech in 1987 with Professor R.H. Grubbs.  He was a postdoctoral fellow with the late Professor Piero Pino at the ETH in Zurich in 1987 and joined the faculty at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in 1988.  He received the Alan T. Waterman Award from the NSF in 1996, the Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science in 2009, and EPA's Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in 2012 with Dr. James Hedrick.  He has won several university teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores Award, the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, and is currently a Bass Fellow in Undergraduate Education. His research interests are at the interface of Inorganic, Organic and Polymer Chemistry, in particular the development of new concepts in catalysis for the selective synthesis of both macromolecules and fine chemicals.  Particular areas of interest include catalytic polymerization reactions, selective oxidation catalysis, the development of organocatalytic polymerization strategies, and the design of functional macromolecules for applications in biology and medicine. 

Prof. Alex M. Szpilman grew up in Hillerød, Denmark. He completed his M.Sc. at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) working on the total synthesis of Balanol with John Nielsen. His Ph.D. was carried out at the Weizmann Institute of Science, under the supervision of Professor Mario D. Bachi. Upon graduation Alex joined the group of Erick M. Carreira at the ETH as a Carlsberg Postdoctoral Fellow. 

In 2009 Alex started his independent academic career at the Technion. In 2016, Alex moved to Ariel University where he currently holds the rank of Associate Professor with tenure.  From November 2020 Alex is the Vice Dean for Research and from October 2021 also the Head of the Department of Chemical Sciences. Alex's research programs include: a) New C-C, C-N and C-O forming reactions of Electrophilic Enolonium Species via Umpolung of Enolates using hypervalent iodine reagents,  b) Solar/Visible Light Mediated Synthetic Reactions, c) Nitroxide as catalysts and reagents. Additional research concerns energetic materials, hydrogen storage and the biological activity of natural products.

Michael Rack, has a master’s degree from the University of Leipzig (1990), and a Ph.D. from Eberhard-Karls-University Tuebingen (1990). He joined BASF in March 1995 as lab team leader for intermediates research process development agrochemicals research and was appointed to the role of Principal Scientist in 2003, followed by being appointed Senior Principal Scientist for Fluorine Chemistry in 2013. He is a leader of kilo- and fluorine labs, early phase process development, route scouting, upscaling of chemical processes in pilot plants, as well as cost of goods estimates for new active ingredients. He received the Agroscience Award in 2017.

Dr. Lionel Saudan is a Principal Scientist at the corporate R&D Division of Firmenich S.A. in Geneva (Switzerland). He joined the company in 2000, after a two-year post-doctoral stay in the group of Professor J. M. Tour, working on the synthesis of a new ‘nanocar’ at the University of South Carolina and at Rice University (Texas). He obtained his BSc and PhD (1998) from the University of Geneva under the supervision of Professor E. P. Kündig working on the asymmetric synthesis of new chiral amines. His current research topics are in the field of homogeneous catalyzed hydrogenation, hydroformylation and photo-redox reactions in the context of the development of new perfumery ingredients.