Speaker Biographies

Dr. Aggen has served as the Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at Circle Pharma since 2020 and has over 25 years of experience in medicinal chemistry. Previously, he held positions at Revolution Medicines, Kodiak Biosciences, Achaogen, Chemocentryx, Gilead Sciences, Theravance, and Northeastern University. Dr. Aggen has led teams engaged in targeted drug discovery against multiple antibacterial and oncology targets, and his contributions include being an inventor of the aminoglycoside antibiotic Plazomicin, now marketed as Zemdri. He was awarded a doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, where he studied under Prof. Richard Chamberlin. He also served in the US Marine Corps Reserves.

Michelle Arkin is Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center. Her lab focuses on developing chemical probes and drug leads for novel targets, with a particular interest in protein-protein interactions and protein-degradation networks. Prior to UCSF, Michelle worked at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover protein-protein interaction inhibitors for IL-2 and LFA-1 (lifitigrast, marketed by Novartis). She is a co-founder of Ambagon and Elgia Therapeutics.

Wes is currently leading the medicinal chemistry effort at Foghorn Therapeutics for the discovery and development of selective EP300 protein degraders. He has more than fifteen years of drug discovery experience in the biotech industry, and extensive experience optimizing beyond rule-of-five chemical matter. Prior to joining Foghorn, he led chemistry teams that delivered development candidates introducing first-in-class Gram-negative activity into macrolide antibiotics, as well as natural product-based gamma secretase modulators as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. He has additionally developed new linkers which contributed to the advancement of antibody drug conjugate programs from inception through in vivo proof of concept in oncology.

Dr. Elisa Barile obtained a M.S. cum laude in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Applied Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Naples (Italy) with a focus on Natural Products Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. After her doctoral studies, she joined Prof. M. Pellecchia’s laboratory at the Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, in San Diego. At SBPMDI, Elisa applied NMR-based FBDD and structure-based drug design approaches and implemented a variety of biophysical, biochemical and cellular assays. Her research focused on the discovery of novel therapeutic compounds targeting protein-protein interactions in cancer, infectious diseases, and neurological disorders. In 2015 Elisa joined AnCoreX Therapeutics and in 2017 moved to Takeda Pharmaceuticals to apply NMR methods to drug discovery. Dr. Barile is currently leading Takeda’s Biophysics group and is passionate about developing new strategies to modulate protein and RNA targets with small molecules in the GI, Neuroscience, Oncology and rare diseases therapeutic areas. Dr. Barile has published over 40 peer-review articles to date and led multiple drug discovery programs.

Dr. Marc Bianciotto has been contributing to computational drug discovery at Sanofi since 2001, following a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry. Throughout his tenure, he has provided project support while undertaking methodological developments across multiple CADD domains, with particular interest in taking into account protein flexibility in protein-ligand binding kinetics and thermodynamics. In recent years, Dr. Bianciotto has expanded his research focus to encompass the development and application of Generative Artificial Intelligence techniques for lead optimization. His commitment to advancing the field led him to participate in the AiChemist European Doctoral Network for developing Explainable AI methodologies in chemistry.

Alex Boddy is a Scientist in the Chemistry Technologies Group in Medicinal Chemistry based in Basel, Switzerland. Alex received his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from Imperial College London under the supervision of Prof. James A. Bull and Prof. Alan C. Spivey in collaboration with AstraZeneca in 2020. His research developed new strategies towards saturated heterocycles for drug discovery. Following his PhD studies, he spent one year at GSK in the UK working in isotope chemistry. In 2021 he moved to Germany and worked as a Scientist on dye, label and isotope chemistry at Roche Diagnostics. In April 2025 he transferred to medicinal chemistry in Basel working on HTE, C-H functionalization and parallel synthesis.

Dr. Bradley is a multi-disciplinary scientist in computer-aided compound design using structural data. He completed a first-class MChem in Chemistry from the University of Oxford in 2010. He carried out an interdisciplinary DPhil also at the University of Oxford on the SABS-IDC programme. During this he developed computational tools (OOMMPPAA and WONKA) for structure-based drug design—working with the SGC Oxford and GlaxoSmithKline. Subsequent to his DPhil, he carried out a postdoc at the RCSB PDB (UC San Diego) where he worked on novel compression algorithms for macromolecules, including the MMTF file format. He then worked as a Project Leader with the Oxford Chemistry department, Diamond Light Source, and the SGC Oxford on the XChem project (high-throughput X-ray screening of fragments). Here he generated tools and future funding for fragment-based compound optimisation leveraging the XChem platform. From 2018 to 2024, he worked at Exscientia, where he developed their physics-based drug discovery platform. Now he leads an academic group at the University of Liverpool where his interests lie in using computation and automation to accelerate drug design.

Jens Carlsson is a Professor of Computational Biochemistry at Uppsala University (Sweden), where his group employs computational models to study protein function and develop strategies for structure-based drug design. His research primarily focuses on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and enzymes involved in cancer and viral infections. The Carlsson group investigates the molecular mechanisms of GPCR signaling and designs ligands for novel drug targets using a combination of techniques, including molecular dynamics simulations, molecular docking screens, and machine learning. These research projects are often carried out in close collaboration with experimental groups, with the goal of contributing to the development of novel therapeutics.

Giulia Caron was awarded a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Lausanne (CH) and now she holds the position of Associate Professor at the Molecular Biotechnology and Health Sciences Department at the University of Torino. Her main scientific activity is the design, experimental determination and computational prediction of physicochemical descriptors related to ADME properties. Moreover, she has a deep expertise in the integration of Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding (IMHB) considerations in drug design. She is now focusing on the bRo5 chemical space. To this respect she is deeply involved in lead optimization strategies to discover new oral PROTACs.

Ian was one of the pioneers of the recent renaissance of the PROTAC field through his 2012 collaboration with Prof Craig Crews & Alessio Ciulli when leading the GSK PROTAC group (2012-2017) including the publication of the landmark 2015 Nature Chemical Biology paper and advancing a portfolio of VHL & IAP-based PROTACs towards the clinic. Ian also has extensive experience of medicinal chemistry & chemical biology leadership from roles at Merck & GSK across many therapy areas including neuroscience, oncology, inflammation and others. More recently, Ian led the R&D team at BenevolentAI where he applied novel artificial intelligence methods to a portfolio of projects to approach target identification and chemical optimisation in new ways. Ian returned to the TPD field in May 2020 as CSO at Amphista Therapeutics, the leading European-based targeted protein degradation company focused exclusively on using novel degrading mechanisms to advance a range of programmes towards the clinic.

Mads Hartvig Clausen studied chemistry at DTU, where he obtained his PhD in 2002 with Professor Robert Madsen. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 2002 to 2004, with Professor Andrew Myers, before returning to DTU as an assistant professor. In 2014, he became a full professor of chemical biology at DTU. His research focuses on chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and library synthesis. Mads is co-founder and Head of the Center for Nanomedicine and Theranostics at DTU, Director of the Danish infrastructure for chemical biology, DK-OPENSCREEN and has co-founded five spin-out companies.

Dean carried out his early postdoctoral research at the LMB in Cambridge, UK with Dr Melina Schuh where he invented Trim-Away technology, which utilizes off-the-shelf antibodies and the natural function of intracellular antibody receptor and E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM21 to rapidly degrade endogenous cellular proteins. Dean then worked with Dr Leo James, LMB to elucidate the mechanism of TRIM21 activation, before moving to TRIMTECH to exploit this mechanism to develop new therapeutics that selectively degrade pathogenic protein aggregates.

Craig Crews is the John C. Malone Professor of MCDB and professor of Chemistry and Pharmacology at Yale University. He graduated from the U. Virginia with a B.A. in Chemistry and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Biochemistry. On the faculty at Yale since 1995, his laboratory has developed the use of small molecules to control intracellular protein levels. In 2003, he co-founded Proteolix, Inc., whose proteasome inhibitor, Kyprolis received FDA approval for the treatment of multiple myeloma. The Crews’ lab is also credited with founding the field of ‘Targeted Protein Degradation’ drug development technology, i.e., PROTACs, which has the potential to target currently ‘undruggable’ disease causing proteins. In 2013, Dr. Crews launched the New Haven-based biotech venture, Arvinas, Inc., which is testing the first PROTAC-based drugs in clinical trials for prostate and breast cancer. Since then he has founded Halda Therapeutics, whose first RIPTAC entered clinical trials in 2025 for prostate cancer. Dr. Crews has received numerous awards and honors, including the Ehrlich Award for Medicinal Chemistry (2014), a NIH R35 Outstanding Investigator Award (2015), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2017), the Khorana Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2018), the Pierre Fabre Award for Therapeutic Innovation (2018), the Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics (2019), the Heinrich Wieland Prize (2020), the Scheele Prize (2021), an honorary doctoral degree from the Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany (doctor rerum naturalium honoris causa) (2021), the Connecticut Medal of Technology (2022), the inaugural Bristol Myers Squibb Award in Enzyme Chemistry (2023), the Gabbay Prize with Ray Deshaies (2023), the Kimberly Prize (2024), Emanuel Merck Lectureship, the IUPAC-Richter Prize (2024), and the Passano Award with Ray Deshaies (2025).

Michael Dabrowski, PhD is a co-founder and the CEO of Pelago Bioscience. Michael is a seasoned in vitro pharmacologist and biological assay developer with experience stretching from senior scientist and technology expert, to project and scientific leader and manager. Michael has 15 years of Drug Discovery experience from Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca in multiple therapeutic areas and a strong track delivery record of science, project, people and budget management.

Dr. Ben Davis is a Research Fellow and Director of Business Development at Vernalis Research, a biotech company based in Cambridge UK which has been at the forefront of fragment-based approaches since 1998. An NMR spectroscopist and biophysicist by training, his current research focus is the development of biophysics and FBLD methods for challenging therapeutic targets and systems. Dr Davis studied for his PhD in protein folding and molecular interactions with Professor Alan Fersht at Cambridge University, and then studied the interactions of small molecules with proteins and RNA. He has over 20 years’ experience in the drug discovery industry. He has contributed to seven books over the last decade and is an author on more than forty scientific publications. He is a frequent speaker at scientific conferences and has been running FBLD training workshops since 2007.

Elisa Donati is a Senior Computational Chemist and head of the Services Division at Acellera, where she leads and coordinates collaborative computational projects for drug discovery. She earned a PhD in Data Science and Computation in 2022 at the Italian Institute of Technology, where she also conducted postdoctoral research, both focused on understanding the complex molecular mechanisms governing nucleic acid-processing enzymes.

Kyle Eastman is VP and Head of Chemistry at Halda Therapeutics in New Haven, CT, where he and his colleagues have invented the novel bifunctional technology RIPTAC Therapeutics. The Halda team progressed their lead prostate program asset HLD-0915 into the clinic in Q1 2025. Previously, Kyle was a program leader at Achillion where he helped advance the complement pipeline including support for the notable Factor D program and initiation of an additional complement pathway discovery program that together contributed to a near $1 billion acquisition by Alexion. Before Achillion, Kyle had spent almost a decade working across several virology programs at BMS in Wallingford, CT. During this time Kyle and his lab invented and contributed to several compounds advanced to the internal BMS development organization including the invention of the first pan-genotype HCV inhibitor. Additional efforts from his lab resulted in the invention of a host of orally bioavailable lead compounds targeting a novel HIV target that became a focal point in the BMS HIV divestiture to ViiV/GSK. Prior to beginning his career at BMS, Kyle spent two years at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) working with Phil Baran for post-doctoral studies. Kyle earned his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry at The Pennsylvania State University in 2006.

Alex Edwards is a Senior Scientist for AstraZeneca at the Discovery Centre in Cambridge, UK. Based in the DNA-Encoded Library screening team, his role in early drug discovery encompasses the scoping, designing and execution of DEL screens for targets within the portfolio to identify chemical equity for hit optimisation and development into therapeutic candidates. His role also involves the application of DEL to new modalities, innovative screening methodologies and collaboration with external partners to explore opportunities for platform development. He is passionate about the application of AI/ML to large screening datasets to enable more accurate identification of true binders. He obtained his MChem at the University of York working on the structure and function of proteins involved in the insulin-signalling pathways in the southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus).

Dr. Rick Ewing (William R Ewing) is a senior medicinal chemist experienced in leading teams to deliver development candidates, running academic collaborations and leading scientific assessments for business development opportunities. Rick started his chemical career during his time as an undergraduate at West Chester University. After his first year, he took on an internship at the Chester County Health Department where he practiced analytical chemistry, testing water samples that were obtained throughout the county. After completed his first internship, Rick then took on a co-op position at Wyeth Laboratories in their Quality Assurance department. This again was an analytical chemistry position using both wet chemistry and instrumentation to assay final drug products and API for release to the marketplace as well drug stability testing to assess drug storage. The co-op was extended to cover Rick’s last three years at West Chester University. Rick received the ACS Philadelphia local undergraduate award for his scholastics and achievements at West Chester University. It was during his time at Wyeth that Rick became passionate about learning the art of drug discovery and hence decided to pursue a PhD degree. Rick entered the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania study under professor Madeline Joullie. At Penn, Rick took on the total synthesis of Didemnins and Detoxinines. During his third year, both Rick and Professor Joullie were approached by Dr. Paul Wiess (Professor emeritus in the University of Pennsylvania’s Chemical Engineering department) to work on the problem of delivering molecules to inhibit angiogenesis. This led to a productive drug discovery consortium with Prof. Joullie (U. Penn Chemistry), Dr. Juda Folkman (Harvard Medical School), and Prof Paul Wiess (U. Penn Chem. Engineering). Rick was involved in the consortium over his last two years of his time at U. Penn. Rick completed his PhD studies in the fall of 1988. Rick started his industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Rorer Pharmaceuticals, a small pharma company with labs in King of Prussia. He was fortunate to have project leadership on the first programs he worked on at Rorer. Rorer became a larger pharmaceutical company after being acquired by Rhone-Poulenc. Rick then had the great fortune to work in a global company that embraced overseas travel to increase exposure to diverse ways to do research as well as frequent trips to the RPR site in Vitry just outside Paris. The policies at RPR allowed Rick to present every year at Peptide and drug discovery conferences throughout his career at RPR. In addition to many GPCR targets, Rick worked in the area of discovering anti-thrombotic therapeutics by finding platelet and coagulation cascade inhibitors. In 1998 RPR merged with Hoechst to form Aventis. It was at this time that Rick was recruited to become a Group Leader at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Rick rose to senior director in small molecule drug discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb where he led medicinal chemistry teams in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure. In these areas, Dr. Ewing led medicinal chemistry teams to deliver over 15 development candidates. Among these are Milvexian, a first in class Factor XIa inhibitor currently in PIII development (Janssen/BMS). In addition to his roles in medicinal chemistry, Rick led the BMS chemistry awards program for more than 10 years. The awards program recognized graduate students through a 1 year graduate fellowship and pre-tenure professors with a two year unrestricted grant. The awards program included an awards symposium at BMS with the awarded professors and graduate students presenting. Rick led the two BMS academic collaborations with Scripps and Princeton where he helped build research programs directed at addressing long range synthetic and structural chemistry problems relevant to medicinal chemistry. Over his last 5 years at BMS, Rick took on additional responsiblities through a lead role in the scientific assessment of external assets and technologies to potentially be brought into BMS. In this role, Rick took part in over 100 scientific evaluations in business development across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, immunology, fibrosis, heart failure and platform technologies. From this effort, Rick developed a strong interest in joining biotech. He went on to begin his biotech career in the position of Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at the Barer Institute, a discovery phase oncology biotech company. After the Barer Institute, Rick joined Rapafusyn as VP, Head of Chemistry where he continues his research career in discovering Type I molecular glues to inhibit intracellular PPIs of aberrant proteins. Rick is co-inventor on 75 patents, and co-author on 74 peer reviewed publications. In 2023, Rick was awarded the 2023 Edison Patent Award in Biotechnology, a team award for research done with BMS and the Scripps Institute. Also in 2023, Rick received the Philadelphia Section Award for his lifelong achievements in drug discovery research. In 2021, he was awarded the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow for his scientific achievements and contributions to the Society, and in 2018 received the Ondetti-Cushman award for leadership of the FXIa team that discovered Milvexian.

Stephen W. Fesik, PhD, is the Orrin H. Ingram II Chair in Cancer Research and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB), and the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). The focus of his research is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott (2000-2009) where he built a pipeline of compounds that are showing promising anti-cancer activities in early-stage clinical trials. In addition, while he was at Abbott, he developed several new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of several proteins and protein/ligand complexes, pioneered a fragment-based method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to identify and optimize ligands for binding to many protein drug targets. Dr. Fesik has published more than 295 papers, trained 68 postdoctoral fellows, and has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of many scientific journals, scientific advisory boards, and the Keystone and Bruker Board of Directors. He has also obtained several awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from EAS (2003), the SBS Technology Innovation Award (2010), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012), and 2021 Chester Stock Award from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Jose Carlos Gomez-Tamayo is a Scientist in the In-silico discovery group at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicines. In this role, he provides comprehensive support to projects, particularly those in their early stages, as part of a dynamic team dedicated to fast-tracking hit identification to hit-to-lead. He takes on both technical and functional capacities, delivering the necessary tools and analyses to address project needs from a multidisciplinary perspective. Additionally, his work involves the development and integration of AI/ML models in the drug discovery pipeline, with a specialization in 3D binding affinity prediction and generative models.

Dr Carles Galdeano is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona. He obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University of Barcelona. After that, he spent three years post-doc in Alessio Ciulli’s lab (first at the University of Cambridge and later at the University of Dundee) where they developed the first potent VHL ligands described together. His postdoctoral discoveries represented a breakthrough in the PROTACS field. In 2015, he returned to the University of Barcelona to work in collaboration with Prof Barril until 2019, when he started his independent research group. Dr Galdeano is also co-founder of Oniria Therapeutics. His lab is interested in expanding the druggable proteome since most proteins are still considered undruggable for conventional drug discovery approaches.

Dr. Robert Galemmo has over 30 years’ experience as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry and is currently a medicinal chemistry consultant for start-up biotech firms. He has worked for major industry leaders such as DuPont Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Rhone Poulenc, and Elan Pharmaceuticals, as well as startups, Neuromed, Cortexyme, and Verge Genomics. As a Department Head, he has built high-functioning, productive research teams; as a Project Leader, he was responsible for multiple clinical and development candidates. He led the early research effort for the marketed oral anti-coagulant Eliquis®, led the team that identified the MET kinase inhibitor JNJ 38877605 under clinical development in the EU, and discovered the clinical leukotriene antagonist RG 12525, evaluated as an anti-asthma drug. Currently, Dr. Galemmo’s PIKfyve Inhibitor VRG50635, which he discovered while at Verge Genomics, is in human clinical trials for ALS. He has broad therapeutic area experience in Oncology, CNS, CV, GI, and anti-inflammatory drug research. Dr. Galemmo received his PhD from The Ohio State University, is an inventor on 45 US patents and the author of more than 50 scientific publications.

Dr. Stefan Geschwindner is currently a Director at AstraZeneca R&D Gothenburg in Sweden where he is heading the Biophysics department within Discovery Sciences. His team is involved in every stage of early drug discovery, ranging from identifying and validating targets, finding and validating potential hits, generating leads (including fragments), and optimizing them, all the way to selecting candidate drugs. They employ diverse biophysical techniques to guide early drug discovery projects, assessing compound-target interactions and their mechanisms of action. Additionally, they play a pivotal role in advancing fragment-based lead generation strategies. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Frankfurt/Germany working predominantly with NMR to elucidate protein structures. After his Ph.D. he joined the Astra Structural Chemistry Laboratory with focus on protein engineering and characterization and helped to implement a variety of different biophysical techniques in the early drug discovery process. Before moving into his current role, he had different roles as Team leader in Protein Engineering and as Principal Scientist in Biophysics. His over 50 peer-reviewed publications are frequently cited leading to an h-index of 26.

Sanne Glad is Scientific Director at Amgen and heads up Drug Discovery Unit 1 at Amgen Research Copenhagen (previously Nuevolution). She has been instrumental in developing the DEL technology from a technology platform to an integrated part of Amgen's small molecule hit finding platform. She was project lead of the hit discovery and optimization within the PRMT5 program. She is currently engaged with several new early discovery projects as well as Amgen's molecular glue discovery efforts.

Currently an ICREA Professor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Dr. Guallar completed his PhD in theoretical Chemistry between the University Autonomous of Barcelona (Spain) and UC Berkeley (USA) in January 2000. After three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University (New York, USA), he was appointed assistant professor at Washington University School of Medicine (St Louis, USA), before moving his group to BSC in 2006. His laboratory (EAPM) has grown considerably since, keeping a productive international character, and developing important contributions in computational biophysics, such as the protein-ligand modeling software PELE, and biochemistry, including computational algorithms for enzyme engineering and the introduction of the first PluriZyme (enzyme with multiple actives sites).As a BSC researcher, Prof. Guallar has been awarded several important research projects, including the award of a prestigious advanced ERC grant (the youngest researcher to receive it in Spain). His research has produced over 140 papers in international journals and directed 16 PhD thesis. In addition to algorithms development (and their application), the group has recently placed importance in adding interdisciplinary fields to our research, such as visualization techniques, data mining and software optimization through machine learning algorithms. Prof. Guallar is also founder of the first spin off from BSC, Nostrum Biodiscovery, a young biotech enterprise created in 2016 which aims to collaborate with pharmaceutical and biotech companies dedicated to the development of drugs and molecules of biotechnological interest. The company currently works with clients in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Wolfgang Haap is a Distinguished Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Tuebingen, Germany. Wolfgang has more than 20 years experience in industrial drug discovery at Ciba and Roche. He delivered several clinical development compounds across different therapeutic areas such as cardiovascular metabolic diseases, neuroscience, immunology and oncology. He is inventor and co-author of more than 90 patent applications and scientific publications.

Ingo V. Hartung is a synthetic organic chemist by training (PhD University of Hannover/Germany, Postdoc Stanford University/US) with 20+ years of Pharma industry experience (Schering AG, Bayer AG, Merck KGaA). He has been project leader in oncology drug discovery and has had portfolio responsibility for preclinical research in the areas of epigenetics and immuno-oncology. Ingo is heading Merck’s global Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Design department which is driving drug discovery projects in oncology & immunology covering various types of small molecule modalities (inhibitors, degraders, antibody-drug conjugates). His research interests comprise all aspects of innovation in small molecule drug discovery. He is the author of >50 scientific publications and patents and board of director member of the Israeli Biotech company TenAces Biosciences.

Christian Heinis has studied biochemistry/chemistry at the ETH Zurich. After a PhD in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dario Neri at ETH, he did two post-docs, the first one with Prof. Dr. Kai Johnsson at the EPFL and the second one with Sir Gregory Winter at the LMB-MRC in Cambridge, UK. In 2008 he started as Assistant Professor at EPFL (supported with an SNSF professorship) and was promoted in 2015 to Associate Professor. Christian is a co-founder of Bicycle Therapeutics and the co-director of the NCCR Chemical Biology.

Timo Heinrich studied chemistry at the Goethe university in Frankfurt/Main until 1998. In his PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Michael Reggelin he investigated the application of chiral sulfoximines in the asymmetric synthesis of Neurkinine antagonists. From 1998 until 2001 he worked with Solvay Pharmaceuticals in Hannover. There, ‘orphan-receptors‘ and cardio-vascular targets were in focus, also the adenosine A1-antagonist SLV320 – Derenofylline. Since 2001 he is working with Merck KGaA in Darmstadt. He supported CNS projects like the 5-HT2A-antagonist Pruvanserin and the anti-depressant Vilazodon. Later, targets from oncologic indications were progressed. His MetAP2 inhibitor M8891 was well tolerated in clinical Phase I testing and out licensed to Cureteq for further development. He contributed significantly to the discovery and submission of probe molecules like the selective lactate transporter MCT4 inhibitor MSC-4381 and kinase SRPK inhibitor MSC-1186 to the Structural Genomics Consortium. Most recent activities were focused on Hippo pathway modulators like MSC-4106.

Anders Hogner PhD, is a drug hunter with +20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry in the field of chemistry/computer aided drug design. Anders is currently head of Computational Chemistry in Medicinal Chemistry in Early Cardiovascular, Renal, and Metabolism, BioPharmaceuticals R&D. Part of Anders role involves co-leading AstraZeneca’s CADD strategy, global lead of IT demands from the business, and part of team delivering AstraZeneca’s Augmented Drug Discovery environment. During 2017-2018 Anders also acted as interim head of Computational Chemistry for Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA) disease unit. He has proven-track record of impacting projects milestones through innovative approaches resulted in being named co-inventor on 3 clinical drug projects and ability to bring in new methodologies and collaborations. He is passionate about talent management, mentoring, and developing people to achieve key deliverables in a performance-driven setting.

Prof. Hsu earned his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and completed his postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute. The Hsu Laboratory focuses on the discovery of bioactive molecules. A central theme of the group is the development of covalent probes and inhibitors for investigating protein and lipid activity. Research in the group is multidisciplinary and uses a combination of organic synthesis, bioanalytical chemistry, and bioorganic chemistry. Current efforts include identifying new reactive chemistry, quantifying ligandability of proteins on a proteomic scale, and deciphering structure and function of membrane signals in living systems. Ultimately, the goal is to develop new molecules to enable chemical biology and therapeutic discovery. Prof. Hsu’s research program has been recognized by several awards including the highly competitive NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, Department of Defense CDMRP Career Development Award, Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Emerging Leader Award from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, and CPRIT Recruitment of Rising Stars Award.

Petrina Kamya, PhD, is the Head of AI Platforms and President of Insilico Medicine, Canada an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company. Before joining Insilico, Dr. Kamya spent eight years in various roles at Chemical Computing Group that involved scientific and business-related aspects of preclinical drug discovery. In addition to establishing the corporate strategy for the sales and business development of molecular modeling software for academia, she also played an active role as an application scientist working on real-world discovery projects and finally in a senior role in strategy and business development for pharma and biotech companies. Following her time at CCG, Petrina moved to Certara as a Market Access Manager, where she learned first-hand the challenges of getting drugs to market. Petrina has been with Insilico Medicine since August 2020. She holds a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in computational chemistry) from Concordia University.

Elena is an experienced medicinal chemist, drug hunter, and biotech leader with an impressive delivery track record. Elena’s therapeutic area expertise is oncology, with additional breadth in metabolic and infectious disease. With over 20 years of experience in the biotech industry, Elena is passionate about small molecule drug discovery and early development. Having worked previously at Exelixis, and Numerate, she has taken many programs from concept stage to first in human. Elena is a co-inventor of Cotellic (Cobimetinib), a MEK inhibitor developed by Exelixis and Genentech. Currently leading MedChem efforts at Revolution Medicines, she joined the team in 2015 and has made significant contributions to the company’s pipeline and development of its unique tri-complex platform. She led chemistry efforts for the RAS Companion Inhibitor RMC-4630, led the team that advanced the RAS(ON) Inhibitor RMC-6236 into development, and made pivotal contributions to the discovery of clinical candidates, among them are RMC-6291, RMC-9805, and RMC-5845. Elena received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Elena has authored multiple scientific publications and is a co-inventor on over 25 issued patents and applications.

Michael N. Liebman, PhD (theoretical chemistry and protein crystallography) is Managing Director of IPQ Analytics, LLC and CSO of United Cancer Centers after serving as Executive Director of the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine. He is Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, Drexel College of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Drug Discovery, Wenzhou Medical University and Fudan University. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Center of Biomedical and Health Research, University of Massachusetts (Lowell). Previously, he was Director, Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics, University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center. He served as Global Head of Computational Genomics, Roche. He serves on the Board of the Nathaniel Adamczyk Foundation in Pediatric ARDS. Michael chairs Translational Medicine for the PhRMA Foundation and serves on the IUPAC Division on Human Health. His research focuses on computational models of disease that stress complexities of real-world patients and real-world clinical practice utilizing systems-based approaches for representation and analysis for pharma and healthcare. Current application areas include: multiple sclerosis, heart failure, and a focus on women’s health: triple negative breast cancer, hypertension and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, infant-maternal morbidity and mortality, perimenopause-menopause transition with an emphasis on underserved populations and health disparities.

Dr. Nir London received his PhD from the Hebrew University in 2011. He joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, as an EMBO post-doc fellow starting in 2012, and joined the Weizmann Institute as a senior scientist in 2015. Dr. London's lab is focused on covalent chemical biology and drug discovery and has developed several technologies for the design of covalent inhibitors. His honors include the Chorev Award by the Israeli Chemical Society, the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award, a postdoctoral award from the Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research. Most recently he also received the Alon fellowship, an award of excellence from the Israel Cancer Association and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation – AACR Career Development Award for Translational Breast Cancer Research. Recently Dr. London was selected for the IUPAC periodic table of young chemists.

Dr. Xiaojie Lu received his PhD at Brandeis University working on the organocatalytic asymmetric peroxidation reaction of electronic deficient olefins in 2010, then, he joined GlaxoSmithKline for early-stage drug discovery at molecular research department in Boston. As a research investigator, he has been working on the design and synthesis of DNA encoded chemical libraries to identify small molecule ligands for biologically interesting targets. In 2016, Dr. Lu was awarded GSK associate fellow. Since July 2017, he has joined the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, CAS as the principal investigator. His current research interest focused on the design and synthesis of DNA encoded focused library for the lead generation of challenge drug targets.

Jordi Mestres studied chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) and obtained a PhD in computational chemistry from the University of Girona (Spain) in 1995. After a postdoctoral stay at Pharmacia & Upjohn, in Kalamazoo (Michigan, USA), he moved to Organon first as a research scientist, in Oss (The Netherlands), and later as head of computational medicinal chemistry, in Newhouse (Scotland, UK). In 2003, he returned to Barcelona to start his independent laboratory at the IMIM Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute, while also being an associate professor at the University Pompeu Fabra (UPF). In october 2023, he moved to the University of Girona, where he is now visiting professor. He received the 2006 Corwin Hansch award from the QSAR, Chemoinformatics & Modeling Society and in 2018 he was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2006, he founded Chemotargets as a spin-off company of his research group at IMIM, where he is now its chief scientific officer.

Dr. Alessandro Monge has a background in science (quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, molecular dynamics, and protein modeling) and over two decades of corporate and business development experience in the computation and AI for drug discovery space. He is Managing Partner at Blue Dolphin, a corporate and business development consultancy, where since 2018 he has advised VC firms, investment banks, founders, and executive teams. Alessandro currently serves as an advisor to Pharmacelera, Dalriada and Nanome, and has previously held senior management roles at Schrodinger, Iktos and TandemAI. He earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from The Rockefeller University and completed postdoctoral research on protein modeling at Columbia University.

David Norton is a Director of medicinal chemistry at Astex Pharmaceuticals. After gaining his PhD at the University of Southampton, he was a medicinal chemist at GlaxoSmithKline. He worked on a number of targets involved with multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and pain. David has now been at Astex for 15 years, successfully applying fragment- and structure-based drug discovery to therapeutic targets in multiple disease areas, including oncology and CNS. He has been project leader for the fragment library team as well as chemistry lead and project lead for therapeutic targets.

Radoslaw Nowak is part of Biochemistry and Structural Biology Group at the Center for Protein Degradation as well as a scientist in the laboratory of Eric Fischer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research interests revolve around transforming structural, biophysical, biochemical, and proteomic insights surrounding PROTACs and other degrader molecules into predictive computational framework to accelerate degrader discovery and validation. Dr. Nowak received his DPhil from University of Oxford in the group of Prof. Udo Oppermann working on development of inhibitors for histone lysine demethylases, a class of epigenetic readers.

Evan O’Brien received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, followed by his doctoral work with Dr. Joshua Wand at the University of Pennsylvania. While in Dr. Wand’s lab, Evan focused on using structural and dynamic solution NMR methods to probe lipid-protein interactions and fast-timescale dynamics. His work on dynamics and entropy in well-characterized systems drove his interest in exploring these phenomena with more complex human membrane protein systems. To that end, he started his postdoctoral work with Dr. Brian Kobilka at Stanford University in 2018. His early work in the Kobilka lab involved using various fluorescence techniques to interrogate GPCR dynamics, which resulted in a highly multi-disciplinary effort to characterize how unique Family B GPCR structural properties result in distinct signaling behavior. More recent work in the Kobilka lab has continued to focus on combining biophysical techniques with cryoEM to discover and characterize novel mechanisms of GPCR allosteric modulation using small molecules.

Tudor I. Oprea is a digital drug hunter with three decades of experience in knowledge management applied to target and drug discovery. He co-developed ChemGPS, the “lead-like approach,” systems chemical biology, and a knowledge-based classification for human proteins. He co-discovered the first GPER agonist (orphan drug designated, LNS8801), GPER antagonist, and several GLUT transporter inhibitors. His machine-learning models include cheminformatics, drug discovery, disease, and target biology. His team maintains DrugCentral and Pharos, part of an NIH Common Fund project. He co-authored over 300 publications and 10 US patents and edited 2 books on informatics in drug discovery. He is CSO at Expert Systems, Inc., a San Diego-based i2020 Accelerator company.

Julien Orts was trained in Physics & Biophysics and graduated jointly from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory under the guidance of Prof. Carlogmano and Prof. Griesinger. During that time, he developed the INPHARMA method that can experimentally assess the quality of docking poses of fragments and drugs in the receptor-binding site using only unlabeled protein (ug) from cell extra. Julien joined the BioNMR laboratory at the ETH Zurich led by Prof. Riek, first as a post-doc and then as a junior group leader, where he developed new NMR methods, such as the exact NOEs that improve the NOE accuracy by order of magnitude. In 2021, he relocated to the University of Vienna, joining the Division of Pharmaceutical Chemistry as an Assistant Professor. Since 2024, he has held the position of Associate Professor and scientific director of the NMR facility. His laboratory specializes in Drug Discovery through advanced NMR methods, encompassing integrated approaches for rapid determination of protein-ligand complex structures, NMR-based drug design, protein allostery, and the thermodynamics of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions.

I am working on small-molecule modulation of 14-3-3 Protein-Protein Interactions with a special focus on natural products and fragment-based ligand discovery. I was involved in several early drug discovery projects with the pharmaceutical industry and was initiator and coordinator of the FP7 Industry-Academia Partnership and Pathways (IAPP) 14-3-3STABS and the Horizon2020 European Training Network (ETN) TASPPI. Before taking up my current position at Eindhoven University of Technology and Ambagon Therapeutics, I was a group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre (CGC) of the Max Planck Society in Dortmund, Germany. Together with Luc Brunsveld (TU/e) and Michelle Arkin (UCSF), we founded Ambagon Therapeutics where I serve as Chief Scientific Officer. In both my academic work and now at Ambagon, I am dedicated towards making the 14-3-3 interactome druggable, developing new small-molecule treatment options for a range of diseases.

Hyejin Park is currently a Senior Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry group at Jnana Therapeutics, where she has led and supported several immune and rare disease portfolios. She earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Richmond (Richmond, VA) and received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Duke University (Durham, NC), focusing on the total synthesis of apomorphine analogs.

David Pearlman is a pioneer in the field of computational chemistry. After receiving the first Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley focused on applying modern computational methods to study large molecules, he became the founding product manager at Biosym Technologies (later Accelrys/Biovia). Subsequently, he was an early employee of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and later developed and helmed the biologics software platform (Bioluminate) for Schrodinger, Inc. Dr. Pearlman was also the first author and a principal developer of the widely-used AMBER program for many years. He has published a long string of seminal papers on free energy perturbation, including the first papers demonstrating the feasibility of highly parallelized FEP and the use of FEP for rank-ordering congeneric binders. He has also published extensively on topics such as ligand scoring, protein modeling, NMR refinement, and de novo ligand design. Today, Dr. Pearlman is Vice President of Product for QSimulate.

Our laboratory focuses on the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel pharmacological tools in the areas of cancer, neurodegeneration, and potentially other disease areas, using innovative drug discovery approaches. The overall goal of the laboratory is to bring together basic sciences including modern nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) techniques, X-ray crystallography, computer modeling, traditional medicinal synthetic chemistry, and cell biology to elucidate the molecular basis of disease and to design novel pharmacological tools that serve for target validation and to develop novel therapeutic agents. A central theme of our laboratory is the development of novel methodologies to tackle protein-protein interactions (PPIs) as targets for drug discovery, and to further advance our most promising agents into potential therapeutics.

Laura Perez Benito is a Principal Scientist at Johnson & Johnson with a strong background in molecular pharmacology and computational chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. focused on the study of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) oligomerization and the design of bivalent ligands using Physic-Based methods such Molecular Dynamics and Free energy perturbations, contributing to the understanding of receptor-receptor interactions and ligand targeting strategies. Following her doctoral work, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Johnson & Johnson, focused on the application of open-source software to perform free energy perturbation (FEP) and integrating FEP methodologies into early-stage drug discovery programs. This work advanced the use of computational tools in real-world pharmaceutical development. Currently, as a Principal Scientist at Johnson & Johnson, Laura continues to lead innovative efforts in applying computational methods to accelerate drug discovery and improve molecular design strategies.

Markus got fascinated by the process of protein degradation early on during his Master’s thesis at Free University in Berlin, where he worked on proteasomal functions and ubiquitin-binding proteins. He further gained broad knowledge in respiratory diseases, inflammation, and oncology while pursuing a Ph.D. in molecular biology and medicine of the lung in Germany and at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He moved on to a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in Chicago, where in collaboration with Noble Laureate Aaron Ciechanover, he discovered a hypoxia-regulated ubiquitin-ligase. Prior to joining GSK, he specialized in ubiquitin-ligase recruitment in ER-associated protein degradation at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Oxford. Currently, he is Scientific Director in the Protein Degradation Group, leading the technology team and leading multiple collaborations with biotech and academia.

I started my career at GSK CEDD in Zagreb then moved to do my PhD in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the National Institute for Chemistry on the synthesis of P-chiral ligands for Rh-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation and bifunctional ligands for Ru-catalyzed asymmetric transfer hydrogenation. After a short stint at Teva, Zagreb where I worked on route scouting for API`s I moved to Nuevolution A/S (now Amgen Research Copenhagen) in Copenhagen where I have worked as a medicinal chemist in hit to lead and lead optimization of compounds identified using the DEL platform. I have co-authored 6 patents and 5 articles.

Andreas has more than twenty years of experience in drug discovery DMPK. He is VP and currently heads Preclinical M&S which provides the PK and PK/PD modelling support for Bayer Pharma’s entire research portfolio. Previously, he was heading Research PK with responsibility for the complete DMPK support of all drug discovery projects across diverse therapeutic areas from lead generation to preclinical candidate selection & profiling. Andreas holds a PhD in Cell Biology from Leipzig University. During his PostDoc at King’s College London, funded by several pharmaceutical companies, he worked on in vitro models and in silico approaches to assess and predict the CNS penetration of drugs. He then joined Discovery DMPK at Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, where he expanded his area of expertise to intestinal and hepatic transport processes and their relevance for drug absorption, drug disposition and drug-induced liver injury. Having a passion for scientific innovations he has been supervising >15 Master and PhD students. His latest research interests are in the fields of PK/PD of new modalities, machine learning, microphysiological systems, oral absorption modelling and drug delivery technologies.

Monica Rodrigo joined AstraZeneca in 2019 with over 15 years of experience in the ubiquitin field. She received her PhD from University of California, San Francisco, where she studied the Anaphase Promoting Complex, a megadalton E3 ubiquitin ligase, and the role that E2 ubiquitin conjugating enzymes play in ubiquitin chain extension. She came to the UK for her postdoc at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she studied the ubiquitin-dependent degradation of mislocalized membrane proteins. Prior to joining AZ, she was a principal laboratory research scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, working on DNA repair mechanisms. She joined the PROTAC Safety team in Clinical Pharmacology and Safety Sciences in 2019, helping to shape the safety strategy for targeted protein degraders.

Jenny Sandmark obtained her PhD in X-ray crystallography from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. She was at AstraZeneca from 2003 through 2025 taking up a role as protein crystallographer in the department of Structure, Biophysics and Fragment-Based Lead Generation. She is supporting in a large number of early drug development projects spanning several therapeutic areas, such as cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological disease.

Dr. Sarott obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from ETH Zürich, where his contributions to chemical probe design were awarded a 2021 ETH Medal. He then worked as a Swiss National Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, where he worked under the guidance of Profs. Nathanael Gray and Gerald Crabtree. At Stanford, his work centered on lineage-specific expression of cell death genes with small molecules. His work serves as basis for Shenandoah Therapeutics, a biotech start-up based in the San Francisco Bay Area he helped co-found. In January 2025, Dr. Sarott launched his independent academic career as group leader at the Max Planck Insitute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany. His work integrates synthesis and molecular biology to develop chemical inducers of proximity that activate therapeutically useful signaling rather than inhibit or degrade aberrant protein function.

Jörg Scheuermann studied Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland). He performed his Ph.D. studies at the ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Dario Neri working on the identification of novel small binding molecules to markers of angiogenesis. In 2002, with the renaissance of the idea of DNA-encoded Chemical Libraries, together with Dario Neri he pioneered DNA-encoded Chemical Library (DEL) technology with the setup and development of Encoded Self-Assembling Chemical (ESAC) Libraries. He continued working with Dario Neri on innovating DEL technology, he co-authored >80 peer-reviewed publications on DEL (together with Dario Neri he holds the highest publication track record in the field) and he is co-inventor of 3 DEL-related patents. In 2018 he wrote his habilitation thesis on "DNA-Encoded Chemical Library Technology for Drug Discovery” and received his Venia legendi and teaches various classes at ETH Zurich in the fields of Drug Discovery and Gene Technology. Jörg currently is Principle Investigator at the ETH Zurich heading the group "DNA-encoded libraries/DEL technology) with 1 senior scientist, 2 postdoctoral fellows and 5 PhD students. Jörg is co-founder and organizer of the “International Symposium on DNA-Encoded Chemical Libraries”, a yearly alternating event between ETH Zurich/Switzerland, Boston/US and Shanghai/China. Jörg's main research interests lie in the innovation of DEL technology, e.g., the development of novel DEL architectures, selection methodologies and the tailored construction of DELs for difficult targets. Recently, he conceived and published a novel DEL technology ("PureDEL"), which allows for creating very large and diverse libraries of chemically synthesized macrocycles.

Victor currently serves as Head of Computational Drug Design at SandboxAQ. He earned his BSc and MSc in Pharmacy, and PhD in medicinal chemistry focused on drug discovery for infectious diseases using ligand and target-based approaches at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Universidad Complutense (UCM) completing part of his research at the University of Cambridge and Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS). During this time, Victor participated in multiple CNS and infectious diseases projects including a European Consortium with public and private entities aiming at targeting neglected parasitic diseases. Victor worked 5 years at Exscientia where he led the computational design strategy for several drug discovery programs, and applied AI tools to advance drug discovery programs at different stages towards lead optimisation and the identification of drug candidate compounds in oncology, immuno-oncology and rare diseases areas. Victor has received several awards from scientific societies and pharmaceutical companies, including the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC), Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT), Menarini, Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry (RSEQ) and Eli Lilly.

I produce conferences in the drug discovery space, mostly on medicinal-chemistry related topics, for Cambridge Healthtech Institute. My portfolio includes multiple conference tracks at: Discovery on Target (Boston), Drug Discovery Chemistry (San Diego), and our newest launch: Drug Discovery Chemistry Europe (Barcelona). I've worked in biomedical communications for over 25 years—jumping into it as a science writer for a communications agency whose clients were biotech companies, right after earning my PhD in cell biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. My undergraduate degree is from Princeton University where I majored in biology with a minor in 'Science in Human Affairs' which involved a lot of writing and I think foreshadowed my desire for a non-conventional scientific career path that enables me to play broader but indirect role in scientific innovation.

Woody Sherman is Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Psivant Therapeutics and a thought leader in molecular simulations and computer-aided drug design, with over 90 peer-reviewed publications covering novel methods and applications. As Chief Computational Scientist at Roivant, Woody oversaw the computational strategy, implementation, and deployment of computational methods. He received his B.S. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied nonlinear optical properties of organic polymers using computational quantum mechanics methods. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT working in Professor Bruce Tidor’s lab where he examined the role of electrostatics in protein-ligand binding and implemented a novel method for optimizing ligand binding specificity across a panel of targets. While in graduate school he worked at Biogen where he developed novel methods to enhance antibody affinity via electrostatic charge optimization, resulting in a publication and patent. As Global Head of Applications Science at Schrödinger, led research, product development, methods development, and the deployment of Python-based tools. He also worked closely with Pharma partners on research projects and collaborations. Woody has published on a broad range of topics, including induced-fit docking, ensemble docking, molecular dynamics, free energy simulations, protein design, small molecule optimization, cheminformatics, hybrid ligand/structure-based methods, charge optimization, pharmacophore modeling, and more.

Susumu Shimoyama is the President of FUJIFILM Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. He studied molecular and cellular immunology at Kyoto University and jumped in the pharmaceutical industry. He has over 20 years' experiences in drug discovery and clinical development throughout his carrier in GSK Japan, MSD Japan, and Fujifilm. After joining Fujifilm, he has led multiple oncology projects from early-stage discovery to clinical development. In addition to his management roles in oncology drug R&D, he oversees collaboration, marketing, and business development activities for Fujifilm’s lipid-based drug delivery technologies and manufacturing services.

Garrick Smith has a PhD (1991) in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Reading, UK. He then joined Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals, UK (later Novartis) working in projects in Thrombosis and Respiratory Diseases. In 1997 he moved to Denmark and joined H. Lundbeck A/S, Copenhagen as a medicinal chemist working on a range of targets within CNS. In 2017 he moved to Nuevolution, Copenhagen which was acquired by Amgen 2019 and is now Amgen Research Copenhagen. He leads Discovery Unit 3 using the DNA encoded library (DEL) screening and associated platforms for hit id and optimization in several early projects across multiple disease areas.

Nicolas studied chemistry at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse, France, where he obtained his ‘diplôme d’Ingénieur Chimiste’ with a focus on medicinal and bioorganic chemistry. He also earned a MSc in organic and macro-molecular synthesis from the University of Haute-Alsace, France. After completing his studies, he pursued a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland under the guidance of Prof. R. Neier. In 2002, he further expanded his expertise through a Post-Doctoral stay at Stanford University, CA, working with Prof. P.A. Wender. Following his academic journey, Nicolas joined Novartis in the Global Discovery Chemistry (GDC) department as an investigator in medicinal chemistry. Since then, he has worked on various projects in autoimmunity & transplantation and, since 2015, in oncology disease areas. Nicolas successfully led several drug discovery projects from exploratory to late-stage lead optimization, contributing to several development candidates yielding development compounds and marketed drug (PI3K?-selective inhibitor leniolisib/Joenja). Nicolas is currently Director, group leader medicinal chemistry in GDC Oncology and Immuno-Oncology.

He took a BSc in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Barcelona (UB), finishing studies in the UK. Later, he got a PhD in computational chemistry with Professor Modesto Orozco (UB- IRB-Institute of Research in Biomedicine). He worked at the Drug Discovery unit of Laboratorios Uriach/Palau Pharma for 11 years, during which he actively contributed to the development of several clinical candidates. Afterwards, he worked during 6 years at the IP law firm ZBM Patents&Trademarks, successfully passing the first exam of the EPO. In 2016 he co-founded and launched the company Nostrum Biodiscovery, the first spin off of the BSC (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) and IRB . At Nostrum he acted first as CSO and then as CSO/CEO, taking the company from 0 to 14 employees. He later took on the role of Head of Drug Discovery for Oryzon Genomics. He is currently Associate Director at the R+D Data Science Dpt. of Almirall.

Vid is an expert in theoretical physics, quantum physics, tensor networks, string theory, machine learning and mathematical modelling with over 15 years of postdoctoral experience at leading centres including University of Hamburg, University of Vienna, University of Ghent and University College London. Vid founded has 5 years’ experience leading AI/ML start-ups and holds a PhD in theoretical physics from King’s College London.

Chris is a drug discovery scientist with over 18 years experience spanning big pharma, biotech and startups. Chris started his career in 2007 at GSK, initially as a medicinal chemist delivering clinical candidates for respiratory diseases, then later as a chemical biologist in the protein degradation group, helping to discover and develop the first PROTACs. In 2017 he moved to BenevolentAI, working as part of tech teams to design new AI products to improve decision making and accelerate drug discovery. During this time he oversaw the evaluation of new targets into the drug discovery portfolio and also led the Astrazeneca collaboration in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. In the summer of 2023, Chris joined Celeris Therapeutics to design PROTACs with AI. In November 2024, Chris founded Ternary Therapeutics with some of his ex-BenevolentAI colleagues, where he is currently CEO.

Ed is Professor of Chemical Biology at Imperial College London, a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, and academic founder of Myricx Pharma, a spinout developing his lab’s research into clinical applications. Following his PhD (2000) with Steve Ley in Cambridge and postdoctoral research in Paris as an 1851 Fellow and Howard Trust Fellow, he was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship in 2006 to start his group at Imperial College. He sits on the advisory boards of several international research institutes and biotechs, and co-develops drug discovery technologies with companies including Pfizer, Merck, GSK, AstraZeneca, Kura Oncology, and ADC Technologies. His research has been recognised by multiple awards and Fellowships, most recently the 2019 Sir David Cooksey Translation Prize, the 2020 Corday-Morgan Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Cancer Research UK Programme Award.

Ali is Professor of Chemical Biology at the School of Chemistry, and Chief Scientific Officer of Curve Therapeutics. Ali leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists whose efforts are focused on the development of novel chemical tools that enable new insight into the role of protein-protein interactions in cell biology, and as the starting point for new therapeutics. Ali served as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry's (RSC) chemical Biology Interface Division (2020-2023), and a Fellow of the RSC. Ali is on the editorial board of RSC Chemical Biology. Ali was Chair of the RSC's Chemical Biology and Bioorganic Group (2012-2015), and an elected member of the RSC's Chemistry and Biology Interface Division council (2012-2016). Ali has won a number of awards during his career, including the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences' medal for European Young Chemist in 2008, the RSC Medimmune Protein and peptide Science Award in 2017, and the European Peptide Society's Leonidas Zervasaward in 2020.

Chiara is an Associate Director at Astex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. Chiara completed her studies in synthetic organic chemistry in Italy, to then move to the USA to pursue a PhD at Brown University, centred on studying the biosynthesis of polyketide antibiotics. In 2011, she was awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming fellowship to work at the University of Cambridge. The focus of her research, in academia at first then in industry, has been the development of small molecules to interfere with and repair altered biological processes linked to cancer and diseases of the central nervous system.

Dr Frederik van den Broek Senior Director Professional Services and Consulting, Corporate R&D, Elsevier, Amsterdam In Elsevier’s Professional Services team, Frederik leads the global consultancy practice on data integration and analytics projects throughout the life science, chemistry and engineering domains using commercial, proprietary, and public data sources. He holds a doctorate in Chemical Physics from the University of Amsterdam / FOM Institute AMOLF and a master’s degree in Chemistry from Utrecht University

Moreno Wichert is a Principal Scientist in the DNA-Encoded Library Technology (DELT) team at Roche. He studied biochemistry at ETH Zurich and completed his PhD in the group of Prof. Dario Neri, working on self-assembling DELs and tumor targeting. His work led to a CAIX-targeting ligand now in clinical trials as a radioligand-based theranostic agent. He has authored over ten publications, filed more than five patent applications, and co-edits the forthcoming book DNA-Encoded Libraries: Principles and Applications.

Jeffrey Wu is a principal scientist in the medicinal chemistry department at Nurix, headquartered in San Francisco, California. He earned in Ph. D from University of California Berkeley, and in over 15 years of research, he has contributed to successful drug discovery efforts at Roche, Plexxikon, and now at Nurix. His projects have produced several notable compounds, including marketed drug elpida, small molecule BRD4 inhibitor currently in phase 2, and an EP300 inhibitor currently in phase 1 clinical trials. In 7 years at Nurix, he has been on the project teams which delivered clinical targeted BTK degraders NX-2127 and NX-5948, and IND-approved IRAK4 degrader NX-0479. B-raf which will be discussed today is his most recently completed lead optimization. He is currently the project lead of a degrader-antibody-conjugate project, utilizing targeted protein degraders as payloads on antibodies.

I'm a software engineer

Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Colorado State University under the late Professor Robert M. Williams. Brings over 25 years of drug discovery experience from roles at G.D. Searle/Monsanto and Amgen. Currently serving as Chief Scientific Officer at Shenzhen Sungening Ltd.

Patrick obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the Technical University of Munich in 2021, where he established methods for residue-specific chemoproteomics enabling covalent ligand development. He identified broadly reactive probes that enable specific proteome-wide monitoring of several amino acids beyond cysteine and was recognized for this work by the German Chemical Society with the PhD Award Medicinal/Pharmaceutical Chemistry. His postdoctoral studies at UF Scripps focused on the modification and degradation of disease-relevant RNAs with small molecules. Since then, he has joined NEOsphere Biotechnologies as a Senior Research Scientist, integrating new approaches to streamline and complement the discovery and development pipeline of molecular glues.