Douglass F. Taber

Title: Natural Product Synthesis by Intramolecular Alkylidene Carbene C-H Insertion

Biography: 

Douglass F. Taber studied chemistry at Stanford University. In 1974, he completed his doctorate in organic chemistry in the group of Prof. Gilbert Stork at Columbia University. After a postdoctoral year with Prof. Barry M. Trost at the University of Wisconsin, he took up an independent position at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. In 1982, he moved to the University of Delaware, where he is currently Professor Emeritus. His research interests have been in complex carbocyclic construction, including computationally-understood organometallic-mediated carbon-carbon bond formation. He is the author of the popular series https://www.organic-chemistry.org/Highlights.

Dr. Chithra Mohan

Dr. Chithra Mohan received her Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Ibnusaud. She is as an Assistant Professor at the School of Chemical Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. In 2021, she joined as a member in Organic Chemistry Division, and Professional Relations Division (Women Chemists) of American Chemical Society (ACS). Her research interests encompass synthesis of enantiomerically pure compounds from Natural Product starting materials, total synthesis of natural products, the synthesis of complex organic molecules, and medicinally pertinent molecules via photoredox catalysis.

Nutan Sharma

Title: First total synthesis of anti-inflammatory marine derived natural product (-)- Herdmanine-D

Biography: Dr. Nutan Sharma is an Associate Professor in Department of Chemistry at Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary (SGT) University, Gurugram, India. She is a Principal Investigator in SERBTARE Project awarded by Science & Enginnering Research Board. She has 12 years of research experience and her areas of interest includes total synthesis of natural products, green chemistry, and fluorinated chemistry. She has established her own research group and currentyl supervising 4 research students. She has published 17 research papers in International Journals of repute and is a member of prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry also.

Fabiana Plescia

Fabiana Plescia obtained her PhD in Farmaceutical Science at the University of Palermo. She actually is permanent researcher at the Department of Biological, Chimical and Pharmaceutical Technologies and Sciences at the University of Palermo. She is Principal Investigator in research mainly focused on the synthesis of new drug molecules with potential biological activities against cancer.

Cherie S. Tan

Title: Biological nanopore approach for single-molecule analysis of nucleobase modifications

Biography: 

Dr. Cherie S. Tan is an Associate Professor of Medical College at the Tianjin University. Her undergraduate training was in analytical chemistry with Professor Janusz Pawliszyn at the University of Waterloo.  After obtaining her Bachelor’s Degree in Canada, she spent four years working in the biotechnology industry in San Francisco Bay Area. During that time, she developed her skills as an associate at the DMPK department (Drug Metabolism Pharmacokinetics) at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. Then, to further understand the expression of cancer-related genes and develop an analytical method for fast screening of the targeted genes, she pursued her Ph.D. degree in a Nanopore Sequencing of DNA Damage group, operated by Professor Cynthia J. Burrows and Professor Henry S. White. Following a postdoctoral appointment at the same group, she began her academic career as an associate professor at Tianjin University in 2019. Her research interests are in nanopore sequencing, biomarkers, biosensors, point-of-care testing POCT sensor development, bioinformatics, population genetics, epigenomic analysis, et. al.

Huck Grover

Title:  Development of Catalytic Cascades Involving a C–H Functionalization Step in the Synthesis of Heterocycles

Biography:

Huck completed his BSc in chemistry at Wilfrid Laurier University in the MacNeil lab where he got his first experience with organic synthesis and methodology. Following completion of his undergraduate degree, he joined the Kerr lab (2010) at Western University where he learned about heterocycles, cycloaddition chemistry and natural product synthesis. Huck then moved to Berkeley, California to work in the Maimone lab (2015) as a postdoc with a focus on complex asymmetric synthesis, terpenes, natural products, and medicinal chemistry. He draws on each of these learning experiences as an assistant professor in the chemistry department at Memorial University of Newfoundland (2017).  

Alakesh Bisai

Title: A One-Pot Sequential Catalytic Asymmetric Construction of Vicinal All-Carbon Quaternary Stereocenters

Biography: 

Alakesh received his Ph.D. degree from IIT Kanpur, India working with Prof. Vinod K. Singh and did his Postdoctoral studies with Prof. Richmond Sarpong, at the University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA. He is working as a Professor of Chemistry at IISER Bhopal since January, 2018. His research group is actively involved in the target oriented total syntheses of various architecturally complex and biologically active natural products. In May, 2019, he moved to IISER Kolkata as a Professor and working in Organic Synthesis directed for the total syntheses of architecturally intriguing and biologically relevance alkaloids.

Hannes P. L. Gemoets

                                                Keynote
Hannes P. L. Gemoets was born in Ghent, Belgium. He received an M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering (cum laude) at the KU Leuven (Faculty of Engineering Technology Ghent). He moved to the Netherlands to pursue his Ph.D. at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Micro Flow Chemistry & Process Technology group, under the supervision of Prof. Timothy Noël and Prof. Volker Hessel. His research focused on the development of novel continuous-flow methods for C–H functionalization strategies (i.e. C–H activation and photoredox catalysis). As the next step in his career, Hannes joined the Research & Development division of Creaflow located in Deinze, Belgium. As R&D Director, his work focuses on the design and development of innovative and scalable continuous-flow (photo)reactors, as well as the worldwide sales of the HANU™ Flow Reactor.

Ananta Kumar Atta

Dr. Ananta Kumar Atta is a senior Assistant Professor (Grade I) of Chemistry at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Arunachal Pradesh, India. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2010 from the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) in carbohydrate chemistry. He pursued his postdoctoral studies with Prof. Dong Gyu Cho at Inha University, Incheon, South Korea in supramolecular chemistry from 2010 to 2013. He has been awarded DST-Young Scientist Award in 2015 and elected as a fellow of the Indian Chemical Society (FICS) in 2019. His current research schemes mainly focus on sugar-modified chemosensors for the detection of heavy metal ions and nitroaromatics, synthesis of low-molecular-weight organogelators (LMWOs), and carbohydrate-based fluorometric carbon quantum dots for various applications. Recently, he has given invited talk in Analyticon 2020, San Francisco, CA, USA and Molecules to Materials, SVNIT Surat, India

Maria Manuel B. Marques

Maria Manuel Marques received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2001 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. S. Prabhakar. From 2001 to 2003 she joined the group of Prof. Dr. J. Mulzer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Vienna, as a postdoctoral research fellow. In 2003, she returned to the Faculty of Science and Technology, New University of Lisbon (Requimte) as a research fellow and invited professor. In 2016 she obtained her Habilitation in Chemistry. Her research encompasses the development of new synthetic and sustainable methodologies involving metal-catalyzed reactions towards bioactive compounds, in particular heterocyclic molecules.

Ying Li

Title: Structural Mechanism underlying the Regulation of Deubiquitinase A Probed by NMR Spectroscopy

Biography: 

Ying Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of Louisville, USA. She obtained her PhD in Biophysics and Computational Biology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008. Following her postdoctoral training at Columbia University, she started her independent research group at University of Louisville in 2014. The main focus of her current research is to understand the functional roles of conformational dynamics in enzymes using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and other biophysical techniques. She has also published work on developing NMR methods for studying membrane proteins and protein dynamics

Peng Zhang

Title: High-activity zeolitic catalyst for catalytic reforming at low temperature

Biography: 

Dr. Peng Zhang (1980) obtained his PhD from the China University of Petroleum. He has engaged in dehydrogenation & reforming catalyst and process of petrochemicals for more than 16 years. Dr. Zhang innovatively discovered high performance zeolite-type environmentally friendly reforming catalysts, which can avoid chlorine loss and equipment corrosion of traditional commercial alumina-type catalysts. He is a senior engineer and inventor on more than 40 patents. Dr. Zhang has the honorary title of Science and Technology Young Talent of PetroChina Petrochemical Research Institute.

B. Frank Gupton

Title: TBA

Biography: 

Prof. B. Frank Gupton, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized scholar and industry expert. After attending the University of Richmond on a basketball scholarship, he received his master’s degree from Georgia Tech. He earned his doctorate in chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University.
His 31-year industry career included senior positions with the Hoechst-Celanese Corporation and Boehringer-Ingelheim. In 2007, Gupton retired as executive director of process development for Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals.
Gupton then joined the VCU College of Engineering faculty and became the Floyd D. Gottwald Junior Chair in Pharmaceutical Engineering in 2016. His research focuses on improving global health care by making pharmaceutical production cleaner and more cost-effective. To help advance these goals, he founded the Medicines for All Institute (M4ALL) with a simple idea: expand global access to lifesaving medications by producing them more efficiently.
An inventor on multiple patents, including one for his work to produce nanoparticle catalysts supported on graphene, Gupton is a National Academy of Inventors Fellow. He received the Billy R. Martin Award for Innovation in 2017.
For his efforts with M4ALL to develop cost-saving methods to produce the anti-HIV drug nevirapine, he won the 2019 Peter J. Dunn Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS). For that work, he and M4ALL chief technology officer D. Tyler McQuade, Ph.D., also won the 2018 ACS Green Chemistry Challenge Award and the 2018 ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry. The institute is working with a manufacturer in South Africa and partnering with the government of Ivory Coast to bring these advances to the places they are most needed.

Dusan Bratko

Title: 

Biography: 

Dr. Dusan Bratko obtained Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Ljubljana and is currently a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Virginia Commonwealth University. He previously held positions at the Department of Chemistry, University of Ljubljana, and in the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley. His research concerns statistical mechanics and molecular modeling of ionic solutions, colloids and interfacial phenomena of interest in nanoscience, energy, and materials engineering.

Lioz Etgar

Title: TBA

Biography: 

Prof. Etgar was the first to demonstrate the possibility to work with the perovskite as a light harvester and hole conductor in the solar cell which results in one of the pioneer publications in this field. Recently Prof. Etgar won the prestigious Krill prize from the Wolf foundation. Etgar’s research group focuses on the development of innovative solar cells. Prof. Etgar is researching new excitonic solar cells structures/architectures while designing and controlling the inorganic light harvester structure and properties to improve the photovoltaic parameters.
Lioz Etgar obtained his Ph.D. (2009) at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and completed post-doctoral research with Prof. Michael Grätzel at EPFL, Switzerland. In his post-doctoral research, he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and won the Wolf Prize for young scientists.
Since 2012, he has been a senior lecturer in the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University.
In 2017 he received an Associate Professor position.

Sunagatullina Gulnaz Razilevna

Title:  Synthesis of a New 10,11-Didehydro Analog of Epothilone D

Biography: 

Sunagatullina Gulnaz Razilevna graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry at the Bashkir State University in Ufa, Russia in 2018. In the same year, she started her PhD of the laboratory for the synthesis of low-molecular bioregulators under the guidance of Miftakhov Mansur Sagaryarovich at the Ufa Institute of Chemistry of the Ufa Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is currently completing her PhD (06/2022) at the same center. Her research is aimed at obtaining compounds that have anticancer properties with a taxol-like mechanism of action - an analogue of epothilone D.

Srinivasarao Yaragorla

Title: In situ Synthesis and Cyclisations of Ambiphilic Allenes 

Gyan Modi

Title: Development of naturally inspired novel diagnostic and therapeutic agents for early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Biography: 

Gyan Modi is assiait professor at Dept of Pharm. Eng & Technology, IIT (BHU), Varanasi. His laboratory has received several research projects funded from SERB, and ICMR, India. He is the recipient of several awards. 

Amit Nag

Title: Plasmonic nanostructures for sensing and biomedical applications

Biography     

Amit Nag is an Associate Professor in Chemistry, at BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from IIT Kanpur, India under the supervision of Professor Debabrata Goswami on femtosecond laser chemistry. He worked as a Post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, U.S.A with Professor Ara Apkarian on scan-probe microscopy and at the Department Chemie und CeNS, LMU, Munich, Germany with Professor Achim Hartschuh on plasmonics and Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. He has successfully completed sponsored projects funded by BITS-Pilani, DST and CSIR. His research interests include Nonlinear laser spectroscopy, Scanning-probe microscopy, Plasmonics, Carbon Dots, Biophysical chemistry.

Kevin Kou

Title:  Exploiting Electron-Rich Alkenes for C–H Functionalization: Synthesis of Isoquinoline Natural Products

Biography: 

Kevin Kou is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Riverside since 2018. In 2009, he began PhD studies in asymmetric transition metal catalysis with Vy Dong at the University of Toronto, and in 2012, moved to UC Irvine with the group. From 2016–2018, he pursued post-doctoral training at UC Berkeley with Richmond Sarpong targeting the total synthesis of complex diterpenoid alkaloids. At UC Riverside, his group seeks to advance synthetic strategies that are amenable to the synthesis of bioactive molecules.

Chau-Ming So

Title: Design of Alkyl-Heteroaryl-Based Phosphine Ligands and Their Application in Chemoselective Coupling Reactions of Polyhalogenated Aryl Triflates

Biography: 

Dr. Chau-Ming So is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his B.Sc. (1st class honor) from PolyU in 2006. He pursued his postgraduate study at the same institution and obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2010. In 2012-2013, he moved to Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) as the postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Tamio Hayashi’s research group. So’s research interests focus on the development of ligands and their application in transition metalcatalyzed chemo-/regio-/enantioselective reactions. He has published 62 papers in well-recognized SCI journals and licensed several patents.

Haralampos N. Miras

Title: Chalcogenide Molecular Catalysts for the Hydrogen-Evolution Reaction: Electronic Effects and Mechanistic Insights

Biography:   

H. N. Miras is associate professor in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. His research is focused on the discovery of simple preparation routes to metal oxide/chalcoxide-based composite functional materials as well as the understanding of fundamental processes in the self-assembly of supramolecular clusters and molecular nanomaterials with modular magnetic, redox, electronic, conductive and catalytic properties.

Jerome Rouquette

Title: Atomic spring like effect in glassy silica helium composites 

Biography: 

Jerome Rouquette is a CNRS researcher at the Institute Charls Gerhardt in Montpellier, France. His work on structural and vibrational studies "in-situ" under constraints (pressure, temperature, electric and magenbtic field) can be found in more than 90 publications with a h-index = 21. He is actually the principal investigor of a french ANR project on the experimental set-up of an "in-situ" high pressure/high temparature Raman spectroscopy experiment and participates to 3 other projects on Nanocomposites and magnetoelectric materials. 

Maria Manuel B. Marques

Title: Metal-catalysed synthesis of pharmaceutically relevant heterocycles

Biography     

Maria Manuel Marques is an Assistant Professor with Habilitation in Chemistry at the Chemistry Department of the NOVA School of Science and Technology. She received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2001 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. S. Prabhakar from New University of Lisbon. From 2001 to 2003 she joined the group of Prof. Dr. J. Mulzer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Vienna, as a postdoctoral research fellow. In 2003, she returned to - New University of Lisbon (Requimte) as a research fellow and invited professor. In 2016 she obtained her Habilitation in Chemistry and became assiatant Professor in 2018 at the same Department. Her research encompasses the development of new synthetic and sustainable methodologies involving metal-catalyzed reactions towards bioactive compounds, in particular heterocyclic molecules.