Prof. Robert H. Grubbs, Caltech
Robert H. Grubbs received his B.S. and M.S. Chemistry from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1963 and 1965. Ph.D., Chemistry, from Columbia University, New York, in 1968. NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry, Stanford University, 1968-69. He is now the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, and faculty member since 1978. He was a faculty member at Michigan State University from 1969 to 1978. The Grubbs group discovers new catalysts and studies their fundamental chemistry and applications. For example, a family of catalysts for the interconversion of olefins, the olefin metathesis reaction has been discovered in the Grubbs laboratory. In addition to their broad usage in academic research, these catalysts are now used commercially. He has also been involved in the translation of technology through the founding of five companies. In 2005, Robert H. Grubbs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemisrty jointly with Yves Chauvin and Richard R. Schrock for “the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis." https://grubbsgroup.caltech.edu

Prof. Christophe Copéret, ETH Zürich
Prof. Christophe Copéret was trained in chemistry and chemical engineering at the École Supérieure de Chimie Physique Électronique (CPE) de Lyon. He received a PhD in chemistry from Purdue University in 1996, for his research on the synthesis of complex molecules via Pd-catalyzed carbonylation reactions, supervised by Prof. E. Negishi.
After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. K.B. Sharpless at the Scripps Research Institute, Christophe was offered a research position at CNRS in 1998 and was promoted to Research Director in 2008. Since 2010, he is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences of ETH Zürich.
His scientific interest lies at the frontiers of molecular, material and surface chemistry as well as NMR spectroscopy with the aims to design molecularly-defined solid catalysts through detailed mechanistic studies and structure-activity relationships.
http://www.coperetgroup.ethz.ch

Prof. Eva Hevia, University of Bern
Eva Hevia received both, her MSci degree in Chemistry and her Ph.D. degree, from the Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) in 1998 and 2002 respectively. Her doctoral studies were under the supervision of Professor Victor Riera and Dr Julio Perez.
In 2006, after a three-year appointment at the University of Strathclyde working as a Marie Curie Fellow with Professor Robert Mulvey, she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and Lectureship at the same institution. Subsequently, she was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2010, Reader in 2011, and to Professor in 2013. In 2019, Eva moved to the University of Bern where she is currently a Professor in Inorganic Chemistry.
Eva’s research interests include applying polar organometallic reagents incorporating cooperative effects to key organic transformations, as well as developing s-block-based metal catalysts.
http://evaheviagroup.com

Prof. Todd Hyster, Cornell University
Todd Hyster is native of Minnesota and did his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota. He obtained his Ph.D. from Colorado State University, where he worked under the mentorship of Prof. Tomislav Rovis. As a graduate student, Todd developed methods for preparing nitrogen-heterocycles using Rhodium-catalyzed C–H activation. As part of this work, he was a Marie Curie Fellow in the labs of Tom Ward at the University of Basel, where he developed an artificial metalloenzyme to catalyze an asymmetric C–H activation reaction.
After completing his graduate studies, he moved to Caltech as an NIH-Postdoctoral Fellow with Frances Arnold where he evolved cytochrome P450s to catalyze nitrene-transfer reactions. He started his independent career in 2015 at Princeton University where his group is using single electron transfer mechanisms to enable substrate promiscuous enzymes to catalyze non-natural free radical reactions.
https://www.hysterlab.com 

Prof. Anat Milo, Ben Gurion University
Anat Milo received her B.Sc./B.A. in Chemistry and Humanities from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001, M.Sc. from UPMC Paris in 2004, and Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2011. Her postdoctoral studies at the University of Utah focused on developing physical organic descriptors and data analysis approaches for chemical reactions.
In October 2015, she returned to Israel to join the Department of Chemistry at Ben-Gurion University, where her research group develops experimental, statistical, and computational strategies for identifying molecular design principles in catalysis.
https://anatmilo.com 

Prof. Javier Pérez-Ramírez, ETH Zurich
Javier Pérez-​Ramírez has been full Professor of Catalysis Engineering at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering of the ETH Zurich since January 2010. Born in Benidorm, Spain, he studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Alicante, Spain, (1997) and earned his PhD degree under Profs. Moulijn and Kapteijn at TUDelft, The Netherlands (2002). He then went to industry (2002-​2005), holding several research positions at Norsk Hydro and Yara International in Porsgrunn (Norway). He returned to academia as ICREA research professor and group leader at ICIQ in Tarragona, Spain (2005-​2009). In 2010, he took up office as full professor at the ETH Zurich.

His research is focused on the science and engineering of heterogeneous catalysis to design sustainable and eco-​efficient processes.
www.ace.ethz.ch

Dr. Thomas Carl, Siegfried AG
Thomas Carl studied chemistry at the Universities of Stuttgart (Germany) and Reading (UK). He was awarded a PhD degree by the University of Basel for his research on electron transport through DNA under the supervision of Prof. Bernd Giese.
After post-doctoral studies with Prof. K. Peter C. Vollhardt at the University of California Berkeley, he returned to Switzerland in 2006 to take a position at Ciba Specialty Chemicals as process chemist. He held different management positions in industry, and last year he joined Siegfried AG as Head of Process R&D and Scale-Up.
https://www.siegfried.ch

Dr. Susanne Drechsler, SULZER Chemtech
Susanne Drechsler received her Diploma in chemical engineering from the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, in 2013. After that she moved to Fribourg, Switzerland, where she joined the group of Prof. Andreas Kilbinger as a Marie-Curie fellow to carry out her PhD thesis on aromatic amids for supramolecular polymer chemistry. In 2018 she started working for SULZER Chemtech as a R&D engineer. Since 2020 she is the head of R&D of the bio-based polymers and application group.
https://www.sulzer.com/

Dr. Markus Fischer, Merck/Sigma-Aldrich Production GmbH
Markus Fischer received his diploma in chemistry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Paul Knochel. His doctoral studies focused on the development of light-harvesting materials for organic solar cells. He received his PhD from the University of Ulm under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Peter Bäuerle.
After a research internship with Prof. Andrew Holmes at the Bio21 Institute in Melbourne, he started his career at Evonik industries in process development. Since 2011, he is working for Merck KGaA. After management positions in process development and production in Darmstadt, Germany, he is now head of process development and process safety at the Buchs site in Switzerland.
The main task of the department is the portfolio management of about 5.000 production processes and the development of novel, robust and cost effective processes for external customers and in-house products, mainly for the regulated market.
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/switzerland-schweiz.html

Dr. Edouard Godineau, Syngenta Crop Protection AG
Edouard Godineau received his PhD from the University of Bordeaux in 2007, with Prof. Yannick Landais. After a post-doctoral stay with Prof. A. Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Istitut für Kohlenforschung in Mühlhein a.d.R, he joined Syngenta Crop Protection in 2009 as a process chemist.
Since 2014, he is leading the process chemistry group at Syngenta where is he is responsible to identify and design most cost-effective possible synthetic routes to new active ingredients. Edouard was appointed Syngenta Fellow in December 2019.
https://www.syngenta.com

Dr. Teodoro Laino, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
Teodoro Laino is Principal Research Staff Member and technical leader for Chemistry/Materials at IBM Research-Zurich. He graduated in theoretical chemistry in 2001 from University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) di Pisa, and received the doctorate in chemistry in 2006 from SNS.
The focus of his research is on materials simulations for industrial-related problems and on the application of machine learning/artificial intelligence technologies to chemistry and materials science problems.
https://www.zurich.ibm.com

Dr. Audrey Langlois, Novartis
Audrey Langlois obtained her PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where she worked on asymmetric catalysis in the group of Prof. E. Peter Kündig. In 2012, she moved to Harvard University (Cambridge, USA) to perform her post-doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Andy G. Myers, working on the design of a fully-synthetic route to macrolide antibiotics. Audrey returned to Switzerland in 2013 to start her career as a process chemist. First, at SpiroChem, an ETH-Zürich spin-off and since 2014 at Novartis within the Chemical and Analytical Development department. Over the past years, Audrey has supported several drug development projects, ranging from classical small molecules to new chemical modalities.
https://www.novartis.com

Dr. Lucie Lovelle, Novartis
Lucie Lovelle is a Fellow in the Chemical and Analytical Development organization of Novartis. Lucie earned her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Montreal (Canada), where she worked, under the supervision of Prof. André B. Charette, on the diastereo- and enantioselective synthesis of 1,2,3-trisubstituted cyclopropanes. In 2010, she moved to ETH Zürich (Switzerland) to complete her post-doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Ryan Gilmour, leveraging from the gauche effect to design and synthesize various fluorinated organocatalysts. Lucie was recruited a year later by Janssen, pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (Schaffhausen, Switzerland) to work on, among other projects, the development of bedaquiline, an approved marketed drug to treat multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Since 2015, Lucie is working at Novartis in process research & development for drug candidates across indications and phases of clinical development.
https://www.novartis.com

Dr. Christoph Boss, Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery Chemistry, Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Dr. Christoph Boss completed his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Bern (Prof. Reinhart Keese), Switzerland followed by post-doctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI; Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr.) in LaJolla, California, USA.
From 1999 until 2012, he had various positions of increasing responsibility in Actelion's drug discovery chemistry department contributing to the identification of several lead compounds including macitentan (Opsumit) for PAH and daridorexant for insomnia. From November 2012 to June 2017, he was the Senior Group Leader Chemistry Technologies at Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He joined Idorsia when the company was established in June 2017 as the Senior Group Leader in Drug Discovery Chemistry, Oncology. He was appointed Head of Drug Discovery Chemistry and member of the Idorsia leadership team in July 2019. In 2019, Dr. Christoph Boss received the SCS Industrial Science Award from the Swiss Chemical Society. He is a co-inventor on more than 100 published patent applications and co-author on more than 50 papers, abstracts, book chapters, commentaries, editorials and reviews.
http://Idorsia.com

Dr. Jos de Keijzer, Sr. Workflow Architect, Chemspeed
Jos joined Chemspeed in 2018 as a Workflow Architect. In this role, he interacts with customers to understand their technical requirements, which enables him to translate their manual workflow into a Chemspeed Automated solution. From 2007 - 2018, Jos had a similar position at Symyx Technologies, Freeslate Technologies and Unchained Labs. Prior to this, he worked at Avantium on high throughput fixed bed catalysis and crystallization of drugs. He also designed the first high throughput polyolefins reactor station at DSM in Geleen.
Jos holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Free University of Amsterdam.
https://www.chemspeed.com 

Elisa Anders, MSc, Talent Acquisition Lead DE-CH, Merck
Elisa received her diploma in molecular biology from University of Bonn, DE and University of Zurich, CH in 2010. In her master thesis she focused on cell entry pathways used by adenoviruses to overcome the lung epithelial barrier. Afterwards she went to University of Bern to conduct research on the parasite Theileria in order to understand reversible mechanisms of cancer induced cells before she changed into the field of Recruitment. Elisa started her recruitment career in an agency specialized in the scientific area. Today Elisa is leading the Talent Acquisition team for Merck in german- speaking Switzerland. Together with her colleagues she recruits curious talents for 4 Merck sites within Switzerland.
https://merckgroup.com

Dr. Cecelia Tortoreto, Siegfried AG
Cecilia obtained her PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where she worked on ruthenium catalyzed reactions in the group of Prof. Jérôme Lacour. In 2014, she moved to Emory University (Atlanta, GA) to complete her post-doctoral studies on C-H functionalization in the group of Prof. Huw M.L. Davies. Since 2016, she works at Siegfried (Evionnaz, Switzerland) in the Process R&D department and is responsible for development, upscaling and validation of manufacturing processes for active pharmaceuticals ingredients and their intermediates.
https://www.siegfried.ch

Audrey Dillier, Siegfried AG
Audrey obtained her Federal Diploma of higher Education in human resources where she developed her skills as an HR specialist, which she has been practicing for 6 years. Audrey started her career in the watch industry and then worked as an HR Consultant to recruit profiles for industrial clients. Since 2020, Audrey is working at Siegfried as Talent Acquisition and HR Generalist and manages recruitment and develops the employer brand there.
https://www.siegfried.ch