Ben L. Feringa obtained his PhD degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands under the guidance of Professor Hans Wynberg. After working as a research scientist at Shell in the Netherlands and the UK, he was appointed lecturer and in 1988 full professor at the University of Groningen and named the Jacobus H. van't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences in 2004. He was elected Foreign Honory member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member and vice-president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he was appointed Academy Professor and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. Feringa’s research has been recognized with a number of awards including the Koerber European Science Award (2003), the Spinoza Award (2004), the Prelog gold medal (2005), the Norrish Award of the ACS (2007), the Paracelsus medal (2008), the Chirality medal (2009),the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award (2011), Humboldt award (2012) and the Nagoya gold medal (2013). Feringa is currently director of the Center for Systems Chemistry at the University of Groningen. The research interest includes stereochemistry, organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, molecular switches and motors, self-assembly and molecular nanosystems.

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Ilan Marek, FRSC, born in Haifa in 1963 but educated in France moved to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1997. He is Professor of chemistry and since 2005, he holds the Sir Michael and Lady Sobell Academic Chair. His scientific interest lies in the design and development of new and efficient stereo- and enantioselective strategies for the synthesis of important complex molecular structures. For his work, he received several international prices and awards (the most recent are the 2011 Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Organometallic Chemistry and the 2012 Janssen Pharmaceutica Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis).

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Matthias Beller studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1989 in the group of Prof. Tietze. As recipient of a Liebig scholarship, he spent one year in the group of Prof. Sharpless at the MIT. From 1991 to 1995, Beller was an employee of Hoechst AG in Frankfurt, where he directed the "Homogeneous Catalysis" project. In 1996 he moved to the Technical University of München as C3 Professor for Inorganic Chemistry. In 1998 he relocated to the University of Rostock to head the Institute for Organic Catalysis (IfOK). Since 2006 Matthias Beller is director of the newly formed Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis. His scientific work has been so far published in ca. 500 original publications and review articles. In addition, over 90 patent applications have been filed in the last decade.

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Dale L. Boger is the Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute and a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. He received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Kansas (1975) where he worked with Professor A. W. Burgstahler and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University (1980) working with Professor E. J. Corey. He was on the faculty at the University of Kansas and Purdue University before joining TSRI in 1991.

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Jan-E. Bäckvall received his Master of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1971 from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, where he also obtained his Ph. D. in 1975. During 1975 – 1976 he spent one year with K. B. Sharpless at MIT. In 1976, he became Assistant Professor and in 1977 Associate Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. In 1986, he moved to Uppsala University as a full Professor. In 1997 he moved to his current position at Stockholm University. Prof. Bäckvall is a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Academia Europaea, as well as of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. He is a member of a number of Editorial Boards and is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of Chemistry – A European Journal. Prof. Bäckvall has published more than 400 papers and presented more than 130 lectures at international conferences.

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Karl Gademann (born 1972) was educated at ETH Zürich and Harvard University (PhD with Prof. Dr. Dieter Seebach, postdoctoral studies with Prof. Dr Eric N. Jacobsen, Habilitation associated with Prof. Dr. Erick M. Carreira). After four years as assistant professor at EPFL in Lausanne, he moved in 2010 to the University of Basel, where he was recently promoted to Ordinarius (full professor) holding a chair in organic chemistry. Karl Gademann has had over seventy publications, holds two patents, and received several awards including a Novartis Early Career Award 2010, the national Latsis Prize 2011, the Lilly Lecture Award, the Ruzicka Medal and the Liebig Lectureship of the GDCh. He was awarded the European Young Investigator grant related to natural product synthesis and his research interests include the synthesis and chemical biology of natural products.

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Frank Glorius was educated in chemistry at the Universität Hannover, Stanford University (Prof. Paul A. Wender), the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and Universität Basel (Prof. Andreas Pfaltz), and Harvard University (Prof. David A. Evans). In 2001, he began his independent research career at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Germany (Prof. Alois Fürstner) and in 2004 was promoted to Associate Professor for Organic Chemistry at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. Since 2007, he has been Full Professor at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. His research focuses on the development of new concepts for catalysis and their implementation in organic synthesis. Topics include the design of NHCs and MOFs, C-H activations, asymmetric arene hydrogenation and asymmetric umpolung organocatalysis.

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Véronique Gouverneur received her undergraduate degree in chemistry at the Université catholique de Louvain (LLN, Belgium), where she also did her Ph D under the supervision of Prof. L. Ghosez. In 1992, she moved to a postdoctoral position with Prof. R. Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute (California, USA). She returned to Europe in 1994 as Maître de Conference at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France). In 1998, she started her independent research career as a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of Oxford and became a Fellow of Merton College. Her research program aims at developing new tactical approaches towards fluorinated molecules to address long-standing problems in the synthesis of fluorinated analogues of natural products, pharmaceutical drugs and molecular probes for PET imaging. She is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford since 2008.

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Shū Kobayashi studied at the University of Tokyo, receiving his Ph.D. in 1988 working under the direction of Professor T. Mukaiyama. Following an initial period as assistant professor, he was promoted to lecturer then associate professor at Science University of Tokyo (SUT). In 1998, he moved to the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, as full professor. In 2007, he was appointed to his current position as professor of organic chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, the University of Tokyo, and is now Head of Department. He has held various visiting professorships, including the Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (1993), Kyoto University (1995), Nijmegen University (1996), Philipps-University of Marburg (1997), Paris-Sud (2010). Professor Kobayashi has wide-ranging research interests that include the development of new synthetic methods and novel catalysts, organic reactions in water, solid-phase synthesis, total synthesis of biologically interesting compounds, and organometallic chemistry. He has held numerous named lectureships and is a recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists (1991), Ciba-Geigy Research Foundation Award (1994), Springer Award in Organometallic Chemistry (1997), IBM Science Award (2001), Organic Reactions Lecturer (2002), Nagoya Silver Medal (2002), Mitsui Chemical Catalysis Science Award (2005), JSPS Prize (2005), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (2006), Howard Memorial Lecturer (2006), C.S. Hamilton Award (2007), and Merck-Cambridge Lecturer (2007).

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Professor Michael J. Krische obtained a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where he performed research with Professor Henry Rapoport. After a year abroad as a Fulbright Fellow, he initiated graduate research at Stanford University with Professor Barry Trost as a Veatch Graduate Fellow. Following receipt of his Ph.D. degree, he worked with Jean-Marie Lehn at the Université Louis Pasteur as an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow. In Fall 1999, Professor Krische was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He was promoted directly to Full Professor in Fall 2004. In Fall 2007, he was appointed the Robert A. Welch Chair in Science.

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Emmanuel Lacôte studied at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), then joined the group of Max Malacria at Université Pierre & Marie Curie (UPMC). He moved to Fribourg (Switzerland) for an extended stay in the group of Philippe Renaud, which led to a joint Ph.D. from UPMC and the University of Fribourg (1999). After a postdoctorate position at Stanford with Paul Wender, devoted to the total synthesis of bryostatin analogues, he was appointed at CNRS in 2000, where he is now Directeur de Recherche at ICSN (Gif sur Yvette). His current research involves the chemistry of isothioureas and boron, as well as the elaboration of organo-polyoxometalates for catalysis and chemical biology.

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István Markó received his BSc and PhD from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, in 1978 and 1983 respectively. He carried out his post-doctoral studies firstly at the same University with Professor L. Ghosez (1983-85) and subsequently at the University of Vermont, USA, with Professor M.E. Kuehne (1985-87) and also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, with Professor K.B. Sharpless (1987-88). In 1988 he was appointed lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK, and in 1993, he returned to the Catholic University of Louvain as a lecturer, becoming Professor and Director of the Organic Chemistry Laboratory in 1998. Professor Markó acts an industrial consultant to various large pharmaceutical companies, as well as sitting on the board of several professional committees.

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Professor Gary Molander received his B.S. degree at Iowa State University in 1975 working with Professor Richard C. Larock. He entered the graduate chemistry program at Purdue University in 1975, obtaining his Ph.D. degree in 1979 under the direction of Professor Herbert C. Brown. He joined Professor Barry Trost's group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow in 1980, and in 1981 he accepted an appointment at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as an assistant professor of chemistry. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988 and Professor of Chemistry in 1990. In 1999 he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2001 he accepted the Allan Day Term Chair in Chemistry, and in 2007 he was appointed the Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry, which he currently holds. Professor Molander’s research interests focus on the development of new synthetic methods for organic synthesis.

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Klaus Müller, organic chemist by training (PhD with Prof Albert Eschenmoser, ETHZ), got involved in theoretical and physical organic as well as biostructural chemistry. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the US and continued as visiting lecturer at Harvard University for two years before returning to the ETHZ where hid did his Habilitation in 1977. In 1982, he joined F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Basel, to set up and further developed molecular modeling, biostructural research, bioinformatics, and was involved in the development of automated miniaturized key technologies in discovery research. From 1998 till 2009 he was Head of ‘Science & Technology Relations’, acting as liaison person to academic and non-academic external groups. He was a Member of the Board and Secretary-General of the Roche Research Foundation from 1999 till end 2008. Since 1990 he is extraordinary professor at the University of Basel. After his regular retirement in spring 2009, he continues to be affiliated with Roche as a consultant, while teaching and pursuing research in organic chemistry at the ETH Zurich.

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Tobias Ritter received his undergraduate education in Braunschweig, Bordeaux, Lausanne, and Stanford, and received a MS in 1999. He performed research with Prof. Trost at Stanford, obtained his PhD with Prof. Carreira at ETH Zurich in 2004, and was a postdoc with Prof. Grubbs at Caltech. In 2006, Tobias was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard and promoted to Associate Professor in 2010.

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Professor Scott A. Snyder received his early training in chemistry at Williams College. He obtained his Ph.D. from The Scripps Research Institute in 2004 under the tutelege of Professor K. C. Nicolaou, with whom he also co-authored the textbook Classics in Total Synthesis II, before pursuing postdoctoral studies at Harvard University with Professor E. J. Corey. In August of 2006 he began his independent career at Columbia University, where he is an Associate Professor. His research is focused on using the unique structures of complex natural products to address challenges in chemoselectivity. Special emphasis has been placed on understanding the chemistry of unique, oligomeric natural products and developing simple chemicals that can install halogens selectively on complex frameworks.

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Paul Wender was educated at Wilkes, Yale and Columbia Universities. He is currently the Bergstrom Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology (Medical School) and is affiliated with several programs including Molecular Imaging, Chemical Biology, Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Cancer Center, Cancer Nanotechnology, and Molecular Therapeutics Programs. He cofounded CellGate and contributed to founding two other biotech companies. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research involves studies in chemistry, biology, medicine, and materials science and emphasizes step/time economy, the ideal synthesis, and function oriented synthesis and includes studies directed at imaging, drug delivery, cancer immunotherapy, disease resistance, HIV/AIDS eradication, and Alzheimer’s disease. He has introduced over 25 new reactions, reported total syntheses of numerous major targets (e.g., taxol, bryostatin, resiniferatoxin, phorbol) and advanced therapeutic leads and drug delivery systems (guanidinium-rich molecular transporters).

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Professor, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. PhD, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1999). Postdoc., University of Virginia (1999-2002), and Georgetown University Medical Center (2002-2003), Associate Prof., Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (2003-2005), Prof., Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2005-present). Research interests: new synthetic methodologies, asymmetric reactions, synthesis of biologically active natural & un-natural molecules, and medicinal chemistry.

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