Confirmed Speakers

Phil Baran was born in 1977 in Denville, New Jersey. He received his B.S. in chemistry from NYU in 1997, his Ph.D. at The Scripps Research Institute in 2001, and from 2001-2003 he was an NIH-postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. His independent career began at Scripps in the summer of 2003. He currently holds the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry. Phil has published over 180 scientific articles and has been the recipient of several ACS awards such as the Corey (2015), Pure Chemistry (2010), Fresenius (2006), and Nobel Laureate Signature (2003), and several international distinctions such as the Hirata Gold Medal and Mukaiyama Prize (Japan), the RSC award in Synthesis (UK), and the Sackler Prize (Israel). In 2013 he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, in 2015 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2016 he was awarded the Blavatnik National Award, and most recently, in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He has delivered hundreds of lectures around the world and consults for numerous companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb (since late 2005), Boehringer-Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, DuPont and TEVA, and is a scientific advisory board member for Eisai, Abide, and AsymChem. In 2016 he was appointed as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He co-founded Sirenas Marine Discovery (2012) and Vividion Therapeutics (2016) and in 2013 he co-authored The Portable Chemist’s Consultant, an interactive book published on the iBooks store along with his graduate class in Heterocyclic Chemistry (viewable for free by anyone on iTunes University). Outside of the lab, Phil enjoys spending time with his wife Ana and three young children (Lucia, Leah, and Manuel).

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Syuzanna received her Master's degree in Chemistry from Yerevan State University, Armenia, after which she moved to Moscow, Russia, in 1999 to undertake her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Belokon. After spending several months in 2002 as a visiting scientist in Warsaw, Poland, working with Prof. Grela, Syuzanna joined the research group of Prof. Feringa at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands in 2003 as a postdoctoral Research Fellow. In 2007 Syuzanna joined the Process&Development department at Janssen Pharmaceutica, Belgium. Syuzanna started her independent research career in 2010, when she was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. In 2013 she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor (adjunct hoogleraar) at the University of Groningen. Syuzanna’s research activities include synthesis, organometallic reactions, catalysis, enantioselective transformations and autocatalysis. Syuzanna's work has been recognized by a recent major award from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society, the KNCV Gold Medal 2016, the premier prize for researchers in the chemical sciences in the Netherlands, and the prestigious Solvias Ligand Contest in 2011.

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David Leigh is one of the pioneers of the field of artificial molecular machinery and molecular nanotechnology. He has introduced influential concepts for the synthesis of interlocked and knotted molecular architectures, pioneered the use of ratchet mechanisms in the invention of synthetic molecular motors, and initiated the field of molecular robotics. David obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK, in 1987 and, after postdoctoral research at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, David returned to the UK as a Lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1989. After spells at the Universities of Warwick and Edinburgh, in 2012 David returned to Manchester where he is currently the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry and a Royal Society Research Professor. He has won a number of major international awards including the Izatt-Christensen Award for Macrocyclic Chemistry, EU Descartes Prize and the Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS), the UK’s National Academy of Science and Letters, in 2009.

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Nuno Maulide was born in Lisbon in 1979. After graduating in chemistry from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in 2003, he completed an M.Sc. at the Ecole Polytechnique in 2004 (Summa cum Laude, ranking 1st out of 22 students) and received his Ph.D. from the Universite catholique de Louvain in 2007.He subsequently moved to Stanford University under Barry M. Trost for postdoctoral studies before returning to Europe to take an endowed position as Max-Planck Research Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Kohlenforschung in early 2009, where he also received a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (2011). Since October 2013 he is Full Professor and Chair of Organic Synthesis at the University of Vienna. His research interests span diverse areas within organic chemistry, focusing on unconventional reaction mechanisms and intermediates. He has received among others the Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award (2012), the ADUC prize of the German Chemical Society (2012), the inaugural EurJOC Young Researcher Award (2015), the Elisabeth Lutz Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2016) and the Prize of the City of Vienna (2017). Furthermore, he is an ERC Starting (2011) and Consolidator (2016) Grantee.

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Jeffrey I. Seeman (Department of Chemistry, University of Richmond) has over 185 publications and patents, in fields as diverse as natural products chemistry, chemical physics, flavor technology, responsible conduct of research and the history and sociology of chemistry. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and has studied at Oxford University with Sir Jack Baldwin and Steve Davies. He was the creator and editor of the series of 20 autobiographies of eminent chemists entitled Profiles, Pathways and Dreams. He also created and manages the Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award program for the Division of the History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. He has served as Chair of Division of History of Chemistry of the ACS, on the Board of Directors of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and on the advisory boards of the Petroleum Research Fund, The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Accountability in Research. He also produces videos for educational purposes.

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