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William Fenical (Bill) received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry, and then joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), UC-San Diego, in 1973. Bill is currently Distinguished Professor of Oceanography and Pharmaceutical Science, and Founding Director of SIO’s Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine. Bill’s research interests have focused on the field of marine natural products chemistry. For the past 30+ years his interests have been to develop marine microbial resources for the utilization of marine microorganisms as a source for new drug discovery. His efforts have resulted in the advancement of two drugs, currently in late phase III human trials for the treatment of glioblastoma brain and non-small cell lung cancers. He has discovered several potent new antibiotics and has a current research effort to discover marine microbial drugs for immunotherapies of cancer. Bill has co-authored more than 510 papers in this field and has served on the advisory boards of 8 major journals. Bill has received several awards, among them the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Riverside, the Paul Scheuer Award in Marine Natural Products Chemistry, the Silver Medal Award from the International Society of Chemical Ecology, the National Cancer Institute’s Merit Award, the American Chemical Society’s Ernest Guenther Award for the Study of Natural Products and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Pharmacognosy. In 2008, Bill was elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Science, and in 2015 he was honored as Scientist of the Year by the San Diego Regional American Chemical Society. More recently Bill was nominated as a member of the Sigma Xi Honor Society.
Angelo Fontana is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Naples "Federico II" and Director of the Institute of Biomolecular Chemistry of the National Research Council. As the author of more than 230 papers and patents, his research has focused on naturally occurring biologically active small molecules mostly from marine organisms. He is co-founder of BioSEArch SRL, a start-up for the development of marine natural products in medicine and as ingredients in foods and cosmetics. In 2009 he received the Apivita Award from the Phytochemistry Society of Europe for the contribution in the field of natural products. His current interests concern the discovery and development of small molecules capable of activating or suppressing the immune response in cancer and chronic degenerative diseases, the biosynthesis of lipids and secondary metabolites in marine eukaryotes and opisthobranchs, and the biological synthesis of hydrogen in the hyperthermophilic bacterium Thermotoga neapolitana.
Ryuichi Sakai received an MSc. in marine science at the University of the Ryukyus, Japan under supervision of Tatsuo Higa, and then joined the Sea Pharm project at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution working as a research scientist for approximately two years. He then entered the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and received his Ph.D. in chemical science under supervision of Kenneth L. Rinehart. He worked on didemnins that resulted in ecteinascidins for his thesis and developed efficient isolation of these compounds and discovery of several new analogs. He returned to Japan to join the Kitasato University School of Fisheries Sciences, where he worked on water-soluble bioactive marine natural products, focusing especially on neuroactive molecules. He then moved to Hokkaido University. Currently, he is a professor at Hokkaido University, Faculty of fisheries sciences. His research interest has always been the discovery of structurally and biologically unique marine natural products that are not limited to small molecules but extend to proteins. He is also conducting a research project to understand the importance of symbiosis in coral reef organisms and the ecology and physiology of commercially important marine species with a metabolomics approach. He coauthored 120+ papers in this field. He has recently received the Japanese Society of Fisheries Science Award.
Fernando Albericio is Research Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa & Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona. He was the Inaugural Rector of Yachay Tech (Ecuador), and Founder and General Director of the Barcelona Science Park. Currently, he is catalyzing the creation of BioDurban. His major research interests cover practically all aspects of peptide synthesis (new reactions, building blocks, coupling reagents, solid phase supports, protecting groups, and linkers) and combinatorial chemistry methodologies, as well. Lastly, his group is concentrating efforts in greening peptide synthesis. Furthermore, his group is also involved in synthesis of peptides and small molecules with therapeutic activities (cancer and infectious diseases), and in nanotechnology, developing new systems for drug delivery and strategies for diagnostics as well.
He has published more than 1000 scientific articles, filed more than 60 patents, and graduated more than 75 Ph.D. students.
Detmer Sipkema is Associate Professor in Marine Microbial Ecology at Wageningen University and earned his BSc, MSc and PhD in Bioprocess Engineering from the same university. He performed postdoctoral research at the University of California Berkeley in the Laboratory of Prof. Harvey Blanch and at the CEAB-CSIC (Spain) in the group of Prof. Maria Uriz. In addition, he worked as scientist for the company DSM (The Netherlands). His research is driven by ambition to understand and apply symbiotic interactions between marine microorganisms and their hosts. These interactions in the marine environment are special because of their early appearance in evolution (e.g. sea sponges). In addition, the deeper oceans are the last natural frontier on Earth and little is known about the ecology and evolution of microorganisms that inhabit these waters. The more applied aspects of the research are focused on discovery of bioactive compounds from microbes associated to sponges and other marine invertebrates that can be used for pharmaceutical purposes.
Antonio Hernández Daranas is a Senior Scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) as well as Director of the NMR and mass spectrometry facilities at the IPNA-CSIC. He is a structural chemist with interests in structural biology. Applications over the years were focused on the chemical study of marine organisms, in particular dinoflagellates, that resulted in the discovery and structure elucidation of several novel bioactive natural products. The study of protein-ligand interactions by NMR, calorimetry and computational simulations has been another important subject of research. A major focus of his work over recent years has been in developing more efficient structure elucidation methodologies using computational techniques and NMR spectroscopy. As a result, he has established the structure of a large number of structures, some of great complexity, generating more than 80 publications and participating in a number of international symposia. He received the award for Innovation in Research of Natural Products from the Specialized Group of Natural Products of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015.
Olivier P. Thomas is Professor of Marine Biodiscovery at the University of Galway-Ireland since 2015. He obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University Paris Descartes-France in 2002. He was then hired as a post-doctoral researcher at the CEA Saclay-France where he worked on isotopic labelling of proteins. In 2004, he was appointed lecturer in Marine Natural Products Chemistry at the University Nice Cote d’Azur where he worked mainly on the description of the chemical diversity of Mediterranean and French overseas invertebrates in collaboration with the Spanish company PharmaMar. After a promotion in 2012 as professor in marine environmental metabolomics in the same university, he obtained a Chair in Marine Biodiscovery in Galway Ireland where he is developing a Biomaterial Repository of Irish species (www.imbd.ie). He is also the leader of the metabolomics component of the Tara Pacific consortium focusing on coral and other invertebrates located in the Pacific Ocean.
Roberto Berlinck graduated in Chemistry at the University of Campinas, Brazil and obtained his PhD in Sciences (Organic Chemistry) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 1993 moved to the Universidade de São Paulo as assistant professor. During 1997-1998 was a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, in collaboration with Professor Raymond J. Andersen, then between 2014 and 2015 as a visiting Professor at the University of Michigan in collaboration with professor David H. Sherman. Since 1993, Dr. Berlinck’s research interest included the discovery of pharmacologically active chemicals from marine invertebrates. In 1998 started the first Brazilian program on the investigation of microbial secondary metabolism, including bacteria and fungi. Dr. Berlinck established collaborations with several Brazilian and international investigators, including specialists in cancer, inflammation and immunomodulation, antibiotics, parasitic diseases, in biodiscovery, organic synthesis and natural product biosynthesis. More recently Dr. Berlinck’s interests moved towards the understanding of biochemical pathways controlling the biosynthesis of biologically active secondary metabolites produced by fungi in culture conditions.
Sylvia Urban is one of Australia’s leading natural product chemists. With over 25 years’ experience in biodiscovery science, she has led the isolation and evaluation of hundreds of natural products derived from the Australian and New Zealand environment. Her research group has made numerous discoveries across natural products science leading to multiple high impact publications. Sylvia has fostered transformative industry funded research and has an established international cross-disciplinary research profile. Her contributions to Australian science were recognised when she was made a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 2020. Over the last decade Sylvia has become an educational leader, acknowledged by her appointment as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2018, and in being awarded numerous teaching awards including an Australian Award for University Teaching. Responsible for the Bachelor of Science degree she has transformed education in STEM to provide flexible student choice and connection across science disciplines. She promotes better opportunities for women in STEM through her role as the Chair of the Women Researchers’ Network and is committed to embedding Indigenous knowledge into the science curriculum through her STEM Reconciliation Facilitator role at RMIT University
Janine Cossy did her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University Champagne-Ardenne in Reims (France), working on photochemistry under the supervision of Prof. J.-P. Pète. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. B. M. Trost at the University of Wisconsin (USA), she came back to Reims as CNRS Associate Researcher. In 1990, she was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry at the ESPCI in Paris. Janine Cossy’s research interests focus on the synthesis of natural products and biologically active molecules and on the development of synthetic methods. Her research efforts have resulted in more than 560 publications and 18 patents. Among the awards, she received, the CNRS Silver Medal (France, 1996), the UK Royal Society Rosalyn Franklin International Lecturership awarded to internationally recognized women scientists (UK, 2005); the IUPAC 2019 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering (2019). She is a member of the French Academy of sciences and was promoted “Officier de la Légion d’Honneur en 2023.
Laurent Meijer. After 32 years of classical academic career (PhD (Lille/Paris Universities), post-doc (Stanford University, Hopkins Marine Laboratory), CNRS researcher and team leader (Station Biologique de Roscoff), sabbaticals (University of Washington, Seattle; Rockefeller University, New York), Laurent Meijer founded ManRos Therapeutics and Perha Pharmaceuticals, two small biotech companies focused on the development of kinase inhibitors as therapeutic drugs. Aged 70, he is author of >365 scientific articles and co-inventor in 47 patents. His two current major projects are: (1) the development of otoprotective drugs for the prevention of hearing loss induced by ototoxic agents and acoustic trauma. (2) the development of DYRK1A inhibitors for the correction of cognitive disorders associated with Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. In these latter indications, the drug candidate Leucettinib-21 should enter phase 1 clinical trials in September 2023. Leucettinibs are synthetic heterocycles derived from Leucettamine B, a marine natural product identified in the calcareous sponge Leucetta microraphis.
Shinichi Sunagawa earned university degrees in Biochemistry (BSc/MSc), Aquatic Ecology (MSc) and Systems Biology (PhD), before he worked a Postdoctoral Researcher and Research Scientist (Computational Biology) at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently an Associate Professor of Microbiome Research at the Department of Biology at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Prof. Sunagawa and his group develop bioinformatic databases and tools to study environmental microbial communities. He has led some of the main research outputs of Tara Oceans, an international research consortium aiming at advancing our understanding of the diversity, ecology and evolution of marine microbes at global scale. More recent work explored the discovery potential of the ocean microbiome for novel enzymes, natural products and biosynthetically diverse groups of previously unknown microbes by environmental genomics.
Tadeusz ‘Ted’ Molinski earned his PhD in organic chemistry at the Australian National University before moving to the US to begin a career in marine natural products (MNPs). After two postdoctoral appointments (with Professor D. John Faulkner, Scripps Institution of Oceanography – SIO – at UC San Diego, and Chris Ireland, University of Utah), he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry, UC Davis in 1989 where, by 1997, he was promoted to Full Professor. In 2005, he returned to La Jolla and currently holds joint
appointments at UCSD in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the School of Pharmacy and SIO. The Molinski group focuses on the isolation-structure elucidation, total synthesis, and medicinal chemistry of MNPs from marine invertebrates, and innovation of new spectroscopic techniques in NMR and CD. He is a coauthor of >200 publications and recipient of numerous awards. In 2020, Professor Prof. Molinski was presented the Ernest Guenther Award; the highest honor accorded by the American Chemical Society for research in the chemistry of natural products.
Deniz Tasdemir is professor of marine natural products chemistry at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany), where she leads Research Unit Marine Natural Products Chemistry and GEOMAR Centre for Marine Biotechnology (GEOMAR-Biotech). Deniz obtained her PhD in phytochemistry at ETH-Zurich and her post-doctoral training on anticancer sponge metabolites at University of Utah. She has been studying chemical diversity of marine macro- and microorganisms from tropical, temperate and polar seas towards discovery of new bioactive/functional secondary metabolites. Her recent interests include marine chemical ecology focusing on host-microbe-pathogen interactions in seaweeds and seagrasses. She heavily employs LC-MS/MS based untargeted metabolomics, spatial metabolomics (imaging MS), innovative microbial culture techniques and high-resolution spectroscopy in both drug discovery and chemical ecology research. She is recipient of many prestigious awards, such as Pierre Fabre Prize (PSE), Egon-Stahl Silver Medal (GA) and Waters Award for Excellence in Natural Product Innovation.
Jaclyn M. Winter is an Associate Professor at the University of Utah in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. She earned a dual BS in Chemistry and Molecular Genetics from the State University of New York College at Fredonia and obtained her Ph.D. in Marine Natural Product Biosynthesis under the guidance of Professor Bradley Moore at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. After graduate school, she carried out postdoctoral training with Professor Christian Hertweck at the Hans Knӧll Institute and Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology in Jena, Germany and with Professor Yi Tang at UCLA. In 2015, she started her independent career in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Utah and runs an interdisciplinary research program focused on natural product biosynthesis and the bioengineering of natural product pathways, with a particular emphasis on using marine-derived fungi and microorganisms isolated from the hypersaline environment of Great Salt Lake as resources for antibiotic discovery and development. She is the recipient of a Merck/AAAS Research Fellowship, NIH Marine Biotechnology Predoctoral Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, Claude ZoBell Fellowship, L’Oréal/AAAS USA Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women in Science, and two College of Pharmacy Teacher of the Year awards.
Eva Sonnenschein received her MSc in Biology focussing on Biological Oceanography at the University of Kiel, Germany and the University of Southern Denmark conducting her thesis research at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. She completed her PhD in Marine Microbiology at Constructor University and the International Max Planck Research School for Marine Microbiology, Germany. She worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, USA and as postdoctoral researcher, then Assistant Professor and Senior Scientist at the Technical University of Denmark. Now, Eva is an Associate Professor in Biosciences at Swansea University in Wales. Her group studies the communication of marine microbes on the molecular level with focus on the environmentally important systems of microalgae and microplastic. She is fascinated by microbial chemical ecology and how we can use this knowledge to identify novel, sustainable solutions for biotechnological applications.