Prof. Christine BEEMELMANNS (Saarland University, Germany)

Christine Beemelmanns studied Chemistry at the RWTH Aachen, and after graduation went to Japan for a one-year research stay in the group of Prof.  Sodeoka at RIKEN. Back in Germany she worked at the FU Berlin with Prof. Reißig and received her PhD in Organic Chemistry. She then worked another six months in Japan at the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Prof K. Suzuki and joined shortly afterwards the group of Prof. Clardy at Harvard Medical School (Boston) in 2011.

End of 2013, she received a call from the Hans-Knöll Institute (HKI) to work there as a Junior Research Group leader in the field of Natural Products Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

In 2020, she was elected as Margaret L. and Harlan L. Goering Visiting Professors in Organic Chemistry at UW Madison (spring term 2020).

In 2022, Beemelmanns was appointed Professor for Biochemistry of Microbial Metabolism at the Leipzig University. In October 2022, she accepted a call for the Full Professorship on Medicinal-Pharmaceutical Microbiota Research at Saarland University together with the HIPS.

Her research combines different aspects of natural product chemistry, applied microbiology and organic and natural product chemistry and aims to chemically and to functionally characterize microbial signaling and defense molecules in different model systems. The analysis of ancient and evolved microbial interactions allows her to discover unprecedented chemical core structures with potential pharmaceutical potential.

https://www.beemelmanns-lab.de/christine-beemelmanns.html

Dr. Karl GADEMANN (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Karl Gademann (1972) was educated at ETH Zürich and Harvard University, where he worked with Prof. Dieter Seebach, Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen, and Prof. Erick M. Carreira. His previous professorial appointments include the EPFL in Lausanne and the University of Basel, where he served as full professor and dean of research. Karl Gademann served as the department chair of the department of chemistry and also a member of the research council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

His work has been recognized by a number of international awards, including the Latsis prize, the Novartis Early Career Award, the Ruzicka Medal, The Liebig Lecture by the German Chemical Society, and the European Young Investigator Award. He delivered the Novartis Chemistry Lecture at the University of Illinois in 2016. In summer 2020, he was named as a Fellow of Chemistry Europe.

https://www.chem.uzh.ch/en/research/groups/gademann/curriculumVitae.html

Prof. Wim VRANKEN (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium)

Proteins perform a wide variety of functions in cells through interactions with each other and many additional molecules. These interactions are traditionally understood from a static description (a picture); however proteins are not static, on the contrary they change between multiple states (a movie). They move dynamically between these states (conformations) – our research is aimed elucidating the relation between dynamics, conformation and experimental (mostly NMR) data on proteins. By unravelling the underlying physical and chemical principles with statistics and informatics, and relating them to biological events, we try to better understand how proteins work, and generate new approaches that predict how they work – placing the research in the interdisciplinary structural bioinformatics or structural computational biology category.

https://ai.vub.ac.be/team/wim-vranken/

Prof. Erick CARREIRA (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Professor Carreira's research program focuses on the asymmetric synthesis of biologically active, stereochemically complex, natural products. Target molecules are selected which pose unique challenges in asymmetric bond construction. A complex multistep synthesis endeavor provides a goal-oriented setting within which to engage in reaction innovation and design. Drawing from the areas of organometallic chemistry, coordination chemistry, and molecular recognition, Carreira's group is developing catalytic and stoichiometric reagents for asymmetric stereocontrol.

https://carreira.ethz.ch/

Dr. Emmanuel ROULLAND (University of Paris-Cité, France)

Dr. Pauline POINOT (University of Poitiers, France)

Directrice adjointe de l'IC2MP

Maître de conférences - Equipe E-BICOM

Dr. Françoise OCHSENBEIN (I2BC Paris-Saclay, France)

Together with R Guerois, we lead a Team at I2BC (Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell). We combine computational and experimental strategies to unravel the molecular bases underlying the dynamic assembly of specific protein networks.

Our research interests are focused on the complexes involved in maintaining genome integrity and chromatin maintenance. and we are particularly interested in chaperoning processes. We characterize the structure of complexes, and design inhibitory compounds capable of interfering with these interactions.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/francoise-ochsenbein-b7116412/?originalSubdomain=fr

Dr. Bastien NAY (Ecole Polytechnique, France)

After completing his pharmacy studies in Bordeaux, Bastien Nay obtained a DEA (postgraduate diploma) in Biomolecular Chemistry from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse in 1997. He then pursued a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the same university under the supervision of Joseph Vercauteren in Bordeaux, which he completed in 2000.He subsequently carried out two postdoctoral fellowships: first at the University of Nottingham in England in the group of Steve Clark, working on the application of olefin metathesis reactions to the synthesis of natural products, and then at the Institute of Natural Products Chemistry (ICSN) in Gif-sur-Yvette with Christiane Poupat in medicinal chemistry.

In January 2004, while working on another total synthesis project, he joined the CNRS as a Research Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle) in Paris, where he led the Fungal Natural Products Chemistry team from 2008 to 2017. He was appointed Research Director at CNRS in 2014.

In 2017, he joined the Organic Synthesis Laboratory at École Polytechnique, where he continues his research in total synthesis at the interface with biology. His projects have led him to explore the chemistry of polyphenols, terpenoids, various polyketides (including cytochalasins and macrolactones), cyclopeptides, and their diverse biological properties. More recently, he has been interested in the design of light-responsive molecular tools to study living systems.

https://naygroup.wordpress.com/bastien-nay/

Dr. Salomé POYER (ICSN, France)

Salomé Poyer is a Research Scientist at CNRS (CRCN). Her work focuses on the development of methods to characterize the isomeric structures of lipids using mass spectrometry. Since most structural isomeric features can be accessed through C–C bond cleavages, her research interests focus on gas-phase reactivity with transition metals and on alternative activation techniques to generate radical dissociations. She also develops methods using ion mobility spectrometry to overcome spatial isomeric barriers.

Dr. Arnaud CHEVALIER (ICSN, France)

Since 2018, I am a CNRS researcher at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances. Author of around forty publications, and recipient of the 2025 Young Researcher’s prize, awarded by the SCF Transversal Division of Chemical Biology, the work of our team is focused on fluorescence imaging tools to study intracellular and mitochondrial processes for therapeutic innovation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaud-chevalier-5564808b/?originalSubdomain=fr

Dr. Véronique EPARVIER (ICSN, France)

Véronique Eparvier holds two Master’s degrees: one in Agro-Resource Sciences from the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, and another in Anthropology from the Human Ecology and Anthropology Laboratory at Aix-Marseille University (Aix-Marseille III). In 2005, she obtained a PhD in Natural Products Chemistry from the National Museum of Natural History (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle). Her doctoral thesis was carried out under the supervision of Françoise Guéritte and Thierry Sévenet at the Institute of Natural Products Chemistry (ICSN). 

In 2006, she was commissioned by the ICSN to establish the program “Chemodiversity of the Flora of French Guiana,” and in 2008 she was recruited as a research engineer. She rejoined the ICSN in 2011, where she contributed to the development of research programs on symbiotic microorganisms and to the creation of a microbial strain collection. She obtained her Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in October 2013 and has been a Research Director since 2020. She currently leads the Functional Chemistry – Chemical Ecology research team.

 https://icsn.cnrs.fr/recherche/sncm

 Dr. Jean-François BETZER (ICSN, France)

Jean-François Betzer is a graduate engineer of the ENSCP and holds a PhD from the École Polytechnique University, which he completed in 1998 under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Yves Lallemand. After a postdoctoral fellowship in the group of Prof. L. Ghosez, he joined the CNRS as a Research Fellow in the team of Prof. J. Ardisson and Dr. A. Pancrazi at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, where he developed new synthetic methodologies and their applications to the total synthesis of natural products. He joined the ICSN in 2007

https://icsn.cnrs.fr/recherche/somc

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