Zachary Carpenter
Zachary Carpenter is the founder and CEO of VantAI, who pioneered the use of machine learning in the protein degrader space and is now partnered as the computational engine for many of the spaces major players (BI, JnJ, Blueprint, [another major big pharma deal hopefully TBA). Prior to VantAI, Zach worked at Quantum Black, McKinsey & Company, and Columbia University’s C2B2 unit where he received his PhD in a dual appointment between the labs of theoretical physicist & mathematician Raul Rabbadan and Cancer Biologist Adolfo Ferando.
Giulia Caron
Giulia Caron received a B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Torino (Italy). She then moved to the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) where was awarded a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1997 under the supervision of prof. B. Testa. She holds the position of Associate Professor at the Molecular Biotechnology and Health Sciences Department at the University of Torino and teaches medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Her primary scientific interest is the design, experimental determination and computational prediction of physicochemical and in vitro ADME properties of drugs and drug candidates in the bRo5 chemical space (PROTACs and macrocycles above others).
Felix Hausch
Felix Hausch is professor for structure-based drug research at the Technical University Darmstadt. He is a recognized expert for the chemical biology of immunophilins (mainly FKBPs) and has discovered the SAFit class of selective FKBP51 ligands. He has authored 89 publications (incl. Nat Chem Biol, Angew Chem, JACS; h-factor= 37 (Google Scholar)) and >10 accepted patent families. He is speaker of the LOEWE consortium TRABITA, Core team member of the Zukunftscluster PROXIDRUGS, coordinator of the BMBF consortia iMIP and 51TaValP, co-coordinator of the VIP+ consortium Fit4Fat and of the ANR/BMBF consortium SIAM. Felix Hausch received his PhD from the Free University Berlin in 2000, gained postdoc experience at Stanford University and biotech industry in Zurich (ESBATech AG, 2 years), and was group leader at the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry and lecturer at the LMU (Munich, 2005-2016).
Ivan Dikic
Stephanie Voss
Matthieu Schapira
After training in France and in New York in chemistry, biochemistry, structural biology and molecular modeling, Dr. Schapira lead structure-based drug design at biotechs in San Diego and France. He later joined the Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Toronto, where he is also an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology.
Martin Steger
- PhD in 2012 from the University of Zurich
- 2013-2018: Postdoc at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich (Laboratory of Prof. Matthias Mann)
- 2018-2022: Scientist Targets Validation for molecular glue degraders at Evotec
04/2022-ongoing Scientist MS-based proteomics at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Lurong Pan
Dr. Lurong Pan is the Founder and CEO of Ainnocence, a Next Generation Global Biotech. She has extensive drug design and precision medicine research experience using structural biology, computational biophysics and artificial intelligence technologies. She was a Senior Investigator at Global Health Drug Discovery Institute between 2017-2021, was a Research Scientist in Structural Biology and Computational Biology at UAB Medicine between 2013-2015. She is the Director of Computational Science at Integrated System Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Pan received her B.S. in Applied Chemistry from Nanjing University, M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is also an IBM certificated big data architect.
Satpal Virdee
Satpal Virdee is Professor of Chemical Biology at the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, University of Dundee. He studies E3 ligases at the biochemical, structural and cellular level. He has also developed pioneering probe technologies that enable parallel profiling of the activity of potentially hundreds of E3 ligases (activity-based protein profiling). This technology allows the identification of active E3 ligases across diverse tissue types and the discovery of novel E3 classes. He has shown that these can have profound medical importance and are promising targets for diseases with unmet clinical need.
Agnieszka Konopacka
Agnieszka Konopacka is a GSK Associate Fellow and Principal Scientist in the Protein Degradation Group at GSK since 2017. She gained experience in neurotoxicology in the Mossakowski Medical Research Centre in Warsaw during her PhD, followed by a postdoc at Bristol University, in the Laboratories for Integrated Neuroscience and Endocrinology. Looking to apply her expertise to drug discovery she moved to Pfizer Neusentis, where she worked on pain and neurodegenerative disease projects, and later to Horizon Discovery to lead efforts for validation of genetic standards. Currently she works on development and implementation of targeted protein degradation technologies as well as PROTAC projects.