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Hiroaki Suga, Chair

University of Tokyo, Japan

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Hiroaki Suga is a Professor of the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science at the University of Tokyo. He was born in Okayama City, Japan in 1963. He received his Bachelor of Engineering (1986) and Master of Engineering (1989) from Okayama University, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1994) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After three years of post-doctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital, he was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1997) and promoted to tenured Associate Professor (2002). In 2003, he moved to the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo as an Associate Professor, and soon after he was promoted to Full Professor. In 2010, he changed his affiliation to the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science.

Claudia Höbartner, Associate Editor

University of Würzburg, Germany

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Claudia Höbartner is a Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Würzburg. She studied chemistry at the Technical University of Vienna and at ETH Zürich, and earned her PhD from the University of Innsbruck in 2004. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, she joined the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen as a research group leader. In 2014, Claudia was appointed as associate professor at the University of Göttingen, and since 2017 she has been a full professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Würzburg. The main research interests in her lab concern the chemistry and chemical biology of functional nucleic acids and nucleic acid modifications, with a focus on structures, mechanisms and applications of ribozymes and aptamers.

Kilian Huber, Associate Editor

Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University, England

Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska, Associate Editor

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

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Dr Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska is a Professor of Pathology, Director of Molecular & Cellular Pathology Graduate Program, and Associate Director of Program in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Michigan. She also serves as a co-Director of T32 NIGMS Training Program in Translational Research. Dr Nikolovska-Coleska received her BS in Pharmacy (1987) and MS and PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry (1993 and 1999 respectively) from University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, North Macedonia.

She held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at her alma mater university and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan, under the guidance of Professor Shaomeng Wang.

Andrea Rentmeister, Associate Editor

University of Münster, Germany

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Andrea Rentmeister is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Münster. She studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Graz and the University of Bonn, where she earned her PhD in 2007. After a postdoctoral stay at the California Institute of Technology, she started her independent career as a Junior Professor at the University of Hamburg in 2010. In 2013, Andrea was appointed as Associate Professor at the University of Münster, and in 2020 promoted to Full Professor.
Research in her lab focuses on RNA at the interface of chemistry and biochemistry and aims to understand and ultimately control the processes affecting mRNA expression and turnover. Andrea has won a number of awards and serves on several advisory and executive boards.

Roderich Süssmuth, Associate Editor

Technical University of Berlin, Germany

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Roderich Süssmuth is Professor of the Department of Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin. He received his Diploma in Chemistry (1995) and his PhD in Chemistry (1998) from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. This was followed by a post-doctoral stay at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla (2000-2001) and an Assistant Professor position with an Emmy-Noether Fellowship at the University of Tübingen (2002-2004). Roderich was appointed to the position of Associate Professor at TU Berlin in 2004, and Full Professor in 2009. Roderich’s research interests are in the fields of peptide chemistry, peptide drugs, medicinal chemistry and the biosynthesis and mode of action of natural products. Roderich serves on various grant committees and has received various awards and recognitions.

Sander van Kasteren, Associate Editor

Leiden University

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Sander van Kasteren (Roosendaal 1978) trained as an organic chemist in Edinburgh. He performed his PhD research under the tutelage of Prof Benjamin G. Davis in Oxford, where he worked on carbohydrate total synthesis and its application to the development of MRI- and histological probes to detect early brain inflammation.

Later, he participated in the lab of Prof. Colin Watts at the University of Dundee. He worked on the development of protease inhibitors to improve antigen cross-presentation in dendritic cells. A second postdoctoral position in the groups of Huib Ovaa brought him back to the Netherlands. In this lab, he continued his development in the field of chemical immunology and worked on the development of highly selective deubiquitinase inhibitors.

Cai-Guang Yang, Associate Editor

Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China

Cai-Guang Yang was born in Liaoning, China in 1974. He received his BSc in Chemical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1997. He earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry on the total synthesis of natural products from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2002. He moved to the University of Chicago to begin his post-doctoral training in the Chemistry Department.

After six years of post-doctoral work at the interface of chemistry and biology, Cai-Guang returned to Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, CAS to start his independent research and has been appointed as a professor since 2008. His research interests are in the fields of medicinal chemistry, structure biology, and chemical biology related to RNA methylation, antimicrobial resistance, small-molecule inhibitor/activator, and drug discovery.

Michelle Arkin, Editorial board member

University of California, San Francisco, USA

Michelle is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and an Adjunct Professor at the Buck Institute of Research on Aging. Her lab focuses on chemical biology of protein-protein interaction networks and other challenging targets in diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer.

Michelle co-directs the UCSF Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), which works with investigators in academics, biotech, and pharma to develop first-in-class probes and drug leads for novel targets across therapeutic areas. Michelle is the President of Board of Directors the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, a member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), and a member of the Editorial Board of the Assay Guidance Manual and other chemical biology journals.

Jennifer Heemstra, Editorial board member

Washington University, St Louis, USA

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Jennifer Heemstra was born in the United States in 1978. She received her BS in Chemistry from University of California, Irvine (2000) and her PhD in Chemistry from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2005). After a short time in industry, she returned to academia as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. She began her independent career at the University of Utah in 2010 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016. In 2017, she moved with her lab to Emory University.

Research in her lab is focused on harnessing the molecular recognition and self-assembly properties of nucleic acids for applications in biosensing and bioimaging.

Ali Tavassoli, Editorial board member

University of Southampton, UK

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Ali Tavassoli is Professor of Chemical Biology at the School of Chemistry, University of Southampton. Ali was born in Iran in 1975. He received his BSc from Bristol University (1995), followed by a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Reading University (1999). This was followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in bio-organic chemistry at Sussex University, and a five year postdoctoral fellowship in chemical biology at the Pennsylvania State University.

In 2006, Ali was appointed Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Southampton, and promoted to Reader in 2011. Ali was awarded a personal Chair and promoted to Professor of Chemical Biology in 2015.