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Ben Perry is currently Senior Discovery Manager at Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), where he is responsible for Discovery Open Innovation. At DNDi he has led the NTD Drug Discovery Booster since inception, and has been involved with the conception and implementation of several other initiatives focused on leishmaniasis and Chagas disease drug discovery at DNDi, including the Open Synthesis Network and the MycetOS projects. Prior to joining DNDi, Ben spent 15 years in various medicinal chemistry roles at Celltech (UK), UCB (UK; Belgium), Addex Therapeutics (Switzerland) and Genkyotex (Switzerland).

He has worked extensively in early-stage drug discovery across a variety of disease indications including oncology, autoimmune disorders, neurodegeneration and psychiatry. His areas of research interest include the use of chemoinformatic and computational tools within medicinal chemistry, alternative research mechanisms, and the use of new technologies and research collaborations to further the drug discovery process. Ben holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Imperial College London and a MBA from IE Business School, Madrid.

Daniele obtained his PhD at the University of Sheffield (Prof I. Coldham) in 2010 and conducted PostDoctoral work at RWTH (Prof M. Rueping) and the Max Planck Institute (Prof P. Seeberger). In 2012 joined the group of Professor V. Aggarwal as Research Officer (University of Bristol). In 2014 he commenced his independent career as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Manchester and was promoted to Reader in 2018 and Professor in 2020.

The group’s main research interests are in the area of catalysis and synthetic chemistry, with a focus on the assembly of N-containing molecule. Daniele was awarded the ERC Starting Grant (2017), the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2018), the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2019) and the AstraZeneca Early Career Award (2019).

Dr. Quentin Lefebvre, obtained his Master degree in physical sciences and chemistry in 2011 at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France) as ‘élève normalien’, performing research internships in Berlin (Germany) and Cambridge (UK). He then moved to the RWTH Aachen University (Germany) for doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. M. Rueping and graduated in 2015. His research focussed on methodology development in synthetic organic chemistry, with a highlight on fluorine chemistry, photoredox catalysis and flow (photo)chemistry.

After a one-year postdoctoral stay in the same group, he joined the group of Prof. J. Clayden in Bristol (UK) for two years, working on the synthesis and conformational analysis of medicinally relevant medium-sized rings. He published 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles and joined SpiroChem in Basel (Switzerland) in 2018 as a Research Chemist, to develop and promote enabling technologies.

Prof. Dr. Richmond Sarpong is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He works on natural product synthesis to better understand biological systems and allow for the development of novel therapeutics.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Macalester College and he obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the Princeton University where he worked on enediyne functional analogues. He conducted postdoctoral studies at Caltech with Prof. Brian Stoltz. In 2004 Prof. Dr. Sarpong started his independent scientific career at the University of California, Berkeley. The Sarpong laboratory specialise in the synthesis of bioactive organic molecules, with a focus on the natural products of flora and fauna. He has developed new synthesis strategies for alkaloids, a family of natural medicines that includes quinine and morphine. In particular, Sarpong is interested in natural product synthesis for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.’’