FCG/YCP Webinar Series III

Prof Nelson began his academic career at City College of San Francisco. He then earned a B.S. in Chemistry from University of California at Berkeley in 2005 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2013. After postdoctoral training at University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Nelson joined the UCLA faculty in 2015. Broadly speaking, Prof. Nelson’s research program is focused on the development of enabling technologies for chemical synthesis. His group approaches this goal through several research areas including reaction discovery, electron crystallography, biocatalysis and total synthesis.

Katherine Wheelhouse

GSK

Katherine Wheelhouse studied for her MChem at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating in 2004; her MChem project was carried out under the supervision of Professor Tim Donohoe in the area of ring-closing metathesis for heterocycle synthesis. She stayed in the Donohoe group for a DPhil, working on osmium-mediated oxidative cyclisation reactions before joining GSK as a process chemist in 2008. Since 2011 Katherine has specialised in application of chemical cataysis to pharmaceutical manufacture, working on projects across all stages of development. She is a GSK scientific fellow, a member of the RSC Applied Catalysis Committee, the PharmaCat Industrial Steering Committee and also of the editorial advisory board of the journal Organic Process Research and Development.

John McIntosh

MDS

John McIntosh studied his PhD in Eric Schmidt’s laboratory at the University of Utah, where he studied the biosynthesis of the cyanobactin family of cyclic peptide natural products. After finishing graduate school he pursued his post doctorate for Frances Arnold at Caltech where he studied non-natural reactions of cytochrome P450s and other heme proteins. John has been part of the MSD’s Small-Molecule Process Research and Development Department since 2015 where he has worked in the Biocatalysis and Protein Engineering groups. He is presently an associate principal scientist.

Anne Foley

UCB

I am a Senior Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry Department at UCB, UK working on early and late stage NCE programs. I joined UCB after completing a DPhil at Oxford University with Prof. David Hodgson on Alkene Selective Ring-Closing Metathesis and Chromium(II)-Mediated E-Alkenylstannylation. Before my DPhil, I worked at AZ, Loughborough in the Research Analytical Group. Whilst at UCB, I have worked on numerous NCE projects within multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology and inflammation including kinase, integrin and PPI inhibitor programs, such as TNF-α, successfully delivering candidates into development. Outside the lab, I enjoy taking part in STEM outreach activities and inspiring young people.

Chloe Townley

Astex

Chloe completed her PhD from the university of Leeds in 2020 under the supervision of Prof’s Adam Nelson, Steve Marsden and Dr Lindsay McMurray (AstraZeneca).
She joined Astex in summer 2020 as a medicinal chemist and is currently working in the synthesis and technology group.

Julia Shanu Wilson

Hypha Discovery

Julia earned her degree and PhD in biochemistry from Imperial College London. Her PhD focussed on the discovery of microbial alkaloids using radiolabelled probes.
Following a post doc in New Zealand on the biosynthesis of indole diterpenoids, Julia joined the pharmaceutical industry as a Research Scientist, becoming a Programme Discovery Leader for Cubist Pharmaceuticals (subsequently bought by Merck). She was responsible for the team discovering new natural product derived anti-bacterial drugs, and was part of the cross-continent team responsible for bringing daptomycin to the market. Julia joined Hypha in 2013 and is on the Management Team.

Oliver Kappe is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Graz (Austria) and Scientific Director of the Center of Continuous Flow Synthesis and Processsing (CC FLOW). He received his diploma (1989) and his doctoral (1992) degrees in organic chemistry from the University of Graz and after two postdoctoral stays (University of Queensland and Emory University) returned to Graz in 1996 to start his indepenent acacdemic career and was appointed Full Professor in 2011. For the past decade the focus of his research has been directed towards flow chemistry/microreaction technology, encompassing a wide variety of synthetic transformations and experimental techniques. His research group is actively involved in projects dealing with API synthesis and manufacturing, employing a number of different enabling and process intensification strategies.