Scientific Advisory Board

Expertise: Microfluidics, LOC, POC Diagnostics

Andrew deMello is currently Professor of Chemical Nanosciences at Imperial College London. He obtained his PhD in Molecular Photophysics at Imperial College London in 1995 and subsequently held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley before returning to the UK. His current research programmes are centred on the areas of miniaturized chemical analysis systems and ultrahigh sensitivity detection. Generally, studies focus on performing chemistry and biology in nanoliter volumes, high-efficiency manipulation of small liquid samples and investigating novel phenomena on the microscale. He has given over 100 invited lectures in the USA, Europe and Asia, has published 90 research papers in refereed journals, and co-authored a book. He sits on the Editorial Boards of Lab on a Chip, Chemistry World and Imperial College Press. In 2002 he was awarded the SAC Silver Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry for his contributions to the Analytical Sciences and in 2004 became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Expertise: Gene Silencing, RNAi Screening, Cell Based Assays

Dr Anthony Mitchell Davies has worked in cell based assay development for over a decade and is the Director of the High Content Facility at Trinity College Dublin. Where he has been responsible for the set up and running, of one of the earliest dedicated academic High Content Screening Units in Europe. Dr Davies’s personal research interests are focused on cardiac biology and the use of primary cardiomyocytes in drug discovery applications. His research is also strongly focused on miniaturization of high content assays and development of improved environmental control for these cell based systems.

Stem Cells, Bioprocessing, Cell Culture

Chris graduated with a first class honours degree in Microbiology from Royal Holloway College, University of London in 1990. He then went to the University of Birmingham to study for his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering where he worked on the synthesis of alpha-amylase by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens under the supervision of Professor Gerald Solomons. Chris stayed at Birmingham for a further 13 years first as Lecturer then Senior Lecturer, developing his research work at the Life Science/Engineering interface. In October 2006, Chris came to Loughborough University to take up a new chair in Biological Engineering and is now busy establishing Loughborough's Centre for Biological Engineering (CBE), of which he is co-founder.

PCR, Genomics, Molecular Diagnostics

Fred Russell Kramer is Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the New Jersey Medical School and co-directs the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Public Health Research Institute. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1964 and received his doctorate from the Rockefeller University in 1969. He was on the faculty of the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for 17 years and has been a Research Professor in the Department of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine for the past 22 years.

Discovery Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Drug Discovery

György M. Keseru obtained his Ph.D. at Budapest, Hungary and joined Sanofi-Aventis CHINOIN heading a chemistry research lab. He moved to Gedeon Richter in 1999 as the Head of Computer-aided Drug Discovery. He earned D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 2003 and he was invited for a research professorship at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Since 2003 has been responsible for lead discovery activity and in 2007 he was appointed as the Head of Discovery Chemistry at Gedeon Richter. He contributed to the discovery of the antipsychotic cariprazine that is progressing to NDA filing in 2012. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, drug design, and in silico ADME. He has published over 150 papers and more than 10 books and book chapters.

Expertise: Biomolecular Screening, Drug Discovery

Dr. Djaballah has several years of industrial experience in early drug discovery gained over the years in pharma and biotech companies. He has extensive experiences in the areas of fluorescence technology, assay development, automation/robotics, HTS, compound & screening data management, software development & novel technologies. Dr Djaballah has been involved in developing and screening several targets in various therapeutic areas, including antibacterials, antivirals, antifungals, diabetes, CNS, cardiovascular, oncology & inflammation. He is currently the director of the high throughput drug screening core facility at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York. He obtained his BSc (Hons.) in biochemistry and biotechnology from the University of Birmingham, and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Leicester, both in England.

Expertise: Mass Spectrometry, Separation

John first encountered MS as his final year project at Swansea University and then studied for his PhD in Mass Spectrometry at the School of Pharmacy, University of London under the supervision of Mike Baldwin. John has been at Southampton responsible for Chemistry’s MS Facility since 1988. This has grown from one under-used sector system to a vibrant section with 10 spectrometers. John's research interests are the application of mass spectrometry as a routine tool for chemistry/chemical biology as well as probing new areas for research using mass spectrometry and separation science and mass spectrometry. Specific interests at present are around understanding fundamental MS/MS fragmentation processes and mechanism, including use of computational methods, hyphenated approaches (GC-MS, HPLC-MS & SFC-MS) to analysis of petrochemicals, particularly biofuels and research into analysis and detection of oligonucleotides. John is a Chartered Chemist, Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC); he is Chair of the RSC Separation Science Group and Secretary of the International MS Foundation; formerly Chair of the British MS Society (2008-2010), Vice-Chair (2006-08). He is the European representative of the IUPAC working group for Standard Definitions of Terms Relating to MS.

Expertise: Metabolic Profiling, Metabolomics

Jules Griffin is a programme leader at the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research unit and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He is also a member of the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre and MRC Centre for Obesity and Related Disorders (MRC CORD) at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He is developing NMR and mass spectrometry based metabolomic tools for identifying metabolic biomarkers associated with genetic modification, drug toxicity and understanding the control of metabolic pathways. Although primarily focused on mammalian metabolism, he has also worked with a range of fundamental model organisms including fruit flies, C. elegans, zebra fish, and yeast..

Expertise: Chemistry, Structural & Computational, Chemical Biology, Microarrays

Professor Mark Bradley was awarded a first class degree in chemistry in 1986 (University of Oxford) and his D.Phil., awarded in 1989, was performed under the supervision of Sir Professor Baldwin. This was followed by a period of post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School with Professor Walsh in the area of molecular biology. He was at the University of Southampton from 1992-2004 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow (1992-1999), during which time at the age of 33 he was awarded a personal chair in Combinatorial Chemistry (1997). In 2005 he took up his current position as Professor of HighThroughput Chemical Biology in Edinburgh. He is the winner of numerous awards including the 2006/7 Novartis lectureship, was recently elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and his group has published over 180 research articles. His research interests are focused on the application of the tools and techniques of chemistry to answer and solve biological problems and address needs, typically with a high-throughput twist. Recently, he span out, from the University of Edinburgh, DestiNA Genomics Ltd.

Expertise: Microfluidics, LOC, Cell Culture, Microarrays

Martin Dufva received his M.Sc. in 1998 and his PhD in 2001 both from the Göteborg University (Sweden). Martin Dufva currently holds an associate professor position at the Department of Micro and Nanotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark. Leading the Fluidic Array System and Technology (FAST) group, his research is orientated towards molecular biology on chip, with the microarray of various forms as core technology. Martin Dufva has published about 30 scientific papers in various fields of microarray technology and cell culture chip technology.

Microfluidics, LOC, Analytical Chemistry

Dr Nicole Pamme is a lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Hull (UK). Her research is focused on bioanalysis in microfluidic devices, in particular applications of magnetism. She obtained a degree in Chemistry from the University of Marburg (Germany) in 1999. This was followed by a PhD in Microfluidic Chemistry at Imperial College London (UK) with Prof. A. Manz. In 2004, she moved to Tsukuba (Japan) as an independent research fellow in the International Centre for Young Scientists (ICYS) based at the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science. She was appointed as a lecturer in Hull in 2005.

Chemistry

C. Oliver Kappe is Professor of Organic Chemistry and Director of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Microwave Chemistry (CDLMC) at the University of Graz, Austria. He received his diploma- (1989) and his doctoral (1992) degrees in organic chemistry from the University of Graz where he worked with Professor Gert Kollenz on cycloaddition and rearrangement reactions of acylketenes. After periods of postdoctoral research work on reactive intermediates and matrix isolation spectroscopy with Professor Curt Wentrup at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia (1993-1994) and on synthetic methodology/alkaloid synthesis with Professor Albert Padwa at Emory University in Atlanta, USA (1994-1996), he moved back to the University of Graz in 1996 to start his independent academic career. He obtained his "Habilitation" in 1998 in organic chemistry and was appointed Associate Professor in 1999. Since 2011 he holds the position of Professor of "Technology of Organic Synthesis" (Organische Synthesetechnologie) at the University of Graz. He has spent time as visiting scientist/professor at e.g. the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, USA, Professor K. Barry Sharpless, 2003), the Toyko Institute of Technology (Toyko, Japan, Professor T. Takahashi, 2008), the University of Sassari (Sassari, Italy, 2008), and the Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Orlando, USA, 2010). The co-author of ca. 250 publications, his main research interests have in the past focused on multicomponent reactions, combinatorial chemistry and the synthesis of biologically active heterocycles. More recently his research group has been involved with enabling technologies for synthetic chemistry, including microwave and continuous flow chemistry. During the last few years his lab has authored ~100 original research articles, reviews and book chapters on microwave-assisted synthesis. His latest book "Practical Microwave Synthesis for Organic Chemists - Strategies, Instruments, and Protocols" (co-authored with D. Dallinger and S. S. Murphree) was published with Wiley-VCH in 2009 and is currently considered one of the standard reference works in the field. For his "innovative work in microwave chemistry " he received the 2004 Prous Science Award from the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry in addition to a number of other awards. C. Oliver Kappe is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Flow Chemistry (Akadémiai Kiadó) and a member of the Flow Chemistry Society. He is also a board member of the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry and The Society of Combinatorial Sciences. In addition he has been an Editor of the Journal QSAR and Combinatorial Sciences (Wiley-VCH, 2003-2007) and has served/serves on the Editorial/Advisory Boards of the Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry (ACS), Molecular Diversity (Springer), ChemMedChem and ChemSusChem (Wiley-VCH), Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry (Wiley-VCH) and a number of other journals.

Expertise: Flow Chemistry

Dr. Paul Watts graduated from the University of Bristol in 1995 with a first class B.Sc. in chemistry. He continued his studies at Bristol, obtaining a Ph.D. in bio-organic natural product chemistry in 1999. His Ph.D. focussed on the synthesis of isotopically labelled compounds, for use in determination of biosynthetic pathways to polyketide-derived natural products. Paul subsequently worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Hull, where he pioneered organic synthesis in micro reactors. In February 2002, he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Hull, in August 2007 was promoted to the position of Senior Lecture and then further promoted to Reader in Organic Chemistry in May 2009. He now leads the micro reactor and flow technology group where the research has resulted in the publication of over 80 highly cited papers in peer reviewed journals on the topic of continuous flow organic synthesis, in addition to other publications and book chapters. In 2005, Watts initiated a joint venture with Lionix BV (Netherlands) to commercialise the technology, which has resulted in the formation of Chemtrix BV. Watts has a part time secondment to work with the company in the role of Chief Technology Officer.

Epigenetics

Paul Hurd has long-standing interests in the mechanistic aspects of epigenetic systems. During his Ph.D. studies with Professor David Hornby at the University of Sheffield, he characterized the mechanism of inhibition of DNA methyltransferases by a novel nucleotide analogue. After this, he moved to the University of Cambridge to work with Professor Tony Kouzarides at the Gurdon Institute where he initially focused on the mechanisms by which DNA methylation is coupled to alterations in chromatin structure through the post-translational modification of histones. During this time it became increasingly evident that the post-translational modification of histones plays a central role in establishing, regulating and orchestrating DNA based processes. Moreover, the sheer variety and complexity of histone modifications, in addition to their dynamic nature, persuaded him to begin characterising novel histone modifications in the hope of elucidating biological function. This subsequently led to the application of next-generation DNA sequencing in order to analyze the epigenomes of a variety of organisms. He is currently a Principal Investigator at Queen Mary, University of London, UK.

Biomolecular Screening, Chemical Biology

Dr. Rathnam Chaguturu is currently a Senior Director at the SRI International Center for Advanced Drug Research. He was formerly the Director of the High Throughput Screening Laboratories at the University of Kansas and has more than 30 years of experience in new lead discovery and development, executing high throughput screens, and managing hit to lead projects. He joined Rutgers University in 1976 as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, and later moved to Dow Chemical Company-Central Research Laboratories as a Project Leader. At Dow, Rathnam instituted the first principles of chemical library screening for new lead discovery, and developed tools for mining in-house chemical archives. Rathnam joined Sierra Sciences as Director of Drug Discovery in 2006 after a 22-year outstanding career at FMC Corporation where he led discovery research efforts focused on ion channel, receptor, enzyme and cellbased targets, and instrumental in designing the industry-first Zymark robotic screening platform for new lead discovery. He recently organized a workshop on high throughput screening (HTS) strategies in drug discovery, the first of its kind, in Panama City (Panama) aimed at Latin American scientists interested in drug discovery from natural sources, and another one in Chicago on Academia and Industry Working Together to Ease the Drug Discovery Bottleneck. As a representative of FMC, he was one of the founding members of the Society for Biomolecular Sciences. Dr. Chaguturu has authored over 45 research publications including reviews and book chapters, and holds 11 US patents. He is the Editorin- Chief of the journal, Combinatorial Chemistry and High Throughput Screening, published by Bentham.

Quantitative PCR, Molecular Science

Stephen Bustin obtained his PhD from Trinity College, University of Dublin in molecular genetics. Since 1989 he has worked at the Royal London Hospital and was awarded a personal chair by the University of London in 2004. He was appointed as a visiting Professor of Molecular Biology by the University of Middlesex in 2006. He has a special interest in molecular technologies and his laboratory operates at the forefront of technological development in nucleic acid quantification. He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers and reviews and is the editor of the “A-Z of quantitative PCR”, the leading textbook for this technology. He is on the editorial boards of several journals and has given numerous presentations at scientific conferences around the world. He has organised and co-organised many qPCR meetings in the UK, Europe and the US.

Diagnostics, Biodetection, Theranostics

PD Dr Till Bachmann is Head of Biochip Research and Chief Operating Officer of the Division of Pathway Medicine, Medical School, University of Edinburgh. He graduated from University of Stuttgart in 1994 and has a PhD (summa cum laude) in biosensors obtained from research conducted at University of Stuttgart and the University of Tokyo. Till has more than ten years experience in research and scientific management including a German Habilitation in Analytical Biotechnology. He has published over 30 publications and filed over 10 patent applications in the field of biosensors and biochips. His research locates at the interface of medicine and biochip research with a key focus on molecular diagnostics of bacterial infectious diseases using multiparametric detection technologies such as DNA and protein microarrays. Till is active member of various scientific societies, editorial boards has strong links into the diagnostics industry with high interest into biotech venture business.