Invited speakers

Prof. Dr. Annette Beck-Sickinger 

Dr. Annette Beck-Sickinger is a full professor of Biochemistry and Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of Leipzig. She received her doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Tübingen in 1989. From 1996 to 1999 she was an assistant professor of biochemistry at ETH Zurich, after which she moved to the University of Leipzig, where she has remained since. She is a member of the German Chemical Society, the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. She is known for her work on peptide signaling; she has coauthored reference works on combinatorial chemistry as applied to peptides and has participated in International Union of Pharmacology projects on standardization of nomenclature for G protein-coupled receptor peptide ligands.

Beck-Sickinger received multiple awards including Leonidas Zervas Award of the European Peptide Society (1998) and the Gold Medal of the Max Bergmann Society (2009).

Prof. Dr. Leonard Prins

Dr. Leonard Prins studied chemical technology at the University of Twente (Netherlands) from 1991 to 1997. He then spent his PhD in supramolecular chemistry group under the leadership Prof. David Reinhoudt in 2001. He continued in the field of bioorganic chemistry da as a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, with Prof. Peter Dervan. From 2003, he integrated the group of Prof. Giulia Licini as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Padua and then as assistant professor. Since 2016, he holds the position of professor at the University of Padua. Dr. Prins took several awards for his research, including the HJ-Backerprize Prize 2001 awarded by the Royal Dutch Chemistry at the best organic chemistry doctoral thesis published in the Netherlands in 2001, in 2008 the young European Chemist Award presented by the European Association for molecular sciences (EuCheMS) and in 2009 the medal of "Ciamician" given by the organic chemistry Division of the Italian chemical Society originality, research in the field of organic chemistry and chemical. In 2009, he was a beneficiary of a European start-up grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). In 2011, he received the JSP Fellowship in Switzerland.

The main interest of his research group is in the development of synthetic structures that have a size and complexity similar to that of proteins and exploit these structures for molecular recognition and catalysis.