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After gaining a First class Honours B. Sc. Degree in Chemistry with Distinction in Biochemistry, Mark carried out a D. Phil under the supervision of Professor Sir J. E. Baldwin FRS – both at the University of Oxford. On gaining both a Lindemann Trust and SERC/NATO Postdoctoral Fellowships, he continued with postdoctoral work under Professor C. T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA (1989-1991) before moving to the University of Southampton as a UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ University Research Fellow.

In 1997 at the age of 34 Mark was awarded a Professorship in Combinatorial Chemistry where he founded the Combinatorial Centre of Excellence. He continued to direct this Centre until moving to Edinburgh in 2005 where he took up his current position as Professor of Chemical Biology.

Since this time his work has become much more focused on the application of chemistry to solving medical problems (chemical medicine) which has resulted, for example in the extensive collaboration between the groups of Bradley, Dhaliwal and Haslett in the area of “smart-probes” for clinical and pre-clinical imaging.

More than sixty PhD students have emerged from the Bradley group and overall the group has published more than twenty patents and three hundred articles in the form of papers, reviews and book chapters.

Ali was Chair of the UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥'s Chemical Biology and Bioorganic Group (2012-2015), and a member of CBID council (2012-2016). Ali has won a number of awards during his career, including the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences' medal for European Young Chemist (in 2008) and the UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥’s Protein and Peptide Science Award (in 2017).

He was a Maplethorpe fellow at UCL and, after being appointed as a chemistry lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland. He moved to Leicester, where he is currently a senior lecturer in medicinal chemistry at De Montfort University School of Pharmacy.

Federico has a strong research interest in the synthesis and reactivity of small-molecules and their involvement in enzymatic and metabolic processes within eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. His recent efforts have been directed toward the identification of novel anti-tuberculosis agents targeting the mycobacterial siderophores biosynthetic pathway.

He has expertise in the rational design, synthesis and biophysical evaluation of DNA sequence-selective compounds, i.e., heterocyclic polyamides and pyrrolobenzodiazepines, and aminofuran-containing natural products. He investigates small-molecules-protein interactions using biophysical (NMR spectroscopy) and biochemical methods.

After finishing his MSc, he spent half a year at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (MA, US) as a visiting scientist. His PhD was obtained from the University of Copenhagen in 2000; the research work was carried out at the Risø National Laboratory (Denmark) and Georgia Institute of Technology (GA, USA).

Jóhannes spent two and a half years in Germany as a post-doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie (radiation chemistry), Mülheim and the University of Leipzig. He worked for five years at The Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, Surrey as a molecular modeller developing anticancer drug candidates followed by a Centre for Effective Learning in Science (CELS) lectureship at the Nottingham Trent University.

For ten years, he was a senior lecturer in computational chemistry and molecular modelling at the School of Chemical Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Charlotte is a Chartered Chemist (CChem) and holds a BA (Hons) in Biochemistry and PhD in Biophysics from the University of Cambridge. Her career has taken her across the biological and physical sciences and she has worked in biophysics, structural biology, chemistry and medical departments at four of the UK’s top academic institutions. In 2013 she launched her independent research group as a Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Prior to 2003, she worked in the Arts as a professional diary and contract manager. 

Continuing his studies at the University of Manchester, Gavin undertook a PhD in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, investigating multivalency, followed by a PDRA at St Andrews University (with Professor S. J. Conway).

He then worked in industry, firstly at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, on the design of new treatments for primary dysmenorrhea and secondly at Peakdale Molecular on the design of an anti-nicotine vaccine.  

He returned to academia and the University of Manchester in 2010, firstly as a PDRA in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology developing chemical synthesis approaches to heparan sulfate oligosaccharides (with Dr J. M Gardiner) and secondly as a fixed-term lecturer, in 2014, within the School of Chemistry. He took up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at Keele in 2016 and was promoted through the ranks to Professor of Biological Chemistry in 2021. 

After obtaining an MChem in Chemistry and a DPhil in Pharmacology from Oxford, she worked in the biotech sector in drug discovery before returning to academia to work with Prof. Chris Schofield FRS at University of Oxford. She was awarded a BHF CRE Senior Fellowship in 2012 and a UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2013, with her inter-disciplinary team working across the Department of Chemistry and Radcliffe Department of Medicine at Oxford. She joined Newcastle University in 2019.

Her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of enzymes and proteins that are linked to diseases, such as cancer, and developing chemical tools to study and modulate their function.  

Lydia brings 20 years of industry experience structuring drug discovery collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Her research interests include the application of CRISPR gene editing tools and Artificial intelligence to redefine drug development. Lydia holds a BSc honours and MPhil degree in Chemistry from Cardiff University and completed an MBA (Directors List, 2001) at Manchester Business School, UK. 

David trained as a pharmacist at Nottingham University, followed by PhD research in organic synthesis at Liverpool University. David’s pharma industry career spans thirty years, split almost equally between GSK and AstraZeneca. Scientifically, David’s current main interests lie in Oncology, with a focus on the application of physical sciences to solve biological problems –in particular, the discovery of lead molecules and tools for better understanding currently undruggable targets.