Alessio Ciulli graduated Magna Cum Laude in Chemistry at the University of Florence in Italy, studying under Prof. Ivano Bertini at the Magnetic Resonance Centre. In 2002 he joined the laboratory of Prof. Chris Abell at the University of Cambridge in UK to study for a PhD in Chemical Biology, funded by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and a BBSRC CASE Award in collaboration with Astex Therapeutics. After receiving his PhD in 2006, Dr. Ciulli was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College to carry out postdoctoral research at Cambridge, with Prof. Abell and Prof. Tom Blundell. He was recently awarded a Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship at Yale University in the United States to work with Prof. Craig Crews. His research interests are on biophysical and structural methods in protein-ligand and protein-protein molecular recognition, and on fragment-based approaches for drug design and chemical biology.

Emanuele Paci carried out his Laurea Summa cum Laude (theoretical solid state and liquid physics) (1984-1990) n Univ La Sapeinza in Rome Italy. He then carried out his Docteur es Sciences (PhD) Summa cum Laude (physical chemistry of proteins) (1996) in University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France. He carried out postdoctoral work with Prof Chrsi Dobson at Oxford Univ and Martin Karplus at Strasbourg. He was subsequently a researcher at the Univ of zurich. Since 2004 he has been a senior research fellow at the University of Leeds.

Graduated in Physics in London, and then PhD at Kings College London under Professor Maurice Wilkins FRS and Stephen Neidle focusing on the crystallography of anti-cancer drugs that interact with DNA. 1928-1982: postdoctoral position at Birkbeck College, London under Sir Tom Blundell FRS working on aspartate proteases. 1982-1989: postdoctoral position under Sir David Phillips FRS, focusing on computational crystallography and structures of monoclonal antibodies. 1989-1999: Lecturer to Professor at the University of Bath, where I helped establishes a protein crystallography unit and focused on sialidases and the structural basis of thermostability. 1999-present, Professor Molecular Biophysics and Director of the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of St Andrews.

Malcolm Walkinshaw obtained both his BSc (1973) and PhD (1976) degrees from the Chemistry Department at the University of Edinburgh. After leading a structure-based drug design group in Sandoz in Switzerland for ten years, he took up the Chair of Structural Biochemistry in 1995 at the University of Edinburgh. He has published over 200 papers on molecular recognition, protein structure and drug discovery. His lab currently consists of 20 research fellows, PhD students and support staff using crystallographic, biophysical and computational approaches to study protein-ligand interactions. He is now director of the newly established Centre for Translational and Chemical Biology.

Paul Williams is currently Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Head, School of Molecular Medical Sciences, University of Nottingham. After graduating in Pharmacy (B.Pharm (Hons), Nottingham) in 1979, he completed his professional MRPharmS training prior to undertaking a Ph.D in microbiology (University of Aston). In 1985 he took up a position as Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Biochemistry in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Nottingham, was promoted to Reader in 1992 and to the Chair of Molecular Microbiology (December 1995). In 1996 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Institute of Infections & Immunity (renamed the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation in 2002), University of Nottingham which he led until 2008. He is currently Head of the School of Molecular Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Professor Williams' research interests have primarily focused on the molecular basis of bacterial pathogenicity and in particular on global gene regulation through cell-to-cell communication (quorum sensing).

Richard Smith is director of the Protein Therapeutics Laboratory at King’s College London – the laboratory is located within Guy’s Hospital and is part of a recently established Centre for Transplantation funded by the UK Medical Research Council. He is also an honorary senior Fellow in the Department of Clinical Medicine at Cambridge University. Richard is a specialist in improving the therapeutic performance of enzymes and other protein drugs by manipulating their molecular interactions in vivo. This approach uses genetically based protein engineering and post-translational modifications to confer new effector functions on known biological agents. Richard studied chemistry and biochemistry at Oxford University and he gained extensive experience of drug development and translational research over 33 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. This included playing a major role in the invention and development of the marketed acyl-enzyme thrombolytic prodrug Anistreplase and the progression of three other agents from bench to bedside. He co-founded a biotechnology company (Adprotech Ltd) in Cambridge (UK) and this company was responsible for advancing one of these agents to the clinic and for the discovery and early-stage development of several others. He has published approximately 100 scientific papers in fields ranging from protein structure and function to cardiovascular pharmacology and molecular immunology.

Antonio Bertoletti began working in the field of viral hepatitis as a medical student at the University of Parma (Italy). During his MD specialization (1991) in Infectious Diseases he spent two years at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla) characterizing the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) specific cytotoxic T cell response in patients. He returned to the University of Parma, where he worked in the Department of Infectious Diseases as a Clinical Scientist continuing his study of human HBV specific T cells. Dr. Bertoletti then moved (1995) to the MRC Unit in the Gambia, as Senior Immunologist, to study HIV-2 specific T cell Immunity before joining The UCL Institute of Hepatology at University College of London (UK) (1997). In 2006 he moved to Singapore where is now Director of Infection and Immunity Program at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (A*STAR) and Principal Investigator of the Viral Hepatitis Laboratory. He is also Adjunct Professor at the local Duke-NUS University Medical School.

AB is an expert in the field of viral hepatitis, with a specific interest in the immunopathogenesis of HBV infection. He has published extensively in this area during his over 20 years experience and he sits on scientific committees and editorial boards within the viral hepatitis field. His current research at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences is focus on the development of new immunological based therapies (TCR-redirected T cells, HLA-peptide specific antibodies) for the treatment of HBV and Hepatocarcinoma in addition to study the impact of Asian HLA-s on the HBV-specific T cells hierarchy.

Chan Tat Keong is a graduate of the medical school at the National University of Singapore in Singapore. After completing his residency in ophthalmology, he pursued a clinical and research fellowship in Cornea/External Disease and Refractive Surgery at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, U.S.A. Dr Chan is also a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in the United Kingdom. In 2008, he was conferred the Fellowship of the Academy of Medicine in Singapore (FAMS). He presently practices as a Senior Consultant Ophthalmologist at the Singapore National Eye Centre in Singapore and concurrently holds a clinical teaching appointment at the National University of Singapore. In addition, he is a member of the Institutional Review Board of the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI). He is one of the key members of the newly formed Infectious Disease Task Force of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery (ASCRS). He is also an active international member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). In addition, He serves as an International Council member of the International Society of Refractive Surgery of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (ISRS/AAO) and is one of its representatives for Singapore in the organization.

His interests are in the areas of ocular infectious diseases, anti-infective therapy and refractive surgery. He has taught in instructions courses at scientific meetings in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and in the United States. As a result of his outstanding work on the molecular diagnosis of microbes implicated in severe ocular infections, he was awarded the first prize in the poster competition of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) Annual Congress twice in consecutive years, first in Munich, Germany in 2003 and then in Paris, France in 2004.

Jagadeesh is a Research scientist at Bioinformatics Institute, A*STAR with a joint appoint at Singapore Eye Research Institute. He is part of a multi-disciplinary team SCAMP (Singapore Consortium for Antimicrobial Peptides) to fight against infectious diseases in Asia, like fungal infection of the eye. He is involved in designing novel antimicrobial compounds using various computational tools. He obtained his masters degree in organic chemistry and earned his PhD in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, India. Having passion for Science with applications in mind, he pursued his postdoctoral research in Max-Planck Institute, Germany which focused on novel catalyst design for an industry. To explore the word of bio-macromolecules, he continued his postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Michigan, USA. Later he worked, on disease targets (diabetes, cancer, obesity), for couple of biotech companies in India and Singapore. Jagadeesh has co-authored two patents and number of pear reviewed international journal publications.

James P. Tam is the director of Drug Discovery Centre of Nanyang Technological University and the Double-degree program in Biomedical Science and Chinese Medicine, and the founding dean of School of Biological Sciences (2001-07).

His research work has focused on the design and development of therapeutics, particularly biologics and immunologics of anti-infectives and synthetic vaccines.

He received his Ph.D. in University of Wisconsin, Madison and held professorial appointments at Rockefeller University (1982-1991), Vanderbilt University (1991-2004) and The Scripps Research Institute (2004-2008). He received the Vincent du Vigneaud Award (1986), the Rao Makineni Award (2003) by American Peptide Society, and Ralph F. Hirschmann Award (2005) by The American Chemical Society.

Dr John Dangerfield is currently Head of Laboratory for the small biotech start-up SGaustria (formerly Austrianova), at Biopolis, and is responsible for developing projects with industrial and academic partners to encapsulate diverse living cells for implantation into humans to treat medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular and infectious diseases. He is also Principal Investigator at the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Virology-Nanotechnology, located within SGaustria's lab, which is a foreign module of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Gene Therapeutic Vector Development based at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, where he also still holds a Group Leader position at the Institute of Virology and is involved in supervising research which he started before moving to Singapore in 2007. In the past 4 years he has co-authored 9 publications and has been involved in procuring 4 company and 5 research based grants.

Martin Everett joined MerLion Pharmaceuticals in Singapore in 2005, initially as Head of Biological Sciences, becoming Head of Research in 2008. Before joining MerLion he worked at Glaxo SmithKline in the UK on anti-tubercular drug discovery and led a team performing automated high throughput screening of enzyme targets within the Molecular Screening department. Between 1993-96 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Antibiotic Research Group at the University of Birmingham, investigating the molecular causes of antibiotic resistance in clinical and veterinary pathogens. He obtained a Bsc in Microbiology from University of Wales, College of Swansea, in 1987 and a PhD from University of Bristol in 1992.

Dr Martin Hibberd BSc(Hons) PhD; is Senior Group Leader and associate director, Infectious Diseases at the Genome Institute of Singapore and has adjunct positions at the National University of Singapore and Imperial College (London, UK). He graduated with Honors from Brunel University in 1985 (West London, UK) and received his Doctorate, on the immune-genetics of the human T-cell antigen receptor, from King’s College, London. He has a broad and impressive scientific background spanning both microbial and human determinants of infectious and inflammatory diseases. His previous posts include WHO-funded Senior Microbiologist at the UK’s central Public Health Laboratories, and for seven years prior to his current appointment he was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Imperial College School of Medicine, one of the very top-ranking British universities.

His current research interests cover both pathogen and host aspects of infectious disease, understanding how microbial agents causes the observed disease (including pathogen identification and sequence characterization) and why specific individuals are susceptible to the disease (using host genetics on a genomic scale). Approaching infectious disease from these two directions also allows specific host pathogen responses to be investigated (utilizing RNA micro and low density arrays). This work aims to identify key host responses to specific pathogens that could be targeted by new therapies.

Naweed Isaak Naqvi carried out his PhD in Maharaja Sayajirao Univ. of Baroda, India & International Rice Research Institute, Philippines.

Subsequently he was a project scientist at the international rice research instt, phillipines supported by the rockerefeller fndn. Following which he joined the Instt of molecular agrobiology in Singapore in 1997. He remained there until 2002 when he joined the TLL where he is currently a senior PI. His areas of specialisation are cell signaling, chemical biology, metabolism, host-pathogen interaction, functional genomics, microbiology, and research interests are 1) Biology of infection-related morphogenesis in plant pathogenic fungi and 2)Molecular basis of fungus-host interactions.

He has been Chair of the TLL Graduate Program (2002-2006).

K.G. Neoh is currently a Professor at the National University of Singapore. She received her Bachelor's and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 1976 and 1980, respectively. Her research interests are in the areas of nanotechnology, surface and molecular engineering which are primarily targeted for biomedical applications. She has published >450 international journal articles and book chapters, and has been granted 21 patents. She is currently on the Editorial/Advisory Boards of a number of international journals such as Langmuir, Journal of Environmental Science and Health – Part A, and Recent Patents on Engineering. She holds Honorary Professorship at Southeast University, China and the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. She has received the National Science Award, the National University of Singapore Staff Achievement Award and the Japan Association for the Advancement of Medical Equipment Fellowship.

Roger Beuerman is currently Deputy and Senior Scientific Director of the Singapore Eye Research Institute, Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology, Yong Loo Lin, School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. His early work was in neurophysiology and he received the PhD degree in neuroscience from Florida State University. He has more than 25 years of experience in ophthalmology research working on the development of refractive surgical procedures, the clinical confocal microscope, proteomics and peptide based anti-microbials. He is well known internationally for work on ocular surface disease. Roger is the principal investigator of the SGH Stem Cell Research Group and worked on the use of ocular surface stem cells for clinical transplantation and on the development of new antimicrobial peptides, and ocular proteomics. He heads SCAMP, Singapore Consortium for the development of Antimicrobial Peptides, a network of scientists at SERI, BII, NTU and NUS that has successfully developed unique molecules with outstanding antimicrobial properties that are safe to the eye at high concentrations. He has edited two books in ophthalmology, the latest on dry eye. Overall, he has more than 200 publications sits on several editorial boards, such as Cornea and Ocular Surface and reviews grants for the Singapore General Hospital Foundation, the National Medical Research Council and the Biomedical Research Council.

Professor Sir David Lane is the Director of the Cancer Research UK Transformation Research Group at the University of Dundee, where he leads research teams studying Human Tumour suppressor gene function. He is also Chief Scientist, Cancer Research UK and Chair of Singapore’s Biomedical Research Council.

Sir David completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at University College London where he studied auto-immunity under the supervision of Avrion Mitchison. He carried out Post Doctoral Research first at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London with Lionel Crawford and then at the Cold Spring Harbor Labs in New York with Jo Sambrook. On returning to the UK, Sir David set up his own laboratory with CRC funding at Imperial College, London, then moving to the ICRF laboratories at Clare Hall before moving in 1990 to Dundee to help establish the CRC laboratories there.

Sir David has published more than 350 research articles that have been citied over 39,000 times and is internationally recognised for his original discovery of the p53 protein SV40 T antigen complex and for his many subsequent contributions to the p53 field. The p53 gene is the most frequently altered gene in human cancer with more than half of all cancers having mutant p53. He is co-author with Ed Harlow of the most successful practical guide to the use of immunochemical methods. The “Antibodies” manual has sold over 40,000 copies.

Dr Ujjini Manjunatha, PhD is a Research Investigator in the Tuberculosis Unit at Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) Singapore. Currently Dr. Manjunatha works on drug development against Mycobacterium tuberculosis with a multi-disciplinary team of microbiologists, molecular biologists, biochemists, medicinal chemists and pharmacologists. Before joining NITD, Dr. Manjunatha worked at the Tuberculosis Research Section, National Institutes of Health, Maryland USA as a postdoctoral visiting research fellow. Both in his present position and during postdoctoral work, he has made significant contribution in understanding the mechanism of action of nitroimidazoles against M. tuberculosis. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore where he worked on Structure-function analysis of mycobacterial DNA gyrase.

Dr. Manjunatha has experience working in the area of host pathogen interaction, understanding the physiology of mycobacterium and characterization of new molecular targets. Dr. Manjunatha has delivered invited talks at reputed meetings such as Gordon Research Conference on Tuberculosis Drug Development (July 2005) and American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Meeting Washington (April 2007). He has received John E. Fogarty International Visiting Post-doctoral research fellowship by U.S. Government (2002-2007), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - University Grant Commission Junior and Senior Research Fellowship (1996-2001) by Government of India and many other academic honours. Dr. Manjunatha has one invited review article and over 16 publications in reputed international journals like Science, Proc Natl Acad Sci, Nucleic Acids Res, Eur J Biochem etc and has one patent to his credit.

Dr. Lian-Hui Zhang is a Senior Principle Investigator and the Head of Microbial Quorum Sensing Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore. Dr. Zhang received his PhD in 1993 under the supervision of Allen Kerr at the University of Adelaide, where he identified a novel quorum sensing signal from a bacterial pathogen and demonstrated its role in regulation of virulence gene horizontal transfer. After that he has spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow in Robert Birch’s group with the fellowship support from the University of Queensland and Australian Research Council, respectively. In that period he demonstrated a novel anti-pathogenic approach to control bacterial infections. Dr. Zhang set up his first laboratory at a state biotechnology centre of Australia in 1997. One year later, he moved to Singapore where his group has been focusing on the study of bacterial quorum sensing. His revolutionary work in quorum quenching and outstanding contribution in quorum sensing has been recognized by the NUS Outstanding Researcher Award in 2002 and the National Science Award in 2005, respectively.