Hiroaki Suga, Editorial Board Chair
University of Tokyo, Japan
Hiroaki Suga is a Professor of the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science in the University of Tokyo. He was born in Okayama City, Japan in 1963. He received his Bachelor of Engineering (1986) and Master of Engineering (1989) from Okayama University, and Ph. D. in Chemistry (1994) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After three years of post-doctoral work in Massachusetts General Hospital, he was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the State University of New York at Buffalo (1997) and promoted to the tenured Associate Professor (2002). In 2003, he moved to the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology in the University of Tokyo as an Associate Professor, and soon after he was promoted to Full Professor. In 2010, he changed his affiliation to the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science. His research interests are in the field of bioorganic chemistry, chemical biology and biotechnology related to RNA, translation, and peptides. He is also a founder of PeptiDream Inc. Tokyo, a publicly traded company at the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which has many partnerships with pharmaceutical companies in worldwide. He has received many awards in Japan and Max-Bergmann Medal 2016.
Cai-Guang Yang, Associate editor
Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China
Cai-Guang Yang was born in Liaoning, China in 1974. He received his Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1997. He earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry on the total synthesis of natural products from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2002. He moved to the University of Chicago to begin his post-doctoral training in the Chemistry Department. After six years of post-doctoral work at the interface of chemistry and biology, he returned to Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, CAS to start his independent research and has been appointed as a professor since 2008. His research interests are in the field of Medicinal Chemistry, Structure Biology, and Chemical Biology related to RNA methylation, antimicrobial resistance, small-molecule inhibitor/activator, and drug discovery.
Jennifer Heemstra
Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Jennifer Heemstra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Emory University. She was born in the United States in 1978. She received her BS in Chemistry from University of California, Irvine (2000) and her PhD in Chemistry from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2005). After a short time in industry, she returned to academia as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. She began her independent career at the University of Utah in 2010 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016. In 2017, she moved with her lab to Emory University.
Research in her lab is focused on harnessing the molecular recognition and self-assembly properties of nucleic acids for applications in biosensing and bioimaging.
Ali Tavassoli
University of Southampton, UK
Ali Tavassoli is Professor of Chemical Biology at the School of Chemistry, University of Southampton. Ali was born in Iran in 1975. He received his BSc from Bristol University (1995), followed by a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Reading University (1999). This was followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in bio-organic chemistry at Sussex University, and a five year postdoctoral fellowship in chemical biology at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2006, Ali was appointed Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Southampton, and promoted to Reader in 2011. Ali was awarded a personal Chair and promoted to Professor of Chemical Biology in 2015. His research interests are in the field of chemical biology related to nucleic acids, peptides and proteins; and cell biology, particularly cellular hypoxia-response. Ali is also founder and CSO of Curve Therapeutics, and current President elect of the RSC’s Chemical Biology Interface Division. Ali has won a number of awards including the 2017 Medimmune Protein and Peptide Science Award.
