Dr. Ece is an assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Biruni University. He received a B.Sc. in chemistry at Hacettepe University, Ankara. He completed his master degree in organic chemistry and obtained his Ph.D. in the field of organic, computational medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry in the same institution. He worked as Research Assistant between the dates 2002-2011 at Hacettepe University.

Dr. Ece gave several talks as invited speaker in international/national scientific organizations including NATO-ASI Summer School, Training Courses etc. He organizes Hands-On Training Courses on Computer Aided Drug Design.

His research group (ECE Research) is mainly focused on the computer aided drug design & discovery. In that aspect, he uses both quantum chemical and molecular mechanics calculations. Supported by the leading software companies in the field, Ece Research uses effective and specialized computational tools to address a particular problem or to enlight an experimental finding in medicinal, organic or pharmaceutical chemistry.

He believes that there is no boundaries in different fields of sciences. Scientists should set aside the differences and collaborate with each other. It is the reason that the motto of ECE Research is "Combining Multidisciplinary Research".

E-mail: aece@biruni.edu.tr
Web Page: http://www.ece.biruni.edu.tr/

Director of Research and Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SoPPS) TCD. Research interests lie in the broad area of Natural Product Chemistry: finding new therapies for diseases with unmet clinical need. During my career I have successfully identified a lead molecule from nature which I have translated through a medicinal chemistry programme, to a novel therapeutic chemical scaffold which progressed through preclinical stages of development through to Phase 1 Clinical trials. During this period I co-founded a TCD Campus company Trino Therapeutics Ltd and was co-PI on funding of approximately €14 million including from Venture Capital (€9 million) and the Wellcome Trust (€4.5 million) with €3.5 million as co-PI coming from a Wellcome Strategic Translation Award I am co-applicant on six published patents in the US, EU and Asia. I have learned a lot about the journey from discovery to humans and the challenges and obstacles that line the road. Experience led decision making about research is invaluable and through this lens of experience, the molecules my group is working on have real therapeutic potential and have been designed to eliminate some of the insurmountable obstacles to drug development.

E-mail: hsheridn@tcd.ie
Web Page: http://www.pharmacy.tcd.ie/staff/sheridan-cv.php

Dr Darren Fayne holds a PhD from Dublin City University in computational and organic chemistry. He worked for two years at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in Hannover, Germany as a molecular designer from March 2003. While with the Computer-Aided Drug Design Group he focused on two main therapeutic areas of research: Cardiovascular disease and Gastroenterology (IBS/IBD). In July 2005 Dr Fayne joined the Molecular Design Group in Trinity College Dublin as a Senior Research Fellow. His research focus is the rational computational design of novel small molecular modulators of key disease related proteins.

In the late 2000’s, he co-founded and served as a director of a rational drug design campus spin-out company to commercialise intellectual property and develop compounds for the treatment of an orphan cancer – malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Nuclear receptors are a major research interest of his, as is the development of computational tools to assist the drug discovery process. A key aspect of his work forming a bridge between chemistry & biology and utilising computational design methodologies to collaboratively discovery novel small molecules with the potential to treat human disease. More recently he has collaborated with colleagues to identify novel small molecule inhibitors of IL-17A (inflammation/autoimmune), LspA (Anti-bacterial) and Vif (Anti-viral). To date he has successfully filed two patents, published 33 articles in peer-reviewed journals and one book chapter.

E-mail: fayned@tcd.ie
Web Page: https://www.tcd.ie/research/profiles/?profile=fayned

Oliviero Gobbo was awarded his PhD in Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is trained in pre-clinical research and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and has worked in private industry and academia for over 20 years. Oliviero Gobbo’s current research interests lie in the fields of cancer and neuroscience, particularly in improving therapeutic delivery. He has a specific interest in the emerging area of Theranostics using nanoparticles. The employment of such theranostic nanoparticles, which combine both therapeutic and diagnostic capabilities in a single agent, promises to propel biomedical research towards personalized medicine. Dr. Gobbo’s research aims to develop new technologies to address unmet clinical needs for fighting tumours that currently have limited therapeutic options, such as brain or lung cancers. He has developed a new MRI diagnostic tool for lung cancer and is currently working on new approaches to carry drugs through the blood-brain barrier (BBB). He also has an interest in novel treatment strategies for tumours, such as immunotherapies or cannabidiol-based treatments, as well as magnetic hyperthermia field which uses superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles as heating mediators to destroy cancerous tumour cells. Oliviero Gobbo’s research has been widely published, and he has had a number of publications in international leading journals, most notably Science and Nature Communications.

E-mail: ogobbo@tcd.ie
Web Page: https://pharmacy.tcd.ie/staff/gobbo-cv.php

Maria is a Spanish medical doctor Specialist in Respiratory Medicine from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona Spain). She started her training as basic researcher in 2004, at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (University of Texas Health Science-Houston-USA). At this stage of her life, her passion for research motivated her to move to Ireland in 2006 where, under the supervision of Professor MW Radomski, she defended her PhD in 2009 (Trinity College Dublin). From 2010 she holds a position as Assistant Professor in Nano pharmaceutical Drug Discovery (School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences & School of Medicine) in Trinity College Dublin.

Her research interests are focused on platelet biology, cancer and Nanotoxicology (particularly on nanoparticle-cell and nanoparticle-platelet interactions). She investigates the effect of nanomaterials and novel formulations on platelet function and tumour cells and applies nanotechnology for unravelling the potential interactions between drugs and nanoparticles developed for drug delivery with their targets and the biological barriers that they have to overcome to exert their action.

E-mail: santosmm@tcd.ie
Web Page: http://www.tcd.ie/medicine/staff/santosmm/

Dr Andreas Bender is a Reader for Molecular Informatics with the Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, leading a group of about 22 postdocs, PhD and graduate students and academic visitors. In his work, Andreas is involved with the integration and analysis of chemical and biological data, aimed at understanding phenotypic compound action (such as cellular readouts, and also organism-level effects) on a mechanistic level, predicting molecular properties related to both compound effiacy and toxicity, as well as drug repurposing. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands before his current post. In 2013 he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to model mixture effects of chemical structures in biological systems using mechanistic approaches, an area currently very little understood.