Bio
Dr. Santos-filho is a professor of Computational Biophysical Chemistry at the Walter Mors Natural Products Research Institute, Health Sciences Center of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Before assuming his (tenured) position as a university professor, he worked as: chemist in Brazilian chemical, and aviation and aerospace component manufacturing companies; postdoctoral scientist at the Institute of Chemistry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Research Specialist at The Chem21, Inc., USA; postdoctoral scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy, USA; Research Associate at University of British Columbia Department of Medicine, Canada; senior scientist at the Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos)/Fiocruz; and visiting scientist at the Inflammation Laboratory of IOC/Fiocruz, Brazil. He is member of the Brazilian Physical Society and of the American Chemical Society. Since 2016, he has served as the editorial board member of the international peer-reviewed journals related to chemical and pharmaceutical sciences: Pharmaceuticals, Scientia Pharmaceutica (owned by the Austrian Pharmaceutical Society), and since 2022 he has served as editor-in-chief of the In Silico Approaches in Drug Discovery section of the journal Drugs and Drug Candidates. His main scientific interests are: Medicinal Chemistry; Structural Biology; Immunology; Virology; Organic Reaction Mechanisms; and Enzyme Catalysis.

Bio
Dr. Baker is a Distinguished University Professor in USF’s Department of Chemistry where his research group is interested in the discovery and characterization of novel chemodiversity from natural products. He has promoted the use of natural product libraries for the development of screening and drug discovery platforms in collaboration with biomedical scientists around the world. These studies have led to important discoveries in cancer, such as palmerolides and palmadorins; infectious diseases, such as the anti-biofilm diterpene darwinolide and the friomaramide antimalarial peptides; and the myricanol family of natural products active in neurodegenerative therapeutic areas. Current efforts are focused on advancing the biomedical potential of palmerolides, including heterologous expression of the biosynthetic gene cluster that was discovered in a bacterium found in the microbiome of the host ascidian from which palmerolides were discovered.

Talk
Biologically Relevant Chemical Space: From Characterization to Predictive Modeling

Bio
Dr. Medina-Franco holds a BSc in Chemistry (1998, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a MSc and Ph.D. degree (2005, both from the UNAM). In 2005, Dr. Medina Franco joined the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. Gerald Maggiora and he was named Assistant Member at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies in Florida in August 2007. In 2013, he conducted research at the Mayo Clinic. In 2014 he joined UNAM and now is Full Time Research Professor. He leads the DIFACQUIM research group at UNAM. The research focus is on chemoinformatics, molecular modeling and artificial intelligence with applications on epigenetic targets and natural products. Dr. Medina-Franco is a member of the National Researcher System, National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico with the highest level. In 2017 he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). He has been an Invited Professor at Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Japan, and France. Dr. Medina Franco has published over 340 peer-reviewed papers, 25 book chapters and issued one international patent. He has edited four books. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design and serves as Editorial Board Member of several journals including Drug Discovery Today, Chemical Sciences, Journal of Cheminformatics, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, and Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery. Since 2007 he has been PI in several research grants. Dr. Medina-Franco has supervised the research of 11 postdoctoral fellows, 23 graduate, and 30 undergraduate students.

Talk
Knowledge based and AI-accelerated approaches to drug discovery and repurposing

Bio
PhD is K.H. Lee Distinguished Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and the Research Fellow at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also a member of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) at UNC. Prof. Tropsha obtained his PhD in Chemical Enzymology in 1986 from Moscow State University, Russia. His main research interests are in the area of Data Science with applications to drug development, chemical safety predictions including computational and combinatorial NAMs methods, and materials science. He has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed research papers, reviews, and book chapters, and his studies have been supported by all major federal funding agencies in the US. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and a consultant to several technology and drug discovery companies.