Our speakers
Fiona H. Marshall, Ph.D.
President, Biomedical Research, Novartis
Prior to taking up her current role in November 2022, Fiona served as senior vice president and global head of discovery sciences, preclinical development and translational medicine at MSD (Merck & Co in the US). Prior to that, she was a founder and chief scientific officer of Heptares Therapeutics. Earlier in her career, Fiona was director of molecular pharmacology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and spent 10 years at GSK, where she was leading the team cloning the GABAB receptors.
Fiona holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from University of Bath and a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, both in the UK. She was the recipient of the 2012 WISE Women of Outstanding Achievement for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award, the 2015 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award for Chemistry, and the Vane Medal from the British Pharmacological Society. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and an honorary fellow of both the British Pharmacological Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Klemens Kaupmann, Ph.D.
Retired Senior Principle Investigator, Biomedical Research, Novartis
Klemens received his PhD from the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Following postdoctoral research on the molecular pharmacology of somatostatin receptors at Sandoz AG in Basel, he joined Benny Bettler's lab in 1995 for a second postdoctoral position, focusing on the expression cloning of GABAB receptors. From 2001 to 2004, he led the GABAB modulator project at Novartis Neuroscience, driving the characterisation and development of positive allosteric modulators.
In 2012, he joined the Immunology department at Novartis, where he worked on target validation and assay development for several projects related to innate immunity. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles.
Hans Bräuner, Ph.D.
Vice dean of research, University of Copenhagen, Danmark
Hans Bräuner received his Ph.D. in Molecular Pharmacology in 1996 at the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen, and his D.Sc. in 2002 from the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences where he worked as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry since 2000. Before, he spent 6 months at Novartis in the Bettler team characterizing the recently cloned GABAB receptors.
Since 2002, Hans holds a full Professorship of Molecular Pharmacology in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. From 2022 till now, he is the Vice-dean for Research, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen.
Bernd Fakler, Ph.D.
Director of the Institute of Physiology, University of Freiburg
Bernd studied Medicine and physics at the University of Ulm (Germany), where he obtained his MD (summa cum laude) in 1992. From 1992 to 1997, he studied voltage-gated ion channels as postdoctoral fellow in the Section of Sensory Biophysics and in the Institute of Physiology at the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen where he habilitated in 1997 (venia legendi). After a sabbatical at the Vollum Institute, OHSU, Portland, OR, USA in the lab of John P. Adelman, he returned in 1998 to Germany as a C2-Professor at the Institute of Physiology, University of Tübingen.
Since 2001, he is Full Professor (C4) at the Institute of Physiology, University of Freiburg where he was coordinator of several Research Areas of the Cluster of Excellence. He is scientific advisor and co-founder of LOGOPHARM GmbH. They co-authored more than a dozen papers on deciphering protein complexes and interactomes of ion channels and GPCRs. His team, jointly with the Bettler lab, identified important GABAB-associated proteins that alter signaling propertis in a cell- and synapse-specific form.
Qinq R. Fan, Ph.D.
Principle Investigator, Columbia University, NY, USA
Qing is a Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology at Columbia University. She obtained her bachelor, master and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. Her graduate thesis was completed in the laboratory of late Professor Don C. Wiley. She carried out her postdoctoral training under the guidance of Professor Wayne A. Hendrickson at Columbia University.
Research in her group focuses on the structural studies of G-protein-coupled receptor, with the goal of understanding the ligand-dependent activation mechanisms of these receptors. She was a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences, McKnight Scholar in Neuroscience, Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist and Schaefer Research Scholar.
Ryuichi Shigemoto, Ph.D.
Professor, Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria
Ryuichi obtained his M.D. in 1985 from the Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Japan where he also did his Ph.D. 1991-1994 in the laboratories of Professor N. Mizuno and Professor S. Nakanishi. Before, he worked from 1986 to 1987 as Neurologist in the Chikamori Hospital, Kochi, Japan.
In 1989, he became Assistant Professor in the 1st Department of Anatomy, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan, and continued as Assistant Professor from 1990 to 1998 in the Department of Morphological Brain Science, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan with an international placement for a year at the MRC Neuropharmacology Unit, University Oxford, UK.
Ryuichi then moved as Professor to the National Institute for Physiological Sciences. In 2013, he moved to the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) in VIenna, Austria.
He received numerous awards like in 2000 the ISI Citation Laureate award and in 2016 an ERC advanced grant. He is member of the Academia Europaea and author of more than hundred papers.
Jean-Phillipe Pin, Ph.D.
Emeritus Director of Research, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle (IGF)
Jean-Philippe Pin get his PhD in Molecular Biology in 1987 at the University of Montpellier 2 (France). He participated in the discovery of the metabotropic glutamate receptors and demonstrated synergism between various glutamate receptor subtypes for the activation of phospholipase A2. In 1990 he joined Steve Heinemann's laboratory at the Salk Institute as a post doctoral fellow. He cloned and characterized new mGlu receptor splice variants and demonstrated differences in their transduction properties.
In 1992, he set up a research team working on the structure function relationship of mGlu receptors within a CNRS laboratory headed by Joel Bockaert in Montpellier (France). Between 2003 and 2024, he was head of the Molecular Pharmacology Department within the Institute of Functional Genomics (Montpellier, France) and subsequently Director of Research of the IGF.
Kristian Strømgaard, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Copenhagen, Danmark
Kristian holds a MSc in Chemical Research of the University College London, UK and a MSc in Pharmacy of the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen. He did his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy supervised by Professor Jaroszewski and Krogsgaard-Larsen and in the Department of Combinatorial Chemistry, H. Lundbeck A/S.
He spent a year abroad as an Alfred Benzon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia University, New York, USA and returned in 2002 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen. In 2004, he moved as Associate Professor to the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Copenhagen where he obtained full professorship in 2006.
Marius Hoener, Ph.D.
Distinguished Scientist, pRED, Roche
Marius is a Distinguished Scientist in the Neuroscience and Rare Diseases Research Discovery & Translational Area at Roche, where he has been driving the development of small molecules and RNA therapeutics in psychiatry, neurodegenerative diseases, and rare disorders from discovery to early clinical stages. At Roche since 2002, he has held key leadership roles including Lab Head, Section Head, and Research Project Leader.
He has successfully led several cross-functional research teams and brought multiple molecules into the clinic. Over the course of his career, Marius has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and is listed as an inventor on more than 30 patent applications.
Bernhard Bettler, Ph.D.
Emeritus, Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel
Bernhard Bettler received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in 1986. He then worked in the biotechnology department of Ciba in Basel. In 1989 he joined the laboratory of Steve Heinemann at the Salk Institute in San Diego. He was involved in cloning and characterization of AMPA, kainate and NMDA receptors, the ionotropic receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate. In 1994,
Bettler returned to Ciba (later Novartis) as a head of drug discovery projects in the Nervous System Department. In 1997, his team reported the cloning of GABAB receptors, the first heteromeric G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR).
While at Ciba/Novartis Bettler’s group identified the first positive allosteric modulators of GABAB receptors. In 2001, Bernhard Bettler joined the Medical Faculty of University of Basel as the Head of the Institute of Physiology. Between 2005 and 2024, he was a member of the executive committee of the Department of Biomedicine.