Professor David Black, School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales, Australia. Professor David Black studied chemistry at the University of Sydney. Following a Masters degree mentored by Francis Lions, he was awarded an Overseas Scholarship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to undertake a PhD in Cambridge with Lord Todd. After post-doctoral research with Thomas Katz at Columbia University, he was appointed to a lectureship at Monash University. In 1983 he moved to the chair of organic chemistry at the University of New South Wales. He has spent periods of study leave at the ETH Zürich (with Albert Eschenmoser), Würzburg University as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (with Siegfried Hünig) and Cambridge University (with Alan Battersby). He has also held Visiting Professorships in Tokyo, Auckland, Göttingen, Innsbruck and Kobe. He has won the Rennie, Smith, Birch and Leighton Medals of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, of which he served as National President in 1998. David Black has also contributed to international science as Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry from 2004-2011, and Secretary General of the International Council for Science from 2011-2018. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Officer of the Order of Australia. He was recently awarded the 2017 Craig Medal of the Australian Academy of Science. Professor Black has made major contributions to organic chemistry in the general fields of heterocyclic chemistry, coordination chemistry and natural products. His research has focused on the design and synthesis of new molecular structural types, often related to important known natural products, but displaying deliberate reactivity variations that are not found in nature. He was a pioneer in the use of metal coordination for the control of organic reactions, and has also discovered new reactions of activated indoles leading to the construction of molecular receptors and small peptide mimics.
Professor Janine Cossy, Laboratoire de Chimie Organique, ESPCI, Paris, France. Professor Janine Cossy graduated from the University of Reims working under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Pierre Pète. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Barry Trost (1980-1982) at the University of Wisconsin, she returned to Reims where she became Director of Research of the CNRS in 1990. The same year, she moved to Paris to become Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI ParisTech). She has published over 450 articles and filed thirteen patents in the field of synthetic organic chemistry and natural product synthesis. She is Associate Editor at Organic Letters since 2005. Awards: CNRS Bronze Medal (1987), CNRS Silver Medal (1996), Royal Society Rosalind Franklin International Lectureship (2005), Prix Le Bel from the Société Chimique de France (2009), Usha Ranjan Ghatak Endowment Award (2015), E.C. Taylor Senior Award of the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry (2015), Susan P. and Barry M. Trost Award in Organic Synthesis (2016), Tarrant Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Organic Chemistry (2016). Member of the Advisory Board: Journal of Organic Chemistry (2001-2004); New Journal of Chemistry (2001-2004); Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry (2006-2009); European Journal of Organic Chemistry (2000-2010); Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron Letters (since 2003); Letter of Organic Chemistry (since 2006); Trends in Organic Chemistry (since 2006); The open Organic Chemistry Journal (since 2007); Synthesis, Synlett and Synfact (since 2009); Arkivoc (since 2009); Heterocycles (since 2009); Mediterranean Journal of Chemistry (MedJChem) (since 2011); ISRN Organic Chemistry (since 2010); Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry (since 2011); Reports in Organic Chemistry (since 2011).
Prof. Dr. Christian Stevens, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, University of Ghent, Belgium. Prof. Dr. Ir. Christian V. Stevens is professor at the Department of Sustainable Organic Chemistry and Technology at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (Ghent University). He graduated at the same department as bio-engineer in chemistry in 1988 and obtainded a PhD in 1992 as fellow of the National Fund for Scientific Research. During his PhD he also worked as a research assistant of the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, USA with Prof. C.E. McKenna. After his PhD at Ghent University under the direction of Prof. N. De Kimpe, he did post-doctoral work at the Center for Heterocyclic Compounds at the University of Florida, USA under the direction of Prof. A. R. Katritzky as a NATO Research Fellow. He became group leader in the group of Prof. Katritzky in 1993. He returned as a postdoctoral fellow of the National Fund for Scientific Research. In 1994, he also made a short postdoctoral stay at the University of Alicante (Spain) under the direction of Prof. M. Yus. In 1995, he
