Byron Purse is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at San Diego State University and Director of the SDSU–UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Chemistry. His research focuses on the design and application of fluorescent nucleoside analogues for studying nucleic acids, RNA biology, and nucleic acid therapeutics. His group has developed highly emissive and responsive nucleoside probes that enable applications ranging from sequence-specific RNA sensing and single-molecule detection to live-cell imaging of RNA. Dr. Purse is a co-founder of Alida Biosciences, a biotechnology company developing tools for RNA epigenetics research. His contributions have been recognized through continuous NSF support, an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award, and election as Co-Vice Chair and future Co-Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Oligonucleotides.

Dr Matthew Willmott obtained his Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 2019. Following this, he received his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2024, working under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Turner and in collaboration with AstraZeneca. His research focused on the biocatalytic synthesis of 2′-functionalised nucleoside analogues. He is continuing this work as a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Dr Sarah Lovelock.

Andrea Rentmeister studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Graz and the University of Bonn, where she earned her PhD in 2007 under the supervision of Prof. Michael Famulok. After a postdoctoral stay at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Frances H. Arnold, she started her independent career as a Junior Professor at the University of Hamburg in 2010. In 2013, Andrea was appointed as Associate Professor at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and in 2020 promoted to Full Professor. Since 2024, she is Chair of Organic and Biological Chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She was awarded an Emmy Noether Fellowship (2012), the Hoechst-Award of the Aventis Foundation (2015), an ERC Consolidator Grant (2018) and an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant (2022), and the Wittig-Grignard Award (2024). She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a corresponding member abroad of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Research in her lab focuses on RNA at the interface of chemistry and biochemistry and aims to understand and ultimately control the processes affecting mRNA expression and turnover.

Jacob is from Pontefract, West Yorkshire and graduated with a first class MChem degree from the University of York in 2022. His final year industrial placement was undertaken at Bayer Crop Science in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Jacob joined the group in September 2022 and is a final year PhD student working on the synthesis of 6' nucleoside analogues.

Hana Cahova received her PhD at IOCB Prague and UCT Prague under supervision of Prof. Michal Hocek in 2010. Afterwards, she conducted her postdoctoral stay with Prof. Andres Jäschke at Heidelberg University. As a Humboldt fellow, she studied NAD-RNA and DNA photoswitches. In 2016, she established her independent junior research group at IOCB Prague. With her team, she focuses on RNA modifications in model systems such as viruses or bacteria. In 2022, she received ERC Starting grant to study dinucleoside polyphosphate RNA capping and its role.