Shivam Tikoo is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry in the laboratory of Dr. Christopher J. Wilds at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada), He was also an NSERC CREATE PROMOTE program assistant. He holds a dual BS-MS degree from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, India. His research focuses on the intersection of bioorganic chemistry and chemical biology, specifically developing novel selenium-mediated chemical ligation strategies and stimuli-responsive linkers for functionalized oligonucleotide conjugates.

Tyler Rutherford is a PhD candidate and nucleic acid chemist in the Wilds Lab at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His primary expertise lies in structural DNA nanotechnology, focusing on the design, solid-phase synthesis, and conjugation of tetrahedral DNA nanocages. He possesses extensive experience with phosphoramidite synthesis, click chemistry, and protein assays. His current research targets DNA repair as an endogenous release factor for drug delivery applications. He is scheduled to defend his thesis this year and is actively exploring opportunities in industry.

Alexandria (Alex) Horton is a PhD student in Pharmacological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in the molecular and synthetic evolution of XNA polymerases. Her research focuses on the development of highly specialized replicative polymerases for the synthesis of modified nucleotide chemistries, such as threose nucleic acid (TNA), using a high-throughput droplet microfluidic platform. Her work seeks to expand the substrate scope of evolved polymerases for broad applications across the fields of therapeutics, diagnostics, and biotechnology.

Abhishek is a fourth-year PhD student in the Chemistry Department at McGill University, Canada, where he conducts research in Dr. Masad J. Damha’s laboratory on chemically modified oligonucleotides for therapeutic applications. His work focuses on the design and synthesis of novel RNA sugar modifications and their deployment in antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), siRNAs, and CRISPR-based systems.

Yihao Wu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at McGill University, where he conducts research in the Sleiman lab. His work lies at the interface of DNA nanotechnology and supramolecular chemistry, with a focus on expanding DNA assembly beyond sequence-specific base pairing. By integrating multiple assembly “languages,” his research seeks to create cooperative and dynamic supramolecular DNA architectures with emergent properties for nucleic acid delivery and other biological applications.

Sarveenah R G Chandrasegaran is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry in the laboratory of Prof. Tara Pukala at the University of Adelaide (Adelaide, Australia). Her research focuses on the in vitro and in vivo analysis of DNA triplex formation, investigating how synthetic backbone modifications such as locked nucleic acid (LNA) substitutions enhance triplex stability and sequence tolerance. She employs native mass spectrometry, UV-Vis spectroscopy, and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) to characterise these assemblies, alongside nanoparticle synthesis as delivery vehicles for modified triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) into bacterial cells. She holds a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours and a Bachelor of Science (Double Chemistry) from the University of Adelaide.

Zidi Lyu is a PhD candidate in Chemistry in the group of Prof. Masad J. Damha at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, specializing in therapeutic and synthetic RNA chemistry. Her research focuses on developing branched oligonucleotide analogues that mimic intronic RNA lariats, solid-phase synthesis of long and functional RNA, and the development of cap-independent minimal mRNA platforms for enhanced protein production and cancer vaccine applications. Zidi previously completed an MSc in Chemistry at Northeastern University and a BSc in Chemistry at McGill University, and has held industrial roles as an R&D and quality control analyst in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Her work spans fundamental method development in RNA chemical synthesis and the creation of next-generation mRNA and oligonucleotide therapeutics, with peer-reviewed publications and conference awards recognizing her contributions to the field of oligonucleotide therapeutics.

Matteo Giannangeli is a PhD student in Precision Medicine at the Università di Brescia, Italy, where he conducts research in medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Alessandra Gianoncelli. His work focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of small molecules targeting biologically relevant macromolecules, with particular interest in G-quadruplex and i-motif structures and phosphodiesterases as therapeutic targets. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology and a Master's degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Brescia. During his doctoral training, he completed a research stay in the group of Carlos Gonzalez at the IQF-CSIC (Madrid, Spain) strengthening his expertise in structural biology, in particular by applying NMR spectroscopy to study non-canonical nucleic acid structures. He is co-author of several peer-reviewed scientific publications and has presented his work at national and international conferences.

Tobias Behn is a PhD student at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Cologne, working on the chemistry of catalytic nucleic acids under the supervision of Prof. Stephanie Kath-Schorr. His research centres on DNAzymes as synthetic nucleic acid therapeutics, developing novel chemically modified nucleoside building blocks for incorporation into catalytic DNA to probe, control and tune its function. He graduated with an M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Cologne in 2022, working on an unnatural halogen-bonded DNA base pair. His work is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the BMBF's GO-Bio Next initiative, in close collaboration with Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and its University Hospital to translate therapeutic DNAzymes towards clinical application.

Samira Ebrahimi is a PhD candidate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University, Canada, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Unrau. Her research focuses on post-transcriptional gene regulation in immunity, with emphasis on Regnase-1-mediated mRNA cleavage. She studies the role of Regnase-1-dependent RNA regulation in lymphoma and SARS-CoV-2 infection, where disrupted RNA degradation leads to stabilization of target transcripts and altered immune signaling pathways.

Hayato Yokoe is a Ph.D. student in the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry (Prof. Hiroshi Abe), Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Japan. He received his B.Sc. (2023) and M.Sc. (2025) in Science from Nagoya University. His research focuses on the development of novel chemical ligation methods for nucleic acids with broader interests in bioorthogonal chemistry and nucleic acid therapeutics. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the ISNAC Outstanding Poster Award (2025) and the Student Presentation Award at the 106th Annual Meeting of the Chemical Society of Japan (2026).

PhD candidate in Biochemistry at the University of Cologne, specialising in RNA modifications, nucleic acid chemistry, and mRNA stabilisation strategies. My research focuses on developing chemical and biochemical approaches to improve mRNA translation efficiency. I have experience in organic synthesis, molecular biology, RNA production and purification, as well as analytical characterisation techniques. I am interested in RNA therapeutics, chemical biology, and innovative nucleic acid technologies.

Prof. Dr. Hui Mei received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peking University in 2008, and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Osnabrueck in 2015. He completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University and the University of California, Irvine, prior to joining Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT). His research interests cover nucleic acid chemistry, nucleic acid-based therapeutics and synthetic biology. To date, he has published over 30 corresponding-author or first-author articles in peer-reviewed top journals including JACS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. and NAR and applied for more than 10 invention patents. His current research focuses on the design and development of novel unnatural xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs), as well as XNA-based applications in nucleic acid therapeutics and synthetic biology.