Prof. Kathie Seley-Radtke is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her medicinal chemistry research focuses on targeting coronaviruses, filoviruses, flaviviruses among other infectious diseases, using her novel “fleximer” and expanded purine tricyclic nucleoside/tide scaffolds. Prof. Seley-Radtke is currently the Immediate Past President of the International Society for Antiviral Research (ISAR), as well as a past President and current Secretary for the International Society for Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Nucleic Acids (IS3NA). She also chaired the 2023 Gordon Research Conference on Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Oligonucleotides. Prof. Seley-Radtke currently serves as Editor in Chief of Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry, and as Associate Editor of Science Advances/AAAS. She has published over 120 papers and book chapters, has 27 patents, given over 170 invited, plenary, and keynote lectures world-wide, and has received many honors including the American Chemical Society’s Chemist of the Year in 2016, the University of Maryland System’s Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Research in 2017, the 2015-2018 UMBC Presidential Research Professor, as well as one of the Baltimore Sun’s 25 Women to Watch. More recently Kathie was awarded the 2020 ISAR Antonín Holy Memorial Award for her outstanding accomplishments and demonstrated service to the antiviral and medicinal chemistry field. The Holy award is the Society’s top honor for chemists.

Hanadi Sleiman is a Professor of Chemistry and Canada Research Chair in DNA Nanoscience at McGill University. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, and was a CNRS postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn’s laboratory at the Université Louis Pasteur. She joined the faculty at McGill University in 1999, where her research group focuses on using the molecule DNA as a template to assemble nanostructured materials. Sleiman is Fellow of the Royal Society (London) and of the Royal Society of Canada, and was Associate Editor of J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2018-25) Among her research recognitions are the NSERC Polanyi Award (2021), Izatt-Christensen Award in Supramolecular Chemistry (2016), Killam Research Fellowship (2018), and E. W. R. Steacie Award ( 2024). Sleiman is Editorial Advisory Board member of Chem, J. Org. Chem., ChemBioChem, and Trends in Chem. She received the McGill Principal’s Prize (2002) and the Leo Yaffe Award (2005) for Excellence in Teaching.

Gavin was born in Newport, Wales and read Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at UMIST where he was awarded an MChem in Medicinal Chemistry. Continuing his studies at the University of Manchester, Gavin undertook a PhD in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, investigating multivalency, followed by PDRAs at St Andrews University and the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. He took up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at Keele University in 2016 and was promoted through the ranks to Professor of Biological Chemistry in 2021. From 2025 he returned to the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester as a Professor of Chemical Biology. In 2020 he was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and was the 2021 recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Dextra award, in recognition of his research into creating new probes for chemical glycobiology and for the application of non-native carbohydrate structures in medicinal chemistry.