• Training: PhD, Columbia University; Postdoctoral Fellow, Caltech • Current position: George and Hilda Daubert Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University • Affiliations: Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford Biosciences, Sarafan ChEM-H Institute • Research interests: Modification of RNA for tracking, controlling, and probing the biopolymer in living systems; studying DNA damage and repair pathways for cancer prevention

Pasi Virta received his PhD degree from University of Turku in 2004 in the group of prof. Harri Lönnberg. Since then, he continued his research in the same university as post-doctoral fellows by Finnish research council focusing on synthetic strategies of oligonucleotides and their conjugates. During his career he also acted as a principal scientist in a Finnish pharma company and as a visiting researcher in Karolinska Institutet in the group of Prof Roger Strömberg, investigating modified peptide nucleic acids. He was appointed as professor of organic chemistry at the university of Turku in 2016, specialized on synthetic strategies of oligonucleotides, their biomolecule conjugates, delivery vehicles and nanoparticular formulations, applying both solid- and liquid-phase methods and DNA-templated ligations for the synthesis. He has published more than hundred research articles and supervised 15 PhD theses, primarily on nucleic acid research. Alongside his research and teaching activities, he has served as Head of the Department of Chemistry, led the graduate school of exact sciences in University of Turku and acted as an expert evaluator on different scientific panels.

Hermann Neitz is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Würzburg. He studied biochemistry and chemistry at the University of Göttingen, focusing on chemical biology. For his Ph.D., he continued to work in the field of nucleic acid chemistry under Claudia Höbartner's supervision. His research focuses on developing novel systems with hydrophobic recognition motifs, which create new opportunities in nucleic acid research. He is currently continuing his research on photoreactive nucleoside analogues, creating innovative bioconjugates.

Subha R. Das received dual degrees in Computer Science and Chemistry from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Auburn University. After postdoctoral training in RNA biochemistry at the University of Chicago, he started his lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA in 2007, where he is currently Associate Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology. The Das laboratory has spent nearly two decades developing chemical tools at the interface of nucleic acid chemistry and synthetic polymer science. His group has developed phosphoramidite and acylation reagents that place ATRP initiators directly within DNA and RNA sequences. In collaboration with the Kris Matyjaszewski group at CMU, these reagents enable polymers to be grafted directly from the nucleic acid itself to create hybrids with complex and tunable architectures. A long-standing interest in nucleic acid delivery has drawn the Das lab to extracellular vesicles, with oligonucleotide tethers opening up exciting new ways to engineer them for cancer and immune therapies Beyond his research, Das is passionate about making chemistry accessible to wider audiences. He has created The Kitchen Chemistry Sessions, courses and outreach workshops to teach chemistry and biochemistry through the real-world context of food, cooking, and molecular cuisine. Das is trying to decide whether or not to include onions in paella.

Stefan Vogel is a Professor of Biopharmaceuticals at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). He received his PhD (2001) for work on glycolipid antibiotics from the University of Leipzig (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Peter Welzel. Thereafter he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG) to join the Nucleic Acid Center (NAC) at the University of Southern Denmark to perform research on nucleic acids under the supervision of Prof. Jesper Wengel (2001-2002). He continued his independent nucleic acid research as assistant professor at SDU with work on lipidated nucleic acids and joined faculty in 2006 as Assoc. Prof. at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). His primary research interests center around nucleic acid chemistry, nucleic acid-controlled fusion of biomembranes and formulation of therapeutic oligonucleotides.