56th Organic Process Research and Development Conference

Ángel received his PhD from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Spain, where he combined experimental and theoretical approaches to advance the mechanistic understanding of chemical reactions. After this, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in the group of Prof. Franziska Schoenebeck. Now, Ángel is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca in Macclesfield, UK, where he has been applying modeling and mechanistic understanding to accelerate process design.

David is a synthetic organic chemist who obtained his Ph.D in 1994 under Prof. Steve Ley FRS. After two post-doctoral positions focused on synthetic organic methodologies and total synthesis David began his industrial career in 1998 at Pfizer Process Chemistry, UK, working on many early to mid-clinical phase APIs.

In 2012 David joined Codexis where he led the process chemistry department for eleven years.  He has conceived and had oversight of many diverse enzyme screening and engineering projects across pharma other enzyme applications.  Several of these programs have culminated in implemented commercial processes at the client’s sites.  In late 2025 David joined Codexis’ Client Technical Services as Senior Director.

Sylvain Guizzetti is a senior chemist with over 20 years of experience in organic synthesis, early process development, and flow chemistry. He holds an engineering degree from ENSCMu and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Strasbourg, conducted in collaboration with Bayer CropScience and the CNRS under the supervision of Charles Mioskovski and Alain Wagner. He began his career as a project manager in medicinal chemistry at NovAliX, before specializing in process development and driving the implementation of flow technologies within the company. He now leads the Flow & Process Chemistry department at NovAliX, overseeing multi-site operations, innovation strategy, and collaborative research. His work focuses on bridging early discovery and scalable solutions to accelerate pharmaceutical development.

Jan Haller studied chemistry at the university of Kiel and received his PhD in organic chemistry in Münster in 1995. After a postdoc time at UCLA devoted to computational chemistry, he started his industrial career at Agfa (the former photo company) in the chemistry R&D department. Since 2001 his focus has moved to process development in the CDMO world of Axplora. Jan has successfully transferred an uncountable number of chemical steps to production.

Kotaro Iwasaki is a research scientist in the API Process Development Department at Chugai Pharmaceutical. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Professor Tohru Fukuyama. He completed his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in the laboratory of Professor Ryan A. Shenvi. After three years as an assistant professor at Tohoku University, he joined Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2017. Since then, he has been working on early-stage process development of small- and mid-sized-molecule APIs from preclinical through clinical development.

Pär Jansson attended Umeå University (Sweden) for his undergraduate studies in Chemistry. Upon finishing in 2009 he moved to Stockholm University to pursue a PhD in Organic Chemistry working with Professor Kálmán J. Szabó on oxidative transition metal catalyzed functionalization of alkenes and alkynes. In 2015 he joined the R&D department at Cambrex in Karlskoga, Sweden, as a scientist working in Process Development with focus on technology transfer and scaleup of chemical processes from laboratory to pilot plant. During 2019 he transferred to a  Senior Scientist position in Regular Products working on product maintenance, optimization of previously validated processes and developed a particular interest in improvement of solid phase properties. Since 2025 he serves as Principal Scientist. In his recent professional years Pär has had a particular focus on in-depth impurity tracking as well as effective managing of elemental impurities and potentially mutagenic impurities, particularly N-nitrosamines.

Henrik is a Specialist in the Early-Stage Synthetic Peptide Team in Novo Nordisk CMC Chemical Development. He has a background in medicinal chemistry, obtaining BSc and MSc degrees from Lund University and his PhD from the University of Copenhagen. After postdoctoral work with GSK and the Francis Crick Institute in London, Henrik joined Novo Nordisk in 2020 where he works with process development and innovation in the synthetic peptide field.

Alexandre studied chemistry and biology at the University of Nantes, France. After a research internship at Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Beerse, Belgium) during his master’s studies, he moved to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where he completed his master’s thesis and subsequently pursued a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Jieping Zhu. During his time at EPFL, Alexandre worked on several projects, including copper‑catalyzed alkene functionalization, remote C–H functionalization methodologies and photochemical oxidative processes, with applications to the total synthesis of natural products. In 2022, he joined Novartis in the Chemical & Analytical Development department as a Process Chemist, where he is currently involved in early‑ and late‑phase projects. In parallel with his role as a process chemist, he also co‑leads the development catalysis platform at Novartis.

Dr. Gabriele Menges-Flanagan has more than 20 years of experience in industrial applications of flow chemistry. She is a Senior Scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems IMM in Mainz and a member of the OPRD Editorial Advisory Board. She earned her Diploma in chemistry from the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and, after completing her PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, returned to Germany to join Fraunhofer IMM (then the Institut für Mikrotechnik Mainz) in 2005. Her interests include the conversion of batch into continuous processes and the synthesis and direct conversion of reactive organometallic intermediates on varied throughput scales.

Rudi Oliveira, PhD, is a Senior Scientist at Hovione Portugal, with over a decade of experience in the development and optimization of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing processes, integrating flow chemistry, process modelling, and Quality by Design principles.

He holds a degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Lisbon in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and has authored multiple publications and patents.

His research interests include process chemistry, continuous manufacturing and drug delivery, with a strong emphasis on translating innovative chemical technologies into robust industrial applications, often in collaboration with academic and industrial partners.

• I attended the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Got my BSc, MSc, and PhD there. My PhD supervisor was Prof. László Poppe. My PhD thesis was about enzyme engineering, and enzyme modeling in general. I  essentially continued this during my  postdoc at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.  Investigated enzymes included phenylalanine ammonia-lyases and aminomutases, lipases, omega-transaminases. Throughout my university years I have participated in many sideprojects or have worked for other companies short term. Most notably drug design projects, LogP and pKa prediction method development, computational biologics project on coeliac disease. I have joined Teva API/TAPI in 2020 as a chemical researcher. Since then I have designed chemoenzymatic routes of synthesis for many APIs some of which were published in patents. I have designed and developed enzymatic processes. Provided designs for several enzyme engineering campaigns. Provided support to other stakeholders e.g. analytics, chemical process development.

Marco Santagostino is an organic chemist with over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, specializing in enabling technologies for chemical synthesis.

He holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Università degli Studi di Milano and is currently based at Boehringer Ingelheim’s main R&D site in Biberach, Germany. He leads a multidisciplinary team focused on High-Throughput Experimentation (HTE), catalysis, industrial crystallization and hydrogenation processes, supporting Boehringer Ingelheim’s pipeline through to clinical development. With several publications and patents and a career spanning multiple roles, Marco brings extensive expertise in chemical development and strategies for process optimization, driving innovations that enable efficient, high-quality, and scalable production of life-saving medicines.

Gajan is a process chemist in the Early Chemical Development department of AstraZeneca. His expertise lie in the scale up of oligonucleotide and peptide drug substance for use up to Ph2b clinical trials. Prior to AstraZeneca he was a medicinal chemist at Sygnature Discovery in Nottingham working in a variety of therapeutic areas looking at using small molecules to modulate disease

Linden is CEO and founder of SOLVE Chemistry, a London-based start-up focused on enabling efficient chemical process development through automated high throughput data collection and machine learning methods.

After completing his undergraduate chemistry degree at Oxford, he moved to Imperial to complete his PhD between chemistry, chemical engineering, and machine learning. His PhD research focused on developing methodology to efficiently collect data from chemical reactions, producing multiple peer reviewed papers and a patent, and receiving departmental thesis and presentation prizes. Since founding SOLVE Chemistry, Linden and the team have further improved their data collection and machine learning techniques providing data collection services, process insights automatically, and software to enable more efficient chemical process development.”

Dr. Olga Sokolova earned her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bristol under the supervision of Prof. John F. Bower, with research focused on the development of novel carbon–carbon bond activation processes. She subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Westfälische Wilhelms‑Universität Münster under Prof. Dr. Ryan Gilmour, working on fluorocyclizations using hypervalent iodine reagents, photocatalytic desymmetrisation, and glycosylcarbene chemistry. Her research training also includes visiting research positions at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) under Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren, where she studied gold(I)‑catalyzed reactivity of ketoenynes, and at the University of Bristol under Prof. John F. Bower, focusing on novel C–H activation processes.

Olga joined Symeres in 2022, where she currently leads a small team focused on chemocatalysis and applies Design of Experiments and Bayesian optimization to enable efficient and cost‑effective chemical processes.

Andrea Zanetti graduated in Medicinal Chemistry from UCD, Dublin, before completing a PhD in organic synthetic chemistry under Prof. Pat Guiry, focused on the synthesis and biological evaluation of lipoxin analogues. He later carried out postdoctoral research at ESPCI in Paris, working on a novel approach to the synthesis of artemisinin, and held a research fellowship in Cardiff focused on medicinal chemistry projects targeting GABA receptors. Since joining Pfizer Ireland in 2022, he has been working in Process Development, supporting second-generation process development, site support, and cost improvement projects.