Total Chemical Synthesis of Proteins

Ashraf Brik is Professor of Chemistry at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He received academic degrees from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, completing his Ph.D. in 2001. From 2002 to 2006, he was a Research Associate in the Scripps Research Institute. In 2007, he joined the Department of Chemistry in the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to a Full Professor in 2012. Professor Brik has authored over 110 scientific publications and has received numerous scientific awards, including the 2017 Bruno Award, the Bessel Award of the Humboldt Foundation for 2015, the 11th Hirata Award, Teva Award for Excellence in memory of Eli Hurvitz, the 2013 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry for and the 2011 Israel Chemical Society prize for Outstanding Young Chemists.

Philip E. Dawson is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where he is also the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. He received his A.B. (1992) from Washington University, and Ph.D. (1996) from the Scripps Institute under the guidance of Stephen Kent. Following postdoctoral work at Caltech, he returned to Scripps as Assistant Professor in 1997. He has served as President of the American Peptide Society and co-chaired the 22nd American Peptide Symposium and the 2016 GRC. He has published over 150 papers, and has been honored with an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship, the Vincent du Vigneaud Award, the Max Bergmann Kreis Gold Medal and the Zervas Award.

Lei Liu is a Professor of Chemistry at Tsinghua University. Liu received his B.Sc. in chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China (1995-1999). His Ph.D. was obtained in 2004 from the Chemistry Department of Columbia University. From 2004 to 2007, Liu was a Research Associate in the Scripps Research Institute. In 2007, Liu joined the Department of Chemistry in Tsinghua University at Beijing. Liu is now a Full Professor and vice chair of the Chemistry Department of Tsinghua. Professor Liu has authored over 200 scientific publications and has received scientific awards including the National Natural Science Award and Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award.