Programme features

Keynote Lectures

Bezhan Chankvetadze - Institute of Physical & Analytical Chemistry, Tbilisi, Georgia

Bezhan Chankvetadze is Professor for Physical Chemistry and director of the Institute of Physical and Analytical Chemistry at the Tbilisi State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research interests include separation sciences with emphases on noncovalent intermolecular interactions, miniaturized techniques, new chiral selectors for liquid-phase separations and enantioselective recognition mechanisms. In 2019 B. Chankvetadze was elected as Honorary Professor of Xi´an Jiaotong University (Xi´an, China). B. Chankvetadze is the Member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences and the Member of the Academia Europaea.

Herman Wolosker - Technion Institute of Israel

Dr. Wolosker’s lab has transformed understanding of NMDA receptor signaling through D-serine biology, with therapeutic implications for neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Herman Wolosker is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on D-serine, a critical co-agonist of NMDA receptors involved in synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory. His lab discovered that D-serine is produced in the brain by serine racemase and that its absence disrupts NMDA receptor signaling. Dr. Wolosker’s current research explores D-serine’s role in neurotoxicity and its implications for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and ALS, with the goal of developing serine racemase inhibitors as potential neuroprotective therapies.

Jonathan V Sweedler - James R Eiszner Chair in Chemistry, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Professor Sweedler received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1983, and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1989. Thereafter, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Illinois in 1991. His research interests are in bioanalytical chemistry and focus on developing new methods for assaying the chemistry occurring in nanoliter-volume samples and applying these analytical methods to characterize the small molecule and peptide cell-cell signaling molecules from systems ranging from microbial ecologies to animal nervous systems. Professor Sweedler is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Symposia

A series of 7 mini-symposia with presentation by experts in the field will allow to present the state of the art and adress major open question related to different aspects of biological chirality.

S1: Molecular mechanisms of animal Left-Right asymmetry

S2: Emergence and organization of chiral superstructures

S3: Exploring the functional  impact of D-amino acid modifications

S4: The origin and maintenance of homochirality in life

S5: Pathophysiological roles of free D-amino acids in health and disease

S6: Probing chirality: spectroscopic, photonic, and electrochemical approaches

S7: Enationselective interactions and chirality-controlled recognition in biology

Selected Short Talks

A special feature, “My Science in 3 Minutes”, will allow ten selected young researchers to present their work with a prize for the best presentation.

Posters

Up to 40 applications will be chosen for the "Come with Your Question” poster sessions. Poster sessions will encourage discussion of both results and open questions, promoting interdisciplinary engagement.