(All colloquia will be held in the Dyson Perrins Lecture Theatre, Thursday at 2 pm, unless otherwise stated. All visitors are welcome. Convenors: Prof. Jeremy Robertson and Prof. Angela Russell Week 1 12 October Professor Emily Balskus (Harvard University) "Deciphering the human microbiota with chemistry" More information: chemistry.harvard.edu/people/emily-balskus and www.microbialchemist.com Week 2 19 October Dr. Tobias Erb (Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg) "CETCH me if you can: bringing inorganic carbon into life with synthetic CO2-fixation and metabolic retrosynthesis" More information: www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/erb Week 3 26 October PFIZER SYMPOSIUM - 2:15 pm in ICL Lecture Theatre Dr Celine Cano (Newcastle University) "Development of DNA-PK inhibitors for Cancer Therapy" More information: www.ncl.ac.uk/nicr/staff/profile/celinecano.html#background Dr David Blakemore (Pfizer, Groton) TBA Professor Nicholas Westwood (University of St. Andrews) TBA More information: chemistry.st-andrews.ac.uk/staff/njw/group/ Week 4 2 November Professor George O'Doherty (Northeastern University, Boston) "De novo asymmetric synthesis for carbohydrate and natural product medicinal chemistry" More information: http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/jfhgrp/ Week 5 9 November Dr Robert Young (GSK, Stevenage) "Impact and misuse of synthetic chemistry in contemporary drug discovery" Week 6 16 November Professor Richard Taylor (University of York) "From natural products to organic diversity: dearomatisation and spirocycle synthesis" More information: www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/academic/t-z/rtaylor/ and www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/academic/t-z/rtaylor/grouppages/ Week 7 23 November Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian (University of Cambridge) "Decoding features and functions of the genome" More information: www.ch.cam.ac.uk/person/sb10031 and www.balasubramanian.co.uk Week 8 30 November Professor Paul Fish (University College London) "New chemical probes to explore novel approaches to treat Alzheimer’s disease and cancer" More information: www.ucl.ac.uk/flarre/people/fish-paul and iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=PFISH03