CreInSol and Honorary Professor of the East China University of Science and Technology

Peter Maienfisch is the founder and owner of CreInSol MCB, a company formed in April 2020. Previously he was Research Portfolio Manager Insect Control & Seedcare at Syngenta Crop Protection AG in Switzerland (until April 2020). In this role he was responsible for defining the research strategies and to govern all insecticide, nematicide and seedcare research projects across technologies from their initiation to the delivery to development.

Furthermore, he works as Honorary Professor at the East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), Shanghai, China, as Part-time Professor at Central China Normal University (CCNU), Wuhan, China and as lecturer at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Peter Maienfisch studied chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland, where he received his PhD in 1983. Afterwards he spent 2 years at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech; Pasadena, CA, USA) to perform post-doctoral research in the group of Prof. Robert E. Ireland.

During his career he held several different leadership positions in Crop Protection R&D including Group Leader Insecticide Chemistry, Analytics & Automation at Syngenta, Head of Chemistry in Crop Protection Research at Novartis and Group Leader in Insecticide Research at Ciba.

His track record of innovation and successful introduction of new technologies includes authorship of more than 250 scientific papers and patents. He is the inventor of thiamethoxam (Actara®, Cruiser®, one of the leading insecticides world-wide with annual sales of more than 1 billion $) and championed the development of this innovative insecticide. Furthermore, he initiated research on many new chemical classes at Syngenta and made essential contributions to the discovery and optimization of several new active ingredients, such as Spiropidion, Isocycloseram, Cyclobutrifluram and a malaria vector control compound, which are expected to reach the market in the next couple of years. His scientific contributions also led to many invitations as a speaker and co-organizer of many international congresses, including IUPAC Crop Protection congresses. Furthermore, he is Editor of two books on the “Discovery and optimization of modern Crop Protection Products”

Dr Aurélien Bigot (pronounce BIGO) graduated in chemistry in Strasbourg before moving to Germany in Freiburg to complete his PhD in 2008 with Prof. Breit in the fields of organic synthesis and asymmetric catalysis. Then he joined Syngenta as a postdoctoral fellow followed by a second postdoc with Prof Gaunt in Cambridge before returning to Syngenta in Switzerland as a lab head in 2011. Aurélien has contributed to a number of small molecule projects, most recently as Head of Lead Generation fungicide before transitioning to Biologicals research in 2021, concomitantly to his nomination as a Science and Technology Fellow. He is currently dedicated to biomolecules as potential biocontrol or biostimulant solutions, with a particular focus on peptides and proteins.

Dr. Necla Birgül-Iyison completed her B.Sc. in Biology at the University of Trakya. She earned her M.Sc. in Molecular Biology from the University of Hamburg and successfully defended her Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg's Institut für Zellbiochemie und klinische Neurobiologie. Dr. Necla Birgül-Iyison holds an Associated Professor position at Boğaziçi University's Dept. of Molecular Biology and Genetics, starting in 2024. Previously, she served as an Assistant Professor in the same department. From 2001 to 2004, she worked as an Instructor at Boğaziçi University's Dept. of Molecular Biology and Genetics. In 2001, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cape Town's Dept. of Genetics in South Africa.

 

Dr. Necla Birgül-Iyison was awarded an EMBO Short-Term Fellowship in 2003.

She received a Scholarship from the National Research Foundation in Cape Town (NRF) in 2001. She held a Ph.D. Fellowship from the European Union from 2000 to 2001.

From 1997 to 2000, she was a recipient of a Ph.D. Fellowship from the German Research Foundation in Hamburg. Additionally, she received an M.Sc. Scholarship from the University of Hamburg (Auslands-Stipendium) from 1995 to 1996.

Dissertations:

Her Ph.D. dissertation title is "Identifizierung und Charakterisierung des Allatostatin Rezeptors aus Drosophila melanogaster, Periplaneta americana und Carausius morosus."

Her MSc. dissertation is titled "Untersuchungen transienter Transformanten von Physcomitrella patens (Hedw.) B.S.G.".

Marta is an associate professor in Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Padova (Italy). She coauthored more than 100 publications in peer-review journals, and four EU patents on biorationally-designed peptides as ecofriendly plant-protection products, a technology that won the first prize at the Intellectual Property Award 2021 - Agrotech sector (Expo2021 Dubai).

Sarah Mazzotta received her Master’s degree from the University of Calabria in 2016 and she obtained her PhD at University of Seville (2020). Her PhD research activity was focused on the design and synthesis of novel antimicrobial small molecules, especially against adenovirus infections. She was also involved in the preparation of new bioactive compounds from natural sources. In 2020, she started her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Milan working on the generation of novel glycomimetics as bacterial lectin ligands useful in antimicrobial anti-adhesion therapy. Since 2023 she is an organic chemistry researcher at the same university.

She holds a degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Bologna and a PhD in Molecular Biology from EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL) at the University of Bologna, specializing in Plant Pathology. She teaches several courses in both undergraduate and graduate programs and is responsible for the Biotechnology and Plant Pathology Laboratory.

Her research focuses on the discovery of new molecules and the development of innovative strategies for plant disease control. One of the main goals of her laboratory is the development of RNAi-based strategies, including the design, production, and testing of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) for controlling major plant pathogens. The mechanism of action and effectiveness of these molecules are also studied using molecular and cellular biology techniques.

The laboratory is also involved in developing endogenous RNAi strategies, aiming to create plants capable of producing dsRNA against fungal pathogens and insect vectors of phytoplasmas. She is the author of 85 indexed publications and has an H-index of 26.

Jean-Philippe Combier is a molecular biologist specialist of microRNAs and peptides. He has identified different classes of new peptides, including miPEPs: they are peptides encoded by primary transcirpts of microRNAs and they regulate their expression. This led to the creation of the company Micropep Technologies, which has raised around 60M€ and which aims to identify peptides for agronomy.