Antonio Barbon is staff member at the Department of Chemical Sciences of the University of Padova (IT). He graduated in Chemistry in 1992 and received his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Padova in 1996 working on Twisted Intramolecular Charge Transfer states, under the supervision of Prof. Pierluigi Nordio and Prof. Giorgio Gennari. He spent his post-doc at the Debye Institute at the University of Utrecht (NL) in the group of Dr Ernst van Faassen, working on the characterization by EPR of V(IV)-based catalysts and on defects in polycrystalline Si. In 1998 he returned to Padova, where he continued to work in the field of EPR spectroscopy in the group of Prof. M. Brustolon. There, he was appointed as Researcher in 2002. His research interests are mainly within the characterization of materials by EPR and the study of processes activated by light. He studied the defects of graphene-like materials, both from a structural point of view, but also for the stimulation of toxic effects. He studied the tuning of ISC processes in dyes and the photo-switched electron transfer processes through proteins and membranes. He has been member of the board of the Italian Group of Electron Spin Resonance (GIRSE).
Valérie Belle obtained her PhD in 1995 at the University of Grenoble followed by a postdoctoral stay at the University of Würzburg (Germany), working on methodological aspects of functional and perfusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In 1998, she obtained an assistant professor position in Aix-Marseille University and joined the laboratory of Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering. She is now professor at Aix-Marseille University and teaches general physics to BSc and MSc students. In the past few years, she has focused her research activities on the study of protein dynamics using Site Directed Spin Labeling combined with Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (SDSL-EPR) spectroscopy. She is interested in characterizing structural transitions within proteins mostly arising from protein–protein interaction, in particular in the family of intrinsically disordered proteins. She is also involved in the development of new paramagnetic spin labels aiming at enlarging the potentialities of SDSL-EPR.
Dr Julia Cattani was born in 1984 in Freising. She obtained her Master of Science in Chemistry in 2012 from the University of Regensburg. She joined the research group of Malte Drescher at the University of Konstanz in 2013. In 2017, she completed her PhD on the spectroscopic investigation of the intrinsically disordered protein alpha-synuclein in vitro and in the cell. In 2018, she started working in the industry as a marketing and sales manager for a company in the diagnostic market.
Daniel Cheney achieved his MChem degree in Chemistry at the University of Warwick (2017). With a strong interest in physical chemistry, he carried out a summer research project with Dr Józef Lewandowski on the application of NMR relaxation to assessing chromatographic stationary phases, and spent his final year working with Dr Scott Habershon on the application of automated reaction path discovery software to the growth of carbon nanotubes. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Huddersfield with Dr C. J. Wedge, on the development of optically-induced microwave-free Overhauser DNP.
Prof. Dr Malte Drescher received his diploma in Physics in 2001 and his PhD degree in solid-state Physics in 2005 from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Edgar Groenen, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, funded by a DFG research fellowship, he started his own independent research group at the University of Konstanz in 2008 as a DFG Emmy-Noether fellow. In 2014 he became a DFG Heisenberg fellow and was appointed as full professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Drescher and his group develop and apply electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to investigate structure and dynamics of macromolecules. His main research interests include in-cell EPR spectroscopy and EPR spectroscopy on intrinsically disordered proteins. He is principal investigator within the Konstanz Research School Chemical Biology, the collaborative research centres 1214 (Anisotropic Particles as Building Blocks: Tailoring Shape, Interactions and Structures) and 969 (Chemical and Biological Principals of Cellular Proteostasis). Drescher has been awarded an ERC consolidator grant in 2017.
Andrea Folli is a Research Associate within the EPR group at Cardiff University. Following his Italian Laurea Degree in physical chemistry from the University of Milan (2004), he moved to industry as a junior scientist for Sasol Italy. He returned to academia in 2007 to undertake his postgraduate studies on a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Aberdeen (2007–2010). Prior to his current position in Cardiff University, he was the principal investigator on a European FP7 funded project investigating visible light active concretes for air pollution treatment at the Danish Technological Institute (2010–2015).
Eugénie Fournier received her BSc degree from the Sciences and Technology Faculty at the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France) in 2013. From there, she moved to Strasbourg, where she obtained in 2015 her MSc degree in analytical chemistry (University of Strasbourg). Since 2015, she has been a PhD student at Aix-Marseille University studying the structural and dynamic behavior of a metalloenzyme, the ACC Oxidase, using Site Directed Spin Labeling combined with EPR spectroscopy. Her research is conducted between two laboratories, the laboratory of Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering (BIP, Marseille) and the Institute of Molecular Sciences of Marseille (iSm2, Marseille).
Nolwenn Le Breton received her PhD in chemistry in 2014 at Aix-Marseille University (France), where she worked on site directed spin labelling combined to EPR spectroscopy. In 2015, she started to work as a postdoctoral research fellow at Queen Mary University of London (United Kingdom) where she focused on the characterisation of a metalloprotein using EPR spectroscopy. She joined the Institut of Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg (France) as a research engineer where she is in charge of the EPR plateform.
Marlène Martinho obtained her PhD in chemistry from the university Paris Sud in 2006. After a post-doctoral position at Carnegie Mellon university (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) in Prof. Eckard Munck's lab, she moved to Marseille in 2009. She obtained an assistant professor position at the Aix-Marseille university where she teaches chemistry to BSc and MSc students. Her research work is focused on protein dynamics and protein-protein interactions using site-directed spin labeling and EPR spectroscopy. Her current interests include studying the structure/function relationship into proteins, including IDPs and metalloproteins. In particular, she is interested in using the incorporation of non natural amino acids as targets for nitroxyde probes, as well as the use of the endogenous metal center of metalloproteins for nitroxyde-metal distance measurements.
Elisabetta Mileo obtained her PhD in 2010 at the University of Bologna (Italy). She is a chemist and a spectroscopist with experience on the synthesis and use of nitroxide radicals as spin probes and spin labels in the domain of supramolecular chemistry and Site-Directed Spin Labelling coupled to EPR spectroscopy (SDSL-EPR). After a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of P. Tordo and S. Marque (ICR, Marseille, France), she moved to the BIP laboratory (Marseille, France) and she worked on the development of both protocols and methodology to efficiently graft new paramagnetic labels on tyrosine residues on proteins. In 2014, she obtained a position as researcher at CNRS (Marseille, France). Her research activities are focused on the study of structural flexibility and dynamics of chaperone proteins by SDSL-EPR. In particular, she is actively involved in the development of new tools to investigate proteins structural dynamics, protein-protein interaction and the associated structural changes by SDSL-EPR spectroscopy at the molecular level inside cells (in-cell EPR).
Damien Murphy is Professor of Physical Chemistry at Cardiff University. After obtaining his Chemistry degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 1990, he moved to the University of Turin to undertake his PhD in EPR of surface defects on polycrystalline materials. Following successive PDRA appointments at the IST, Lisbon (1994) and Université P. et M. Curie, Paris (1995), he was appointed to a lectureship in Cardiff University, School of Chemistry, where he is currently Head of School. He is a Fellow of the RSC, Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Award holder. His research interests are broadly focused on the applications of advanced EPR methods for catalysis research.
Emma Richards is a University Research Fellow in EPR spectroscopy at Cardiff University (2015) and currently serves as a committee member of the ESR Group of the RSC. Her research involves utilizing pulsed ESR spectroscopy, including ESEEM & HYSCORE, to investigate condensed matter materials of importance in visible-light activated photocatalysis, focusing on electron transfer processes and the role of dopants and surface defects in promoting catalytic activity. Following her UG degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Bath (2004), she completed her PhD on EPR analysis of stable and transient oxygen radicals on polycrystalline TiO2 under the supervision of Prof. Murphy at Cardiff University (2007).
Jacob Spencer is a current PhD student in the EPR group at Cardiff University, in a collaborative project supported by Johnson Matthey. Originally from Newbury, Berkshire, Jacob completed his MChem (Hons) degree at Cardiff University in 2016. His research interests involve the utilisation of EPR techniques to understand the nature of the catalytic active sites and defect chemistry in functional condensed materials. He is particularly interested in the (in situ and ex situ) characterisation of thin film cathodes for Li-ion battery technologies.
Dr Chris Wedge joined the University of Huddersfield in 2016 as Senior Lecturer in Physical Chemistry. He read Chemistry at Christ Church, University of Oxford, where he received his MChem (2005) and DPhil (2009), his research into radiofrequency magnetic field effects being completed under the supervision of Prof. C. R. Timmel. After postdoctoral work in Oxford with Profs A. Ardavan (2009–2011) and P. J. Hore (2011–2013), he joined the University of Warwick as an assistant professor and taught course leader of the Integrated Magnetic Resonance Centre for Doctoral Training. His research interests include Spin Chemistry and Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, with a particular focus on optically generated electron and nuclear spin hyperpolarization.
Sabrina Weickert studied Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) in Erlangen and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, where she received her diploma with a focus on Biophysics. She engaged in protein biochemistry while working in the research groups of Prof. Dr Kirsten Jung and Prof. Dr Heinrich Jung at LMU Munich. Sabrina Weickert is currently a PhD candidate in the research group of Prof. Dr Malte Drescher and in the Konstanz Research School Chemical Biology (KoRS-CB) at the University of Konstanz. Her research focuses on the investigation of protein–ligand interactions with methods of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy.
