Prof. Dr. Jonathan Hall

Jonathan Hall has been Full Professor for Pharmaceutical Chemistry at ETH Zurich since March 2007.

Jonathan Hall received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1988. He did post-doctoral studies with Nobel Laureate Prof. J.-M. Lehn at Université Louis Pasteur on a Royal Society Fellowship and with Prof. Y. Kishi at Harvard University. He joined Ciba Central Research Laboratories in 1992 where he worked on oligonucleotide artificial ribozymes. In 1997, after the Ciba-Sandoz merger, he became Project Head in the new Functional Genomics Department, responsible for application of antisense technologies for the identification of new targets in drug discovery. In 2000 he was promoted to Unit Head of Nucleic Acids Sciences. His group established a high-throughput oligonucleotide synthesis and screening facility dedicated to the assembly of a genome-wide library of siRNAs, which was used in some of the first whole genome siRNA screens. In collaboration with the Neuroscience Department his group developed methods to apply RNAi in vivo which resulted in early publications and patents describing the therapeutic effects of siRNAs in validated models of pain. In 2003, he received the -Novartis Leading Scientist- award. In collaboration with Prof. W. Filipowicz, at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, his group began work in the area of non-coding RNAs which culminated in the development of a microarray used for expression profiling of microRNAs. In 2005 he became Head of the Platform and Chemical Biology Department of Novartis.