Who we are

BSL committee members

Behringer Simon Lecture Committee 2025 — From left to right: Cosima, Paul, Linus, Matilde, Elias, Teresa, Serena, Albin

Linus Boll (chair)

Linus is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Helma Wennemers and a member of the Behringer Simon Lecture committee since December 2023. Having grown up in Berlin, Linus moved to Zurich to complete his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry at ETH Zurich and the National University of Singapore, where he worked with Prof. Ang Wee Han within the field of bioinorganic chemisty. Back in Zurich, Linus pursued a Master’s degree in chemistry contributing to research projects within the groups of Prof. Helma Wennemers and Prof. Jeffrey Bode, which solidified his desire to do research at the intersection of organic chemistry and biology. For his Master’s thesis, Linus joined the group of Prof. Ronald T. Raines at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on the context-dependence of cysteine and lysine reactivity and refined a method for site-selective cysteine phosphorylation. Having joined the Wennemers group in September 2022, Linus’ research focuses on the development of chemical tools enabling targeted therapy and diagnosis of fibrotic diseases.

Serena Schilling

Serena is a Ph.D. student in the Chen group and a member of the Behringer Simon Committee since January 2025. She completed her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemistry at ETH Zurich, where she carried out research projects in the groups of Prof. Wendelin Stark (Start-up UniSieve) and Prof. Frédéric Merkt. Serena’s current research in the Chen group combines computation and synthesis in order to develop new gold-catalyzed reactions.

Teresa Horak

Teresa is a Ph.D. student in the research group of Prof. Erick M. Carreira and has been a member of the Behringer Simon lecture committee since February 2025. Born and raised in Austria, she then moved to Switzerland, where she received both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from ETH Zurich. For her Master`s thesis she joined the research group of Prof. John F. Hartwig at UC Berkeley, where she worked on transition metal-catalyzed cross-couplings. Her current research focusses on natural product synthesis.

Matilde Piras

Matilde is a third-year PhD student in the Bode group and is part of the BSL committee as of January 2024. Matilde is from Rome and has lived in the USA, Canada, Italy, Japan and Scotland, where she completed undergraduate studies and a masters project in the group of Prof. Andrew Smith. During this time, she carried out a one-year internship at F. Hoffmann-La Roche as part of the RiCH Medicinal Chemistry program. Matilde's PhD research focuses on the development of synthetic hydrogels for biomedical applications.

Albin Vadakkechira

Albin is a Ph.D. student in the Zenobi group and joined the Behringer Simon Lecture Committee in 2024. He grew up in Vienna and received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from TU Wien. Albin then moved to Zurich and started his Master’s degree at ETH Zurich, where he was involved in research projects with Prof. Alexander Barnes (NMR) and Prof. Wendelin Stark (PCR tests for COVID-19). He carried out his master thesis in the group of Prof. Renato Zenobi on the topic of breath analysis. Continuing in the field of breath analysis, his current research in the Zenobi group focuses on the development of a rapid, non-invasive and accurate breath test based on mass spectrometry to diagnose lactose intolerance.

Paul Schnacke

Paul Schnacke has been a Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Kathrin Lang since October 2022 and joined the Behringer Simon Lecture Committee in 2024. Growing up in Germany, Paul decided to study Chemistry at ETH Zürich, where he finished with a Master’s degree in 2021. His current research in the field of chemical biology focuses on the development of a modular toolbox for in vivo mono- and polyubiquitylation of proteins.

Cosima Brudy

Cosima is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Bill Morandi and a member of the Behringer Simon Lecture Committee since January 2025. She grew up in Berlin and decided to study chemistry at the University of Potsdam. She received her Master’s degree in 2023, for which she carried out her master’s thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in the group of Prof. Bartholomäus Pieber. She then moved to ETH Zurich to join the group of Prof. Bill Morandi, where her research focuses on the discovery of novel functional group transfer reactions. Cosima has expertise in the fields of bioanalytical chemistry, synthetic organic chemistry and catalysis.

Elias Dressler

Elias is a PhD student in the Frei group and a member of the Behringer Simon committee since 2025. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnical Chemistry from the Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany. He completed his master's thesis at EPFL in the group of Prof. Christoph Merten, where he continued to work until starting his PhD studies in October 2024. His current research focuses on the development of chemigenetic biosensors for the measurement of intracellular enzyme activity.

Behringer Simon Lecture Committee 2024 — From left to right: Linus, Anna, Hendrik, Moritz, Albin, Mitar

Mitar Radic (chair)

Mitar is a Ph.D. student in the Chen group and has been a member of the BSL Committee since September 2022. Mitar completed his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Vienna, where he gained his first research experience in synthesis during the Bachelor’s thesis supervised by Prof. Dr. Nuno Maulide. He then moved to ETH Zurich for his Master’s degree studies, where he contributed to research projects of a largely synthetic nature in the groups of Prof. Peter Chen and Prof. Erick Carreira. His Master’s degree further entailed a one-year industrial internship in the Process Chemistry Department of F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG in Basel, where he also carried out his Master’s thesis scouting the routes towards the desired lead compound. Reflecting the joy, he finds in confronting both the theoretical and the experimental problems of organic chemistry, Mitar joined the interdisciplinary group of Prof. Peter Chen for his Doctoral studies, where he investigates packing in molecular liquids and mechanisms of gold-catalyzed reactions.

Moritz Fink

Moritz is a third-year PhD student in the Carreira group and has been a member of the Behringer Simon Committee since summer 2023. He received his B.Sc. from the Technical University of Dresden and an M.Sc. from the Technical University of Munich. During this time, he completed a research internship in the group of Ben G. Davis at the University of Oxford, followed by a Master's thesis project in the lab of Tobias Ritter at the Max-Planck-Institute in Mülheim. Moritz' current research interests include photochemical transformations and their application in biological settings.

Anna Konopka

Anna is a third year PhD student in the Bode group and a member of the Behringer Simon committee since January 2024. She received her B.Sc. from the University of Warsaw and then completed her M.Sc. at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Subsequently, she completed a half-year internship with Bayer, before beginning PhD studies. Anna's current research focuses on the automated, high-throughput synthesis of protein degraders.

Albin Vadakkechira

Linus Boll

Paul Schnacke

Hendrik Schmitt

Hendrik is a PhD student in the Morandi group and a member of the Behringer Simon committee since October 2022. He received his B.Sc. from the Technical University of Munich and then completed his M.Sc. at ETH Zurich, for which he carried out his master’s thesis at the University of Cambridge in the group of Prof. Robert Phipps. Subsequentially, he completed a half-year internship with Syngenta, before beginning his PhD studies. Hendrik’s current research focuses on the discovery of novel organometallic transformations.

Euan Richards (chair)

Euan joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2021. He completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the university of Durham in the UK and carried out his Master’s thesis at Bicycle Therapeutics – a UK based pharmaceutical company - working on the development of their peptide based drug discovery platform. He is currently a third-year PhD student in the group of Prof. Jeffrey Bode and his research focuses on the development of a fully closed loop drug discovery platform.

David Fischer

David is a fourth year PhD student in the Carreira group and has been a member of the BSL committee since September 2019.
David completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, UK where he also carried out his Master thesis in the laboratory of Prof. David Spring. Additionally, he has industrial experience at Agrana (Austria) and BASF (Tarrytown NY, USA). His current research focuses on base metal-catalysed HAT reactions.

Alina Begley

Alina is a second year Ph.D. student in the Zenobi group where she uses mass spectrometry to study the unusual chemistry of low temperature plasmas. She’s an American that grew up mainly in East Asia and Germany. After completing her B.Sc. in Chemistry at University of Leipzig, she continued her M.Sc. at ETH Zurich. Mostly interested in analytical method development, she has carried out research projects outside her home universities at IBM Research (Rüschlikon), Korea Institute for Science and Technology (Seoul, South Korea), and the Center of Excellence for Training Research on Malaria (FOSAD, Conakry, Guinea).

Frederic Kölblin

Frederic is a PhD student in the Group of Prof. Helma Wennemers and a member of the Behringer Simon committee since June 2021. He received his bachelor and master degree from the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg i. Br. (Germany). After his Master studies, Frederic relocated to Switzerland for a one-year internship in medicinal chemistry at Roche in Basel and afterwards joined ETH Zürich in October 2020 for his PhD. His research focuses on asymmetric organocatalysis.

Vera Wanka

Vera Wanka has been a PhD student in the group of Prof. Kathrin Lang since June of 2019 and joined the Behringer Simon Lecture committee in 2021. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology and Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. Her current research in the field of chemical biology focuses on the development of novel activity-based probes as tools for studying deconjugating enzymes of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins.

Yue Ma

Yue is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Yamakoshi. He joined the Behringer-Simon Lecture committee from September, 2021. Yue received his bachelor and master degree from University of Science and Technology of China. He carried out his master thesis in the group of Prof. Shigeo Maruyama from The University of Tokyo in 2020. His PhD mainly focuses on the synthesis of bioapplications of fullerene derivatives.

Mitar Radic

Hendrik Schmitt

Szabolcs Makai (chair)

Szabo is a final year PhD student in the Morandi group and a member of the BSL committee from September 2018. Born in Hungary, but raised in Bavaria, he completed his undergrad studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). During his Master’s course he worked in different laboratories, such as the Whiffen lab from Prof. Steven Ley (Cambridge, UK), the Development department of Novartis (Basel) and the Morandi lab (then MPI Mülheim). His current research focuses on the amination reaction of unsaturated molecules.

Adélaïde Savoy

Adélaïde is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Peter Chen and has been a member of the Behringer Simon Lecture Committee since March, 2019. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and pursued her Master’s studies at ETH Zürich. Her PhD research lies in the field of physical organic chemistry, with diverse projects focused on the combined computational and experimental investigation of dispersion effects in solution and in the gas phase.

David Fischer

David is a third year PhD student in the Carreira group and has been a member of the BSL committee since September 2019.
David completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, UK where he also carried out his Master thesis in the laboratory of Prof. David Spring. Additionally, he has industrial experience at Agrana (Austria) and BASF (Tarrytown NY, USA). His current research focuses on base metal-catalysed HAT reactions.

Euan Richards

Euan joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2021. He completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the university of Durham in the UK and carried out his Master’s thesis at Bicycle Therapeutics – a UK based pharmaceutical company - working on the development of their peptide based drug discovery platform. He is currently a first-year PhD student in the group of Prof. Jeffrey Bode and his research focuses on the development of a fully closed loop drug discovery platform.

Frederic Kölblin

Alina Begley

Vera Wanka

Yue Ma

From left to right: Jasper, Jonas, Niels, Adélaïde, Sophie, Mamiko, Szabo

Sophie Basler (chair)

Sophie’s fascination for science led her to pursue undergraduate studies in chemistry and biology at the ETH Zürich. After her undergraduate studies she did a one-year internship at Roche in Basel where she was engaged in the medical management of two new biologics in the field of immunology and neuroscience. Having directly seen the impact of biological drugs she was keen to do science in the field of biological chemistry. Currently she is carrying out her graduate research in the field of biocatalysis at the interface between chemistry and applied biology under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hilvert at ETH Zürich where she contributes to the research area of de novo artificial metalloenzymes.

Mamiko Ninomiya

Mamiko joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2018. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and carried out her master thesis in the group of Prof. Keisuke Suzuki at Tokyo Institute of Technology working on the total synthesis of natural products. She is currently a second-year PhD student in the group of Prof. Jeffrey Bode and her research focuses on the chemical synthesis and modification of proteins.

Jasper Möhler

Jasper is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Helma Wennemers and his research focuses on asymmetric organocatalysis with peptides. He joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2018. Jasper received his Master`s degree from the Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg (Germany). During his MSc studies, he worked in research projects in crop protection at BASF SE (Germany), in the group of Prof. Matt Cooper at the University of Queensland (Australia) and in Roche Diagnostics (Germany).

Szabolcs Makai

Szabo is a 1st year PhD student in the Morandi group and a member of the BSL committee from September 2018. Born in Hungary, but raised in Bavaria, he completed his undergrad studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). During his Master’s course he worked in different laboratories, such as the Whiffen lab from Prof. Steven Ley (Cambridge, UK), the Development department of Novartis (Basel) and the Morandi lab (then MPI Mülheim). His current research focuses on the amination reaction of unsaturated molecules.

Niels Sievertsen

Niels Sievertsen conducted his undergraduate studies at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He then moved to Harvard University where he carried out his MSc thesis under the supervision of Professor A. G. Myers. He is currently a doctoral student in the group of Professor E. M. Carreira at the ETH Zurich. His research focus resides in the total synthesis of complex natural products.

Jonas Metternich

Jonas is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Renato Zenobi and a member of the Behringer Simon Lecture committee since 2019. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein in 2015, while at the same time completing an apprenticeship at Evonik Industries AG, as part of a dual studies program. Following his Bachelor, Jonas pursued his Master studies in Chemistry at the Westfälische Wilhems-University in Münster. During this time, he worked in the labs of Prof. Steven Ray at the University at Buffalo and Prof. Renato Zenobi at the ETH Zurich. Jonas’s current research focusses on studies of desolvated biomolecules in the gas phase by fluorescence energy transfer.

Adélaïde Savoy

Hanna Gregolińska

Hanna is a 1st year PhD student in the group of Prof. Yamakoshi. She joined the Behringer-Simon Lecture committee in September, 2019. She completed her undergraduate studies in organic chemistry at University of Wroclaw in Poland where she also carried out her Master’s thesis in the group of Prof. Stępień. Her PhD interests are centred in local reactions catalyzed by chemically functionalized AFM tip.

Moritz Hönig

Moritz Hönig is the current chair of the committee and he joined the committee in 2017. Moritz completed his undergraduate studies at Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München in 2014 before he moved to the University of Cambridge for his M.Phil. studies.He is currently a Ph.D. student in the group of Professor Erick M. Carreira at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. His research focus resides in the total synthesis of natural products.

Nora Nowak

Nora is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Renato Zenobi and is a member of the BSL committee since June 2017. Nora received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany, she then moved to France for a semester at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de chimie de Montpellier, France and she completed her master thesis at Plateforme de protéomique clinique Montpellier, France in the group of Prof. S. Lehmann. Currently she is working towards her PhD with Prof Renato Zenobi at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Her research interests include real time metabolomics in exhaled breath using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

Ankita Ray

Ankita was born in 1992 in Kolkata, India. She received her Bachelors (Chemistry, Microbiology, and Genetics) from Bangalore University, India, and went on to complete her Masters in organic chemistry. After a few brief sojourns across various national labs in India she found her way to the department of organic chemistry, ETH Zurich. She is currently working as a PhD student in the Yamakoshi group. Ankita is currently working on DNA origami scaffolds and its interaction with carbon based soccer balls. When not in lab, she enjoys non-fiction and promoting animal welfare

Eno Paenurk

Eno is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Peter Chen and has been a member of the Behringer Simon Lecture Committee since June, 2017. Eno received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Tartu, Estonia, then relocated to Switzerland to pursue his Master’s studies at ETH Zürich. His PhD research lies in the fields of organometallic and physical organic chemistry, with diverse projects focused on the combined computational and experimental study of platinum hydrides and the application of classical molecular dynamics methodologies for investigation of dispersion effects in solution.

Mamiko Ninomiya

Jasper Möhler

Jasper is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Helma Wennemers and joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2018. Jasper received his Master`s degree from the Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg (Germany). During his MSc studies, he worked in research projects in crop protection at BASF SE (Germany), in the group of Prof. Matt Cooper at the University of Queensland (Australia) and in Roche Diagnostics (Germany).

Sophie Basler

Sophie’s fascination for science led her to pursue undergraduate studies in chemistry and biology at the ETH Zürich. After her undergraduate studies she had the chance to do a one-year internship at Roche in Basel where she was engaged in the medical management of two new innovative biologics in the field of immunology and neuroscience. Having directly seen the impact of biological drugs at Roche she was keen to carry out more applied science in the field of biological chemistry. Currently she is carrying out her graduate research in the field of biocatalysis at the interface between chemistry and applied biology under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hilvert at ETH Zürich where she contributes to the research area of de novo artificial metalloenzymes.

Adam Eordogh

Adam Eordogh received a BSc (2015) degree in Chemistry from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He also completed his MSc (2017) degree in Chemistry specializing in organic synthesis also at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His project was supervised by Dr. Péter Kele in the chemical biology research group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Before his arrival to Zürich he took part in a research internship at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, USA), supported by the Rosztoczy foundation. Adam started as a doctoral student the Rivera-Fuentes Group on October 2, 2017, and joined the BSL comitee in spring 2018.

Szabolcs Makai

Szabo is a 1st year PhD student in the Morandi group and a member of the BSL committee from September 2018.
Born in Hungary, but raised in Bavaria, he completed his undergrad studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). During his Master’s course he worked in different laboratories, such as the Whiffen lab from Prof. Steven Ley (Cambridge, UK), the Development department of Novartis (Basel) and the Morandi lab (then MPI Mülheim). His current research focuses on the amination reaction of unsaturated molecules.

Iain Stepek

Iain is the current chair of the Behringer-Simon Committee, having joined the team in 2016. A third year PhD student in the group of Prof. Jeffrey Bode, his research focuses on methods development and library synthesis using synthetic fermentation. Scottish by birth, Iain completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Strathclyde in his native Glasgow, and found his way to ETH after internships with Roche and Genentech. Outside the lab, Iain enjoys weird music, exploring strange corners of the world and shouting at people on a football pitch.

Stephan Tetter

With a biotechnological background acquired at the University of Bologna under his belt, Stephan joined ETH and the Hilvert group for his Master’s thesis about Matryoshka-type nested protein cages. The high quality of the research at ETH as well as the great atmosphere in the research group drove him to rejoin the lab in 2014 after traveling around the globe for a few months. He is currently tinkering with ferritin protein cages in order to expand their potential for nanotechnological and pharmacological applications.

Eno Paenurk

Ankita Ray

Nora Nowak

Cedric Schaack

Cedric joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2017 and is currently a fourth-year PhD student in the group of Prof. François Diederich. His research focuses on the development of enantiopure [6]helicene based chiroptical materials for uses in optoelectornic devices. He completed is MSc thesis under the supervision of Prof. Jeffrey Bode at ETH Zurich where he worked on the development of a novel bioorthogonal chemical ligation method. During his MSc studies, he also performed a research internship in crop protection at Syngenta AG in Stein, Switzerland.

Nina Hentzen

Nina joined the Behringer-Simon committee in 2016 and is currently a third-year PhD student in the group of Prof. Helma Wennemers. Her research focuses on the bottom-up design of synthetic collagen for applications in material science and regenerative medicine. She completed her undergraduate studies in Interdisciplinary Sciences at ETH Zürich and carried out her master thesis in the group of Prof. Matthew Francis at the University of California, Berkeley, working on the development of new bioconjugation strategies. After an internship in medicinal chemistry at Roche, she returned to ETH for her graduate studies.

Alina Tirla

Alina was born in 1991 in Constanța, Romania. She received a MSci (chemistry with medicinal chemistry) degree in Glasgow from the University of Glasgow working under the supervision of Dr. France. Alina took part in a one-year internship program in medicinal chemistry at Hoffmann La-Roche (Basel). She joined the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, with Prof. Pablo Rivera-Fuentes as a doctoral student on October 1, 2015.

Moritz Hönig (2nd half)

Moritz Hönig completed his undergraduate studies at Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München in 2014 before he moved to the University of Cambridge for his M.Phil. studies.He is currently a Ph.D. student in the group of Professor Erick M. Carreira at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. His research focus resides in the total synthesis of natural products.

Andrej Shemet

After undergraduate studies at the University Frankfurt am Main, Andrej joined the group of Professor Erick Carreira at ETH Zuerich for his Ph.D. In the Carreira group, he developed an asymmetric total synthesis of rhazinilam and related alkaloids, which relies on a novel copper(I)-catalyzed asymmetric propargylic substitution reaction. This work was followed by various research projects within ETH and other research institutions around the world. Among these projects was a collaboration with Professor Jack Dunitz to investigate single-crystal-to-single-crystal phase transitions in TACO (5-methyl-1-thia-5-azacyclooctane-1-oxide perchlorate) using X-ray crystallography.

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Linus Boll

Professur für Organische Chemie
Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5/10
8093 Zürich
Switzerland

Who we are

BSL committee members

Linus Boll (chair)

Teresa Horak

Albin Vadakkechira

Paul Schnacke

2023-2024

Mitar Radic (chair)

Moritz Fink

Albin Vadakkechira

Linus Boll

Paul Schnacke

Hendrik Schmitt

2022-2023

Euan Richards (chair)

David Fischer

Alina Begley

Frederic Kölblin

Vera Wanka

Yue Ma

Mitar Radic

Hendrik Schmitt

2021-2022

Szabolcs Makai (chair)

Adélaïde Savoy

David Fischer

Euan Richards

Alina Begley

Vera Wanka

Yue Ma

2019-2020

2018-2019

Moritz Hönig

Nora Nowak

Ankita Ray

Eno Paenurk

Mamiko Ninomiya

Jasper Möhler

Sophie Basler

Adam Eordogh

Szabolcs Makai

2017-2018

Iain Stepek

Stephan Tetter

Eno Paenurk

Ankita Ray

Nora Nowak

Cedric Schaack

Nina Hentzen

Alina Tirla

Moritz Hönig (2nd half)

Andrej Shemet

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

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