Dr. Boons received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Synthetic Carbohydrate Chemistry in 1991 from the State University of Leiden (Netherlands). Prior to joining the faculty at the CCRC in 1998, he spent seven years in the United Kingdom, first as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College, London, and the University of Cambridge, and then as a lecturer and professor at the University of Birmingham.

In 2003, Dr. Boons was awarded the Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Science by the European Carbohydrate Association. Also in 2003, he was elected chairman for the 2005 Gordon Research Conference on Carbohydrates. He serves on the editorial boards of Carbohydrate Research , the Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry , and Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biochemistry. In 2004, Dr. Boons received the Horace Isbell Award by the Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry of the American Chemical Society and was appointed Franklin Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia.

Arturo Casadevall, MD, is the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He is Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and served as Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases from 2000-2006. Dr Casadevall received both his M.D. and Ph.D.(Biochemistry) degrees from New York University (NYU) in New York, New York. Subsequently, he completed internship and residency in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Later he completed subspecialty training in Infectious Diseases at the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Casadevall’s major research interests are in fungal pathogenesis and the mechanism of antibody action. In the area of Biodefense, he has an active research program to understand the mechanisms of antibody-mediated neutralization of Bacillus anthracis toxins.

Dr. Drickamer received a BS degree in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1973 and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University in 1977. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Professor Robert L. Hill at Duke University and Dr James D. Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

During this time, he started studying the structure of glycan-binding receptors, a theme that he continues to pursue to this day. He has held academic positions at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of Oxford and was appointed to the Chair in Biochemistry at Imperial College London in 2005. He has received research fellowships from the Searle Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the Fogarty International Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. In addition to serving on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Alberta Glycomics Centre, Professor Drickamer is a member of the steering committee of the Consortium for Functional Glycomics.

Dr. Paulson obtained his PhD (Biochemistry) in 1974 from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and did post-doctoral work from 1974-1978 with Dr. Robert L. Hill at the Duke University Medical Centre, in Durham, North Carolina. From 1978 – 1990 he rose from Assistant Professor to full Professor and vice-chair in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the UCLA School of Medicine. From 1990-1999 he served as Vice President and Member Board of Directors of Cytel Corporation, La Jolla, CA. From 1999-present he has been a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Molecular Experimental Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California.

Dr. Paulson served as the President for the Society for Glycobiology from 2002-2003, and is currently Director of the Consortium for Functional Glycomics (http://www.functionalglycomics.org) an international consortium of over 300 investigators. He has over 200 publications on the biosynthesis and functions of glycoprotein and glycolipid glycans, and chemo-enzymatic synthesis of oligosaccharides. In the last 15 years his research has focused on the roles of carbohydrate binding proteins in immune cell function.

Dr. Seeberger received his Vordiplom in 1989 from the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he studied chemistry as a Bavarian government fellow. In 1990 he moved as a Fulbright scholar to the University of Colorado where he earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry under the guidance of Marvin H. Caruthers in 1995. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City he became Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 1998 and was promoted to Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry with tenure in 2002. In June 2003 he assumed a position as Professor for Organic Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland and a position as Affiliate Professor at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, CA. In January 2009 he accepted the position of Director of the Department for Biomolecular Systems at the Max-Planck-Institute for Colloids and Interfaces and the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Free University Berlin.

Professor Seeberger’s research has been documented in over 140 articles in peer-reviewed journals, one book, thirteen issued patents and patent applications, more than 70 published abstracts and more than 270 invited lectures. Among other awards he received the Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovator Award (1999), MIT’s Edgerton Award (2002), an Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award and the Horace B. Isbell Award from the American Chemical Society (2003), the Otto-Klung Weberbank Prize for Chemistry (2004), the Award of the European Society of Combinatorial Sciences (2005), the Carbohydrate Research Award (2005) and the AstraZeneca Award for Organic Chemistry (2006). In 2007 he will receive the Havinga medal. Peter H. Seeberger is the Editor of the Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry and serves on the editorial advisory boards of eleven other journals. He is a founding member of the board of the Tesfa-Ilg “Hope for Africa” Foundation that aims at improving health care in Ethiopia in particular by providing access to malaria vaccines and HIV treatments. He is a consultant and serves on the scientific advisory board of several companies.

Dr. Chris Whitfield is a world authority on the assembly of glycoconjugates (complex carbohydrates) on the surfaces of pathogenic bacteria. His work has provided broad insight into how these large molecules move through bacterial cell walls, and their potential as targets for antimicrobial therapy. His research group applies research strategies including biochemistry, microbiology, molecular genetics, and structural biology to address complex issues in microbial cell biology. Dr. Whitfield was educated in the UK, receiving his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Following postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of California (Davis) and the University of Calgary, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Guelph, where he has spent his career. Dr. Whitfield holds a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Microbiology and is the founding Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, the largest Department at the University of Guelph. He is currently a member of the University’s Board of Governors. Dr. Whitfield has served on several editorial boards for prestigious international peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Bacteriology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Microbiology, as well as numerous grant panels. He has also held consultancies with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in Canada, the US and Europe. Dr. Whitfield’s awards include the Canadian Society of Microbiologists premier award, the CSM/Roche Prize, a CIHR Senior Investigator Award, and Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. He was elected to Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada (Life Sciences) in 2007.