K. C. Nicolaou is Professor of Chemistry at the university of California, San Diego and is Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and holds the Skaggs Professorship of Chemical Biology and the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry at The Scripps Research Insitute. His impact on chemistry flows from his works in chemical synthesis and chemical biology described in over 550 publications and 55 patents.

Tamsyn Montagnon received her B.Sc. in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Leeds, UK, which was followed by a move to the University of Sussex where she obtained a D.Phil in 2000. She was awarded a GlaxoWellcome post-doctoral fellowship and joined Professor K. C. Nicolaou?s group as a postdoc. She is now assistant professor at the University of Crete.