Dr. Igor Tetko (scientific coordinator) obtained MSc degree (with honor) from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and PhD in bioorganic chemistry from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1994). He did his postdoctoral study in the University of Lausanne in neuroinformatics. Since 2001 Dr. Tetko is employed at Helmholtz Zentrum München, where he is Chemoinformatics group leader at the Institute of Structural Biology. He is also CEO of BIGCHEM GmbH, which provides informatics solution for big data analysis in life sciences. In 2011 he completed H.D.R (habilitation) in chemoinformatics from the University of Strasbourg. Dr Tetko co-authored more than 200 publications in chemoinformatics, bioinformatics, neuroinformatics, computational chemistry, environmental toxicity and machine learning. He was a PI in several international projects (FP7 CADASTER, NATO, INTAS-INFO, etc.) as well as coordinated Virtual Computational Chemistry Laboratory (VCCLAB) , FP7 Marie Curie Innovative Training Network “Environmental ChemOinformatics” and Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network - European Industrial Doctorate "Big Data in Chemistry". In 2019 he was the General Chair of International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN2019) which had a historical record of >500 participants and will be also General Chair of ICANN2024. Dr. Tetko received two national GO-Bio BMBF awards and was founder and CSO of eADMET GmbH company. His research interests include development of machine learning tools for computer-aided drug discovery and life sciences.
Dr. Katya Ahmad (Project Manager) studied Chemistry at Queen Mary, University of London, graduating with an MSci degree (with First Class Honours) in 2016 before pursuing a PhD in Computational Biophysics at the Centre for Computational Science, University College London (2017-2020). Before going into Project Management, she completed a Postdoc at Forschungszentrum Jülich, where she focused on expanding the application scope of a novel QM/MM MD code to study protein-ligand unbinding. Katya's research interests include MD simulations, QM and QM/MM MD simulations, DNA nanotechnology, and computer-aided drug discovery. She also has 5+ years of experience tutoring high-school and university students in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and has supervised Masters and PhD students during lab rotations.
Previous Project Manager (before the end of March 2023)
Dr. Marchela Pandelova (project manager) obtained MSc degree from Sofia University, Chemistry Faculty and PhD in environmental chemistry from the Technical University of Munich (2004). Since 2001 Dr. Pandelova is employed at Helmholtz Zentrum München as a scientist. She focuses on human and environmental exposomics and coordinates DNA extractions within the Germany's largest health study (NAKO). She extended her expertise in health risk assessment including QA/QC of data. She was working on generation of new collaborations and international/national project management (CASCADE-BABYFOOD, INTARESE, EmPOP, UBA-FKZ) with PhD students and scientists from different countries.