Founder and CEO of ChemPass. Previously, Greg was CEO and CTO at ComInnex, Inc. (2012 – 2015) where he co-founded the company’s chemistry business and helped grow the operation to 40+ people, Prior, he was the Managing Director and Director of Chemistry at AMRI Hungary for 4 years (2008 – 2012).

Between 2004 and 2008 he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at Merck & Co. in Rahway NJ supervising Merck’s Target Validation Chemistry group where he was responsible for developing Merck’s fragment-based lead discovery platform and its application to lead discovery programs. During 1998 – 2004 Greg held various managing positions at NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals including Director of Library Development and Hit-to-Lead Optimization. He did his postdoctoral studies with Professor Garland Marshall in the Center of Drug Design at Washington University at St. Louis. Overall, Greg spent 15 years in the United States where his groups contributed to the development of a Safety Assessment Candidate and a Preclinical Candidate.

Co-founder and Head of Chemistry at ChemPass. Previously, Laszlo was the CEO at InFarmatik Kft. and InFarmatik, Inc. where he founded the company, initiated the chemistry business and instrument development then grew the operation to 20+ people. Prior, he was VP and Director of Chemistry at ComGenex Hungary for 6 years (1992 – 1998). Between 1982 and 1992 he worked as a Research Fellow at Gedeon Richter Chemical Works’ process R&D group.

Meanwhile in the period between 2008 and 2014 Laszlo was co-founder and co-CEO of MediMass a medical device company with a core mass spectrometry technology (IKnife) for on line tissue analysis in surgery rooms. The company was acquired by Waters Corp. in 2014.

​Laszlo obtained a doctor univ. degree in organic chemistry in 1994, and a M.S. (1982) and a B.S. (1980) degree in medicinal chemistry at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

Gabor is the Head of Software Development at ChemPass. Previously, he was the Head of IT and Software Development at ComCIX, Inc. (2011 – 2016) where he developed and commercialized an eNotebook-IT platform for the chemistry and pharmaceutical industries.

Prior, Gabor had a similar role as the Head of IT and Software Development at AMRI Hungary (2006 – 2011) and the IT Manager and Director at ComGenex (1997 – 2006) where his team developed a highly integrated production platform for chemistry R&D and library production.

He obtained his engineer degree from the Technical University of Budapest in 1997.

Laszlo is a Business Development Consultant for ChemPass. Laszlo is currently Managing Director at DBH Investment. His previous illustrious carrier includes the following positions in Hungary: VP of Business Development at ComInnex, Inc. (2012 – 2016), CEO at ThalesNano, Inc. (2007 – 2012), VP of Vice President of European Operations at AMRI Hungary (2006), and CEO at ComGenex, Inc. (2001 – 2006).

In the US he was a research group leader at Neurex Corporation (1994-1998) and Laszlo did his postdoc at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

He is a Vice President of the Hungarian Association for Innovation and a Member of the Board of the Hungarian Biotechnology Association.

Dr Stevan Djuric was, until retirement in February 2019, head of the global AbbVie Medicinal Chemistry Leadership Team at AbbVie and Vice President of the Discovery Chemistry and Technology organization. The group’s efforts were focused on initiatives in the areas of high throughput synthesis and purification, hit to lead chemistry, chemical biology and new MS based analytical technologies. In 2015 he was named a Distinguished Research Fellow. During his tenure at Abbott and AbbVie Laboratories, Dr Djuric was a Project Leader for groups in the Immunoscience, Metabolic Disease, and Antiinfective areas. Several of these programs have advanced compounds into clinical development and to the market including Abbott’s proprietary rapamycin analog, Zotarolimus, currently licensed to Medtronics for use on their vascular stents, marketed in the United States and Europe. Dr Djuric has over 180 scientific publications, presentations and patents/applications pending. He has also given over 40 invited lectures at universities and national meetings. He is a member of several Editorial Advisory Boards including the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. In addition, he holds an Adjunct Professorship in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas and one at High Point University in North Carolina.

György M. Keserű obtained his Ph.D. at Budapest, Hungary then joined Sanofi-Aventis heading a chemistry research laboratory. He moved to Gedeon Richter in 1999 as the Head of Computer-aided Drug Discovery. He earned D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2003 and he was invited for a research professorship at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

In 2007 he was appointed as the Head of Discovery Chemistry at Gedeon Richter. During his tenure he was involved in the discovery of 10 clinical candidates (41 patent applications) that entered into clinical development in neurological and psychiatric indications. He also contributed to the discovery of the antipsychotic Vraylar® (US)/ Reagila® (EU) that was approved by the US FDA in 2015 and European authorities in 2017. The drug has been on the US market since 2016 and available to European patients since 2018. After his departure from Gedeon Richter he served as a Director General of the Research Centre for Natural Sciences (RCNS) at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has played a significant role in the development of physicochemical profiling in drug discovery, the concept of compound quality and the improvement of optimization strategies in medicinal chemistry. His achievements have been acknowledged by the George A Olah Award, the Prous Institute Overton, and Meyer Award of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.

In 2016 he was elected as a Fellow (FRSC) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Since 2015 he has been a full professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and he has been heading the Medicinal Chemistry Research Group at RCNS. In 2019 he was elected to be a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include medicinal chemistry and drug design. He has published over 200 papers and more than 10 books and book chapters.

Kalpana Merchant, PhD, is a neurobiologist who has led and contributed to the discovery and development of drugs for neurological and psychiatric disorders for nearly 30 years. Currently, Dr. Merchant serves as the founder President of TransThera Consulting Co., which provides strategic and scientific guidance on drug discovery and translational strategies to biotech start-ups. From 2016 to 2020, she served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chaperone Therapeutics and then the Chief Scientific Officer of Vincere Biosciences, two early-stage companies developing drugs to slow the progression of Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Prior to those roles, Dr. Merchant spent over 20 years contributing to and leading drug discovery efforts, first at Pharmacia Corp./Pfizer and then at Eli Lilly & Co. She retired from Lilly in 2014 where she was Chief Scientific Officer, Tailored Therapeutics-Neuroscience, accountable for strategies to enable biomarker-informed personalized therapies, and had previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer of Translational Sciences and Technologies, where she implemented translational approaches to improve the success rate of drug development. Dr. Merchant received her PhD in neuropharmacology from the University of Utah, and completed postdoctoral training at University of Washington.

Dr. Merchant has co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications, edited a book and is a co-inventor on 13 published patents. She is also an adjunct professor of neurology at Northwestern University, a senior advisor to the Michael J Fox Foundation, and a member of the Oregon Innovation Council.