Local Organizing Committee

Chair: Floris Rutjes

Floris Rutjes received his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1993 under the supervision of Profs. Speckamp and Hiemstra. After a post-doctoral stay with Prof. Nicolaou at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, USA) and an assistant professorship at the University of Amsterdam, he became full professor in organic synthesis at Radboud University in Nijmegen in 1999. He has received several awards including the Gold Medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV, 2002) and the AstraZeneca Award for Research in Organic Chemistry (2003). He is co-founder of the companies Chiralix, FutureChemistry and Pansynt, and in 2008 received the award of ‘Most entrepreneurial scientist of the Netherlands 2008’. For a period of eight years he was director of the Education Institute for Molecular Sciences, and currently holds the position of Vice-dean of Education of the Faculty of Science. In this role, he is responsible for all degree programmes at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level. He has also been active in the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV). He has served on the board of both the divisions of Medicinal Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, he acted four years as chairman of the KNCV Gold Medal selection committee, and he was President of the KNCV between 2016 and 2020. Currently, he is President of the European Chemical Society (EuChemS).

Scientific Program co-chairs: Petra de Jongh & Hermen Overkleeft

The biographies of the Scientific Program Committee co-chairs and further information about the Scientific Program Committee can be found here.

Executive Director: Jan-Willem Toering

Jan-Willem Toering attended Utrecht University where he graduated in law in 1991. He holds a MSc (Business Administration) from Radboud University Nijmegen. After serving in the Royal Netherlands Navy as aid the-camp of the Commander Netherlands Forces in the Caribbean, he joined the Ministry of General Affairs, Netherlands Government Information Services and served as a spokesman for members of the Royal House of the Netherlands. Following several years in public service, he started at BASF in different positions and joined the management team as Head of Communications, responsible for public relations campaigns in order to improve the mutual understanding between the chemical industry and its stakeholders. Next to his responsibilities at BASF, he served on the board of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV) and acted as a chairman of the supervisory board of Bèta Publishers, the publishing company of the KNCV. In 2006 Toering took over the family business and worked as an independent entrepreneur. As of March 2014, Toering has been appointed as managing director of the KNCV.