UCB Lecture Award 2025

Dr. Riccardo di Sanza

Riccardo Di Sanza earned his PhD in 2019 from the University of Nottingham (UK), where he specialized in enantioselective transition-metal catalyzed reactions under the mentorship of Professor Hon Wai Lam. Following his doctoral studies, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona, Spain, under the supervision of Professor Paolo Melchiorre. There, he focused on the development of new photochemical methodologies and novel reactivity.

In 2021, Riccardo transitioned into the pharmaceutical industry, joining Sygnature Discovery in Nottingham. During this time, he contributed to a variety of drug discovery programs, including projects centered on targeted protein degradation, central nervous system disorders, and protein-protein interactions.

In 2025, Riccardo joined UCB’s Discovery Chemistry department in Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium, where he is currently involved in the design and synthesis of small molecules to support innovative therapeutic strategies.

Tobias Ritter received his undergraduate education in Braunschweig, Germany, Bordeaux, France, Lausanne, Switzerland, and Stanford, US. He has performed undergraduate research with Prof. Barry M. Trost at Stanford, obtained his PhD working with Prof. Erick M. Carreira at ETH Zurich in 2004, and was a postdoc with Prof. Robert H. Grubbs at Caltech. In 2006, Tobias was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, promoted to Associate Professor in 2010, and to Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in 2012. Since 2015 he is director at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kohlenforschung in Germany and holds additional faculty appointments at RWTH Aachen and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. The Ritter lab focuses on late-stage functionalization chemistry, with a focus on fluorination methods and their application to molecular imaging. In 2011, Tobias co-founded SciFluor LifeScience, now OcuTerra Therapeutics, a clinical pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.