Tanja M Wrodnigg Editor

Paul Kosma is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. He earned his PhD in organic chemistry in 1980 from the University of Technology, Vienna in the field of heterocyclic chemistry. Starting with postdoctoral studies at the former SANDOZ-Research Institute in Vienna under the guidance of Frank Michael Unger and a research stay at the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry in Moscow with Leonid Backinowsky, he entered the field of carbohydrate chemistry. In 1988 he earned readership (Habilitation) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna and was promoted to full professor of Organic Chemistry in 1991. From 1998 to 2006 he served as director of a Christian-Doppler-Laboratory on Pulp Reactivity and as member of the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence with a focus on cellulose analytics and modification. In 2009 he was chair of the 15th European Carbohydrate Symposium in Vienna and served as representative of Austria in the European and International Carbohydrate Organizations (ECO, ICO) until 2019. He was presented with a prestigious award (Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst 1. Klasse) in 2018. His research interests - resulting in more than 280 publications - are in synthesis of complex oligosaccharides and neoglycoconjugates of biomedical importance from bacteria, viruses and parasites as well as biosynthesis and structural analysis of bacterial glycans by NMR spectroscopy.

Tanja M. Wrodnigg holds a professorship at the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Biobased Systems at Graz University of Technology, Austria. She earned her PhD in organic chemistry (1999) at Graz University of Technology, Austria under the supervision of Arnold Stütz, working on the synthesis of iminosugar based ligands for glycoside processing enzymes. She joined 2001 the group of Stephen Withers at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver as a postdoctoral fellow, to obtain insights into biochemical field of the foregoing enzyme class. Back at TU Graz (2003), she was awarded a Hertha Firnberg Fellowship from the Austrian Science foundation (FWF), to build up her own research group in collaboration with Glycogroup focus on the design and synthesis of glycomimetics as ligands and therapeutics for (bio)-medicinal applications in the context of glycoside processing enzymes. In 2007 she went for a sabbatical to Danish Technical University (DTU) Lyngby, Denmark to work with Prof. Inge Lundt. In 2008 she was appointed Associate Professor at TU Graz and since 2020 she is Full Professor and established the new Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Biobased Systems at TU Graz with the focus on the design and synthesis of bioactive glycoconjugates and glycomimetics as tools for glycoprocessing enzymes and modification of carbohydrate based biomolecules for technological applications.

Arnold Stütz was born in Graz, Austria, in 1957 and received his Ph.D. at Graz Technical University in 1983.

After post-doctoral work with Profs. Yoshito Kishi (1984/85, Palytoxin) and Robert J. (Robin) Ferrier (1986/87, Carbasugars), he returned to Graz and initiated the start of Glycogroup at Graz University of Technology. He was appointed Professor for Organic Chemistry in 1993.

His stays abroad, including his guest professorships at Danish Technical University (DTU), have contributed to a range of fruitful long-term international collaborations.

His main research interests have covered aminocyclitol antibiotics, numerous types of glycosidase inhibitors, synthetic applications and mechanism of xylose isomerase and other means of isomerization of free sugars as well as added-value products from cheap renewable sources, just to mention a few.

Current work is focussed on cyclopentanoid sugar analogs, non-natural glycolipids as well as amino acid – sugar adducts.