Heinz Moser

Heinz Moser heads medicinal, analytical and structural chemistry in Emeryville supporting the infectious disease portfolio at Novartis. Prior to this position he worked as VP of chemistry at Achaogen, specializing on antibacterial drugs. Previously, he was CTO and VP of chemistry at Genesoft Pharmaceuticals, a company exploring sequence-specific DNA binding agents as novel therapeutic modality. He started his professional career in 1987 at CIBA in Basel where he initiated and later headed a project in the field of nucleic acid based therapeutics (antisense). During the merger to form Novartis in 1996 he relocated to Horsham UK, heading the medicinal chemistry department for respiratory diseases. Heinz received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from ETH Zurich (A. Eschenmoser) and did postdoctoral research at Caltech (P. Dervan). His main professional interests are related to drug discovery and medicinal chemistry and specifically include antibacterials, cheminformatics, natural products and interdisciplinary approaches to improve the quality of novel drugs.