As approved by the last General Assembly (Leipzig, September 6), starting on October 1, 2016, the new Secretary of the EPS is Prof. Paula Gomes, replacing Prof. Dirk Tourwé, who has served in this capacity since 2014 until his recent retirement.

Paula A. C. Gomes (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6018-4724) is an Associate Professor, with Habilitation in Chemistry, at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, Portugal. She graduated in Chemistry at the same University, in 1993, where she also carried out her M.Sc. in Chemistry, under the guidance of Professors Maria Joaquina Amaral-Trigo and Maria Isabel Oliveira Santos, on the topic of dipeptide-based prodrugs of classical sulfonamide antibiotics. She then pursued her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona (1997–2000), on the topics of solid phase peptide synthesis and use of surface plasmon resonance sensors for the study of peptide antigen–antibody interactions, under the guidance of Prof. David Andreu She now leads “ORCHIDS”, a Bioorganic Chemistry-oriented research group (http://www.fc.up.pt/orchids/), where her main research goals include (i) drug rescuing, repurposing and repositioning, mainly applied to anti-infective agents, (ii) antimicrobial peptides, (iii) peptide-based drug delivery strategies, and (iv) peptide-grafted biomaterials. She is also the coordinator of “POP-UP”, the peptide synthesis facility set up at her Faculty, the first of its kind in Portugal.