Peter Murin has over 20 years of hands-on experience as CEO and COO of a leading specialty fluorochemical, inert lubricant and generic inhalation anesthetic manufacturer. Peter is an expert at business strategy, technical strategy and manufacturing in the specialty chemical space enabling him to understand and profitably meet customer needs and solve real world problems.

Peter has extensive experience with strategic planning, customer relations, process improvement, expansion planning, generic drug manufacturing, practical GMP strategies, human resources, financial modeling, contract strategy and negotiation, legal strategy and cost control.

Peter has a chemical engineering degree from The Cooper Union in New York City.

Professor Hammond holds the Endowed Chair in Organic Chemistry at the University of Louisville. He was born in Lima, Peru, received his B.S. from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, his M.S. from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D from the University of Birmingham in England. After a stint as postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor at the University of Iowa, Professor Hammond joined the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 1990 as an assistant professor. In 2004, Dr. Hammond moved to the University of Louisville as Senior Professor of Chemistry and University Scholar. From 2007 to 2009, he was program director in the Chemistry Division at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, D.C. Professor Hammond has held visiting professorships at Heidelberg University (Germany), Harvard University, Virginia Tech, Okayama University (Japan), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Unicamp (Brazil) and the University of Valencia (Spain). He is adjunct professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. Professor Hammond has also chaired the Fluorine Division of the American Chemical Society.

Professor Hammond has received the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Dreyfus Scholar-Fellow award and the UMass Dartmouth Scholar of the Year Award. Professor Hammond was also awarded a Mercator Professorship by the German Research Foundation and received a Career Achievement Award from the University of Louisville. He has twice been named Fulbright Scholar, most recently as a Distinguished Fulbright Chair. In 2015, Professor Hammond was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences of Peru. He was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2017.

Professor Hammond is author of 172 publications, holds 10 patents and has received over $14 million dollars in grants as principal or co-investigator. He has presented his work at over 250 international conferences, symposia and university lectures. Collectively, his students have won 35 national and regional awards. His research interests include the search for new synthetic methodologies in organofluorine chemistry, new approaches to catalysis, green chemistry and the study of biologically active natural products from Peruvian medicinal plants.

In 2010, Dr. Hammond co-founded Rigid Solutions LLC.

Bo Xu is a professor at the College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Donghua University in Shanghai, China.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Louisville in 2008.  Prior to his return to China in 2014, he was a research assistant professor at the University of Louisville.  Dr. Xu has authored more than 93 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds four patents.  He is the inventor of the Rigid Solvent technology, which speeds up organic syntheses significantly and evolved to Faster Chemistry’s technology.  Dr. Xu is the co-founder of three start-up companies – Rigid Solutions LLC, Kynetic Pharma LLC and Faster Chemistry LLC.  Three synthetic reagents developed by Dr. Xu have been commercialized by Sigma-Aldrich.

Dr. Xu has extensive experience in organic synthesis method development, the study of reaction mechanisms and organic synthesis automation.