Group members
Dr. Chin-Soon Phan
Head of NPR group
e-mail: chinsoon@osi.lv
Group leader Dr. Chin-Soon Phan was trained in marine natural products chemistry and obtained his PhD in 2018 from UMS, Malaysia. He was then exposed to natural products biosynthesis at the University of Western Australia (as visiting fellow, 2018–2019), Hokkaido University (as JSPS postdoctoral fellow, 2019–2021), and National University of Singapore (as postdoctoral researcher, 2021–2023). He started his independent research group at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis in December 2023.
Dr. Abujunaid Habib Khan
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Abujunaid Habib Khan holds a master's degree in Marine Biotechnology from Annamalai University (India) and has received training in synthetic biology at Praj Matrix-R&D Center (India). He completed his PhD at CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (India) in 2024, and his research focused on isolation and biologic activity of microbial natural products. Currently, Dr. Abujunaid Habib Khan's research interest is to unravel the vast potential of Baltic region microbial natural products for their application in drug discovery.
Dr. Jabal Rahmat Haedar
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Jabal Rahmat Haedar obtained his master's degree (in 2019) and PhD (in 2022) from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Hokkaido University (Japan). His research interests involve the discovery and biosynthesis of microbial natural products, genome mining, and enzymology as a tool for elucidating biochemical pathways.
Dr. Gaja Swarna Kumari
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Gaja Swarna Kumari obtained her PhD from Andhra University/CSIR-IICT (India) in 2022. She subsequently held Research Associate position at CSIR-IICT and Guest Faculty position at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at IISER Kolkata (India). Since 2025, Dr. Kumari is a postdoctoral researcher at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, where her research focuses on the discovery and characterization of microbial natural products.
Vic Kiselov, BSc
Lab Technician
Vic Kiselov holds Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology, awarded in 2020 by the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom), and has a work experience at the MGI Tech Latvia as the field application developer. Currently, Vic Kiselov maintains the laboratory and conducts the daily routine tasks as well as assissts in natural products research.
Anitra Zīle, MSc
PhD student
