About

Our Mission

Snieckus Innovations is a new custom synthesis group headed by Professor Victor Snieckus. We are based at Innovation Park, a state-of-the art facility at Kingston, Ontario. Our aim is to use the decades of synthetic chemistry experience gained through both academia and industrial partnerships in the Snieckus laboratories to assist pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies in tackling the challenging synthesis required in their quest to develop new drugs and crop enhancing agents.

Victor Snieckus, Director

Victor Snieckus has extensive experience in assisting pharmacetical and agrochemical scientists in solution of synthetic programs through continued consultancy work. He began his academic career at the University of Waterloo before moving to his current position as Bader Chair in Organic Chemistry at Queen's University. His work in the area of synthetic organic chemistry has been recognized with numerous awards including the ACS Arthur C Cope Scholar Award, the AstraZeneca Excellence Award in Organic Synthesis and the Arfvedson-Schlenk Award of the GDCH. He was recently made a Fellow of the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry for his long-term research accomplishments.

Michael Wells, Executive Director

Dr. Wells has expertise in new product development and marketing, technology evaluation and licensing strategy. Prior to joining PARTEQ he was managing partner in Protevia Inc., a Guelph-based biopharmaceutical startup company, where he oversaw drug discovery and clinical development of external cardiovascular technologies. He also managed regulatory, intellectual property and manufacturing concerns. More recently he worked as a senior business development consultant for Campbell Alliance, a leading biopharmaceutical consulting firm. He also worked as a marketing associate in new product development at Janssen-Ortho Inc. of Toronto.   Dr. Wells is a graduate of Queen’s University (MBA, Science and Technology), McMaster University (PhD), and University of Guelph (BSc).

John Board, Research Manager

Johnathan Board has overseen industrial projects at SI since 2009 prior to which he developed and refined his heterocyclic synthesis skills through participation in an industrial post-doctoral fellowship at Queen’s University with Prof. Snieckus and OSI pharmaceuticals. He achieved his Ph.D. with Prof. Philip J. Parsons at the University of Sussex, UK, where his research focused on the cascade based synthesis of the aromatic core of Lactonamycin. This was funded with the help of an EPSRC Industrial CASE studentship which included a 3 month placement with Pfizer at Sandwich in Kent UK. Johnathan also completed his MChem degree at the University of Sussex, a course which included a one year industrial placement with GSK at Tonbridge in Kent UK.

Toni Rantanen, Research Manager

Dr. Toni Rantanen has managed industrial synthetic chemistry projects at SI for over 2 years. Toni honed his knowledge of heterocyclic synthesis and directed metalation whilst completing a post-doctoral fellowship under the guidance of Dr. Snieckus.  Before that he completed his PhD focusing on enantioselective organocatalysis with Prof. Carsten Bolm at RWTH Aachen in Germany. His MSc was completed with Prof. Henning Hopf at TU Braunschweig (Germany) working on synthesizing novel bicyclic liquid crystalline frameworks. Toni has a formidable background in various areas of organic synthesis, has presented at conferences from Europe to America and his research has resulted in many publications in various peer-reviewed journals.