Zdenko Časar
Prof Dr Zdenko Časar is an alumnus of the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology and recipient of the Novartis Prize for Outstanding Scientific Research Achievement and the National Push Prize for significant achievements in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Prof Dr Zdenko Časar graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology in Ljubljana and received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Ecole Doctorale Sciences de la Matière, Université de Rennes 1 in France, and in chemical technology from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology at the University of Maribor.
He completed his postdoctoral training in 2003-2004 at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana. His main field of activity and research is synthetic chemistry with a focus on the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients. During his career at Novartis, Zdenko Časar was Head of the Organic Synthesis, Prototype Analytics and Analytics departments at the Development Centre of Sandoz Slovenia, where he worked on a number of the most challenging projects for complex pharmaceuticals. He was also Sandoz Global Head of API Portfolio Management in Austria, where he also led the Sandoz Global Competence Centre for API Polymorphism and the API Portfolio Management team. He was the first Slovenian to be honoured with the highest Novartis Distinguished Scientist Award for finding better and more efficient processes for the formulation of active pharmaceutical ingredients, which helped to reduce costs.
In 2019, he was appointed Head of Early Development of Pharmaceutical Products at Lek d.d. Dr Časar is also a full professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy at UL and a full member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.