Oleg Melnyk graduated as an engineer in chemistry in 1989 from the Ecole Nationale de Chimie de Paris (ENSCP, France). He received his Ph.D. degree in 1994 from the University of Paris VI (France). During his thesis work, he developed a semisynthetic route to cortisone. After post-doctoral training from 1994 to 1996 in the group of Prof. A. Tartar (Lille, France) he was recruited by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Lille. He is now director of research at the CNRS and his main research interests are the development of chemical methods for protein synthesis and the study of protein function.