Spiros N. Agathos, Ph.D. is Professor of Bioengineering at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium since 1993 and, since 2015, he is Inaugural Dean of Biological Sciences and Engineering at Yachay Tech, the first research-intensive university in Ecuador and a hub of innovation in South America.
He is an expert in Biotechnology and Bioengineering, with interests in biocatalyst development, bioprocess optimisation, bioreactor design and scale-up, ecogenomics, and biotechnology for sustainability. He has a PhD in biochemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and served on the faculties of the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) and as a visiting professor in Europe and the Americas.
He has published over 200 articles, 4 books and 4 patents. He has been Editor or Editorial Board member of many journals and serves on numerous committees for science and technology policy. He is a consultant to governments and industry, while his former students and postdocs have significant academic and industrial positions across the globe. Among his many awards, he is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering (AIMBE), of the Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology (SIMB) and of the International Water Association (IWA).
Rui Pedrosa is the President of the Leiria Polytechnic and researcher at MARE-IPLeiria is the coordinator of the Red2Discovery project. Coordinating the Red2Discovery project, Rui Pedrosa has a PhD in Human Biology and a principal researcher at the Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences (MARE-IPLeiria). Rui Pedrosa is an adjunct professor at the Higher School of Tourism and Technology of the Sea, and has extensive experience in participating in management bodies of the Polytechnic of Leiria, in addition to coordinating various research projects, science communication and internationalization.
Degree in Biochemistry and Master in Cellular Biology, the president of the Polytechnic of Leiria was vice-president of the institution for research and innovation in the last term of the outgoing president, Professor. Doctor Nuno Mangas.
Ioscani graduated with a BE in Chemical Engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2006. After a year as Project Engineer at the Mario Molina Centre on Energy & Environment in Mexico City, Ioscani moved to the UK to pursue graduate studies. He received his MSc in Advanced Chemical Engineering with Biotechnology in 2008 and was awarded his PhD in 2013, both from Imperial College London. His PhD research involved developing an integrated modelling and experimental framework to quantitatively relate bioprocess conditions with monoclonal antibody glycosylation. After obtaining his PhD, Ioscani spent 2 years as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College working with Dr. Cleo Kontoravdi and Dr. Karen Polizzi on modelling nucleotide sugar metabolism and developing analytical methods to measure the intracellular concentration of these metabolites. Ioscani joined the UCD School of Chemical & Bioprocess Engineering in 2014 where he leads a multidisciplinary team that combines advanced experimentation and computational strategies to optimise the production of therapeutic glycoproteins, including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).
Dr. Gerardo F. Goya currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He earned his PhD degree from the University of La Plata, Argentina. From 2001 to 2007, he served as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where he established and managed the mechanochemistry laboratory within the Materials Physics Department (DFMT). Upon joining the Institute of Nanoscience of Aragón (INA) at the University of Zaragoza in 2005, he initiated and consolidated a new research direction focusing on nanomagnetism and the biomedical applications of nanoparticles (NPs), particularly magnetic hyperthermia. Notable achievements during this period include the development of novel synthesis methods for magnetic NPs with enhanced control over size and magnetic properties. Additionally, he successfully demonstrated the 'Trojan Horse strategy' for oncologic therapy by inducing cell death with magnetic hyperthermia in dendritic-cell primary cultures. He conducted several studies investigating the interaction between magnetic NPs and various biological agents. In terms of technological advancements, Professor Goya led the design, development, and construction of unique equipment for measuring power absorption in magnetic hyperthermia. This pioneering system, incorporating numerous technological enhancements, was designed to function as a fully automatic measuring platform. The innovative developments of this period served as the foundation for the establishment of a spin-off company from the University of Zaragoza, where he serves as a co-founder and scientific advisor. Through collaborations with prominent parasitologists, immunologists, and medical professionals, the group has successfully established a shared platform in biomedicine, facilitating the coordination of highly innovative multinational projects.
Fabian Kiessling studied Medicine in Heidelberg. Until 2008, he worked in the Departments of Radiology and Medical Physics in Radiology of the German Cancer Research Center. In parallel, he did his clinical training at the University of Heidelberg and received the board certification as Radiologist. Since 2008 he is leading the Institute for Experimental Molecular Imaging at the RWTH Aachen University, is one of the directors of the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering of RWTH and since 2018 coordinates the Aachen site of Fraunhofer MEVIS.
Professor Kiessling is in the Editorial board of several scientific journals including Radiology, European Radiology, European Radiology Experimental, Molecular Imaging and Biology and Nanotheranostics.
He is currently secretary of the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI), founding member of the ESMI working group “Image Guided Therapy and Drug Delivery (IGTDD)“ and he was chairman of the “Molecular Imaging” subcommittee of the European Society for Radiology (ESR). Furthermore, he was program chair of the World Molecular Imaging Conference (WMIS) in New York in 2016.
Aim of his research is the development of novel diagnostic probes, nanomedicines, and imaging tools for a disease specific diagnosis and therapy monitoring. He authored over 300 publications and book chapters, edited three books and received multiple research awards.
Claire Wilhelm is a biophysicist. She was recruited as staff CNRS scientist (Condensed Matter section) in 2003, after obtaining her PhD in 2002 in soft matter physics. Since then, she has oriented the research to the biomedical field. Her works during this last decade lied at the crossroads of magnetism, biophysics and nanomedicine and were resolutely multidisciplinary, taking advantage of the physical properties of magnetic nanoparticles to develop more effective treatments and new methods of medical investigation. She was appointed CNRS research director in 2013 and senior research director in 2018. She received the CNRS bronze medal in 2011, the Louis Ancel prize in 2014, and a ERC consolidator grant in 2014 devoted to magnetic tissue engineering and biotransformation of nanoparticles in living tissues. She has co-authored 140+ publications (10 000+ citations, h-index 51) and she delivered 60+ invited lectures.
Talk Title: Nanoparticles-mediated approaches to cancer therapy and tissue engineering
Dr Larysa Baraban completed her PhD in the University of Konstanz, Germany in 2008 in the Department of Physics. After a stint as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Pierre and Marie Curie, France, she moved to TU Dresden, Germany, where she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow from 2011 until 2013. She is currently a group leader of Bionanosensorics in the same university. Dr Baraban’s research revolves around the use of nanomaterial-based biosensors and systems, flexible sensors for point-of-care diagnostics, microfluidics for high throughput biochemical analysis, artificial nano- and micromachines and magnetic soft matter.
Dr. Alfred Fernández-Castané is Lecturer in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Principal Investigator within the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) and Aston Institute of Materials Research (AIMR) groups at Aston University. He graduated in Biology by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, Spain) and afterwards he pursued his MSc in Advanced Biotechnology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB, Spain). He carried out his PhD thesis within the Chemical Engineering Department at UAB and his project focused on the development of a method to directly quantify IPTG in E. coli cytoplasm and medium samples. This methodology led to gaining a better knowledge and understanding of inducible systems, gene regulation and optimization of recombinant protein production. His PhD in Biotechnology was awarded in 2012 and he then moved to France as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ISSB-Evry where he developed his skills in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Dr Fernández-Castané joined Dr Overton’s lab in 2014 as a Research Fellow in the €2.4m ERA-IB ProSeCa project at the University of Birmingham (UK). His research interests rely on the development of more sustainable and cost effective bioprocesses for the production of high-value products with industrial interest. Current research areas encompass the production of magnetosomes from magnetotactic bacteria, biodegradable biopolymers and enzymes for biofuels application.
Kitney is Professor of Biomedical Systems Engineering; Chairman of the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology; and Co-Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation. He was Founding Head of the Department of Bioengineering, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. He Chaired The Royal Academy of Engineering Inquiry into Synthetic Biology http://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/synthetic-biology-report. Kitney is a member of the Ministerial Leadership Council for Synthetic Biology and was one of the main authors of the UK Roadmap for Synthetic Biology.
Kitney is recognised as a leading research worker in the field of synthetic biology and, with Professor Paul Freemont, has been responsible for developing the Imperial College Hub for Synthetic Biology http://www.imperial.ac.uk/syntheticbiology which is now recognised as one of the leading international centres in the field. In 2013, they were successful in winning the national competition to establish the UK national industrial translation centre for synthetic biology - SynbiCITE http://www.synbicite.com/.
Dr. Deborah Traversi is an associate professor and researcher in General and Applied Hygiene science 2008 at the University of Turin, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. She is working at the Department of Public Health and Pediatrics. The mainly research fields regards the Environmental Science and Human Health, particularly the field of environmental mutagenicity and genotoxicity and the exploration of biological effects of the aero-dispersed particulate matter exposure. Then she is working on research activities on the applied biology promotion and on the prevention improvement. Since the end of the 2008 she is collaborator or responsible in various regional and national projects research projects on environmental health science. Today she is unit responsible for a funded project called SOFCM in the aim of EU 7°FP and co-responsible of a national project funded by the Board of Health on occupational health evaluation for the green jobs and on a sanitary project on the gut microbiota and health. She is involved today in pursuance of University courses of Hygiene. In the last five years she conduced various international missions for the Department for technical and scientific activities or for the presentation of the research results in international contests. She is co-author of around 50 papers.
Dr. Mekhloufi is an agro-food engineer who obtained her PhD in "Biotechnological and Food Processes" from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, France. She is since 2006, an Associate Professor in Physics and Biophysics at the Faculty of Pharmacy (University Paris Saclay, France). Her main research activities consists in formulating and characterizing emulsions / nanoemulsions stabilized by biopolymers such as proteins and polysaccharides. The formulated pharmaceutical and / or cosmetic emulsions are part of the current trend of natural and biodegradable products without synthetic surfactants that are potentially irritating and toxic.
Dr. Alfred Fernández-Castané is Lecturer in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Principal Investigator within the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) and Aston Institute of Materials Research (AIMR) groups at Aston University. He graduated in Biology by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, Spain) and afterwards he pursued his MSc in Advanced Biotechnology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB, Spain). He carried out his PhD thesis within the Chemical Engineering Department at UAB and his project focused on the development of a method to directly quantify IPTG in E. coli cytoplasm and medium samples. This methodology led to gaining a better knowledge and understanding of inducible systems, gene regulation and optimization of recombinant protein production. His PhD in Biotechnology was awarded in 2012 and he then moved to France as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ISSB-Evry where he developed his skills in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Dr Fernández-Castané joined Dr Overton’s lab in 2014 as a Research Fellow in the €2.4m ERA-IB ProSeCa project at the University of Birmingham (UK). His research interests rely on the development of more sustainable and cost effective bioprocesses for the production of high-value products with industrial interest. Current research areas encompass the production of magnetosomes from magnetotactic bacteria, biodegradable biopolymers and enzymes for biofuels application.
Since the very early days in my career, my main interest lays in the area of systems biotechnology and here in particular on metabolism. I’m currently mainly focussing on the development of cell factories for the production of fuels, chemicals and therapeutics, but I’m also involved in a range of fundamental projects for instance on the host microbe interaction inside a marine sponge. For me the term systems biotechnology means the application of modelling tools alongside of advanced analytical tools on the design and engineering of cells and the characterization of cell physiology under different conditions. In the group of Systems Biotechnology we apply this approach to heterotrophic systems for valorization of primary phototsynthetic products and on autotrophic systems for valorization of CO2 and sun light.
Ralf Takors, born in Koblenz in 1966, studied mechanical and process engineering at RWTH Aachen, where he also obtained his habilitation with a dissertation entitled “Metabolic and Bioprocess Engineering – A Fruitful Symbiosis”. He worked at Evonik Degussa GmbH from 2004 to 2009 and has been the director of the Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, since 2009.
Prof. Takors holds leadership positions in various professional associations, including "Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering", "Engineering Life Science" and the "Center of Systems Biology" at the University of Stuttgart. In 2001 he received the Dechema Young Professor Award.
Ralf Takors is now heading the Institute of Biochemical Engineering (IBVT) at the University of Stuttgart. Main research interests are systems metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and biochemical engineering to develop novel bioprocesses from lab to productions cale. Wet-lab activities are supported by intensive modelling activities comprising genome scale stochiometric modelling, metabolic flux analysis, gene regulatory networks, and bioreactor modelling using compartmented approaches and computational fluid dynamics.
Michael Sokolov was born in Moscow, Russia. He obtained his high-school degree (Abitur) in Viernheim in Germany in 2008. In the same year he started his studies in Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). During his B.Sc. he participated in research projects at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Copenhagen and at ETH Zurich for his Bachelor thesis. In the final year of his M.Sc. at TUM Michael Sokolov carried out a research project at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA in the field of applied bioengineering. During his studies he gained work experience in internships with Roche Diagnostics, KPMG Advisory and Linde Engineering and was a scholar of German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des des deutschen Volkes) and Bayerische Eliteakademie.
He then returned to the group of Prof. Morbidelli to start a project entitled ‘Data- and knowledge-driven tools to accelerate biopharmaceutical process development’ in close collaboration with the biopharmaceutical industry. His doctoral work served as a basis to co-found the ETH spin-off company DataHow in 2017, which provides model-based digital solutions to the process industry.