SPEAKERS
Interested in knowing more about our speakers? Find out more here!
We will be updating this page in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned for more thrilling news!
ANA GRENHA
Centre for Marine Sciences, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Algarve
Ana Grenha holds a PhD in Pharmacy-Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Santiago de Compostela – Spain in 2007. She is an Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Algarve in Portugal since 2007 and is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Marine Sciences (CCMAR) at the same University, where she is a member of the Board of Directors. She is the PI of the Drug Delivery Laboratory, which is dedicated to the development of drug delivery strategies, with a particular focus on inhalation. In parallel, the research group is also keen on exploring the potential of natural materials, namely polysaccharides, fostering new applications that benefit from their intrinsic properties. She has been the PI of several funded projects, and has authored 45 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 6 book chapters and 1 patent (pending) in the field of drugs and drug delivery systems. She was recently awarded a prize from the Portuguese Society of Pneumology, attributed to a project on pulmonary immunisation strategies.
CAMILO GUZMÁN
Turku Bioscience, Åbo Akademi, Turku, Finland
Camilo Guzmán holds a PhD in Physics from the École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland in 2008, exploring the nanomechanical properties of biopolymers. His interest in different microscopy methods has led him to several positions, working on advanced microscopy techniques, at Braga, Portugal, where he managed the Nanophotonics and Bioimaging Facility and in Finland, where he has worked in several projects since 2011. More recently, he has joined the European research infrastructure Euro-BioImaging and to become the manager of the Finnish Advanced Light Microscopy Node of Euro-BioImaging, formed by partners in Helsinki, Oulu and Turku. This facility provides open access to a very broad range of light microscopy methods, as laser scanning confocal microscopy, electron microscopy, spinning disc confocal microscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, and many others. Currently his research focuses on mechanobiology and on the use of different advanced microscopy methods to study the adhesion properties of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) colonies and how these properties relate to pluripotency.
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EBEN ALSBERG
Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Orthopaedics, Pharmacology, and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
University of Illinois at Chicago
Eben Alsberg holds the Richard and Loan Hill Professorship in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Orthopaedics, Pharmacology, and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His laboratory focuses on engineering functional biologic replacements to repair damaged or diseased tissues in the body. Complex signals and processes critical in tissue morphogenesis, repair, and homeostasis are used as inspiration for the development of innovative biomaterials and strategies for tissue regeneration. Through the precise temporal and spatial presentation of soluble bioactive factors, mechanical forces, and biomaterial physical and biochemical properties, his lab aspires to create microenvironments that regulate cell gene expression and new tissue formation. He’s co-authored ~140 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, and his work has been recognized with the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, the Biovalley Young Investigator Award from the Tissue Engineering Society International, the Crain’s Cleveland Business Forty Under 40 Award, a Visiting Professorship at Kyung Hee University (Korea), a Lady Davis Fellowship at the Technion (Israel), and election as Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
GORETI SALES
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra
Goreti Sales received a degree in pharmaceutical sciences (1994) from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Porto University and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry (2000) from the Porto University, Portugal, in 2000. She is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra, since January 2020. Her research interests are mainly devoted to research on biomimetic nanomaterials and biosensing devices. She was the founder and scientific coordinator of the research unit BioMark, Sensor Research (since July 2011) in the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ISEP), and since January 2020, has started a new BioMark sensor research group in Coimbra University (Biomark@UC). She coordinated the Starting Grant, 3P’s, approved in 2012 by European Research Council, with a budget of 1 million euros (since February 2013), targeting the development of fully autonomous devices to monitor cancer biomarkers, by merging separate fields of knowledge: Plastic Antibodies, Photovoltaics and Plasmonics. She is also coordinator of an ongoing FET-Open project, MindGAP, approved for funding in 2018, with a budget over 4.4 million euros, by the European Commission, where a relation between mind, body, mediation and exosomes is searched.
JONAS CHRISTOFFERSSON
Bioscience Cardiovascular, Research and Early Development, CVRM, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, Gothenburg, Sweden
Jonas obtained his PhD in 2018 at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University, Sweden. He then joined AstraZeneca as a PostDoc in 2018 in collaboration with The University of Skövde and Takara Bio Europe, focusing on 3D models for cardiac hypertrophy modelling and biomarker discovery. His work included formation of cardiac spheroids from iPSC derived cardiomyocytes, co-differentiation of cardiac progenitor cells, and bioprinting cardiac tissues for disease modelling and contractility analysis. Today Jonas is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca in Gothenburg, Sweden, working on cardiac cell culture models for testing new potential pharmaceuticals.
KALINA PAUNOVSKA
Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Kalina Paunovska is a postdoctoral scholar in the Georgia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering. She was an NIH T‐32 fellow. She received her Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the Georgia Tech and Emory, Atlanta, Georgia, in 2020. She received her B.S. degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, in 2016. Her research focuses on investigating the biological mechanisms that drive LNP delivery to different cell types, and the integration of next‐generation sequencing technologies with drug delivery.
NUNO ALVES
Astellas Pharmaceuticals
Nuno Alves holds a PhD in Clinical Neurosciences from the University of Cambridge, where he developed a novel viral vector delivery to regenerate nerves after a spinal cord injury. He is Associate Director in Innovation Management at Astellas Pharma, a global multinational pharmaceutical company creating better medicines and improving patients lives. His work is finding and investing in the right biotech/pharma company doing disruptive work in the field of medicine and pharma. After graduating in Biology from the University of Aveiro, he has done Erasmus in Italy conducting research on brain tumours. Passionate about Europe and its values, he has worked in science, strategy, business and investment in different companies in four other European countries and managed a diverse talented multicultural team of people. He has also co-founded 3 companies while at Cambridge and has been always passionate about open innovation and convergent technologies to further our knowledge in bringing faster, better, cheaper treatments and technology to improve patients lives.
PEDRO VAZ
Lung Unit, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon
Pedro holds a PhD in Chemistry with focus on vibrational (infrared, Raman and neutron) spectroscopy. He was a staff researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal and at the ISIS
Neutron & Muon Facility, UK. Since 2015, he moved into the private sector in several roles with responsibilities such as scientific director, lab manager and consultant at companies in
the inspection (SGS), phytopharmaceuticals (Ascenza Agro) and precision machining (Argobaum) sectors. He is also leading research activities in the health sector by developing non-invasive oncological breath biopsy. As head scientist, at Tellspec, he implements and
validates spectroscopy solutions for non-invasive chemical analysis. More recently, at Champalimaud Foundation in its role as researcher at the Lung Unit he is developing early diagnostics for lung cancer using breath analysis.
He has co-authored more than 90 scientific articles, 3 book chapters and several communications at scientific meetings. In parallel, he was also invited to lecture at UPMC, Sorbonne (Paris, France), Osaka Prefecture University (Osaka, Japan) and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (Thuwal, Saudi Arabia).
VIRGÍNIA GOUVEIA
(BIOTECHHEALTH ALUMNI)
Project Coordinator at SomaServe, Cambridge
Virgínia Moura Gouveia holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology Applied to Health Sciences from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar and Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto, in partnership with University College London. Formerly, she did her MSc in Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering University of Porto and BSc in Bioengineering at the Faculty of Biotechnology, Portuguese Catholic University. For the last 4 years, Virginia became passionate with the enormous potential of nanotechnology in the development of precision therapies, which made her join SomaServe in 2020.
YVONNE CHEN
Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles
Yvonne Chen is an Associate Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a faculty, by courtesy, in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and a member researcher of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Dr. Chen received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. She received postdoctoral training at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining UCLA in 2013, she was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. The Chen Laboratory applies synthetic biology and biomolecular engineering techniques to the development of novel mammalian-cell systems for clinical use, and led the first investigator-initiated clinical trial on CAR-T cell therapy at UCLA. The Chen Lab’s work on engineering next-generation T-cell therapies for cancer has been recognized by the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Hellman Fellowship, the ACGT Young Investigator Award in Cell and Gene Therapy for Cancer, the Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award, and the Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J. Old STAR Award.
