Rocio’s group investigates post-transcriptional RNA regulation in inflammation and inflammatory diseases, particularly severe asthma. They focus on investigating how mRNA translation and decay modulate cellular pathways that are “traditionally” transcriptional. Keen on bioinformatics, open source everything. SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics.
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Pedro Estrela is Professor of Biosensors and Bioelectronics at the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Biosensors, Bioelectronics and Biodevices (C3Bio) at the University of Bath. He has a background in Physics (degree and Masters from the University of Lisbon, PhD from the University of Amsterdam) and started working in the field of biosensors in 2000 (University of Cambridge until 2008 and University of Bath since 2008).
Prof. Estrela’s research focuses on the development of labelfree electrical, electrochemical and plasmonic biosensors for a wide range of applications such as medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring. He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications. He is an Associate Editor for the journals Biosensors & Bioelectronics, Scientific Reports, Sensors, Frontiers in Sensors and Advanced Devices & Instrumentation and Specialty Chief Editor in Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies.
Mr. Egan has been engaged in private investment business from February 1999 to the present. He was a senior executive at Data Broadcasting Corporation, a leading provider of wireless, real-time financial market data from 1995 to 1999 after co-founding and serving as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Broadcast International, Inc. from 1984 to 1995, when Data Broadcasting Corporation acquired Broadcast International and created CBS MarketWatch. Mr. Egan is a co-founder of Co-Dx and its President and CEO since its inception, actively involved in the day-to-day operations and guiding the vision for the company and its future.
Doris-Ann Williams has been Chief Executive of BIVDA since October 2001. She has more than 35 years’ experience in the IVD sector. She has held a variety of roles, initially in R&D at Amersham International/Amerlite Diagnostics Ltd and subsequently in commercial roles internationally for Becton Dickinson, ICN and Hitachi Chemical Diagnostics. Doris- Ann also works closely with other global IVD industry associations and in the UK as part of Life Sciences UK. She was awarded an MBE in January 2011 and was recognised as a Friend of the Royal College of Pathologists in November 2012 and also as Friend of the Association for Clinical Biochemistry in July 2015. She is currently a Vice-President of the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee. She is also an active member of a number of Government and NHS steering groups & boards. During 2016, Doris-Ann was invited to attend the High-Level meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York (September) and was a member of the Precision Medicine delegation to India for the Prime Minister’s visit in November.
Susie has a background as a medical microbiologist, having trained across the South Coast of England and was previously a consultant in infection for 13 years. Her early consultant career focused on antimicrobial stewardship before specialising in infection prevention and becoming an Infection Control Doctor for seven years. Currently, Susie is using her experience in hospital medicine and infection prevention and control to demonstrate the benefits of whole genome sequencing in exposing and preventing healthcare-associated infections.
Richard is a biochemist and molecular biologist and has worked in the in vitro diagnostics sector for the past 10 years, during which time he established and built up the UK operations of AusDiagnostics. Prior to this Richard worked in Biotech (Cellzome) for ten years and Drug Discovery (Glaxo) for thirteen years.
Andy Ward is a Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. His research focuses upon the use of low-cost sensors for environmental detection of bacteria, viruses, and biomolecules. He is interested in the development of extremely low-cost biosensing platforms that can be used to address environmental and sustainable development challenges. Before his academic research career, AW has over 7 years’ industry experience on the design and development of nuclear submarines focusing upon systems engineering and integration.
Eric C.J. Claas has a long-standing experience in implementation of innovative molecular tests in the clinical microbiology laboratory. After his PhD in 1991, he worked for eight years at the Dutch National Influenza centre (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) where his group identified the first human H5N1 (bird-flu) infection in 1997.Since 1998, he is heading the molecular diagnostics section of the department of medical microbiology at the LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands. More than 100 real-time PCR assays are being offered under compliance of the ISO15189 guidelines. He is coordinator of the NGS activities of the department and also acts as a consultant for molecular diagnostics at the Franciscus Gasthuis and Vlietland hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He has authored over 200 peer reviewed publications and books and holds several positions in societies and committees.
Dr. Jens Ducrée holds a Full Professorship of Microsystems in the School of Physical Sciences at Dublin City University (DCU). He is the founding director of FPC@DCU – Ireland’s first Fraunhofer Project Centre for Embedded Bioanalytical Systems, a joint initiative of Science Foundation Ireland and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. The main part of his research is directed towards novel microfluidic systems and associated actuation, detection, fabrication and instrumentation technologies for the integration, automation, miniaturization, and parallelization of bioanalytical. Typical applications of these next-generation “Lab-on-a-Chip” platforms are sample-to-answer systems for biomedical point-of-care and global diagnostics, liquid handling automation for the life sciences, process analytical techniques and cell line development for biopharma as well as monitoring the environment, infrastructure, industrial processes and agrifood.
Willem Melchers is an associate professor Research interests are in molecular microbiology, with a specific focus on the relationship between HPV infections and the development of cervical cancer. Current studies of him are focusing on the secondary factors related to progression from subclinical infection to invasive cervical cancer. His interests include novel interdisciplinary approaches where molecular biology and genetics are tightly coupled with (bio) physical/informatics methods aimed at understanding the biological function at a molecular level. Willem Melchers is associate professor in Molecular Microbiology. He is head of the Laboratory of Clinical Microbiology of the department of Medical Microbiology.
Saima is a trained clinician with a strong interest in research. She has worked in molecular biology and clinical research since 2007 and is very motivated in expanding my expertise in variable roles. Saima’s clinical experience has always given her better understanding of the overlap of research related to basic research and clinical applications.
Nicola is the POCT coordinator at the Royal United Hospitals Bath Foundation Trust and have been for just over 2 years now. Before this she was a senior biomedical scientist in biochemistry in the manual section again for around 2 years and a specialist BMS since 2003. Her most recent education was the certificate in expert practice in POCT awarded by the IBMS in 2021.
she have always had a great passion for POCT and I enjoy my job despite the many challenges. She believes that POCT is the ultimate integration of the laboratory and patients and never so much in the limelight as it has been during these COVID times.
Muna is a Biomedical Scientist working at the Royal United Hospital NHS foundation trust. At the RUH she has had the opportunity to work in Point of Care Testing (POCT) and Biochemistry; The project lead to the validation of Influenza A/B rapid testing for their Accident and Emergency department as we already test for Covid-19 rapid testing, this would potentially triage our patients efficiently during the cold and flu season.
Tamyo Mbisa obtained his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Ottawa in Canada in 2002. He then, undertook Postdoctoral and Research Fellowships at the National Cancer Institute-Frederick, USA within the HIV Drug Resistance Program from 2002 to 2008. He joined UK Health Security Agency in 2008 and is the Head of the Antiviral Unit, a WHO Specialized HIV Drug Resistance Laboratory which offers genotypic resistance testing for HIV and HCV, and genotypic and phenotypic resistance testing for HSV-1 and HSV-2. In 2019, his laboratory implemented HCV whole genome sequencing (WGS) for direct patient care, one of the first viral WGS assay to be used in the National Health Service (NHS) clinical pathway. His laboratory has also developed herPHEgen®, a HSV genotype-to-phenotype database and antiviral resistance interpretation system. He is the Co-ordinator of a UK network of NHS laboratories undertaking nucleotide sequencing for antiviral resistance (UK HIV ResNet)
Dr Mitra is a University Academic Fellowwith expertise in in metagenomics, bioinformatics andbiostatistics. She has 30 publications and 4501 citationsand has secured over £2.9M in total as Co-I from charity,government, and industrial funding sources in last 4 years.Several of her publications in bioinformatics pipeline andmethod development have >100 citations. She has 15+ yearsof experience in leading bioinformatics team, methodsdevelopment, handling next generation sequencing dataand applying statistical methods to the analyses. Currentlyshe is Bioinformatics Lead in a major colorectal cancercohort study (COLO-COHORT) that aims to develop a “riskstratification tool” to help identify which patients are athighest risk of having adenomas or bowel cancer. Thisstudy aims to explore the significance of the gut bacteriacomposition in patients with adenomas or cancer tohelp inform this risk model using metagenomics shotgunsequencing.
Rocio’s group investigates post-transcriptional RNA regulation in inflammation and inflammatory diseases, particularly severe asthma. They focus on investigating how mRNA translation and decay modulate cellular pathways that are “traditionally” transcriptional. Keen on bioinformatics, open source everything. SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics.
Denis has been in academia and research for 35 years, directing research centres, schools and institutes at 5 Universities, in Europe and the USA. Currently, he is a professor in immunology at the University of Geneva and on the board of US, Chinese, Taiwanese and 4 UK companies. He is also a Chief Medical Officer and Science Director on several companies (UK, Taiwanese and Korean) and Chair of Cambridge Diagnostics and cofounder of Cignpost Diagnostics and several smaller companies. Denis is enthralled by the interface of human research and business. Recently Denis has been using his skills and experience to bring together business, health, government and higher education to address multiple diagnostic challenges. He continues to publish research in prestigious journals as well as editing and reviewing grants and papers and performing due diligence and advising companies.
Peter is a Clinical Lead, Microbiologist in University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust and Trust Clinical Lead for antimicrobial stewardship with a great track history of continuous clinical service mprovements in tertiary healthcare. He is skilled in formation and leading highly functional and agile clinical teams. He is an accomplished and GMC certified medical educator, coach and mentor and enjoys teaching.
Harpreet Singh, is a the Molecular Product Specialist for the UK Midlands & North at Randox. He is a BSc Biomedical Science Graduate from Aston University, Birmingham. During his course, he spent a year in the field as a Research Assistant where he studied “The Effects of Glucose on Dermal Fibroblasts in Wound Healing”. He further developed his research skills with his final year project where he studied “The impact of Fibrotic mediators on Mesenchymal Stem Cell Migration and Differentiation”. Harpreet then began his career in Clinical NHS Laboratories at University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire in the Histology Laboratory where he developed skills in the immunohistochemistry laboratory where they stained cells for different tumour markers. Following this experience, Harpreet moved to the Biochemistry department at Birmingham Women’s Hospital as a Trainee Biomedical Scientist where they were responsible for Maternal Screening. Harpreet is now currently a part of the UK Molecular Product Team at Randox for the Midlands and North to serve for any molecular diagnostics product solutions.
Dr Satta is a consultant in infection and the infection control doctor at University College Hospitals/honorary Associated Professor at UCL.
He began his medical training in Italy before coming to the UK to study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He then undertook specialist training in both infectious diseases and microbiology. He was also an academic fellow at UCL where he completed a PhD on whole genome sequencing and M. tuberculosis. He also holds an MBA in Healthcare, a Master of Public Health, the DTM&H and he is board certified in infection and prevention control (CIC).
After graduating from medical school Dr Awad-El-Kariem completed MSc and PhD degrees at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and was then employed there as a post-doc to study molecular typing of Cryptosporidium. He was then offered the prestigious Wellcome Research Career Development Fellowship in 1995 to study opportunistic infections in AIDS patients at Imperial College, London. He later accepted a post as a Consultant Microbiologist in 2006, with special interest in Infection Prevention and Control. He is currently the Director of Infection Prevention and Control (DIPC) in a large teaching hospital just outside London. His research interests include drug resistance in protozoan parasites, population genetics in medical protozoa, antibiotic multi-drug resistance in Gram Negative Bacteria and Molecular diagnostics of Clostridioides difficile.
