David is Co-Founder/CEO of Colby Pharmaceutical Company, San Rafael, California. Colby clinically develops anti-inflammatory small molecule pharmaceutical drugs, immunotherapeutic and preventative vaccines with companion diagnostics in elderly, adult, adolescent patients for acute/chronic inflammation in immuno-oncology/-virology, including product candidates for acute respiratory distress syndrome, allergy and infectious disease. David was trained in molecular-virology, -oncology, -immunology at Dartmouth College, Baylor College of Medicine and UWisconsin-Madison Medical School. At UC-Berkeley, UC-San Francisco, Stanford Research Institute and Pangene Corporation, David led cross-functional-teams which developed recombinase-mediated-isothermal-gene-amplification and gene-family-cloning. At SRI, David teamed in completing acquisition of Sarnoff Corporation as a profitable SRI-subsidiary, led therapeutics/companion diagnostics, and commercialized nucleic acid-/antigen-/antibody-/drug-multiplex-diagnostic systems using Sarnoff-infrared-activated-UpConvertingPhosphor-ultrasensitive-visually-detectable-reporters for laser-diode-UCP-signal amplification with hand-held-diagnostics. At Colby, David sold three oncology drugs in early-clinical/late-pre-clinical development, merged Colby with Othera Pharmaceuticals’ clinical anti-inflammatory-nitroxide drugs, developed intralymphatic-, intradermal- and orally-administered vaccines with companion diagnostics (i.e., HPV-induced-HNSCC) and is continuing development of infectious disease vaccines.
V. Taly is a CNRS research director and group leader of the Translational Research And Microfluidics group within the MEPPOT team (Personalized medicine, pharmacogenomics and therapeutic optimization). She is deputy director of this team headed by Prof. P. Laurent-Puig in the Cordeliers Research Center (CRC). Her group performs interdisciplinary researches aiming at developing and validating microfluidic tools for cancer research in close collaboration with clinicians and researchers in oncology and toxicology. Since 2008, she developed droplet-based digital procedures for Cancer diagnosis. Recently, her research has been dedicated to the clinical validation of droplet-based microfluidics for the non-invasive detection of Cancer biomarkers, the highlighting of new Cancer Biomarkers and the development of original tools and procedures for their detection with applications in personalized medicine, cancer recurrence detection and cancer diagnostics.
AW by his profession is biotechnologist and associate professor for molecular biology at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna.
Working from 1995-2004 at the Children’s Cancer Research Institute, Vienna, he is experienced in human molecular genetic diagnostics and specialized on diagnostic-testing of syndromal and hereditary neoplastic disease. In 2001 AW obtained the post-doctoral graduation “Specialist in Human Genetics”. Since 2004 at the Molecular Diagnostics business-unit of the AIT-Austrian Institute of Technology he specialized on DNA-methylation- and autoantibody -biomarker development using microarray and high throughput technologies.
During his Master and PhD years, Wim became fascinated by long non-coding RNAs, as they are versatile molecules which are shown crucial for (embryonic) development and proper cellular functioning. Strikingly, this family of molecules remains largely unexplored and were long deemed non-functional noise arising from our genome. Wim is a researcher and Assisting Academic Staff at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium. His focus is on the overlap between long non-coding RNAs involved in the context of infectious diseases (i.e. HIV) and cancer development, as the immune system plays a central role in clearing both infectious and tumorigenic cells. For this, he will contribute to the development of high-throughput CRISPR interference screening platforms to identify lncRNAs which can boost the immune system to recognize and destroy these malignant cells.
Mike received advanced training in medicinal-organic chemistry and nano-biotechnology at Loughborough-/Nottingham-/Oxford-Universities. He subsequently held positions of increasing responsibility at Amersham/GE Healthcare, Celltech, Medisense/Abbott, Integrated Genetics, IGEN and Microgenics. Mike Powell is an internationally recognized innovator of commercial diagnostic cancer-- and virus--Protein-Antigen-/DNA-/RNA-/Cell-Diagnostic Systems and Companion Diagnostic Instrumentation. This includes, Mike Powell’s discovery and commercialization of XenoNucleic Acid (XNA) target-PCR-amplification or signal-Branched-amplification diagnostic reactions for Clinical-Oncology & -Virology or XNA-Allele-Specific- and XNA-NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) DiaCarta diagnostics. Previous to DiaCarta, Mike was CSO, Nanopoint [microfabricated (MEMS) slide-based imaging-system/reagents for gene mapping/cell analyses]; founded Odyssey Thera (gene-target-validation/drug-discovery); pioneered commercial applications of Catalytic Antibodies & ElectroChemiLuminescence for Roche-Diagnostics automated-in-vitro-diagnostic-immunoassays at IGEN; and was new technology Director at: Microgenics/Boehringer-Mannheim/Roche-Diagnostics.
Preeti is an engaged and motivated Biotechnologist with a passion for Molecular technologies contributing advancements in Healthcare. She is experienced in Business development and skilled in strategic planning & product management for diagnostic products. After graduating Masters in Biotechnology at Amity University, India, she worked as an Application scientist, deepening her technical knowledge in the domain of Genomics & working on advanced technologies like Illumina’s NGS system. Further advancing to a sales role, she was exposed to a broad clinical audience, widening her scientific & market knowledge in the sectors of Diagnostics & Genetic disorders. With a keen interest in IVD, in January 2020 Preeti came onboard with Invitek Molecular, addressing the challenges and working on standardized solutions for Biological sample management.
Full Professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw, Poland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Professor George M. Whitesides Group at Harvard University. He currently leads the Research Group of Microfluidics and Complex Fluids at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Warsaw. The group conducts research on fundamental aspects of the physics of soft matter systems and develops microfluidic tools for chemistry and biology. He co-authored almost 150 scientific publications (in the renowned scientific journals, such as: Nature, Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie, Nature Physics) and multiple patent applications. He also co-founded two spin-off companies: Scope Fluidics and Curiosity Diagnostics, both working on the use of microfluidic technologies in medical diagnostics.
Tim Julian is a Group Leader in the Department of Environmental Microbiology at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. His group’s research focus is on monitoring and modeling environmental transmission of pathogens. Together with a large team led by Christoph Ort at Eawag and Tamar Kohn and Xavier Fernandez at EPFL, he has been monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in Swiss Wastewaters. He will discuss the data they have collected and how it is being used to inform the COVID-19 disease trajectory in Switzerland.
With a PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Allison pursued post-doctoral work on the function and developmental roles of microRNAs at the Whitehead Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After moving to France, she worked at both INRA and the Curie Institute investigating noncoding RNAs in both plants and vertebrates. After consulting at a Paris-based single-cell sequencing start-up, Allison joined Stilla Technologies early in 2019 as the director of the R&D Molecular Biology team, where she and the R&D team work to push the limits of digital PCR using Naica Crystal Digital PCR technology.
