Francesco Mazzarotto was born in Italy, and - apart from spending 6 months at Otorohanga College, New Zealand - lived in the Dolomites until his university enrolment.
He graduated at the University of Bologna in Biology (BSc, 2010) and in Bioinformatics (MSc, 2012), after having developed his MSc thesis project at the University of Tampere, Finland.
In 2012 he was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship for a PhD program at Imperial College London to perform cardiovascular genetics research. He obtained his PhD in 2016 and moved to the University of Florence (as a post-doctoral researcher), again focusing on cardiovascular genetics. Since 2016 he is also a honorary research associate at Imperial.
In 2021, he obtained a lectureship in medical genetics at the University of Brescia, where he expanded also into psychiatry genetics.
Matt Davis PhD joined Gritstone Oncology (NASDAQ: GRTS) in 2015 and is currently the Director of Molecular Biology and Sequencing responsible for various neo-antigen discovery and translational genomics efforts. Prior to Gritstone, Dr. Davis conducted post-doctoral research at Warp Drive Bio in the discovery biology group. He holds a PhD in Genetics from Yale with thesis research under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Schlessinger and previous to his graduate work he conducted cancer genomics research at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute.
Yu-Hwa Lo came to the Jacobs School in July of 1999. He has established a new lab to investigate biologically inspired photonic systems. A member of the Materials and Device Layer for the California Institute of Technology and Telecommuncations, he is collaborating with Professors Andy Kummel and William Trogler (Chemistry and Biochemistry) on early-warning biosensors. He is responsible for designing infrared photon counters in a joint effort with IBM's Almaden Research Center to build a quantum-communications system. He was Associate Professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University, prior to coming to UCSD. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in electrical engineering in 1987.
Alain Wagner is Director of Research at the CNRS and heads the BioFunctional Chemistry team of the UMR 7199 at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Strasbourg. He is interested in manipulating living systems through the use, in situ, of chemical reactions capable of operating in complex biological media. His work particularly focusses on development of cleavable linkers and payloads with new or combined mode of action for safer Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC). Alain also pioneer a microfluidic technology allowing for the analysis and sorting of large population of single cells on the basis of their secretory activity. In 2021 Alain co-founded MicroOmiX s start-up developing advanced single cell-based R&D in the field of antibody and cell-based product development. Combining research and technology transfer Alain is author of more than 160 peer reviewed publications, inventor of 30 patents and co-founder of 5 start-ups.
Currently, Dr. Rick Kamps is working as a Laboratory Manager in the Department of Toxicogenomics and as a teacher supervising many Bachelor students in the concept of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in the Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences since 2010. Furthermore, he has more than 25 years of research experience in the diagnostics and biotechnology sector (e.g., Academic Hospitals in Aachen (Germany) and Maastricht (the Netherlands), and Philips Research Eindhoven (the Netherlands). He is more than a decade skilled in Next-generation sequencing in multiple applications (e.g., RNA/DNA sequencing). At the end of 2020, he gained a Ph.D. in Resolving the Role of Genetic Defects and the Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number in Mitochondrial Disease and Embryonic Development.
Stephane Bugeon is currently a Research Fellow in Profs. Kenneth D. Harris and Matteo Carandini’s team at UCL (University College London). He earned his master’s degree from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) in 2013, and his PhD from the Aix-Marseille Université (Marseille, France) in 2017. In his thesis work, he studied how the migration of olfactory bulb interneuron subtypes is regulated by neuronal activity. He joined the Cortexlab in 2018, where he has been exploring the in vivo activity of fine neuronal subtypes using cutting-edge in situ transcriptomic techniques, coupled with in vivo imaging.
Bart Westendorp is a cell biologist and group leader at Utrecht University. He studies DNA replication stress and cell cycle checkpoint signalling in cancer cells using single cell technology. Single cell analysis has revealed great intra-tumor heterogeneity. Subsets of cells can modify their cell division machinery such that they can tolerate the drug treatment. These so-called drug-tolerant persister cells are able to survive and even proliferate despite presence of DNA damaging drugs, such as chemotherapy and targeted cell cycle checkpoint inhibitors. Bart Westendorp and his team study the dynamic cell proliferation behaviour of individual cancer cells and emergence of drug resistance in muscle-invasive bladder cancer using single cell RNA-sequencing, live cell imaging, and flow cytometry.
Nicolas Fernandez has 10+ years of experience in soft matter physics and led the development of several DNA analysis consumables. An alumnus from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Ponts, he received his PhD on suspension rheology from ETH Zürich (Switzerland). He has joined Scipio bioscience in 2020 and spearheaded the development of the Asteria Single-cell RNA-seq benchtop kit.
Ian Pike is the Chief Scientific Officer at Proteome Sciences and has over 30 years’ experience working in the diagnostics and biotechnology sectors. Since joining Proteome Sciences in 2002 he has held a number of roles covering intellectual property management, business development, operational management and is now focused on leading the Company’s scientific strategy to offer clients a flexible, high-quality service.
Anna did her BSc in Biology at University of Patras, Greece and MSc in Molecular Biology-Biomedicine in University of Crete, Greece. Among other topics, she worked in human population genetics where she started getting herself familiar with computational biology.
Anna is currently a final year PhD student shared between the groups of Judith Zaugg (EMBL Heidelberg) and Caroline Pabst (Universitatsklinikum, Heidelberg). Her research focuses on exploiting single cell technologies in order to understand the impact of the microenvironment in the progression of hematopoietic malignancies.
Dr. Melanie Bailey is a Reader in Chemistry at the University of Surrey, and is currently working on an EPSRC funded fellowship. She obtained her Bsc. in Physics in 2001 from the University of Manchester and her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Surrey Ion Beam Centre in 2005. Dr. Bailey was Ion Beam Analysis Liaison Fellow for the Surrey Ion Beam Centre from 2007-2011, where she worked with users of the facility to gain high resolution trace element maps and profiles. During this time, she began working with various law enforcement agencies to develop ion beam analysis methods in forensics and has worked as a consultant of the International Atomic Energy Agency to set up a global coordinated research programme on nuclear techniques in forensics.
Dr Bailey joined the department of Chemistry in 2011 to lecture in forensic science.
Dimitrios Lamprou (Ph.D., MBA) is Full Professor (Chair) of Biofabrication and Advanced Manufacturing, and Director at MSc Industrial Pharmaceutics at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He is also the Chair at United Kingdom and Ireland Controlled Release Society (UKICRS) and the Chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS) Emerging Technologies Focus Group. Dimitrios, is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications, has over 400 conference abstracts, has given over 150 Invited Talks in institutions and conferences across the world, and has secure Funding more than £4M. Dimitrios has been recognised as world leader in 3D Printing & Microfluidics. PubMed-based algorithms placed him in the top 0.088% of scholars in the world writing about 3D Printing and on the top 0.071% of scholars in the world writing about microfluidics, in the past 10-years. Moreover, PubMed-based algorithms placed him in the top 0.63% of scholars in the world writing about nanofibers. Dimitrios has also been named in the Stanford University’s list 2021 & 2022 of World’s Top 2% Scientists, for his research in Pharmaceutics and Biomedical Engineering. His research and academic leadership have been recognized in a range of awards, including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Science Award and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance Leaders Scheme Award. For more info, please visit www.emergingtechnologieslab.com.
Darren has had a diverse career in academia, completing his BSc and DSc at the University of Manchester, his PhD at University College London, postdoctoral positions at University College London, Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland Ohio) and the University of Cambridge, an academic post at Brunel University and a part time teaching post at the Roehampton Institute. He has worked under the mentorship of Professors Joy Delhanty, Christine Harrison, Terry Hassold, Alan Handyside and Malcolm Ferguson-Smith. He joined the University of Kent in 2004, becoming Professor of Genetics in 2007.
Darren is President of the International Chromosome and Genome Society, a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. He has been a BBSRC Career Development Fellow. He sits on the faculty of CoGen (controversies in genetics) and has previously sat on the board of the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society (PGDIS), organising its annual meeting in 2014. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journals Genes, Cells and the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics; he is Editor in Chief of the journal DNA.
Francesco Mazzarotto was born in Italy, and - apart from spending 6 months at Otorohanga College, New Zealand - lived in the Dolomites until his university enrolment.
He graduated at the University of Bologna in Biology (BSc, 2010) and in Bioinformatics (MSc, 2012), after having developed his MSc thesis project at the University of Tampere, Finland.
In 2012 he was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship for a PhD program at Imperial College London to perform cardiovascular genetics research. He obtained his PhD in 2016 and moved to the University of Florence (as a post-doctoral researcher), again focusing on cardiovascular genetics. Since 2016 he is also a honorary research associate at Imperial.
In 2021, he obtained a lectureship in medical genetics at the University of Brescia, where he expanded also into psychiatry genetics.
Jimmy is a computational postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Omer Bayraktar’s lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. His research is at the intersection of machine learning, molecular biology, cellular neuroscience, genetics, and genomics. He developed innovative research idea to advance spatial genomics to understand human neurodevelopment and diseases. Currently, he is leading the analysis of spatial transcriptomics in postmortem COVID-19 patients in collaboration with Imperial College London, Harvard Medical School, University of York and Newcastle University. Before joining Bayraktar’s lab, Jimmy worked with Dr. Martin Hemberg at Sanger and developed a computational platform SCfind for multi-omics single cell data analysis in the Human Cell Atlas Project.
“Marianne Henry is a Senior Scientist for Technology, Process and Innovation at the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult in London. She has extensive experience in the development of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). Her research projects focus on the analytical development for ATMPs, specifically in the areas of stem cell biology, targeting extracellular microenvironment and using novel sequencing platforms to accelerate biomarker discovery.
She is a member of the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI) Cell Therapy ‐ Tracking, Circulation, & Safety (CT‐TRACS) committee that aids in the assessment of tumorigenicity in cell therapy products and she previously completed her PhD research in the genomic instability of human pluripotent stem cells in collaboration with the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) and Brunel University London”.
Christian Witz did his Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Khinast at the Institute of Process and Particle Engineering on the topic of multiphase reactor simulation using the lattice Boltzmann method. He then established the Computational Bioprocess Engineering group at the institute with the goal of finding, testing, validating, and interconnecting highly efficient algorithms for graphic processing units (GPUs) to simulate the physical process inside devices like the bioreactor. This in-house code base is the basis for the spin-off SimVantage, which provides a cloud-based simulation software and consulting for stirred and/or aerated reactors.
Joanna Jacków, PhD is newly appointed lecturer and group leader at the St John’s Institute of Dermatology at King’s College London, UK. Her research is focused on fundamental understanding of cancer progression of inherited human skin diseases such as Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (DEB) and on development of editing strategies amenable to clinical development, including base editing and prime editing. Dr. Jackόw spent the past several years, including her PhD working in most accomplished dermatology research - laboratories across Europe and USA. She did her PhD at Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Germany directed by Prof. Leena Bruckner-Tuderman where she worked on the basic understanding of type XVII collagen shedding in context of wound healing process. Her post doctorial work conducted in the lab of Prof. Alain Hovnanian at the Imagine Institute in Paris; France is extremely interesting as it demonstrates that many cells can contribute Collagen VII to the wound bed to close RDEB wounds. Before coming to St John’s Institute of Dermatology at King’s College London she worked at the Columbia University in New York City in the laboratory of Prof. Angela Christiano where she demonstrated therapeutic proof-of-concept approach for DEB, using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and iPSC technologies. In her own laboratory, Dr Jackόw is working on testing new gene editing technologies and how they can be therapeutically used in gene therapy in dermatology.
Dr Proukakis is a clinical academic neurologist with an interest in neurogenetics and in particular the cause of Parkinson’s disease. He runs an active laboratory research programme and Parkinson’s disease/movement disorders clinics at Royal Free and Chase Farm Hospitals.
Frank Gesellchen holds a PhD in biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. During his PhD at the German Cancer Research Centre and as a postdoc at the University of Kassel, Germany and the University of Glasgow, UK, his research focused on cellular signal transduction. During his time in Glasgow, his interests switched to application-based research, working in multi-disciplinary projects developing acousto- and microfluidic lab-on-chip devices for biological applications.
Frank joined Sphere Fluidics Ltd in 2015 and is working as a Principal Scientist in the Research & Development team, where he is responsible for developing new assays for Sphere Fluidics’ Cyto-Mine® Single Cell Analysis Platform, managing and conducting proof-of-concept projects as well as for customer support and training.
Currently, Dr. Rick Kamps is working as a Laboratory Manager in the Department of Toxicogenomics and as a teacher supervising many Bachelor students in the concept of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in the Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences since 2010. Furthermore, he has more than 25 years of research experience in the diagnostics and biotechnology sector (e.g., Academic Hospitals in Aachen (Germany) and Maastricht (the Netherlands), and Philips Research Eindhoven (the Netherlands). He is more than a decade skilled in Next-generation sequencing in multiple applications (e.g., RNA/DNA sequencing). At the end of 2020, he gained a Ph.D. in Resolving the Role of Genetic Defects and the Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number in Mitochondrial Disease and Embryonic Development.
Alain Wagner is Director of Research at the CNRS and heads the BioFunctional Chemistry team of the UMR 7199 at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Strasbourg. He is interested in manipulating living systems through the use, in situ, of chemical reactions capable of operating in complex biological media. His work particularly focusses on development of cleavable linkers and payloads with new or combined mode of action for safer Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC). Alain also pioneer a microfluidic technology allowing for the analysis and sorting of large population of single cells on the basis of their secretory activity. In 2021 Alain co-founded MicroOmiX s start-up developing advanced single cell-based R&D in the field of antibody and cell-based product development. Combining research and technology transfer Alain is author of more than 160 peer reviewed publications, inventor of 30 patents and co-founder of 5 start-ups.
