SLAS2023 International Conference and Exhibition

Adam R. Abate received an AB in Physics from Harvard College in 2002, a Masters in Physics from UCLA in 2004, and a PhD in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He returned to Harvard for a postdoc in Physics in the lab of David Weitz, working on a variety of topics in soft matter physics, chemical and microparticle synthesis, and microfluidics. While a postdoc, he developed a droplet-based microfluidic sequencer that became the foundation for the sequencing company GnuBIO. He has founded several additional companies, including Mission Bio, Fluent Bio, and Scribe Biosciences. He is a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and an Investigator in QB3. His research interests are in microfluidics, single cell analysis, and genomics.

Nancy L. Allbritton is the Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering and Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle (2019- current). From 2009-2019, she was the Kenan Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering and Chair of the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University (NC State). Her research focuses on the development of novel technologies for applications in single-cell analysis, micro-arrays and fluidics, and organ-on-chip and has resulted in over 180 full-length journal publications and patents and led to 15 commercial products. Four companies have been formed based on her research discoveries: Protein Simple (acquired by Bio-Techne in 2014), Intellego, Cell Microsystems (www.cellmicrosystems.com), and Altis Biosystems (www.altisbiosystems.com). Dr. Allbritton is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, and the National Academy of Inventors. She obtained her B.S. in physics from Louisiana State University, M.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and Ph.D. in Medical Physics/Medical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Green is a graduate student in Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab at Stanford University. She received her B.S. in biochemistry from University of Southern California and moved to Stanford to start her graduate studies in chemistry. Her research in the Bertozzi lab focuses on lysosome targeting chimeras (LYTACs) to degrade extracellular and membrane proteins via endolysosomal pathway.

During my time at the University of California, Irvine I conducted research in the lab of Dr. Frederick Ehlert which involved analyzing the effect of muscarinic receptors in the heart. I also conducted research at Quest Diagnostics in the lab of Matthew Houston which involved examining the changes in serum proteins in patients infected with the dengue virus. Upon attending USC, I rotated in both Dr. Alachkar’s and Dr. MacKay’s research groups. This allowed me to utilize recombinant protein bioengineering from Dr. MacKay’s rotation and apply that to pharmacogenomics and leukemia projects studied with Dr. Alachkar. Thanks to both mentors, I now possess complementary techniques. More specifically, I can generate elastin like polypeptides fused to scFv domains that target FLT3 and CD99. Throughout my studies I gained a deep interest in immunology, and this sparked my interest in developing different immunotherapeutics to combat AML.

"Courtney Anderson is director of product marketing at Deepcell in Menlo Park, California, which is leveraging high-speed cell imaging and AI to deeply characterize and analyze cell morphology. Prior to joining Deepcell, Dr. Anderson led spatial product marketing at 10x Genomics and before that she led the applications group at ACD focused on spatial biology. Dr. Anderson received her bachelor's degree in human biology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in molecular and developmental biology from UCSF, and completed her postdoctoral studies in metabolic biology at the University of California Berkeley. "

Arndt Asperger is analytical chemist by training and got his PhD from Leipzig University in Germany. He joined Bruker in 2002 and has been working in various positions related to MALDI-MS applications and applications development. His current focus is on applications development and customre support of MALDI-MS based high-throughput methods.

Paul Auspitz is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson University with a BS degree in Finance and IT Systems Management. He has a 25 year track record of success as a trusted digital solutions expert, and adviser to business leaders in highly regulated research driven organisations. Prior to his current role as Director of Preclinical Solutions and Standards for Exchange of Nonclinical Data (SEND) services for Xybion Digital he spent five years in a similar role with Instem, Plc and also has experience including SAP EWM, SCM and sterilization consulting as well as MS 365 Business and Operations solution sales. Paul Auspitz has spent eight years successfully helping organizations address and manage SEND across preclinical research and development businesses.

"Jeff leads product and business development and customer support and success at Celltrio. He has three decades of experience innovating, developing, and delivering robotic automation for high-throughput, high-reliability applications in all industries including Life Sciences. His passion is to drive growth and innovation at Celltrio to establish global leadership in cell line automation and biobanking. 

Prior to joining Celltrio in 2018, Jeff held key roles in product and technology development including CTO at FP International, VP of Global Automation at Flextronics and VP of Engineering and Operations at Adept Technology. He has a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kentucky."

Dr David Baker earned his PhD from The University of Sheffield in 2015 for investigating the role of astrocytes in SOD1-related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Following a short post-doctoral spell, David joined the Cellular Assay Development team in AstraZeneca, initially supporting Neuroscience and Oncology projects but with an ever-growing interest in complex models and assays for Immuno-Oncology . In 2020 David secured a position specialising in assay development for cellular therapies and as of 2022 is leading a small team working on wide-ranging projects encompassing whole genome pooled and arrayed CRISPR screens through to bespoke co-culture models for immuno-oncology projects.

Felix Beltran is the Western US Sales Manager for Refeyn.  Felix started his commercial career in lab automation with emphasis in clinical diagnostics, and immunoassays.  Felix joined Refeyn because of their impressive, innovative technology in 2022.  Felix loves helping scientists by introducing new technology that makes their work easier – stop by the Refeyn booth for a chat.

Dr Anthony Berger is CN Bio’s US-based Field Application Scientist, providing support for the PhysioMimix™ Organ-on-Chip benchtop platform. Anthony has an extensive research background in 3D cell culture, biomaterials, and microfluidics, focusing on how the microenvironment influences cellular decision-making. He is a proponent of complex 3D in vitro models and desires to decrease the barrier to entry of these technologies. Anthony received his BS from Indiana University (US), PhD from the University of Wisconsin (US), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Temple University (US).

"Ryan Bernhardt is the Chief Commercial Officer for Biosero where he leads Business Development opportunities through strategic partnerships, collaborations, and commercial agreements to increase diverse market penetration for Biosero’s industry-leading Green Button Go automation scheduling software suite.

In this role, Ryan also oversees Biosero’s productization roadmap and strategic focus as it relates to Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Applications, and Business Development.  Prior to joining Biosero, Ryan Bernhardt, spent the last six and half years at Eli Lilly and Company as the Global Discovery Automation Research and Technologies Group Leader, leading a team of automation engineers and scientists in the design, implementation, and operation of a variety of innovative automation initiatives across Research and Development Laboratories."

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"With over 34 years of industry experience, Donna Bibber has developed thousands of miniaturized devices incorporating micro molding and automated assembly. Ms. Bibber received her Bachelor of Science in Plastics Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is currently the CEO of Isometric Micro Molding, Inc. 

Ms. Bibber’s plastics engineering background, expertise and unique problem-solving skills have earned her an excellent reputation and national and international recognition for her work in micro manufacturing. She has been a featured speaker at medical and drug delivery conferences across the globe and has published countless technical papers on micro molding and micro assembly.

Her expertise in bioresorbable polymers and active ingredient combination devices, slow-release devices, ophthalmic devices and implants, glucose monitoring and insulin-delivery devices, neurological implants, biosensors, and oncology markers have given rise to many platform-type miniaturized devices commercially available today."

"Karen Billeci began her career at Genentech She have 19 years of experience developing cell based and biochemical assays to support process development, in vivo pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies, and in vitro molecular characterization in a GLP/GMP, clinical and research environment. Her work in this area has resulted in the lead or co-authorship of 14 publications, and 2 patents.

In 2008, her area of focus shifted to an operation role where she worked to develop automation and build efficiencies in lab processes to support high through put generic assays used to support stable cell line development and in vivo studies.  

In 2016 Karen continue to gain experience building high throughput operation at genomic engineer, CROs and diagnostic companies.  In 2022, Karen join Recursion where she has been to apply her background and experience to build a robust and stable phenomics high throughput operation."

Patrick Bingham is a Senior Scientist in the Biochemistry Department of the Oncology Research Unit at Pfizer, Inc. Patrick has more than 20 years of experience developing and implementing biochemical and cell based assays for target identification and validation, screening and lead identification. Currently, Patrick uses Rapid Fire Mass Spectrometry along with traditional biochemical approaches to develop assays for evaluation of epigenetic and metabolism targets within oncology research enabling a deep understanding of target biology and model systems.  Patrick is an active member of The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening and has presented his research and contributions to the field of Mass Spectrometry at past annual meetings.

Multifaceted, cross-functional leader who seamlessly meshes his scientific and automation background with his top-notch business education. Innovative visionary with 20 years of successive career advancement in the life sciences industry, focused on automated platform development, process improvement, and value chain optimization. Specialties: - Technology development and implementation - Automation systems, including design & fabrication - Innovative solutions, efficiency, and value creation - Compound management operations - Biobank operations - Staff development and cultivation - Cross-functional team building - Change management leadership - Lean Sigma analysis and implementation - Project Management - Product Development - Self-motivated innovation - Creative problem solving - (Calculated) risk taking - Thinking outside the box - Being able to see the big picture

Glenn Brandon, Chief Executive Officer and one of the founding members of SentrySciences, brings 30+ years of sales and service experience serving both the High Technology Electronics and Pharmaceutical Markets. Prior to SentrySciences, Glenn was the Global VP of Sales and Service for Particle Measuring Systems, Inc., responsible for a global network of sales and service offices focused on the Semiconductor, Data Storage and Pharmaceutical Markets. In this capacity, he oversaw both direct and indirect sales and service resources and was responsible for the development and execution of global sales and service strategies.

The Braverman lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute is beginning operations Q1 2023, focusing on developing precision organoid models across a number of health applications including cancer, infectious disease, and rare/neglected diseases. Research directions include studying the tissue-level biology of colon cancer with the aim of identifying synthetic vulnerabilities, developing organoid co-culture models to facilitate development of next generation immunotherapies, and leveraging CRISPRa/i tools to study host/pathogen interactions and therapeutically modulate immune responses.

Simon Briel holds a Master's degree in Applied and Molecular Biotechnology MS from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and is currently pursuing a Master's degree MS in Management & Engineering from RWTH Aachen University Business School and the University of Cambridge. He began his career in research at Technical University of Berlin and joined Beckman Coulter Life Sciences in late 2019 as a Global Product Manager. In this role, Simon seeks to streamline users' needs, technical innovation and internal strategies. His aim is to aid the development and optimization of cell culture & microbial bioprocesses. In symbiosis with cell line and strain engineering this is posing a huge potential to drive innovation in biotechnology.

"Paul is the CEO at CN Bio, having joined in 2022. He has over 25 years of experience in building businesses and leading high-performance research, product, marketing, and sales teams to develop and commercialize new biotechnology technologies globally for drug discovery, bioproduction and diagnostics.

Paul has held senior leadership positions in the USA and the UK, including Head of Business Operations and Managing Director of Horizon Discovery Ltd; Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Board member of Oxford Genetics Ltd; Head of Discovery Research Services at MilliporeSigma (Merck KGaA); and Global Marketing Manager at Sigma-Aldrich Corp. Paul has a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Wales, a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and an MBA from the University of Nottingham Business School."

Dr. Cyrill Brunner is a trained pharmacist and obtained his PhD at ETH Zurich in the group of Prof. Gisbert Schneider. His main background are numerous biophysical assays including SPR and computational drug design. He joined Bruker as application specialist in April 2020 and heads the SPR application lab in Fällanden, Switzerland.

"Marybeth Burton is Executive Director, Discovery Sample Management at Merck in Rahway, NJ, USA.  Marybeth leads Merck’s global Discovery Sample Management and is responsible for small molecule and peptide compound management, high throughput purification, commercial chemical inventory management, and discovery chemistry operations.  Her group monitors compound collection quality and participates in efforts to continuously improve both stewardship and composition of Merck's small molecule compound collection.  Marybeth has been involved with process optimization efforts and development of new workflows to support changing sample management needs resulting from globalization of drug discovery efforts.  Marybeth and her team recently completed a multiyear major infrastructure upgrade which includes new automation platforms and processes for small molecule and peptide sample management.

Prior to her tenure at Merck, Marybeth led the compound management group at Schering-Plough.  Marybeth holds a B.A. in Biology and an M.S. in Information Science."

My name is Jessica Bush, I am a fifth year PhD student in The Disney Lab at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology (formerly The Scripps Research Institute). My work focuses on the identification of novel small molecules targeting pathogenic RNA structures to modulate downstream disease pathology and biological phenotypes. The majority of my PhD has been devoted to the identification of small molecules that target the stable r(G4C2)exp repeat hairpin in C9orf72 that has been identified as the most prevalent cause of heritable amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

"Keeping a continual focus on optimizing laboratory productivity, particularly in an increasingly global environment, Bjoern has been contributing to the development of international standards for well over a decade. He is a technical expert contributing to the efforts of standards development committees of ISO, ASTM International, and CLSI. 

Filling a void in testing guidance for users of automated liquid handling systems, Bjoern was one of the industry experts who proposed the development of ISO/IWA 15. He then served as project leader and technical editor for the development of the ISO 23783 series of standards for automated liquid handling systems, which was published in August 2022.  

As technical expert, Bjoern has been contributing to the 2022 revision of the ISO 8655 series of standards, serving as lead author and project leader for the new Part 8 “Photometric reference measurement procedure for the determination of volume” and project leader and technical editor for the revision of Part 7 “Alternative measurement procedures for the determination of volume.” He is the lead author and project leader for the development of Part 10 “User guidance, and requirements for competence, training, and POVA suitability.” 

Bjoern serves as chair of the ASTM E41.06 subcommittee Laboratory Instruments and Equipment and was the project leader and technical editor for the 2022 revision of ASTM E1154 “Piston or plunger operated volumetric apparatus and operator qualification.” 

Head of Applications team at FUJIFILM CDI since 2012.

Rebecca Carlson is a PhD candidate co-advised by Paul Blainey and Nir Hacohen at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She is completing a degree in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics in the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT with a Concentration in Computer Science. She has also received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University with a minor in Chinese.

"Engineer by training in biological sciences, Olivier Casamitjana acquired 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Successively at Pfizer and Solvay-Fournier, Olivier worked in the domains of assay development, high throughput screening and management of sample patrimony. Then Olivier worked within Sanofi during 10 years. He was successively project leader of large automated stores for compound management and of a LIMS’ implementation to manage the inventories, the workflows and the robotics interfaces. 

Olivier Casamitjana has been the global coordinator of the Sanofi compound management group, notably in charge of the strategy and key partnership and led the Toulouse Sample Management group during 8 years. Then, Olivier held an MBA program from Toulouse Business School and led, as a deputy, a technological & translational platform (integrated Drug Discovery), aiming at developing external business.

In 2015, Olivier joined Evotec and leads the screening and compound management department of Evotec France and he is part of the senior leader team in charge of the company’s strategy. In January 2017, he became SVP global head of compound management in charge of the business development and drive the operation in this domain. 

Active member of the club robotique and then ELRIGfr since 1999, Olivier has been elected in June 2013, president of Elrigfr (European Laboratory Robotics Interest Group – Francophone)."

Lead Automation Engineer

Dr. Natalie Castellana is CEO of Abterra Biosciences in San Diego, CA.  She is passionate about mapping the natural immune response to challenge, particularly the relationship between the B-cell receptor repertoire encoded in B cells and secreted antibodies in serum.  Abterra Bio specializes in next generation antibody discovery and sequencing, leveraging machine learning to mine the immune repertoire of llamas, alpacas, rabbits, and humans.  She earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California - San Diego, and BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Working at the interface between automation and biology for most of my scientific career, I have worked on high throughput systems in many settings, from early high throughput molecular biology platforms to my current role leading the High Throughput Antibody Expression team within Biopharm Discovery at GSK where the Small Scale Antibody Expression System is based.

Rebecca Berdeaux, Ph.D., is Vice President of Science at CellChorus, the leader in dynamic single cell analysis. Using her expertise in dynamic cellular signaling and leadership of scientific teams, she is overseeing development of single-cell analysis assays for immunooncology and other areas of the life sciences. Dr. Berdeaux earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of California, Berkeley. Following postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute, she took a faculty position at the McGovern Medical School of University of Texas Health, Houston. Dr. Berdeaux’ academic research program focuses on molecular signaling mechanisms in type 2 diabetes and muscle regeneration. Her lab has created numerous conditional transgenic mouse models to cAMP signaling in physiological and pathophysiologic contexts, including mice for tissue-specific chemical-genetic activation of cAMP signaling and non-invasive bioluminescent imaging of cAMP-activated transcription in vivo. She is passionate about developing methods to visualize and rigorously quantify cell behavior at single-cell resolution. 

I am a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia developing single-cell assays paired with machine learning analytics. My career goal is to become a scientist and engineer in an industry-based institution in the field of cell biology. In my career, I aim to develop new single-cell screening technologies which will aid in understanding how, and to what end, sub-populations of cells and tissues respond to pharmaceutical intervention. To date, a significant number of pharmaceutical studies have focused on characterizing the bulk response of cellular and tissue groups to introduced therapeutics. However, these bulk screening methods assume that the cellular targets exhibit a homogeneous identity, which can lead to costly misalignments between in-vitro and in-vivo models. Shifting the discretization of pharmaceutical experiments from bulk to single-cells will aid in developing higher quality products, minimize therapeutic resistance, and expedite disease research.

Dr. Bevins has two decades of experience in research, clinical medicine, and the life sciences industry. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Columbia University then completed the Medical Scientist Training Program (MD-PhD) and residency in clinical pathology (laboratory medicine) at the University of California, San Diego. For five years he served the biopharma and diagnostics industry as a management consultant specializing in clinical development and go-to-market strategy. Dr. Bevins has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts in genetics, clinical chemistry, and laboratory utilization. He volunteers on the Economic Affairs Committee for the Association of Molecular Pathology. Dr. Bevins is currently a free-lance commercial strategy consultant and clinical laboratory director.

Sanjeev Bhavnani MD FACC is a Senior Medical Advisor for Digital Health at FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), where he is a senior clinical expert and subject matter expert related to digital health medical devices. In his role at the CDRH Digital Health Center of Excellence, Dr. Bhavnani provides leadership for digital health policy development, technologies including artificial intelligence, and design considerations for DHTs and AI/ML clinical investigations including hybrid, decentralized, and virtual care clinical trials. Prior to joining the Agency, Dr. Bhavnani was the founder and executive director of Healthcare Innovation at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, CA and led the development of clinical trials and patient care programs that evaluated the safety and effectiveness of DHTs, nanosensor devices, cloud-based analytical platforms, and handheld ultrasound.  Over more than a decade, Dr. Bhavnani served as principal investigator of 90 DHT and AI clinical trials and patient care programs that have enrolled over 30,000 patients in the US and in resource limited areas and successfully designed the first point-of-care methods for DHT used within clinical trials.  His team developed the SMART-FHIR integration interface for DHT data into EMRs for remote patient monitoring, deployed enterprise-wide telehealth during COVID-19 achieving 1M+ telehealth visitations and created a learning health system real-world data platform to monitor healthcare quality of DHT and ML devices. Dr. Bhavnani is a practicing cardiologist and has held various leadership positions at national professional societies, advisory boards, think tanks, and educational institutions and has trained a global consortium of innovation scholars towards the advances in digital health.

Marc Bickle obtained his Ph.D. at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland, studying the immunosuppressive drug Rapamycin in yeast. He studied the genetics of behavior in C. elegans at the LMB in Cambridge, UK. He then participated in the creation of Aptanomics a Biotech in Lyon, France. 

I am a research scientist at GenScript developing new DNA assembly paradigms that are suitable for automation. I am also optimizing the production of large numbers of plasmid for contract plasmid production and developing robotic platforms for this. Our goal is to use cutting edge DNA manufacturing protocols that scale up for producing vaccines, gene therapies and other CGT products.

Rajan Chaudhari is a Computational Chemistry Scientist at Eurofins Beacon Discovery in San Diego, CA. Chaudhari received his M.S. Bioinformatics degree in 2010 from the University of Sciences in Philadelphia and then his Ph.D. biochemistry (computational) in 2015 from the same institution. His doctoral work involved development of membrane protein structure prediction method and identification of novel GLP1R agonists. He completed postdoctoral training at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, where he worked on variety of cancer therapeutic targets and modalities. Before joining Eurofins, Chaudhari worked as Senior Scientist at Lassogen, San Diego, CA, where he established computational chemistry capabilities and developed novel lasso peptide based preclinical candidates targeting GPCRs and integrins.

Shimul Chowdhury has served as a clinical laboratory director in multiple laboratories including Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine (RCIGM), Illumina Inc. and Quest Diagnostics. He has dedicated his career to implementing new genomic technologies to improve patient care and outcomes. He is a board-certified clinical molecular geneticist and licensed as a laboratory director in California, Florida and New York.

Eric Chow is the Director of the UCSF Center for Advanced Technology and former Head of Technology at the Laboratory for Genomics Research a collaborative center between UCSF, UC Berkeley, and GSK. He currently directs the UCSF Center for Advanced Technology, a facility focused on NGS, single cell sequencing, and high throughput auatomation.

Dr. Beth Cimini is a Senior Group Leader, CZI Imaging Scientist and head of the Cimini Lab in the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA.  She obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn at UCSF, studying splicing variants of the telomere master scaffolding protein TIN2.  This work honed her interests in image analysis, leading her to postdoctoral and staff scientist roles with Dr. Anne Carpenter's lab at the Broad, leading a team collaborating with ~30 outside scientists per year on custom image analysis projects.  The Cimini lab focuses on bioimage analysis tool creation (Piximi) and maintenance (CellProfiler), as well as on applying open source tools to novel biological problems.  She created and directs the Platform's Postdoctoral Training Program in Bioimage Analysis, and also leads the Broad efforts towards community engagement and driving biological projects for the Center for Open Bioimage Analysis (COBA).

"Filippo Cipriani, PhD, is Principal Scientist at The New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute working on the Diabetes team. The team’s research focuses on developing robust models of diabetes using Pancreatic organoids derived from patient induced pluripotent stem cells. He recently received a NYSCF – Druckenmiller Fellowship Award.

In 2019, Dr. Cipriani completed his PhD in Biomedical Research at the University of Valladolid (Spain). Prior to his PhD, he was a Marie Curie Fellow working as Associate Researcher in the field of microfluidics and microsensors in the IMSAS Group at the University of Bremen, Germany. He completed his Bachelor degree in Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology in 2010 at the Faculty of Science of the University of Florence, Italy, followed by a Master degree in Molecular and Industrial Biotechnology at the Faculty of Science of the University of Pisa, Italy."

Maria Clapés holds an MSc in Bioengineering from the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL). She joined the R&D department at SUN bioscience in 2020, where she established liver models on their proprietary platform, Gri3D®. In her current role as a Field Application Specialist, she supports sales and applications of SUN bioscience products. In a collaboration with Molecular Devices, she supports the experimental design and imaging on the SUN bioscience platform, Gri3D®, for human intestinal organoids.

"Roger is Head of High Throughput Screening (HTS) within Early Discovery at Charles River Labs (CRL). An experienced drug-discovery Bioscientist, Roger joined CRL in 2018 from AstraZeneca - where he had moved through various early discovery roles over ~19 years. His current remit sees him leading CRL’s HTS department - delivering assay development and execution of molecular target-based and phenotypic Hit ID campaigns for multiple client projects.

Over his pharmaceutical R&D career Roger has worked across many fields in early discovery including HTS, SAR Screening, High Content Biology and Laboratory Automation."

Joe Clayton is the Global Scientific Program Manager within the Cell Analysis division at Agilent. He received his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Vermont and a M.S. in Clinical Research and Informatics from Dartmouth College. Joe has nearly 20 years of experience in diverse life science research with an emphasis on imaging-based application development and emerging technologies. 

Brad received his doctorate in biomedical engineering from Texas A&M University in 2013.  Holding several research positions, he has contributed to the development of a variety of analytical and microfluidic biotechnologies.  Since 2017, Brad has been working for Labcorp where he currently investigates and validates various novel capillary blood microsampling solutions as well as markers of neurodegeneration.

John founded 20/15 Visioneers after spending 30 years in R&D Biopharmas, Scientific Software and Consulting orgnizations where he focused on science and technology, computational sciences, informatics and strategy.  John and his teams have brought several scientiifc software platforms to market and have constantly strived to make a difference to science understanding and informatics.

Biography: Dr Patrick Courtney has 20 years industrial experience in technology development. He worked as Director for global firms such as PerkinElmer, as well as at Sartorius and Cap Gemini. He leads a European working group on analytical laboratory robotics and is member of board of directors of SiLA (Standards in Laboratory Automation). He holds an MBA with a PhD in Robotic Engineering/Molecular Biology, and has 100 publications and holds ten patents.

I have a PhD in the synthesis of insect defence secretions.  Following 12 years at British Petroleum working on automated analytical processes and the development of a cartesian robot system & software, I cofounded Process Analysis & Automation.  Now over 30 years on, Peak Analysis & Automation are now part of the Directech Group of Companies still developing cutting edge laboratory automation hardware & software solutions for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and academic and research institutes.

"Software Product Manager at Hamilton Company in Reno, Nevada.

Alvaro has a bachelor´s in Biotechnology and has worked in the life science automation industry for over 17 years. He has occupied diverse roles on three continents as a distributor, product specialist, applications engineer, sales, sales manager, and product manager. He is an expert in Hamilton's software. "

"Luigi Da Via’ is a Team Leader in Analytical Development at GSK working in the high throughput automation group. 

He has a PhD in photochemistry and catalysis at the University of Liverpool (UK). In 2018 he was elected as a GSK Fellow which recognizes the top 5% R&D staff as established leaders of science and mentors.
His current research involves the design, development, and deployment of new automated workflows for the screening of physicochemical properties of new assets during preclinical drug development. 
His role is also focusing on establishing data management strategies to streamline the integration of robotic platforms and analytical instrumentation with the wider GSK IT infrastructure."

Dr. Robert Damoiseaux’s main interests are at the interface of chemistry, biology and engineering and include the development of novel assay technology platforms, High Throughput Screening, High Content Screening and nanotechnology. After having earned a Ph.D. degree at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) where he worked on directed molecular evolution of antibodies he joined the Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics (GNF) in La Jolla, CA in 2001. Since 2004 he is the Director of the Molecular Shared Screening Resources (MSSR) – a unique state of the art screening facility at the California NanoSystems Institute of UCLA where he directs all drug discovery as well as the functional genomics projects. His private research focuses on automation, novel assay systems and toxicological issues of small molecules and nano-materials and consults for the pharmaceutical industry and law firms as expert witness in patent litigation cases.

Libby Daniele joined Quartzy as a Customer Success Manager in 2022 after working as a Researcher and Lab Manager in academic and industry settings for over 7 years. As a former Quartzy user, she understands the perspective and needs of scientists using the platform. She is excited to continue helping labs organize and streamline their work on a larger scale.

"Prof Davies’ CEO Vale Life Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. 

Prof Davies has for the lattwo decades focused on the development of advanced in vitro cell-based models and the rapidly growing field of high content screening and analysis. 
 He has overseen and led the establishment of Research Centres in Europe and Oceania where his work was centred on understanding human disease. In 2005 he set up the Irish National Centre for High Content Screening and Analysis (INCHSA), based in the Department of Clinical Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, one of the first purpose built academic screening centres of its kind in Europe. Anthony has developed and commercialised a number of new technologies, most notably the worlds first liquid 3D cellular scaffold and solid-state Bioreactor technologies specifically designed for use in automated drug discovery. Prof Davies is now based in Brisbane Australia where he holds the position of CEO of Vale life Sciences who have developed a range of advanced cell culture technologies."

Dr. Christophe Deben is currently the head of the Tumoroid Screening lab at the University of Antwerp. In this position he combines his passion for cancer research with his interest in new technologies to develop more advanced 3D cancer models and automated drug screening assays. His team applies a multidisciplinary approach that combines cancer biology, live-cell imaging, and data science to find new combination strategies that target cancer cells more efficiently and to improve the prediction of a clinical response from ex vivo tumoroid drug screenings. As co-founder of Orbits Oncology, he aims to make advanced live-cell image analysis more accessible to academic researchers and facilitate the implementation of 3D cancer models. 

Prof. Dennis Della Corte leads the Life Science Analytics team as Chief Science Officer of ZONTAL and is the acting director of the Consortium of Molecular Design at Brigham Young University. His work is focussed on building the laboratory of the future, through better datasets, algorithms, training strategies. Formerly, he worked at Bayer AG as Global IT Project manager and obtained a PhD in Computational Biophysics at FZ Jülich in collaboration with Stanford University. He also holds Master's Degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics.

Dr. Daniela Dengler has been a lead scientist in the assay development group of the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics (CPCCG) at Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP) Medical Discovery Institute since 2018. Prior to joining SBP, Dr. Dengler obtained her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, where she focused on organic synthesis and structure-based design of small molecules targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). In her current role, Dr. Dengler seeks to exploit the tremendous untapped therapeutic potential of GPCRs by developing and optimizing novel automation-friendly methods tailored to identify small molecules that act on challenging GPCR targets or exhibit unique pharmacological profiles, such as biased agonism and allosteric modulation, which she believes will ultimately result in more effective and safe therapeutics.

I’m Marie DEPRESLE, an engineer assistant in BIORCELL3D consortium in France, more precisely in Clermont-Ferrand. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology five years ago. I have worked in cosmetic research in LVMH research center for a work-study contract and then in screening oncology field for a permanent contract. I mainly work in cell biology and fluorescence staining, and I am also responsible for our screening machines.

Dwayne is a seasoned life science commercial professional with 22 years’ experience in delivering novel life science research solutions to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, molecular diagnostic, and academic markets. As Director of Inventia US, he supports the commercialization and development efforts of the RASTRUM technology in North America. His scientific and business experiences have mainly focused on bringing innovative approaches and technologies to scientific problems. He has helped companies commercialize innovative technologies, including high-throughput drug screening products and services at Invitrogen and Bellbrook, high-content imaging platforms such as the GE In Cell and the Celigo imaging platform, single-cell isolation platforms from Menarini Silicon Biosystems, and most recently the Organ-On-a-Chip technology from Mimetas.

Dr. Yujia Ding (M.S., M.A.Ed., Ed.D.) is a STEM educator and disability advocate with a passion for sharing her love of biology with her students. She completed her Doctor of Education where she explores how to make STEM accessible to individuals with disabilities. Her personal experiences and her students motivate her to keep fighting every day, despite the challenges she faces. Dr. Ding was the Los Angeles Unified School District Rookie of the Year recipient for the 2020-2021 school year. In addition, she received Distinguished Teacher recognition from Dallas Independent School District for the 2022 - 2023 school year. She is a proud Northwestern University Alumna (B.A., M.S.) seeking to leave a positive impact for future generations of scientists. Dr. Ding strives to show her students nothing is impossible, the word itself spells "I'm possible".

Matt is a passionate and experienced research scientist with a background in chromatin biology and a focus on advanced imaging techniques and the application of computational approaches towards looking at biological data. He earned his PhD from MIT where he developed and applied novel imaging-based approaches towards interrogating the DNA damage response in the nervous system. Matt has worked towards bringing high-content imaging platforms and their corresponding data analysis pipelines online at several startups and bio-techs while simultaneously gaining exposure to the client and business-facing side of science.

John Doench is the director of research and development in the Genetic Perturbation Platform of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard,. He provides expert guidance on the design, execution, and analysis of genetic screens. He has contributed to numerous publications in fields such as infectious disease, cancer biology, and immunology. Additionally, Doench leads a group focused on the development of functional genomic techniques, first with RNAi and more recently with CRISPR technology. Here, his team demonstrated the potential of genetic screens with CRISPR and has since developed leading bioinformatics tools and screening libraries to enable community-wide usage of this powerful technology. Importantly, their efforts emphasize not only staying on the cutting edge of the newest approaches, but also focusing on making technologies widely available and useful, which is critical for enabling collaboration with a broader community of researchers working in diverse and challenging model systems.

Dr Audrey Dubourg is CN Bio’s Product Manager for the PhysioMimix™ OOC range of microphysiological systems. Prior to joining CN Bio, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA), in the US, in the Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics department. She completed an MSc in microbiology at the University of Montpellier II (France), followed by a PhD in microbiology/parasitology at the University of East Anglia (UEA), in the UK. Audrey has extensive experience in the disciplines of molecular biology and 3D mammalian cell culture. Since joining CN Bio, she has been actively involved in promoting the benefits of incorporating organ-on-a-chip technology into drug discovery and development workflows.

After studying Natural Sciences and Business & Administration at Utrecht University, Frans-Willem Duijnhouwer started his career at Capgemini as an internet consultant, after which he continued as an entrepreneur in IT. Through a startup in web archiving and a role as a project manager at Uselab, he and a partner started a company for mobile app development, called Mobile Agency. In addition, he has developed and sold an IOT platform at EasyIQ. In 2020, Frans-Willem started working at USoft, where he works with former Capgemini colleagues in the sales department. With his broad knowledge of ICT, Frans-Willem, in his role as pre-sales/business consultant, knows how to translate specifications into solutions for core systems based on a low code development methodology.

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, I have been at The Neuro for over 15 years. As an Associate Professor at The Neuro and McGill University, my research focus is on applying patient-derived stem cells towards the development of phenotypic discovery assays and 3D brain organoid models for both neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. As director of the Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU) at The Neuro, I oversee a team of over 45 research staff and trainees, committed to applying novel stem cell technology, combined with CRISPR genome editing, mini-brain models and new microfluidic technologies towards elucidating the underlying causes of these complex disorders. Integrating new approaches in the group towards building MultiOmics profiles on the patient-derived IPSC cells, the long-term strategy is to identify new personalized precision therapies that can be applied towards building clinical trials on a dish.

Nick Edwards, PhD is a Director of Business Development and Strategic Accounts at Science Exchange, an R&D services marketplace. He works with biotech companies to strategically make science move faster by improving outsourcing efficiency. Nick completed his PhD in Neuroscience at Brown University and a postdoc at UCSD. After working as a consultant at BCG, he spent time in commercial strategy and operations at Illumina. During his time at Resilience and Alloy Therapeutics, Nick gained firsthand experience in building and operating fast-scaling research organizations. Outside of his day job, Nick is a passionate advocate for science communication and careers. He hosts the Once a Scientist podcast, where he interviews scientists across diverse industries and functional roles to help early career researchers understand industry and academic career options.

"David Egan is the co-founder and CEO of Core Life Analytics, a Netherlands-based company that helps biologists to analyze their own data. Born in Carrickerry, Ireland, he completed his undergraduate training in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Limerick. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in New York, NY. 

After a post-doctoral fellowship at The Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, and a position at OSI Pharmaceuticals in NY, he returned to Europe in 2003. In Utrecht, The Netherlands, while managing the Cell Screening Core at the Department of Cell Biology, he encountered the challenges of data analytics in phenotypic screening. This led to the development of the StratoMineR data analytics platform with Wienand Omta and the subsequent establishment of Core Life Analytics in 2016. Since then StratoMineR has been widely adopted in big pharma, biotech, and academic centers.

As part of the next stage of its development Core Life Analytics is launching the StratoVerse, a complete end- to-end, cloud-based, high-content analysis platform. It offers image storage in StratoMineR, high-performance image analysis in StratoScale, and downstream data analytics in StartoMineR, the current product."

R&D molecular diagnostics professional, 10+ years of experience, with drive for results, known for high productivity and delivering products, from concept through commercialization, to market in time. Extensive
knowledge of molecular biology high throughput laboratory systems and CLIA lab operations, analytical assay validation and clinical studies to supporting clinical utility for LDTs. Enthusiastic about learning and enabling tools and solutions contributing to the improvement of human health.

Patrick has spent 25 years in biotech, with 11 years directly supporting the PerkinElmer Drug Discovery Reagent portfolio in various Western US regions, namely the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego. Patrick’s experience spans early discovery assay development for HTS and SAR campaigns, to method development for biomarker analysis in clinical studies.

"Yaw Etse is the Vice President of Engineering and Lab Innovation at Invitae. His strategic focus is next-generation and fully autonomous lab operations, machine learning, and predictive analytics. In this role, Yaw leads scientists and engineers to build fully autonomous platforms, automated assay testing and virtualization, digital twin, continuous integration, and deployment of fully automated next-generation sequencing-based assays.

Yaw previously led platform engineering and the health care provider experience and engineering at Invitae.

Before joining Invitae, Yaw was the CTO of Promise Financial and Repetere and previously led engineering teams at American Express and Capital IQ.

He has a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and pursuing a Master's in Computer Science and Machine Learning from Johns Hopkins University."

Dr. Evans received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio focusing on Serotonin 1A receptor pharmacology. She did a post-doc at the University of Houston, College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences concentrating on cardiovascular and respiratory pharmacology. Kenda joined Encysive Pharmaceuticals in the high throughput screening lab where she worked through many screening campaigns and had specific project management responsibilities. After 5 years with Encysive Pharmaceuticals, she joined PerkinElmer as a field application scientist with the high throughput screening reagents and plate readers group. In 2011 Kenda joined Agilent Technologies as a product specialist in the automation workflow group. Recently Kenda took on a new role as the Applications Workflow Specialist for the Automation Team where she continues to work to build out new applications using the Bravo liquid handler, AssayMAP Bravo and the Metabolomics Bravo for automated sample preparation.

Tiffany Fabianac started her career as a molecular neurobiologist focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling peripheral nerve development and the development of Neurofibromatosis Type 2 therapies. She went on to manage 2 cellular and molecular neuroscience laboratories where she led the research and development of in-vitro and in-vivo models used in the development of treatments for Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetic Neuropathy, Neurofibromatosis, and Schwannomatosis. Tiffany followed her passion for coding and statistics into the world of bioinformatics consulting where she designed, developed, and implemented analytics and data science systems for 7 of the world's largest pharma and biotech research organizations. Currently, Tiffany supports Astrazeneca's data, analytics, and artificial intelligence teams by leading the strategy of and innovation in Data & AI technology for the enterprise.

I graduated from Northeastern University in May of 2022 with a B.S in Bioengineering and minors in Chemistry and Spanish. I began working as a co-op at Dragonfly Therapeutics, a medium-sized immunotherapy biotech, during my final year of undergraduate studies as an SPR user in their protein analytics group. I've been at Dragonfly since May 2021, took a full-time position in May of 2022, and since then my role has expanded into one of Dragonfly's primary SPR users. I recently attended SensorFest, hosted by David Myszka of Biosensor Tools in October of 2022, where I was able to deepen both my overall SPR knowledge and my understanding of how to design a high-quality experiment. I’m currently working towards a master’s degree in biotechnology from Harvard and am looking forward to advancing my career in the biotechnology industry!

After his PhD in Cell Biology with a focus on High Content Screening, Matthias worked for 4 years as an Application Scientist at PerkinElmer, Hamburg. In this role Matthias established new imaging assays and image analysis workflows for High Content Screening. With this strong background in HCS Matthias joined Genedata in 2014, where he started as a Scientific Account Manager for Genedata Screener. In 2017 Matthias became the Project Lead for Genedata Imagence, a next-generation image analysis software based on deep learning. Since 2021, Matthias is responsible for the product management of the Genedata Screener platform and Genedata Imagence.

Amy Files is a Scientist working on the Assays and Reagents team at Bionano Genomics in San Diego, CA. She has been at Bionano Genomics for the past 10 years working on several different aspects of research and development to push forward the field of Optical Genome Mapping (OGM). She was a key contributor for the sample extraction (SP) technology and helped lead the development of the current labeling technology, Direct Label and Stain (DLS), used for OGM. Her contributions to DLS won her the Distinction in Innovation award at Bionano in 2018. For the past year, she has focused her efforts on the development of automation of the SP workflow in collaboration with Hamilton. Prior to Bionano, Amy worked at various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including Merck and Sequenom. She received her B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Point Loma Nazarene University.

Sascha Fischer discovered his passion for automation during his work for Hamilton and Tecan as an Application Specialist for Genomics and NGS. He graduated in Molecular-Medicine at the University of Tübingen and is currently in the final phase of his PhD studies in Neuropsychiatric Genetics at the University of Basel. In April 2021, Sascha joined Genedata as a Business Development Manager supporting Genedata Screener’s Automation Initiatives.

Matthias Fischer has a background in biomedical engineering, obtained in 2007 from the University of Applied Sciences, Jena, Germany. While completing his Ph.D. at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, he developed a fluorescence-based fiber-optical biofilm sensor for studying biofilm formation dynamics in the field. In 2013, he joined the photonics group at the University of York, United Kingdom, as a postdoctoral researcher. Since 2017 Dr. Fischer's focuses on the design and development of lab automation systems to address liquid handling applications.

Jennifer Fournier is the Director of Product Marketing in the Chemistry group at Waters.  She joined Waters Corporation in 2004. She has worked in many different parts of the organization.  She started in Life Science Research and Development, then moved into the manufacturing group for the MassPREP line of standards and was  most recently the Product Marketing Manager for the Analytical Standards and Reagents group specifically all bioseparations standards, RapiGest, Amino Acid and Released N-Glycan analysis (AccQTag and GlycoWorks).  She received her B.S. in Biotechnology and M.S. in Biology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA).  Prior to joining Waters she taught high school biology for a year and also worked in manufacturing for a small pharmaceutical company that manufactures Albuterol for inhalers.  Jennifer currently manages a team that markets and supports the Chemistry Technology Group.

Dr. Fragiadakis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and The University of California, San Francisco. Her lab uses computational approaches to study states of the immune system, using single-cell omics data from patient samples in disease contexts including autoimmunity, viral infection, and cancer. She earned her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University. As part of her research program she runs the Data Science CoLab, a collaboration-based research lab focused on the analysis and curation of single-cell data including single-cell sequencing and CyTOF, and is the scientific lead of the UCSF Data Library project.

Professor Paul French is Vice Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London. He received his BSc in physics (1983) and PhD in laser optics (1987) from Imperial College London, where he joined the academic staff in 1994, having previously also worked at the University of New Mexico (1988) and at AT&T Bell Laboratories, (1990/91). Today his research group is based in the Physics Department at Imperial and in a satellite laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute. His research has evolved from ultrafast dye and solid-state laser physics to biomedical optics for applications in cell biology, drug discovery and clinical diagnosis. Current interests include the development and application of multidimensional fluorescence imaging technology for assays of biomolecular interactions, super-resolved microscopy, automated high content analysis, endoscopy and tomography, with open-source approaches to instrumentation, including hardware, data acquisition and analysis. 

Olivier Frey is Vice President and Head of Technology & Platforms at InSphero and leads the Microphysiological Systems and Organ-on-Chip programs. Before joining InSphero, he was group leader and SNF Ambizione fellow at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of ETH Zurich, Switzerland on integrated microfluidic systems for single cell handling and 3D tissue cultures. He holds a Dr.Sc in Micro Engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and an MSc in Microtechnology and Mechanics from ETH Zürich.

David Fuller is the co-founder and CEO of Artificial who is developing a first-of-its-kind software stack and tools to empower labs to close the loop from scientific intent to reliable results for AI-driven and Cloud-ready lab orchestration.   David has over 25 years of experience in industrial automation and software platforms.  He has held positions in business and technology in such fields as Measurement and Automation where he was the VP of SW R&D at National Instruments.  While at NI, the tools and platforms he built provided the foundation for unique systems as diverse as the CERN hadron collider and SpaceX ground control.  He and several of the technical team now at Artificial, along with many others at NI, partnered with LEGO to build LEGO Mindstorms a low-code tool for kids of all ages to program LEGO robots.  After NI, David focused on Industrial Robotic and Logistic systems as CTO of the KUKA Group and the Managing Director of KUKA Robotics. KUKA is the number one global supplier of high throughput robots for Automotive production.  He received his BS in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M and in 2011 was recognized by the Texas Academy of Medicine & Engineering for Technology Innovation. He holds 42 patents.  He is driven by a love of technology that has a clear positive impact on society.

John Fuller is the commercial product manager for Echo Drug Discovery at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was previously a field applications scientist for Labcyte. He holds a PhD. from the U.N.T Health Science Center and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Linda Gijzen is working as a Scientific Project Lead in the Model Development team at Mimetas where she is involved in the development and characterization of human based microfluidic models of the kidney, intestine, and immune oncology. Besides her position as Scientific Project Lead, she is doing a PhD at Mimetas and the University of Utrecht focusing on microfluidic disease models.

Dr. Logan Gin is the Assistant Director for STEM in the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University where he works on initiatives related to STEM graduate student and postdoc teaching professional development. Prior to arriving at Brown, Logan was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Arizona State University and served as the Program Manager for an NSF S-STEM program focused on involving community college transfer students in undergraduate research. Logan holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Arizona State University where his dissertation work centered around the experiences of STEM students with disabilities. He also has a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Peter Girling began his career researching the mechanisms of disease in a variety of organ systems at universities in Australia, California, and Switzerland. He then studied business and entrepreneurship at Babson College (Massachusetts) and the EPFL and USI (Switzerland) prior to co-founding and becoming CEO of CELLnTEC Advanced Cell Systems, a life science company focusing on advanced in vitro models for research and regenerative medicine.  He has worked at Tessara since 2020 where he is involved in advancing production processes and establishing projects under the early-access program.

"Specialised in cell biology (more precisely in cancer drug resistance and 3D cell culture models) Antoine has realised its PhD works in the Clermont Auvergne University (within the BIORCELL3D consortium). His works were focused on the development of innovative protocols to preserve caner spheroid models (as alternatives to classic cryopreservation methods), and on the biological validation of fluorescent conjugates able to detect and quantify cancer drug Resistance.

Publications :
• The New Serum-Free OptiPASS® Medium in Cold and Oxygen-Free Conditions: An Innovative Conservation Method for the Preservation of MDA-MB-231 Triple Negative Breast Cancer Spheroids - Cancers – April 2021 – DOI : 10.3390/cancers13081945
• LightSpot®-FL-1 Fluorescent Probe: An Innovative Tool for Cancer Drug Resistance Analysis by Direct Detection and Quantification of the P-glycoprotein (P-gp) on Monolayer Culture and Spheroid Triple Negative Breast Cancer Models - August 2021 – DOI : 10.3390/cancers13164050"

Dr. Ilya Goldberg has played a leading role in the development of image informatics and machine learning for bio-medical imaging. At ViQi, Ilya leads development of automated cell-based imaging assays using AIs. Prior to ViQi, Ilya co-founded a company that developed the first medical device to receive regulatory clearance that uses an AI to help diagnose lung cancer in CT screening exams. Prior to this, Ilya led a research group at the NIH National Institute on Aging, developing machine learning software for image analysis in the life sciences, and studying the basic biology of aging. As a postdoc at MIT, Ilya co-founded the OME project, which continues to be used for imaging infrastructure in large image repositories. Ilya has over 60 peer-reviewed articles from his years at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, MIT, and NIH in molecular and cell biology, pattern recognition, image informatics, and aging.

"2008 Ph.D. Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, Howard Cedar's lab;

2008-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow: The Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA - Aviv Regev and Brad Bernstein's Labs
2014-2016 Research Scientist, Broad Technology Labs, The Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA
2016-2022 Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.
2022- Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.

My research focuses on epigenomic mechanisms, and merges the study of basic and disease biology, technological innovations and computational analyses. I am an advocate of reproducible and robust research tools. My major interest is in regulatory epigenomics, and includes the employment and innovation of tools to address unanswered questions in chromatin biology. The main efforts of my group revolve around investigating the organization and function of chromatin regulatory networks during developmental transitions in normal and aberrant states, what are the cellular means to maintain the epigenome during processes such as the cell cycle, and how genetic variation, such as tandem repeats (TRs) and SNPs, impact the structure of chromatin."

"William Go, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Offier, oversees all aspects of A2 Bio’s development of T cell therapies utilizing the company’s novel logic-gated platform technology.

Previously, Will worked at Kite Pharma (acquired by Gilead) where he developed novel immune-cellular therapies for the treatment of cancer. At Kite, Will led the ZUMA-1 pivotal study and eventual FDA and EMA approvals of YESCARTA®, the first CAR T cell therapy approved in large B-cell Lymphoma. YESCARTA received the Prix Galien Award for Best Biotechnology Product in 2018. He became a vice president of clinical development at Kite/Gilead leading large B-cell lymphoma clinical development.

Earlier in his career, Will played an instrumental role in the clinical development of Vectibix® in colorectal cancer, as well as identifying new predictive biomarkers as a medical director in global clinical development at Amgen.

Will received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Carleton College and then attended the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) Medical Scientist Training Program. He received his Ph.D. in 2004 with a focus on immunology and completed his M.D. in 2006. Will did his internal medicine residency, hematology/oncology fellowship at UCSD. He was the recipient of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine fellowship award and the American Association of Cancer Institutes’ fellowship award studying tumor immunology.

Will also volunteers as a Board Member for the American Pancreatic Association Foundation and as a Board of Trustee and COVID-19 Taskforce Scientific Advisor for Viewpoint School."

Mark Greenough PhD is the principal scientist at Tessara Therapeutics (Melbourne, Australia), having joined the company in 2021. Mark’s research expertise is in the fields of neuroscience and genetics where he has applied his skills using cell culture models to elucidate mechanisms of neurodegeneration, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease. Mark also has a keen interest in the metal biology of neurodegeneration and the role that iron plays in health and disease states. Mark has had a significant impact on the growth of Tessara; helping to establish automated protocols for RealBrain microtissue production and leading R&D efforts in assay design, biomatrix formulation, QC protocols and generation of new RealBrain models. Leveraging Mark’s strong track record in Alzheimer’s disease research and recent discoveries related to ferroptosis susceptibility (Greenough et.al., Cell Death and Differentiation, 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41418-022-01003-1) he has applied this knowledge to help establish ADBrain as a ‘first of its kind’ human 3D model for Alzheimer’s disease drug discovery.

"Russell is Automata's Director of Product Growth and looks after product strategy across the Synthetic Biology and Drug Development markets. He started his career studying molecular structures using crystallography, and then moved into life science instrumentation where he has held strategic roles at numerous Life Science technology businesses centred around automation hardware and software tools including Beckman Coulter, Thermo Fisher and Synthace. Russ has managed global teams consulting for automated systems for life sciences; led product development for hardware and software and been subject matter experts for automation of both genomics and cellular biology applications.

Day to day, Russ guides product development to best meet the automation needs of the Life Science industry."

"Kalpesh Gupta is the Principal Automation Engineer, leading the automation efforts at Moderna Inc., located in Cambridge, MA. Kalpesh has a master’s degree in Bioinformatics' from Brandies University, and a master’s in science in Biotechnology from Northeastern University. He is a recognized expert in developing and programming methods for various liquid handling platforms like STAR, STARlet, Starplus, Vantage, and Nimbus. Currently managing a team responsible for programming for 49 Hamilton systems, Kalpesh is overseeing automation growth in Moderna. 

Before joining Moderna, he also has worked in cell signaling technology where he has an extensive experience in Protein Chemistry, Molecular biology, Protein spectroscopic analysis, SDS-PAGE, IEF Western Blotting, Size Exclusion Chromatography, HPLC, DSC, ELISA, dissolution, Activity and cell-based assays, DLS, etc."

Dr. Zachary Gurard-Levin has served as chief scientific officer at SAMDI Tech, Inc. since 2016. He brings 15 years of multidisciplinary research experience with expertise in chemistry, biochemistry, cellular biology and drug discovery research. Dr. Gurard-Levin was a pioneer user of SAMDI technology and co-developed SAMDI as a high-throughput, label-free solution for drug discovery research.

Prior to SAMDI Tech, Dr. Gurard-Levin was a research scientist at the Institut Curie in Paris, France, leading epigenetics drug discovery and diagnostics projects in oncology. Dr. Gurard-Levin has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and has been awarded multiple research grants. He has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Chicago. In addition, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Institut Curie with Dr. Genevieve Almouzni.

Richard is responsible for R&D at Sphere Fluidics, managing the development of their science and technology. Richard has over 20 years’ experience in developing cutting-edge commercial products for healthcare and life sciences. Richard has held numerous senior positions responsible for product and technology development. At Alere Inc (now part of Abbott) he led several major cross-company R+D programmes for in-vitro diagnostic devices including the development of the Alere i platform, the world’s first CLIA-waived point-of-care infectious disease diagnostic device using isothermal DNA amplification techniques. At Cambridge Consultants Ltd. Richard started their bioinnovation group, providing technical design and consultancy services at the intersection of biology and engineering. Over six years this group grew from one person to a team delivering substantial projects in areas such as automated cell transfection, CAR-T cell therapy manufacture and digital data storage in DNA. Most recently Richard was VP Technology at DNA Electronics, leading the R&D team developing a novel fully-automated sample-to-answer in-vitro diagnostic platform using DNA sequencing. Richard holds MA and MEng degrees in engineering from King’s College University of Cambridge.

"Experienced team lead with 10+ years in NGS technology and nucleic acid methodology with molecular oncology focus. Experienced in leading assay development and validation in regulated environments. Passionate about creating engaged and collaborative teams that solve important technical and biological problems

PhD from Karolinska Institute Stockholm, Sweden, 2005-2010
Post Doc at Yale University, CT, 2011-2016
Toma Biosciences, Foster City, CA (Senior Scientist - VP R&D), 2016-2018
Guardant Health, Redwood City, CA (Manager - Associate Director), 2018-2022
Exai Bio, Palo Alto, CA (VP Product &Technology Development), 2022-current"

Sandy Hayes, PhD, is Senior Director, Cell Therapy Platform and Discovery, at Janssen Research & Development. She has more than 25 years of experience in both academia and industry studying the biology and clinical application of γδ T cells. Sandy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin & Marshall College and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Connecticut Health Center.

Dr. Ernest Heimsath joined the Agilent Biotek scientific applications team in 2019 as an Applications Development Scientist. He earned his B.S. in Biology from UT San Antonio, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, where he studied the biochemical regulation of actin polymerization. Ernest conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health and UNC School of Medicine, where he used advanced imaging techniques and animal models to define the contribution of actin-associated genes in building actin-based cellular structures crucial for cancer metastasis and organismal development. With expertise in fluorescence microscopy, his primary role at BioTek is to develop and optimize imaging-based applications.

"Nat is an industry leader with years of experience developing HTS assays, automating and optimizing laboratory equipment, and investigating new technologies with Eli Lilly & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb. During his tenure at North Carolina State University, Nat specialized in hands-on instruction and development activities to assist with the growth of the biomanufacturing industry. As Director, Scientific Market Development at Artel, Nat focusses on developing new applications to solve problems for the assay development community."

Dr. Hoffstrom is cell biologist with over 22 years of combined academic and industrial research experience in field of antibody discovery and drug development.  From 2011 to 2021 he was the Director of the Antibody Technology lab at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center. In 2021 he was recruited to the Department of Medicine at ULCA by Dr. Dennis Slamon to design and build a next generation monoclonal antibody screening platform for therapeutic antibody discovery.

Dr Nick Holliday is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Excellerate Bioscience, a contract research organisation for in vitro pharmacology, and is also part-time Associate Professor in Pharmacology at the University of Nottingham (UK).  Following university studies in Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD), Nick has over 25 years’ experience in the molecular pharmacology of receptors and other drug targets, together with the development of in vitro imaging based assay systems to measure binding and signalling kinetics.  He is a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.

Daniel Holmes earned his undergraduate degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto. He went to medical school at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where he also did his residency in Medical Biochemistry. He is a Clinical Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC and Head and Medical Director of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver and Interim Medical Director of the British Columbia Provincial Toxicology Laboratory. Interests include clinical endocrinology with a focus on secondary hypertension,  lipidology, clinical mass spectrometry, and data science in application to data automation, visualization and clinical utilization.

Dr. Honarnejad is a biotechnologist with >15 years of experience in high-throughput biomolecular and cellular screening and currently serves as Chief Scientific Offier at Pivot Park Screening Centre (PPSC), a spin-off from former Organon/MSD lead discovery screening unit in the Netherlands. At PPSC he is involved in a broad range of commercial, academic, and shared-risk lead discovery programs. He carried out his doctorate in biotechnology jointly at the University of Heidelberg and Harvard University. Prior to joining PPSC, he was active in methods development for high-content in-vitro compound profiling and genome-wide RNAi/cDNA screening methods at various prestigious research organizations such as Harvard Medical School, Max-Planck Society, and European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

"Dr. Nathan Hotaling received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Clinical and Translational Science from Emory University in 2013. After his PhD, Nathan did two post-doctoral research terms at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Eye Institute (NEI), respectively, where he helped standardize the measurement of biodegradable nanofiber scaffolds and the cells grown on them, for use in a primary human cell therapy for age-related macular degeneration, which implanted its first patient in August of 2022.  While pursuing these projects he began to develop a platform to analyze high content datasets collected for drug screening and cell bio-manufacturing. This work led to his transition to Axle Informatics and NCATS where he oversees the development of the next generation of data analysis tools for researchers in the high-throughput and high-content screening fields. 

In conjunction with the above research work Dr.Hotaling is the Senior Vice President of Data Science at Axle Informatics where he founded and developed the Data Science Division. As a division founder his role has spanned a gamut of management and leadership roles from budgeting/accounting to culture definition and operational planning. During this time, he also secured contract funding and has grown the team to over 40 data scientists, software engineers, and researchers in the past 4 years."

"Prof. Rob Howes, Site Director and CEO, Rosalind Franklin Laboratory, Leamington Spa, UK

Rob has 20 years experience in Industry working across a range of organisations in the early drug discovery area. Most recently he spent 8 years at AstraZeneca with a year at the Cambridge Covid-19 Testing Centre supporting the UK’s Covid-19 response. In June 2021, he joined the UK Government's Health Security Agency to run the newly created Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Leamington Spa focused on Covid-19 Diagnostic assays and to establish it as a leading centre for diagnostics within the UK.

Rob is the SLAS Discovery podcast editor and an Editorial Board member of SLAS Discover. He was made a SLAS Fellow in 2020."

"James (Jay) Hoying is a leading expert in tissue vascularization, vascularized tissue models, and tissue model fabrication with more than 25 years of experience in basic and applied sciences involving tissue and vascular biology. Hoying is a founding Partner of Advanced Solutions Life Sciences and serves as its Chief Scientist.  Previously, he was Professor and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Therapeutics at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute (CII) where he developed a broad background in tissue fabrication, cell therapeutics, and translation of discoveries to industry and the clinic. He also has joint appointments at the Department of Physiology at the University of Louisville and the Department of Biotechnology at the University of New Hampshire. Hoying pioneered the use of native, intact microvascular elements in modeling vascularization and vascularizing tissues in vitro and in vivo. He holds numerous patents related to vascularizing tissues and related cell-based therapies. He has edited a book and published over 130 original research papers, reviews, and book chapters. As a researcher, he has secured nearly $18 million in grants as PI or co-PI. Hoying currently serves on the Editorial staff of Frontiers of Physiology and reviews for several other national and international journals. He reviews individual and program grant proposals for the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Affairs, the American Heart Association, and international funding agencies. Hoying has organized, chaired and co-chaired more than 11 international and national conference sessions and delivered more than 51 keynote and invited talks at conferences and University seminars. He currently serves in an advisory role for 5 programs including the Leadership Advisory Council of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute, the Research and Industry Council of the New Hampshire BioMade EPSCoR program, and the New Hampshire Tech Alliance/BioMed|Tech Leadership Council. He is also a Fellow of the American Heart Association. "

"Sarah Huntwork-Rodriguez, PhD, is a Director and Lab Leader at Denali Therapeutics in South San Francisco, California. In this role, she leads the development and implementation of target engagement and disease-associated pathway biomarker assays for Denali's LRRK2 inhibitor program for Parkinson's disease. She has worked extensively with academic collaborators and The Michael J. Fox Foundation to measure Parkinson’s disease biomarkers in the LRRK2 Cohort Consortium, the 24 hour Biofluid Study, the LRRK2 Detection Consortium, the LRRK2 Biobanking Initiative, and PPMI.

During her academic career, she focused on cellular and molecular neuroscience. A graduate of Stanford University, she obtained her PhD in Neurobiology from the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her postdoctoral work in the laboratories of Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Joseph Lewcock at Genentech in South San Francisco, California, she studied mechanisms of the neuronal stress response in triggering cell death following neuronal insults."

Jacobs is a distinguished industry expert leading AI and data science strategy and implementation at Deepcell as VP of Data Science and Bioinformatics. Jacobs has decades-long experience in computational methods and large-scale molecular and imaging datasets at several well-known companies such as Progenity, Helix, 23andMe, and Invitae. He earned his degree in computer science from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Engineering.

Dr. Sudhakar Jha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiological Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Jha is a cancer biologist with interest in deciphering how epigenetic pathways are deregulated during tumorigenesis. His group has identified, purified, and characterized multiple protein complexes that are hijacked by pathogens to promote growth.

"David Julovich completed his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Purdue University and a Master of Science in Data Science from Southern Methodist University. His initial work experience started on the industry side where he gained valuable experience at Abbott Laboratories in an FDA regulated setting and later in Cytogenetics in CLIA and CAP regulated labs (Impath, Genzyme).  

Following his career path on the industry side, Mr. Julovich found his way into academia and supported projects at prominent universities including Purdue, Arizona State University, Indiana University and most recently the University of North Texas Health Science Center. Through his work at UNTHSC, he supports several liquid handlers and automated digital workflows.  

Mr. Julovich years of expertise with multi-plex ELISAs and automated technologies allow him to support and improve Biomarker Screening for neurodegenerative diseases. His current work truly highlights how science and technology can come together to provide a healthcare solution that impacts 10’s of thousands of patients per year and in the future, improve healthcare for millions."

"Magdalena Kasendra is the Director of Research and Development at the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM). She leads a multifaceted effort to translate breakthrough discoveries in stem cell biology and organ development into innovative organoid-based solutions to address unmet medical needs. These include organoid-based platforms enabling discovery and development of safer and more efficient drugs, precision medicine applications and organoid-based tissue replacement therapies.

Prior to joining CuSTOM’s leadership team, she managed the multidisciplinary team responsible for developing, translating and commercializing Organs-on-Chips technology at Emulate Inc., a spin-off from Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. This research has led to major advances in bioengineering of intestinal tissue by combining microchip manufacturing methods and organoid technology and demonstrated the utility of this platform in drug development, disease modeling and precision medicine. 
Dr. Kasendra’s career spans industry, academia and the start-up world. She performed her PhD project at Novartis Vaccines and Development, which was followed by post-doctoral research fellowship at the Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. She has authored numerous publications and patents."

I am a scientist-engineer at Merck Research Labs in Cambridge, MA, where I work on scaling and implementing new technologies in an effort to discover and de-risk drug targets. My research often focuses on developing complex in vitro models and systems that can be used for target de-risking. My team uses a variety of core capabilities in microfluidics, screening/automation, 3D culture, microbiology, and chemical/molecular biology to build and validate these systems. Before joining Merck in 2017, I was a co-founder of Empire Biotechnologies, a biotech startup developing therapies for gastrointestinal diseases. I received my Ph.D in Nanoscale Engineering and B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University at Albany, SUNY.

Sam Kean is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Icepick Surgeon, The Bastard Brigade, The Dueling Neurosurgeons, and The Disappearing Spoon. His books have won multiple international awards for literary science writing, and his work has been featured on NPR’s “Radiolab,” “All Things Considered,” and “Fresh Air.” His podcast, The Disappearing Spoon, debuted at #1 on the iTunes charts for science podcasts.

Ian Kerman studied bioinformatics and molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego. Soon after starting as a research associate at a biotech startup, Ian began applying machine learning techniques to his company’s screening and assay data. Ian later joined a life science-focused data science company, helping laboratory scientists process, analyze, and extract insights from their data. More recently, Ian studied machine learning at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is the Director of Customer Success at LabVoice, an AI-powered digital assistant company for scientists. When he isn’t helping scientists analyze and automate their processes, he spends time with his husky-pug or SCUBA diving with sharks.

Christian Kis is a Staff Scientist in Field Applications for the Life Science and Laboratory Products team.  He has worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific for 11 years and has supported the Kingfishers and Sample Prep portfolio for over 10 of those years.  He is currently involved with training and instrument and applications support in the field for the KingFisher Sample Purification Systems, providing an integral connection between sales, R&D and customers.

Cullen Klein received his B.S. in Chemistry and Mathematics at The Ohio State University in 2002 and completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry at Indiana University-Bloomington in 2009 under the direction of Professor David R. Williams.  He continued his studies with post-doctoral research under Prof. Dr. Peter Seeberger at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interface Science, and Prof. Tom Snaddon at Indiana University-Bloomington.  He subsequently then worked in the Instrument Research and Development division of Siemens Healthcare Laboratory Diagnostics in Newark, Delaware.  In 2020 he joined the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) to work on the ASPIRE program as an Automation Chemist.

"Dr. Nikita Kolhatkar recieved her Ph.D from the University of Washington, Department of Immunology and is currently a senior research scientist at Gilead Sciences focusing on clinical biomarkers in infectious diseases, specifically Chronic Hepatitis B (CHB). She previously held roles as a clinical immunologist at Vaxart, Inc. where she worked on the development of an oral influenza vaccine. Additionally, she has worked as a scientist in the immuno-safety science group at Amgen working to support toxicology studies within the immuno-oncology space."

"Dr. Robin A. Krüger

Robin studied chemistry and biochemistry at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, where he also conducted his doctoral research on fluorescent biomarkers and bacterial photoreceptors. After a postdoctoral stay at the University in Calgary/Canada, he joined LPKF in 2011, where he held various development positions. Since 2020, Robin is leading the ARRALYZE team."

Takuya Kubo is an associate professor of Analytical Chemistry of Materials, Department of Material Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University.  He received his Ph.D. from Kyoto Institute of Technology in 2004. After working as a Research Assistant in National Institute for Environmental Studies (2001–2004), he joined Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University as an assistant professor (2004–2012) and Department of Chemistry, Portland State University, OR, USA a visiting (2010–2011) (JSPS Excellent Young Researcher Overseas Visit Program), then moved to Kyoto University as an associate professor in 2012.

Dr. Kurian is an accomplished scientist with 22 years of research experience and more than 85 published research and review papers.  He is trained in biomarker discovery and genomics of varied disciplines, and in the critical assessment of bio-informatics approaches needed to prioritize and validate biomarkers. He is currently Scientific Director of the Scripps Health/Scripps Clinic Bio-Repository and Bioinformatics Core (SCBBC). Dr. Kurian serves as a scientific advisor for Transplant Genomics, a company specializing in post-transplant care, and as Chief Scientific Officer for MindX Sciences, which focuses on biomarkers of mental health, and was a founding member for both companies.

Brandon Kwan-Leong is an automation engineer at the Laboratory for Genomics Research, where he is standardizing the tools used to build genome-wide guide RNA libraries and perform arrayed CRISPR-based screens. His previous roles in manufacturing and clinical labs produced robust systems used across multiple labs. Brandon has worked as a researcher, engineer, and consultant to develop novel assays and bridge the gap between low and high throughput workflows. He is currently focused on applying automation in an academic setting.

Currently a 5th year Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering at The University of Akron. My research focus is on understanding cancer drug resistance using 3D tumor models i.e. spheroids and organoids and finding effective ways to target them. I have been awarded Tony B Award for the third time in SLAS. 

Meghan is a biochemist with experience ranging from peptide synthesis to SELEX to lncRNA footprinting. While pursuing her PhD at Duke University, she employed each of these with protein biochemistry to explore dynamic interactions of epigenetic complexes. In 2019, she joined the world of DEL and is developing new approaches to the wide variety of biochemical problems in the DEL space. 

Connie Lebakken, PhD, COO and co-founder of Stem Pharm, has 20 years experience in life science companies with roles in manufacturing, operations, and R&D. She has extensive expertise in high-throughput biochemical and cell-based drug discovery assays with a focus on neurology and oncology.

Clarence is leading product development efforts in the digital PCR business at Thermo Fisher Scientific, focused on enabling customers through automation to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer.  He has more than 15 years of experience innovating in the life sciences industry in various capacities, including next-generation sequencing and assay development.  

I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, currently working on mRNA analysis of CAR-T cells in time-lapse. Also working on developing a next-generation image-based cell sorting system. I received my Ph.D. degree at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver. My Ph.D. research focused on developing efficient techniques for single-cell RNA analysis on rare cells and rare cellular events.

Celine Legros is a Drug Discovery Partnership Director at Eurofins Discovery. With extended knowledge of Eurofins Discovery’s expertise and services. She is the primary scientific contact for clients, deeply involved in the design of complex projects, such as HTS, Hit-to-Lead and Lead-Op programs. Prior to joining Eurofins, Celine was Scientific Project Leader in the Screening Department at Institut de Recherches Servier, France, where she was responsible for designing and running screening cascades from Target to Hit/HTS through to Lead Optimization. In close collaboration with chemistry and biophysics teams, Celine led screening projects in neuroscience, cardiovascular & metabolic diseases, immune-inflammation and oncology. In addition, she developed and ran assays on GPCRs, transcription factors, PPi, kinases, Ser-hydrolases and Tyr-kinase receptors, combining scientific relevance with robotics, data quality and throughput. Employing her expertise in HTS and previous experience in platform design, in close collaboration with robotics engineers, she designs automated platforms and implements new HTS technology. Celine holds a Ph.D. in Animal Physiology (melatonin circanual rhythm and melatonin receptors) from the University of Tours, France, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship within the Blood Brain Barrier Group at King's College London, UK.

I am a multi-disciplinary engineer with over 20 years of R&D experience primarily in the areas of laboratory automation and advanced analytical and detection technologies. I started my career at Amgen Inc and am now helping to develop new cancer treatments at A2 Biotherapeutics, a fast-growing biotech startup in the greater Los Angeles area. I completed my undergraduate degree in biomedical and electrical engineering and my master's degree in biomedical engineering, both from the University of Southern California.

Jing Li is a Principal Scientist in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology (BCP) department at Genentech. He is the BCP representative on multiple key pipeline projects at Genentech, providing assay strategy to identify lead molecules for early development. Jing received a medicine degree from Peking University and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Technical University in Munich under the direction of Professor Johannes Buchner. His Ph.D. work focused on understanding the molecular mechanism of heat shock protein Hsp90. In 2012, Jing started his postdoctoral research to study proteasome and protein degradation at Caltech under the supervision of Dr. Raymond Deshaies. He developed the first-in-class inhibitor targeting Rpn11/PSMD14, an essential deubiquitinase located on the 19S proteasome. In 2017, he moved to Amgen Inc. to finalize his postdoctoral research, where he identified natural compounds that inhibit JAMM metalloprotease.

Dr Li. Li is a postdoc fellow in the joint laboratories of Dr. Steven Altschuler and Dr. Lani Wu. Currently, she is applying system biology methods to study acute hypoxia. Previous to that, she received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular biology from the Peking University-National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing joint program, where she applied medicinal chemistry and chemical biology methods to explore human disease related mechanisms and develop new therapeutic approaches.

"Sam is currently a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at Concordia University with a B.Eng in mechanical engineering from Ontario Tech University. In his research, Sam focuses on applying novel microfluidic paradigms to find solutions not available at the macro-scale. In particular, he is interested in how immune cell engineering can be advanced with creative engineering solutions."

Yue has over 10 years’ experience in drug discovery and has spent majority of her time in the research and development sectors in both large pharma and biotech companies. In her current role as a team lead and project lead, she excels at applying interdisciplinary knowledge of antibody R&D and lab automation to characterize antibody at scale, and in integrating the wet lab and dry lab capabilities to build machine learning technology platform and pipeline programs.

Paul joined SPT Labtech in 2015 as a Product Manager responsible for automated systems for drug discovery and genomic research, such as mosquito and dragonfly which utilise novel patented positive displacement pipetting and non-contact dispensing technologies . Paul works closely with reasearchers and collaborators in developing new solutions for the market, both in terms of new instruments and application dvelopment. Most recently Paul led the introduction of the new firefly platform from initial concept design, through development, culminatiing in its launch at SLAS 2022 in Boston. Paul has over 20 years’ experience in the automation of sample processing across a wide range of application areas in the academic, clinical, environmental, biotech, and pharmaceutical sectors.

Mike is the Global Director of Solution Architecture at TetraScience, bringing over 20 years of experience in the systems integration domain. Previous to TetraScience, Mike honed his expertise at organizations such as MuleSoft, Oracle, and Fastenal Company while somehow also carving out time to play golf. His goal is to shoot Par at least once in his lifetime. He has accomplished this goal on 9 holes, but has yet to accomplish it on 18.

X-ray crystallographer by training at Cambridge University, I moved into using automation to help in the high throughput expression of proteins. Using automation was key to success. Now focusing in automation and digitalization in many aspects of target identification and validation, drug discovery and development across many areas in Novo Nordisk.

Stefan N. Lukianov, AM MS is the first-time JHU student founder of Salve Therapeutics.  He has undergraduate degrees from the University of Maine and masters from the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard University in the biomedical sciences.  He has worked in reputable labs at Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, McLean Hospital and the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. He also has extensive experience in science journalism, having published and edited for ASBMB Today, ACS C&EN Show Daily, the Harvard Medical Student Review and MIT Science Policy Review.  Stefan also loves teaching and has held a diverse array of private and public education roles at various grade levels in STEM fields.

Xiaoyong Lu is a passionate field executor in RNA therapeutics development. He has over fifteen years combined experience in Medicinal chemistry, drug delivery and RNA therapeutics. He got his PhD. in Organic Chemistry from Ohio University and continued postdoc training at The Ohio State University and University of Maryland College Park. He currently holds a Director of Chemistry position at Sirnaomics Inc.. He leads the oligonucleotide drug delivery team and supervised oligonucleotide synthesis lab to develop novel RNA targeting delivery platform for novel siRNA therapeutics. He is the inventor of Peptide Docking Vehicle (PDoV-GalNAcTM) RNA targeting delivery system and siRNA-gemcitabine conjugation for cancer treatment. Lead the precilinical development for pipelines STP135G and STP155G for PCSK9 and HBV targets treatment using PDoV-GalNAc based targeting delivery system. He has published a few dozens of publications and is a key-inventor for over ten patents.   

Jennifer MacFarland is a Global Market Development Manager with Thermo Fisher Scientific, where she works with a team of scientists, product managers, and commercials leaders to understand the needs of customers and how Thermo Scientific  instruments, equipment, and consumables can assist in his/her workflow.  Before starting her career, Jennifer received degrees in Forensic and Anthropology.  She has spent 20+ years working in various roles from bench scientist, project manager, and marketing manger in the life science industry.

Chris MaNaughton is a software architect at DeepCure with over 15 years of experience working in various industries, including education, e-commerce, pharma, precision health, and wellness. Chris works across the software stack to build large-scale, highly-available applications and platform services. (DeepCure is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Visit the website at https://deepcure.ai/)

"Sven studied Bioprocess Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany and graduated in 2012. During his diploma studies he investigated the interaction of cytomegalovirus protein pp65 against certain antibodies.

In 2012 he joined Sierra Sensors GmbH to start his role as application specialist. After 6 years he became senior application specialist as Bruker acquired Sierra Sensors GmbH. Currently he is involved in the customer support and product development."

Postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute (California), Division of Infectious Diseases. Research topic: Chagas HTS. Previously Professor collaborator at the Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo. Research topic: signaling pathways involved in the interaction between Trypanosoma cruzi and mammalian cells, with special emphasis on the role of second messengers in the adhesion process of trypomastigotes and an extracellular matrix of host cells. Collaborator of the Colombia Science Clubs initiative (2018), program to promote science in children. PhD in Sciences from the University of São Paulo (2017), (Department of Parasitology associated with the Institute of Biomedical Sciences -USP), research topic: biochemical degradation pathways of branched amino acids in Trypanosoma cruzi. Scientific internship at the University of Buenos Aires (2015). Biologist - Universidad del Tolima (2012). Experience in molecular biology, trypanosomatid biochemistry, cell culture, metabolite transport, parasitology, bioinformatics, protein cloning and purification, enzymology and microscopy.

"After 10+ years of cancer research at Fred Hutch in Seattle Dr. Mann joined ucpoming Nortis, Inc. in 2012. There he led Nortis' science team, their model and business development and Applied Sciences of innovative, perfused 3D tissue models. Among others, these models represented vascular and kidney biology and (immuno-)oncology and their use in toxicology, preclinical drug testing and development. Nortis technology is characterized by mostly autonomously running tissue culture vessels optimized for image acquisition and analysis and ideally suited for being merged with scientific imaging technology.

After moving to Nikon Instruments Dr. Mann took over Business Development & Partnerships with the goal to develop Nikons CRO business for North America. Nikon has a large laboratory available equipped for conducting contract research with a focus but not limitation on scientific image acquisition and analysis. Offered are services from general image acquisition and analysis to complex tissue culture and data acquisition."

"Tamsin E. Mansley, PhD, MRSC, CChem, CSci, is an experienced drug discovery scientist, having worked as a medicinal chemist at Eli Lilly and UCB Research. It was here that she developed her passion for applying computational chemistry and predictive modelling approaches for compound selection and design. Her particular interests lie in coupling machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques with generative chemistry approaches to explore chemistry space and guide compound design.

Since 2005, Tamsin has worked with scientific software providers supporting project teams and their use of computational and cheminformatics applications in drug discovery, enabling them to make informed decisions that will improve the efficiency and productivity of the drug discovery process. Tamsin joined Optibrium in 2015 to develop new opportunities for Optibrium’s fully integrated, elegant software for small molecule design, optimization, and data analysis across North America. In October 2022, Tamsin accepted the role of President at Optibrium's new US subsidiary, Optibrium, Inc. She also leads the global Application Science team, supporting the company’s existing client base.

Tamsin holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of East Anglia in the UK and pursued Postdoctoral studies in the labs of Prof. Philip Magnus at the University of Texas, Austin."

Naim Matasci leads the Ellison Institute’s computational lab as the Director of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. In his role, he supports the Institute's researchers by providing analytical guidance and expertise across the entirety of the project life cycle. Dr. Matasci earned his MSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Later, Dr. Matasci joined the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to study the evolution of human protein expression for his PhD. He then joined the iPlant Collaborative team at the University of Arizona, now CyVerse, where he helped design and develop a data-centric computational infrastructure for the Life Sciences. His current research areas are digital pathology and genomics, in particular for cancer diagnosis.

Dr. J. Eric McDuffie is Director of Investigative Toxicology group at Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. located in San Diego, CA, USA. He joined Neurocrine in 2021, after a 14-year tenure at Janssen, where he last served as Global Head of Safety Biomarkers/Clinical Pathology. Dr. McDuffie previously served as the Head of Mechanistic & Investigative Toxicology team at Janssen’s La Jolla site. Earlier, he had a 7-year tenure at Pfizer’s Ann Arbor and Plymouth, MI, USA as well as Mississauga, Ontario, Canada site, where he was responsible for providing Lab Core (necropsy &histology) support as well as investigative pathology and immunotoxicology support for Antibacterial, Cardiovascular/Atherosclerosis, Neuroscience, Dermatology, Inflammation, and Oncology projects. At Neurocrine, Dr. McDuffie’s team provides support to early discovery teams to delivery rapid selection and progression of safe neurotherapeutic candidates for clinical trials. He serves as a regulatory toxicology lead for multiple discovery and late stage drug candidates, for example, the treatment of depression, schizophrenia, motor neuron disease and epilepsy. Dr. McDuffie has 21 years of experience in preclinical toxicology, including applications of mechanism-based toxicity moddels to investigate potentially translatable organ-specific liabilities for late stage drug candidates.

Cole McKnight is the product manager for the µPulse product line. He has been working to create lab automation technology with Formulatrix since 2020 with past experience in 3D bioprinting technology. His training is in mechanical engineering with further graduate studies in product design at the University of Pennsylvania. At FORMULATRIX, he manages engineering R&D and instrument/consumables production while facilitating sales, marketing, and customer support.

Studied analytical chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with Professor Neil Kelleher concentrating on the articulation of non-ribosomal and polyketide synthesis by top-down mass spectrometry. Joined Abbott Laboratories advanced protein characterization group in Fall of 2005. Has worked on advanced characterization of protein and antibody structure by labeling, H/D exchange and limited proteolysis. Was a foundational member of Abbott's phenotypic screening group and worked in target and mechanism identification. Joined AbbVie at its foundation and continued to work in proteomic, genomic and reference database methodologies for target identification. Joined the genomics research center at AbbVie working to identify protein components in areas of SNP-induced open chromatin. Recently working in chemical biology for targeted protein degradation.

"Claire has a MChem and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield. Whilst studying as an undergraduate she developed an interest in enzymology which lead to a PhD studying the kinetic mechanism of Protein Phosphatase1 (PP1) catalysis and subsequent post-doctoral research positions studying alternative mechanisms of kinase inhibition at AstraZeneca and the role of PP1 in Ischemic cell death at Weill-Cornell Medical School.

Claire is a Senior Principal Scientist at Artios Pharma where she leads the Biochemistry  department. Prior to joining Artios, Claire spent six years at AstraZeneca in the Mechanistic Biology and Profiling group where she specialised in the kinetic characterisation of compounds. Along with the detailed kinetic characterisation of inhibitors, Claire has an interest in developing higher throughput kinetic methodologies to enable the identification of mechanistically differentiated hit series immediately post HTS and how differentiated compound mechanisms may translate into differences in efficacy in both cellular and in vivo systems."

My name is Michael Mellody and I am a PhD student in the department of Bioengineering at UCLA. I am co-advised by Prof. Robert Damoiseaux and Prof. Dino Di Carlo. I have several years of research experience in developing new technologies to facilitate high-throughput drug discovery and screening. My research interests include automation technologies, robotic systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and microfluidics.

Lane Milde is a Senior Scientist supporting laboratory automation and liquid handling workflows and instrumentation for Compound Management & Distribution at Pfizer within Worldwide Research & Development under Discovery Sciences in Groton, CT. He has been at Pfizer for 10 years and has over 18 years of experience in highly automated laboratories within academic, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical settings. Lane started his career at the University of Wisconsin working as a scientist in molecular biology and high-throughput screening. He spent several years at a small biotechnology company developing automated in-vitro diagnostic devices before joining Pfizer in 2012. In his current role, he is responsible for managing automated microplate and liquid handling instrumentation in support of sample management for early drug discovery. This includes the management of an instrumentation quality control program, maintenance and troubleshooting, LIMS integration, and equipment succession planning as well as developing and maintaining automated workflows and solutions supporting a wide range of sample management processes.

Chad A. Mirkin, PhD is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Engineering, and Medicine at Northwestern University.  He is a chemist and nanoscience expert, known for his invention of spherical nucleic acids, Dip-Pen Nanolithography and related cantilever-free nanopatterning, materials discovery methodologies, and his contributions to additive manufacturing. He has authored >840 papers and >1,200 patents worldwide (>400 issued) and founded nine companies. Mirkin has been recognized with >230 awards. He served for eight years on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, and is one of very few scientists to be elected to all three US National Academies. Mirkin has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over 30 scholarly journals, is the founding editor of the journal Small, was an Associate Editor of J. Am. Chem. Soc., and is a Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Editorial Board Member.

Derrick Miyao is the Vice President of Molecular Foundry at DeepCure. Derrick Miyao is a trailblazer in robotic synthesis and automated assays. Derrick joined DeepCure from Neurocrine, where he spent 20 years creating systems for automated drug discovery, including building two systems that can synthesize 10,000 compounds a day and successfully integrate synthesis with affinity binding for closed discovery loop. At DeepCure, Derrick leads the Molecular Foundry, a fully automated synthesis and screening lab in Rehovot, Israel, that will unlock AI and chemistry to get better drugs to patients faster. 

Austin Mogen leads a team of Field Application Scientists that covers West USA and Latin America. Before joining Corning, Austin gained industry experience as a senior scientist of upstream process development and manufacturing supervisor for viral vector production. In these positions he focused on cell line and bioprocess development, closed system solutions for cell culture scale-up, and manufacturing of gene therapies. Austin and the Corning Life Sciences FAS team work extensively with research, development, and manufacturing groups to develop 3D assays and disease models, as well as cellular scale-up conditions for viral production, cellular therapeutics, and biologics.

Dean started his career as a Telecomms design engineer for Nokia, and has since worked in product management roles at Braemac Ltd and Promethean, as well as product marketing roles at NXP Semiconductors and Cooper Bussmann (part of Eaton). He joined Azenta Life Sciences in 2017 as a Senior Product Manager with responsibility for automated sample storage

I joined AstraZeneca in 2018 following the completion of my PhD at the University of Sheffield, where I investigated how endocytosis regulates the JAK/STAT signalling pathway. Since joining AZ I have worked as a Senior Scientist in the global HTS centre, optimising and prosecuting screens across multiple targets and therapeutic areas, using an array of assay technologies. I am particularly interested in developing new methodologies for use against novel targets, including RNA, and for identifying undesirable hits from HTS outputs to aid prioritisation of quality chemical equity.

Shannon Mumenthaler, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She is also Chief Translational Research Officer for the Lawrence J Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC, which is a translational institute that bridges research and innovation by bringing together researchers, patients, and physicians dedicated to improving health of the human condition. Dr. Mumenthaler’s research program is centered around the development and utilization of physiologically relevant, organ-dependent tumor models that allow for the characterization of colorectal cancer cellular dynamics, and serve as a platform for testing specific therapeutic modalities to prevent or delay tumor progression. Specifically, she is integrating biologically-inspired 3D model systems (i.e., organoids and organs-on-chips) with dynamic imaging and computational approaches to provide new insights into the significance of the physical and cellular microenvironment on tumor progression.

Leveraging my experience, qualifications, and passion for bioengineering & mechanical design I can accelerate innovative ideas to products for real world applications. I have a talent for linking early stage technologies to address specific market needs and have experience in growing tech platforms from initial concept to commercialization, with unique expertise in micro/nanotechnologies. In 2015, I founded Ferrologix based on my doctoral work at UCLA and currently serve as Chief Operating Officer where I oversee technical development and management of technical staff. Our company mission and vision is to use cutting edge magnetic nanotechnology to accelerate & scale emerging diagnostics & therapeutics.

Merve Mutlu is a postdoc with two years of experience working at Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research. Throughout her academic career, Merve specialized in CRISPR technology and genome-wide phenotypic screening to identify mechanism of action of therapeutic agents. In her PhD, she accomplished unveiling new key regulatory elements of radiotherapy response in breast cancers. In Novartis, she expanded her interest unveiling working principles of agents to the field of targeted protein degradation (TPD). Besides her postdoctoral research, as an early career professional in ELRIG networking group, she organized the first SLAS-ELRIG networking meeting in Basel in June 2022 where she initiated a hub of scientific collaboration in the field of TPD between pharma, academia, and biotech companies. Merve is a passionate researcher with positive attitude and tireless energy to seek the mysteries of cellular mechanisms. She balances her work enthusiasm with outside work activities such as bouldering and dancing.

I have completed my Ph.D in Analytical Chemistry at Iowa State University. Following graduation, I conducted my postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota where I developed bioanalytical techniques to understand autophagy biology in mammalian systems. I have started my industrial career at PPD (CRO) and acted as subject matter expert on oligonucleotide analysis for multiple stability programs. After moving to Abbvie, I have worked on developing various LC-MS/MS targeted metabolomics and proteomics workflows to understand disease biology for various early discovery programs.

Kristen Nailor is a Principal Scientific Manager and leader of the Biologics Sample Management Group at Genentech, Inc.  Kristen holds a degree in Biochemistry from Indiana University. She began her career at GlaxoSmithKline where she spent 7 years as a medicinal chemist. She then transitioned into the Sample Management world in 2010 when she accepted a position as the head of Compound Management at Vanderbilt University.  At Vanderbilt, she built a robust compound management facility and workflows that supported a wide variety of academic drug discovery programs and industry collaborations. After almost 5 years at Vanderbilt, she became the leader of the La Jolla based Compound Logistics team at Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson in 2014.  In addition to leading her team, she was also a key member of a global core team tasked with implementing a Mosaic Sample Management Software rollout and laboratory infrastructure upgrade across multiple sites. Since 2017, she has been the group leader of the Biologics Sample Management Group at Genentech in South San Francisco, CA.  As interest in biologics and new modalities have grown across the industry, her current passion is to see biological sample management further expanded and elevated to a higher level of throughput, efficiency and impact as small molecule sample management in the drug discovery process. Kristen is also a dedicated advocate and active volunteer in the broader Sample Management Community, and currently serves as one of the Chairs of the SLAS Sample Management Special Interest Group, as well as the program committee for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 SLAS Americas Sample Management Symposia.  She is also the co-chair for the SLAS 2023 International Conference and Exhibition.

Dr. Andrew Napper studied at the University of Oxford and Penn State University before working in the Boston area for Genzyme, Enanta, ArQule, and Elixir Pharmaceuticals. While at Elixir, he played a leading role in the discovery of selisistat (EX-527), which was licensed to Siena Biotech and progressed to Phase II clinical trials as a treatment for Huntington’s disease. In 2005, he joined the University of Pennsylvania to direct one of the labs in the Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network. Dr. Napper joined Nemours in 2009 to establish a lab focused on the discovery of targeted therapies for rare pediatric diseases. After eight years at Nemours, he joined FLX Bio in the San Francisco Bay Area for one year before moving to Evotec as Vice President of Discovery Sciences and Princeton Site Head. From Evotec he joined BMS in March 2021 as Executive Director, Head of Automation and Assay Technologies. Dr. Napper was co-chair of the SLAS 2020 International Conference, and currently he serves as co-chair of the Screen Design and Assay Technology Special Interest Group and a member of the Awards and Grants Committee.

Nicole Nguyen is the Software Product Manager at Artel. She has over a decade of experience with software development teams and is a Certified Software Test Engineer (CSTE). Her commitment to quality user experience and the ability to represent the voice of the customer enable the delivery of  software products that meet the needs of laboratories and scientists across industries.

Dr. Nikolov is a Physician-Scientist with 10+ years of academic and industrial experience in cancer biology and cell imaging. She has a broad background in solid tumor models, tumor microenvironment and immunotherapy.  In her previous experience she led the development of 3D micro-tumor assay from biopsies to predict patients’ response to therapy to improve outcomes. She developed the T cell-based platform for phenotypical screening of a library of new compounds targeting senescence. In her current role at Protein Fluidics, Dr. Nikolov leads the projects on 3D cell-based assay development and automation using microfluidic based PuMA System. Her work involves innovating 3D cell-based applications with the Pu·MA System, high-content imaging and plate-reader based assays.

"As the head of Liquid Handling Product Management and Engineering at Formulatrix, Michael's focus is to ensure that our products continue to move the needle on innovation, efficiency, and transforming the status quo of scientists' and researchers' experience with lab automation.  Our Mantis and Tempest dispensing platforms continue to evolve with new features to address the needs of researchers seeking to miniaturize and simplify workflows.  Our new F.A.S.T. and FLO i8 systems bring to bear some of the easiest-to-use software interfaces that are enabled by the thoughtful and modern use of sensors and imaging systems designed into the instruments.  Our Rover Lab Automation system is helping to close the last mile problem of current state-of-the-art lab automation installations to fully connect islands of automation into truly seamless workflows.

Formulatrix is committed to continually engineering and innovating our existing and new products and projects.  We are constantly deriving new ideas and insights from our customers and their challenges.  Please feel free to stop by our booth to say ""Hi!"" and to discuss your ideal vision for the future of laboratory and pharmaceutical research."

David Nippa is a Doctoral Researcher working on digitalization and automation in Medicinal Chemistry at Roche Innovation Center Basel (RICB) and LMU Munich. His research focuses on combining high-throughput experimentation (HTE), data science and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery. David completed his undergraduate studies at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) San Diego. In parallel to his studies, he conducted internships at Wacker Chemie and Roche.

Qiankun Niu, Ph.D., is an instructor in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at Emory University School of Medicine. She is interested in understanding how cancer genetic alterations contribute to tumor initiation and progression, and identifying potential therapeutic targets for precision medicine. Her work focuses on interrogating oncogenic mutation-mediated differential protein-protein interactions to inform the molecular basis and functional significance of driver mutations in cancer for therapeutic innovation.

John Nolan is a Professor at the Scintillon Institute, where his group develops new tools for cell and molecular analysis. He received BS degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Illinois and a PhD in Biochemistry from Penn State. He did post-doctoral training at Los Alamos National Lab, where he was later a Technical Staff Member and Director of the National Flow Cytometry Resource. He is also founder and CEO of Cellarcus Biosciences, which offers products and services for extracellular vesicle research. He is on the editorial boards of Cytometry and Current Protocols in Cytometry, past-President of the International Scoiety for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC), and a Fellow of the American Insitute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

"Studies: 

University of Zurich: Human biology 

Work:
University of Applied science Zurich: 3D cell culture and tissue engineering group 
Department of Oncology, University Children’s Hospital Zurich: Leukemia research group, Drug response profiling team 
since 2021 with Tecan, focusing on the development and support of applications on Tecans liquid handling platforms in cellomics and proteomics area

Expertise:
3D cell culture, tissue engineering, bioprinting, microfluidics, drug screening, personalized medicine"

"Kendra Nyberg is the Group Lead of Lab Automation at Calico Life Sciences. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Oregon in Physics and her Ph.D at UCLA in Bioengineering. 

During her undergraduate studies, she conducted research in membrane biophysics, holographic microscopy, and droplet microfluidics at University of Oregon, Harvard and UC Berkeley. For her dissertation at UCLA, she developed a microfluidic platform for rapid phenotyping of cancer cell mechanical properties. After graduate school, she designed microfluidic components for inkjet printers at HP Inc and built out in-house technology for a synbio startup, Triplebar Bio. 

At Calico, Kendra leads a team that develops custom solutions, ranging from liquid handlers, integrated systems and microfluidic technologies, that enable scientists to deepen our understanding of aging."

Dr. O’Rourke has 30 years of experience in the research, testing and development of tools and therapeutics for the oncology space.  He received his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University and spent 9 years as research faculty at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. After receiving his MBA from the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Business, John joined Intellicyt/Sartorius.  As Head of Product Development for cell analytics at Sartorius, he led the development and commercialization of reagent, software, and hardware solutions for the high throughput flow cytometry community.  He joined BennuBio as Director of Assay Development where he focused on optimizing workflows and developing new applications for 3D-based flow cytometry. Dr. O’Rourke is currently the CEO and President of BennuBio and leading the company’s commercialization of the Velocyt® LP large particle flow cytometer.

Andrea O’Hara is a technical specialist at Azenta Life Sciences and has over 13 years of experience in next generation sequencing. She earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in genetics and molecular biology and did her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health.

Bill Ortiz, Principal Sales Specialist, PerkinElmer Life Sciences   Bill Ortiz has over twenty five years of experience in the biotechnology industry developing, selling and supporting multimode plate reader detection technology.  He has spent the last 20 years covering the Northwestern United States supporting PerkinElmer’s assay, screening and plate reader technologies.  

Dr. Pace has over thirty years of experience in the life science field, with 20 years legal and corporate experience and 12 years in biotech research for large and small companies. He is a registered patent attorney with a record of over 40 issued US patents. Since 2001 he has helped many early and development stage companies in the life sciences with their strategic, intellectual property, and transactional activities. Dr. Pace has held executive management positions in several companies, including Novartis Corporation, Gentris Corporation, Quill Medical, Inc., and BASF Corporation. Dr. Pace has a J.D. degree from the School of Law at North Carolina Central University, and his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University. He has been CEO at Cell Microsystems since 2014.

Dr. Chorom Pak launched Lynx Biosciences, Inc. (LynxBio) to commercialize MicroC3™, a multi-omic microfluidic platform developed while earning her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The technology was born out of an interdisciplinary collaboration between cancer biologists, physicians, biomedical engineers, physicists, and biostatisticians to solve the technical challenge of characterizing suspension cells in a miniaturized manner that would recapitulate individual patients’ disease. LynxBio is partnered with multiple pharmaceutical companies to leverage the MicroC3™ technology for immuno-oncology drug discovery and development. Before creating LynxBio, Chorom was the clinical and R&D lead at Cellectar Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLRB), where she co-developed a drug against hematological malignancies and advanced it to Phase 2 clinical trials. Dr. Pak was awarded the Biocom Catalyst Award, holds seven patents, and has over 13 years of experience with hematological cancers and development of microfluidic platforms.

Chris earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University (2007). He did undergraduate research in the lab of Philip Garner working on synthetic methodology and the synthesis of alkaloid natural products. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Yale University (2013), under the supervision of David A. Spiegel. During his graduate studies he developed a class of bifunctional molecules that recruit endogenous antibodies to specific disease targets, such as HIV, resulting in their immune-mediated clearance. He carried out postdoctoral studies under the supervision of Ben Cravatt as a fellow of the American Cancer Society at The Scripps Research Institute, where he developed chemical proteomic platforms aimed towards expanding the ligandable proteome. Chris, currently an Associate Professor, started his independent lab at Scripps in August 2018 in the Department of Chemistry where his group develops chemistry-centric strategies to investigate human biology in therapeutic contexts.

Samir Patel is an Application Scientist as part of the Advanced Technology R&D Team at Nexcelom from PerkinElmer, Lawrence, MA. His primary focus is to develop collaborations with a variety of scientific communities, including immunology, microbiology, oncology, and cell/gene therapy. He assists these communities with assay development, experimental design, initial feasibility testing, including on- and off-site support for the Cellometer, Cellaca, and Celigo image cytometry instruments. Additionally, he works with collaborators to author papers for submission to journals. He received his B.S. in Biology from Providence College (2006-2010) and his Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology from University of Massachusetts Medical School (2012-2018).

Dr. Pegoraro heads the High-Throughout Imaging Facility (HiTIF), which provides NIH intramural investigators with the expertise and the technology needed to set-up, optimize and implement high-content imaging (HCI) assays. HCI assays are used to analyze large numbers of experimental conditions, such as in functional genomics or chemical compounds screens. In addition, the HiTIF applies HCI in combination with single-cell image and data analysis to quantify exceedingly rare but biologically important events in heterogeneous populations of cells.

Taci Pereira is the Chief Executive Officer of Systemic Bio, a 3D systems company developing a platform for drug discovery and development using human-relevant data from bioprinted tissues. She previously served as the Vice President and General Manager of Bioprinting at 3D Systems and the Chief Scientific Officer at Allevi, acquired by 3D Systems in 2021. Taci holds a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering from Harvard University and has conducted research on biomaterials for cancer immunotherapy at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering under the advisory of David Mooney, Ph.D. Taci was recognized as a Forbes Brazil Under 30 honoree in 2022, a Houston Business Journal 40 under 40 in 2023, and an MIT Innovator Under 35 (Brazil) in 2024.

Nisha works within Discovery Sciences at AstraZeneca , where she is responsible for building cell-based assays to support early drug discovery projects, primarily against Oncology targets. She received her PhD Biochemistry degree from the University of Sussex , UK and has done a post-doc at the Wellcome Trust funded – Sussex Drug Discovery Centre.

Dr. Carl Peters is a microplate reader senior application scientist with BMG LABTECH. He obtained a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Northwestern University while studying Protein Kinase C signaling. He also has a B.S. in Biology from Hastings College. Prior to BMG LABTECH, he was an adjunct or assistant professor of Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at several different universities.

Timothy Petrie (PhD, MBA) is the Head of Pharmaceutical R&D Tools at Draper (Cambridge, MA), a non-profit engineering innovation company where he guides business development for organ-on-chip, medical devices, and diagnostic technologies.  Prior to this business role, he was Principal Investigator for numerous commercial- and government-sponsored programs within the organ-on-chip, tissue engineerin, and diagnostics space at Draper. Tim received his PhD in Bioengineering from Georgia Tech, MBA from Indiana U, and completed postdoctoral work at the NIH and University of Washington. He has over 35 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds 6 issued patents.

Janette has over 25 years of research and business experience in life science instrumentation and reagent companies. Experienced executive in both small start-ups as well as Fortune 500 companies. Extensive knowledge of the bio-analytic sector, functional expertise in the inbound and outbound aspects of marketing, sales, business development, and launching new technologies into the market. Involved in raising over $100M in corporate and venture funding at five companies. Inventor or co-inventor of 8 issued patents.

Piotr L. Pierog, Ph.D. earned a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in Biomedical Sciences. In his decade long professional career, Piotr held roles of increasing responsibilities at global pharmaceutical companies including: Takeda, Novartis, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson; ranging from target discovery to late-stage development. In his previous role at Novartis Piotr was responsible for aspects of product development and precision medicine where he contributed to the global regulatory approval of cell therapy product for pediatric patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia. More recently, Piotr built and led a Translational Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology teams in cell therapies responsible Phase 1 and pivotal clinical trials at Takeda. Piotr is currently contributing to a built of a T cell receptor (TCR) startup biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA.

My name is Ashwin Pillai; I currently work at Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, MA as an Automation Scientist in the High Throughput Screening Group. I graduated from University of Illinois with a B.S. in Ag & Bioengineering with a minor in Integrative Biology. I have also completed a Bioinformatics Certificate from Harvard Extension School. My role involves bridging the gap between Automation, Biology, and Data with a guiding principle of making the lives of scientists easier by enabling the utilization of automation technologies and data tools. I work directly with scientists to onboard new assays onto robotic platforms, to improve data pipelines for new instruments and metadata capture, and enabling new technologies to scientists to execute on their lab work more efficiently. Previously, I have contributed to R&D in Pharma at Bristol Myers Squibb in Lead Discovery (uHTS), supporting Lead Profiling (ADME-Tox) across multiple robotic platforms (HighRes Bio Cellario, Thermo Momentum). In addition, to supporting Pfizer’s Antibody Discovery Group.

"1991 PhD Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Yale University

1991-1995 Postdoctoral Fellow MBB Yale University
1995-1997 Assistant Research Faculty MBB Yale University
Sales roles at ISCO, BMS, Clontech, Cellomics
VP of Sales at Definiens
VP of Sales at GNS
COO at Proveris Scientific
Currently head of Sales and Marketing at Paradigm4"

Dr. Powell has a diverse research background, with expertise in cell and molecular biology, computer science, and lab automation. He graduated from Texas Tech University with a B.S. in Biochemistry and a minor in Biology in 2012. He then went on to obtain his PhD in Medical Science from Texas A&M University, which he completed in 2018. He has continued his academic career as a post-Doctoral research fellow and now as an Assistant Research Professor in the Gulf Coast Consortia’s Combinatorial Drug Discovery Program and High Throughput Flow Cytometry Programs at Texas A&M Institute of Bioscience and Technology. He has developed a wide array of image-based, flow-based, and biochemical high throughput screening platforms, which have been applied to the development and repurposing drugs across multiple disease contexts including cancer, pathogenic infections, and neurologic disorders. Dr. Powell's research interest also include the development and implementation of methods used to contextualize high dimensional data via integrative machine learning approaches that combine genomics, transcriptomics, chemical, image-derived and drug susceptibility data sources. To support these efforts Dr. Powell has built and maintains a distributed computing cluster that is housed between multiple CPRIT funded core facilities.

James Prescott is a Field Applications Scientist for the BioLector XT microbioreactor based in Denver, CO. He conducts trainings and provides support to help BioLector users optimize their microbial screening workflows. Prior to joining Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, James was a development scientist for Aalto Scientific Ltd, a biotech company that manufactures controls and calibrators for in vitro diagnostics. He was responsible for the research and development of manufacturing recombinant proteins as well as designing native protein purification schemes. For his education, James received both his BS and MS in biology from Georgia College & State University where he concentrated his studies in microbiology. He published some of his research on detecting foodborne bacterial pathogens in oysters in coastal Georgia.

"Raymond Price, PhD, MBA, is the Chief Business Officer at Neuroservices Alliance. His role is as a pharma/biotech business development executive responsible for increasing sales and managing collaborative R&D agreements for Neuroservices Alliance as part of the commercial team. 

He has an MBA from INSEAD (2009), and has work experience in Japan, the US, and France. He also has a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University and extensive R&D experience. Finally, he's the founder and owner of a (profitable!) small business that performs solutions services (medical writing and editing) for non-native English speakers, with global clients in more than 10 countries."

"Laralynne Przybyla received her PhD from MIT where she studied the role of autocrine signaling in mammalian development using custom-engineered microfluidic platforms. Her subsequent postdoctoral work at UCSF expanded on this to investigate how mechanical signaling dictates developmental cell fate transitions. Since then, her research across academia and industry has involved generating model systems based on pluripotent stem cells, setting up custom functional genomics screening platforms for human developmental and disease biology, and developing next-generation high-throughput assays for small molecule and genetic screening applications. 

Dr. Przybyla is currently UC Scientific Director at the Laboratory for Genomics Research and an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Biochemistry and Biophysics Department at UCSF, where her research is focused on applying CRISPR-based functional genomics screening techniques to sophisticated human cell-based disease-relevant models and assays to uncover new biology and identify novel therapeutic targets."

"Emmanuel P. Quevy, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of Probius.

Emmanuel applies his expertise in advanced sensor products and technologies and his experience in entrepreneurship and technology transition to a commercial scale. Before founding Probius, he was responsible for engineering and technology at SDI, overseeing product and technology roadmaps of inertial guidance systems and managing strategic customer programs with Boeing, the US Navy, and other key accounts. Prior to that, he was co-founder, president, and CTO of Silicon Clocks, which was acquired in 2010 by Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB) and where he served as director of MEMS engineering for timing products.

Dr. Quevy’s 20 years of experience in the design and integration of complex sensor technologies include co-authoring more than 40 publications, co-inventing more than 40 issued US patents, and serving as a reviewer and committee member of various journals and conferences. 

His engineering degree from ISEN Lille, France, and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Science and Technology of Lille (USTL), France, preceded his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UST, with post-doctoral work at Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center where he led the DARPA-funded IMT program."

Luca Raess is a scientist working on the development of mass spectrometry-based proteomics sample preparation workflows. His specific focus lies in the design, implementation, testing and optimization of automated end-to-end protocols with the ultimate goal is to achieve better laboratory efficiency and reproducibility. He received his education in biotechnology from ETH Zurich before joining Biognosys' R&D team.

In my current position of Senior Manager, Flow Cytometry I am building out the FACS and cell sorting capabilities of the Allen Institute for Immunology in support of a multi-center longitudinal human immune system multi-omics study. Previously I served as the FACS and immunology specialist on multiple project teams expediting small molecules and biologics with Gilead Sciences and MedImmune/AstraZeneca and led teams at Wellstat Diagnostics and the NCI.

After completing a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Chicago, Huw used his expertise in RNA crystallography and the mosquito to join SPT Labtech's application team. With SPT, Huw has become experienced in supporting a wide variety of liquid handling workflows in genomics and drug discovery using the mosquito, dragonfly, and now firefly.

Steve is Vice-President of Discovery Biology at AstraZeneca with responsibility for reagent generation and assay development, functional genomics, and cell and gene therapy. Previously Steve led the Screening Sciences department with accountability for Compound Management, Hit Discovery and Lead Optimisation biology. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Steve worked at GlaxoSmithKline for 24 years in various roles. He has served in many roles within the Society of Laboratory Automation and Screening most recently as Chair of the European Council. He has also served as Chair of the European Laboratory Research and Innovation Group, and is currently Industry Trustee of the British Pharmacological Society. Steve sits on multiple Scientific Advisory Boards including EU-OPENSCREEN, WCAIR at the University of Dundee and the Centre for Membrane Protein Receptor Research (COMPARE). Steve has authored over 70 research papers and was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to science and the COVID19 response.

"Gareth Reid is a Senior Automation Scientist at CSL Limited. He studied in the fields of Software Engineering, computational biology and bioinformatics, as well as completed advanced robotics courses, in particular using liquid handling platforms. He has worked in the areas of clinical genomics, core pathology, research, and pharmaceutical development. 

He specialises in implementing laboratory automation solutions using liquid handlers and track arms to support sample preparation. His current work involves implementing automation solutions using ThermoFisher robotics and Momentum software as the core platform. His key focus is leveraging, off these automation platforms, to implement important peripherals such as automated QC pipelines, data and metrics analytics and dynamic liquid handling protocols, as well as creating tools to allow scientists to actively contribute science during the workflow development.
Gareth has presented at several conferences on these topics, including the New York Genomics Centre in 2015, where he presented a self-developed, fully automated Illumina NGS workflow, to an industry audience still coming to terms with the concept of automating complex, long running assays. 
He is highly experienced in the areas of liquid handling robotics, software & process engineering, bioinformatics and scientific instrument integration."

I’m currently an Investigator in the High-Throughput Automation team at GSK with a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry.  The goal of my work is to develop efficient analytical protocols for the rapid screening of GSK therapeutic candidates to determine their physicochemical properties.  Our group utilizes an array of solid and liquid dispensing automated platforms to deliver solubility, forced-degradation, and crystallization screens to aid in small molecule drug development.  My role is to serve as a point of contact for internal and external GSK stakeholders by designing, executing, and communicating the results of our analytical workflows.  Prior to joining GSK, I received my Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh focusing on bioanalytical separations.  My dissertation concentrated on developing capillary-scale UHPLC methods for biochemical applications including sub-minute online microdialysis separations of neurotransmitters and utilizing microfluidic devices to study ectopeptidase activity using electroosmotic perfusion and LC-MS.

Daniel has more than 20 years of experience in the biopharma industry, working across multiple functional disciplines, including phenotypic assay development, high-throughput screening, and software engineering. Before Strateos, he was a Research Investigator at Novartis (GNF) and led multiple drug discovery campaigns. His research focused on developing novel phenotypic assays across various indications. Daniel received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis and a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Sara R. Rivera, PhD is a Lab Manager and Lecturer at the University of Michigan. Focused on researching harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes, Dr. Rivera works with many collaborators from the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), NOAA- Great Lake Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her primary work is in Dr. Greg Dick's Geomicrobiology laboratory.

Heaven’s Ph.D. work at Oregon State University focused on mycotoxin biotransformation and immunotoxicity, which ultimately led to a career in the nutritional specialty products industry. In 2020, Heaven’s experience with cytometric analysis of a wide range of sample types led to her current role developing flow cytometry instrumentation at Thermo Fisher Scientific. She now develops detection and analysis solutions for customers wishing to expand their understanding of cellular systems using flow cytometry and imaging.

Yusuf is a PhD student at Stanford University advised by Jure Leskovec and Stephen Quake. He is affiliated with the Stanford AI Lab and the Department of Biomedical Data Science. He works on designing new machine learning approaches for modeling biological systems. In particular, he is interested in how artificial intelligence can inform better experiment design for discovering new medicines. Previously, he worked as a machine learning engineer at GSK where he led a cross-disciplinary team to biologically profile their compound collection.

Paul joined Horizon in 2012 to work on client lead target validation projects utilizing both CRISPR & RNAi based technologies. For the last few years, Paul has developed and performed pooled and arrayed screening platforms to assess the functionality of Horizon's Pin-Point base editing technology platform. Prior to working at Horizon, Paul performed research at the University of Cambridge, where he studied the early BRCA genetics in Breast & Ovarian cancer with Prof Bruce Ponder. Then with Prof Ashok Venkitaraman, he subsequently studied the role of the spindle assembly checkpoint in determining the outcome from a drug induced mitotic arrest.

Ali Safavi, founder, President, and CEO of Grenova, is on a mission to enable laboratories around the world to become sustainable and waste-free. Ali founded Grenova, which is short for Green Innovation, shortly after graduating from college using the firsthand experience he gained working in the lab industry. Today, his award-winning company has created the only technology solution in the industry that enables life sciences and healthcare laboratories to reduce their plastic consumables cost and biohazard waste by over 90%. As a result of his work, Grenova's environmental and economic impact on the life sciences industry has so far resulted in 4,581 metric tons in Carbon Emission (CO2e) reduction, 2,650,848 lbs. of biohazard plastic waste reduction, and $84,135,258 in savings and cost reduction.

"Sarah Sandoz, PhD is the Operational Manager of the Explore Team at Pelago Bioscience, which conducts proteome-wide studies of target engagement with CETSA.

She holds a M.Sc. in Biology with a major in microbiology and immunology from ETH Zurich and a Ph.D. in Molecular Life Sciences from EPFL Lausanne. Her research has involved studying virus and bacterial toxin entry, cell trafficking and endocytosis as well as protein folding.
She has worked with both the targeted and proteome-wide formats of CETSA at Pelago since 2020 as a Senior Scientist. Since 2022 she has been managing the team working on the proteome-wide studies, where CETSA is combined with quantitative LC-MS based proteomics to give unique insights into global compound-induced effects in the living cell."

"Samantha is a Senior Customer Success Manager supporting industry, academic, non-profit and governmental organizations to onboard and fully utilize Quartzy - the world’s #1 lab management solution. Quartzy accelerates science by helping researchers streamline communication, simplify ordering, and track inventory.  Samantha is a dedicated client success advocate and has helped to build the Customer Success program at Quartzy for the last 2 years.  She is an experienced research professional specializing in academic lab management and strategic program development. Samantha has 10+ years experience as a scientist, laboratory manager, community volunteer and mentor. Her passion is to support research groups by applying creative problem-solving skills, knowledge of the field, and attention to detail, while adapting efficiency and organization."

"Jonathan provides advanced robotic, informatics, and operational support across multiple facets of drug discovery within the DTMP group at Janssen.  On any given day he may be found designing or implementing new robotics platforms to accelerate drug discovery, supporting or operating one of our existing automation solutions for 1536w uHTS, Lead Evaluation, Phenotypic screening, Biophysics, or Compound Logistics, or designing or troubleshooting some new custom application or informatics solution to streamline data capture and analysis. Jonathan’s happiest at the intersection of Engineering, Informatics, and Scientific discovery crafting and supporting synergistic solutions to enable drug discovery. 

Prior to joining Janssen in 2014, Jonathan brings 15 years of industry experience with Merck, Schering-Plough, and Bristol-Myers Squibb where he spearheaded the design, implementation, and operation of numerous laboratory automation initiatives in support of high throughput screening, high content imaging, lead evaluation and profiling, cell line development, compound management, molecular biology/genomics, and clinical diagnostic applications.  In addition to his wealth of automation experience, Jonathan also has significance experience and expertise designing, implementing, and supporting screening informatics and compound logistics IT solutions blending commercial solutions with custom application design to accelerate and automate drug discovery sample tracking and data analysis. 

Jonathan earned a Masters of Engineering degree, in Biotechnology, from the University of Pennsylvania, and two Bachelor of Science degrees, in Vertebrate Physiology and Nutritional Biochemistry, from Penn State University."

Chemist converted to engineer.  I have been handling laboratory automation for 20+ years, spanning early discovery to clinical development for both small and large molecule workflows.  Experienced in system integration of commercial systems but really enjoy de-novo design of automated systems.  19 years in big pharma, 2 years at a start-up.

"Prof. Dr. Kathrin Schumann is heading the laboratory ""Engineering Immune Cells for Therapy” at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). She studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen and obtained her Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried. After a research stay at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, she continued her research at the University of California, San Francisco. While working in the laboratories of Alex Marson and Jeffrey Bluestone, she developed CRISPR technologies for the engineering of primary human T cells. In 2018, she was appointed Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Assistant Professor at TUM School of Medicine.

Prof. Kathrin Schumann’s research is focused on human immune cell engineering. She uses innovative CRISPR technology to ablate or modify genetic regions in human T cells in order to characterize their role in cellular function and stability. In the long term, this knowledge may help to develop new therapies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer."

Vishwesh has over seven years of experience in life sciences research. His previous work involved studying cancer cell metastasis, and discovering novel pathways to inhibit cancer cell motility and proliferation. His current work involves building accessible droplet technologies that are compatible with minimal instrumentation for scalable and accessible assays. These are now being combined with low cost readers to enable technologies that are deployable in low-resource settings to improve health in underserved communities.

Kathi Shea is the Vice President of Repository and Innovation at Azenta Life Sciences.  She has been a member of ISBER since its inception in 1999 and served on the ISBER Board for 8 years in various roles, including Director, Secretary Treasurer and President.  She remains active in the Society today through participation in Society meetings, committees and working groups. In 2020 she was awarding the ISBER awarded the Distinguished Leadership award in 2020. Kathi also served on the Advisory Working Group that developed the College of American Pathologists Biorepository Accreditation Program and was an active member of the CAP BAP Committee for 6 years.  She has over 30 years of experience leading biorepository programs and advising government, academia, pharmaceutical and other life science companies on the design of biorepositories, quality systems, and optimal methods for collection, preservation and annotation of biospecimen collections.

A commercially minded biotechnology scientist with over 15 years industry experience in the development/commercialization of immunoassay screening technologies for academics, pharma/biotech's and diagnostics. Lead the team in South Australia and its ongoing investment in the AlphaLISA SureFire Ultra platform for measurement of high value drug targets (kinases) for pharma/biotech drug discovery programs.

Dr. Shen is currently a professor and the chief scientific officer of the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation and the founder and chief executive officer of Xilis Inc, which raised an $89M Series A to advance precision medicine. He was formerly the Hawkins Family Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the director of the Woo Center for Big Data and Precision Health at Duke University. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from Stanford University and the NSF career award at Cornell University. He was the steering committee chair of the NCI Patient-Derived Model of Cancer Consortium, co-chair of the NCI Tissue Engineering Consortium, and cancer track chair of Biomedical Engineering Society 2019. His lab studies precision medicine from a systems biology perspective. Areas of interests include cancer, stem cells, the gut-brain axis, and microbiome.

Graduate of University of Arizona (BSE) with 13 years of lab automation and instrumentation experience in automated extraction, personalized medicine and clinical molecular diagnostics.  Formerly an instrumentation core manager and on-site repair and technical services provider, in his role at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences Ian focuses on applying his integrated sytems hardware & software skills to nascent and novel applications and vendor collaborations.

Prof Simpson Heads the Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics, a technology platform at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She plays a critical role in driving new research enterprises by actively guiding discovery-based screening projects from concept and funding applications, through the assay development phase, screen execution and data analysis. Her laboratory supports compound, CRISPR and RNAi screens in both 2D and 3D settings with a strong emphasis on quantitative cell phenotyping using high content imaging. Her lab has developed automated 3D screening pipelines using cell lines, PDX and patient derived materials, successfully screening compound libraries and performing 2- and 3-way drug synergy studies. The VCFG team have developed machine learning strategies to analyse patient derived organoids across many individuals and can quantify organoids at whole-well or as single structures, allowing us to dissect tumour heterogeneity and drug response.

Ilyas Singeç is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics, a global developer and manufacturer of human cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Prior to this role, he served as the inaugural director of the Stem Cell Translation Laboratory (SCTL) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The SCTL was funded by the NIH Common Fund (Office of the NIH Director) with the mission to help advance the iPSC technology into clinical applications and drug discovery by developing innovative foundational technologies that can be broadly utilized. At NIH, he introduced novel methods for iPSC culture, single-cell cloning, and genome editing. He also pioneered industrial-scale robotic cell culture and the development of advanced cell differentiation protocols. Prior to this role, Dr. Singeç held leadership positions at Pfizer and the Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Medical Discovery Institute focusing on cell reprogramming and genetics-based target identification and validation for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Singeç received his MD and doctoral degree (summa cum laude) from the Universities of Bonn and Freiburg (Germany) and completed training in anatomy and clinical neuropathology.

Avtar Singh is a Senior Scientist in the Cell and Tissue Genomics Department at Genentech, where he develops new approaches for image-based screening and high-throughput biological discovery. During his postdoc with Paul Blainey at the Broad Institute, he established optical pooled screens as a method for high-content screening of genome-scale CRISPR libraries. Prior to that, he specialized in super-resolution microscopy and single-molecule imaging during his PhD in Warren Zipfel's lab at Cornell University.

"Nikhita is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Artificial, a first-of-its-kind lab automation platform that lowers the barrier of adopting automation so labs can accelerate their next breakthrough. Prior to Artificial, Nikhita was a researcher at the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab where she designed and studied socially intelligent robotic and AI platforms.

Nikhita also drove product at Palantir for several Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in the US and Europe. She has worked at various startups including Rypple (acquired by Salesforce), Loose Button, and university research labs such as UC Berkeley AutoLab, Robarts Research and CSTAR.

Nikhita received her M.Sc. in Media Arts & Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at University of California-Berkeley.

Outside of her work, Nikhita mentors founders and companies as a Founder Advisor at the MIT Engine and Climate Capital Bio, and can be found designing disaster relief solutions with the Field Innovation Team, obsessively trying to conquer the Sunday NYT crossword, or building fun projects in the machine shop."

Dr. Sirenko is an established cell biologist and imaging specialist who is an expert in developing assays with complex cell-based models for research and drug discovery. She is a senior scientist at Molecular Devices where she works on development of high-content imaging methods to the analysis of novel cell systems. Dr. Sirenko currently leads a group of scientists developing methods and new tools for automation of 3D cell models – including organoids and organ-on chips – for modeling cancer, neurotoxicity, and toxicology. Dr. Sirenko holds a PhD in Biochemistry/Biophysics, has over 15 years of industry experience, and has authored more than 35 scientific papers.

Zack completed his undergraduate studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insititute studying Chemistry and Biochemistry/Biophysics. He is currently a 4th-year graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying under Dr. Matthew Lockett. His focus is on developing 3D cell culture models that are more representative of in vivo conditions.

Sara Siwiecki (she/her) is a PhD candidate at Yale University in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and a graduate of Chapman University with a BS in Biochemistry. Sara's thesis focuses on the evolution of jellyfish from a materials science perspective and uses various biochemical and biophysical techniques. Outside of her thesis research, she is a disability advocate for scientists. At Yale, she is a leader of the Graduate Student Disability Alliance, which is a disability advocacy group for graduate students, and a leader of the Disability Peer Mentorship Program, which is a program that facilitates peer mentorship for disabled students on campus. She has also worked with LabVoice to imagine how digital assistants can improve lab accessibility and participated in the SLAS's New Matter podcast about conversations around accessibility in the lab. She envisions a future where scientists feel welcome and successful in their labs through advancements in new assistive technology for lab equipment and improvements in conversations around disability in STEM. She would be happy to chat with anyone about science accessibility (or why jellyfish are super cool!) 

Nikolai Slavov is an Allen Distinguished Investigator and associate professor at Northeastern University in the Bioengineering Department and Barnett Institute. His lab has pioneered several multiplexed experimental methods for quantifying proteins in single cells and is developing new computational methods for analyzing and understanding single-cell protein data. He organizes the annual single-cell proteomics conference (single-cell.net/) and contributes to organizing other leading conferences, including HUPO, Oxford Global, NeurIPS, and others. The Slavov lab obtained direct evidence for a new regulatory mechanism of protein synthesis (ribosome specialization) and continues to drive research in this emerging field. Research from the Slavov lab has been recognized and supported by many prestigious awards, including the Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, the NIH Director’s Award, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Nikolai Slavov received BS from MIT in 2004, a PhD from Princeton University (Botstein laboratory) in 2010 and conducted postdoctoral research in the van Oudenaarden laboratory at MIT.

Andrew Smith is Senior Automation Engineer at AstraZeneca, based in Maryland. He has a background as a scientist at various pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and eventually made the transition into automation engineering specializing in automated analytics and Tecan liquid handlers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences from Nottingham Trent University.

"Joshua Smith received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 2011 on a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award, joining the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member.  With a background and training in low-dimensional nanoelectronics, Dr. Smith developed a growing interest in biomedical engineering and biotechnology, and in 2013 he helped establish the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology Group at IBM Research and later managed the Molecular Health Solutions Group, overseeing R & D efforts for microfluidic devices aimed at separation and detection of single molecules for advanced biomedical diagnostics and preparative technology solutions.  After serving as the technical assistant to the Vice President of Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM Research from Nov 2020 to Jan 2022, he joined the Accelerated Discovery team focused on holistic acceleration of scientific discovery workflows for healthcare and materials research.   

Dr. Smith has held an Adjunct Assistant Professor position at Columbia University in the Department of Electrical Engineering and is an IBM Master Inventor with more than 80 filed patent applications and over 50 granted patents.  He has co-authors 22 peer-reviewed journal articles, and his research has been highlighted by Forbes, CNN Money, IEEE Spectrum, and Pharma Technology Focus among other media outlets as well as on-stage at TED."

"Education:

Ph.D. Biochemistry, 1996
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Chicago, IL
Awards: 1993-American Diabetes Association student research award.

MS. Biochemistry and Molecular biology, 1990
Moscow State University, Department of Molecular Biology, Moscow, Russia
Awards: 1990 -""Cum Laude"" Diploma of Moscow State University.
1986-1990 - University Academic Award (Moscow State University)

Professional Experience
1)  11/2018- present: Principal Scientist, HCI/QB, Merck Research Laboratories, 
Merck, Boston, MA ,
2) 6/2013- 11/2018: Senior Scientist, Lead in vitro screening, at Therapeutic Discovery Center, Molecular Translational Sciences Division,  USAMRIID 
3) 3/2010- 5/2013: Sr. Scientist, Director, Center for Core Technologies, IPK (Institute Pasteur in Korea),  Seongnam-si, Korea ,
4) 09/2002- 02/ 2010 . Principal Research Scientist II, Group Leader for Cellular Assay Development, Screeening Sciense, Wyeth research , NY & PA, USA
5) 05/1996– 05/2002: Senior Research Associate. Northwestern University, Laboratory of Dr. Daniel I.H. Linzer, Evanston IL 
05/1996– 05/2000 – postdoctoral fellowship"

Alice Soragni, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and of the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute. She has a Bachelor and Master of Science cum Laude from the University of Bologna, Italy and a PhD from the ETH of Zuerich, Switzerland. Her laboratory in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UCLA couples basic research into mechanisms of disease to the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Her expertise lies in the development of tumor organoid models to investigate the biology of rare tumors and perform screenings for functional precision medicine applications.

"Dr. Souza is the Director of Global Business Development and Innovation, 3D Culture at Greiner Bio-One and former Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is one of the creators of magnetic 3D cell culture, including magnetic 3D bioprinting. Results using these groundbreaking technologies have been reported in various high-impact scientific journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Protocols, Biomaterials, and Nature Reviews Cancer. Recently, his work was selected for the Short List of The Lush Prize for outstanding research producing an effective non-animal safety test. Dr. Souza’s research has been funded by grants from National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD), Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), and Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF)."

"Hello, my name is Thomas Spanjers, and I am an accomplished sales manager in the lab automation industry. With over 15 years of experience, I have a proven track record of success in building and leading high-performing sales teams that deliver exceptional results.

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology.Throughout my career, I have worked with a wide range of clients in the pharmaceutical and Biotechnology sector, developing and implementing customized lab automation solutions that help them optimize their operations and achieve their business objectives. My extensive knowledge of lab automation technologies and industry best practices allows me to provide expert guidance and support to my clients throughout the sales process. I have a deep commitment to creating a positive, collaborative work environment that fosters success.

I look forward to meet the people visiting the SLAS and am open to all inquiries."

Dr. Spitzer completed his undergraduate degree in Biology from Georgetown University followed by graduate training in Immunology at Stanford University in the laboratories of Drs. Edgar Engleman and Garry Nolan. There, he developed experimental and analytical methods to model the state of the immune system and immune responses to cancer using high-dimensional single-cell data. Dr. Spitzer moved to UCSF as a Parker Fellow and a Sandler Faculty Fellow in 2016. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and of Microbiology & Immunology as well as an Investigator of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. His research lab uses systems immunology methods including single-cell analysis to understand how the immune system is altered by and mounts responses against cancer.

Guy is co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of AIQ Global. Guy has over 20 years of commercial software experience, including 14 years as Software Architect and Development Manager for Yahara Software and Stericycle Inc. working in regulated environments and medical devices. He joined AIQ in 2016 and led the efforts toward FDA clearance and subsequent high-scale cloud deployment of the company's novel technology for evaluation of treatment response in complex diseases.

I am a neuroscientist by training with 30 years combined experience in academic neuroscience and drug discovery. In my academic career, I focused my research on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease while in industry I supported identification and validation of new targets for Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and Parkinson’s disease.  While in industry, I developed a passion for public private partnerships and engaged in translational research including biomarker identification and validation across multiple CNS diseases. I joined the Critical Path Institute in 2011 and served as the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD), a flagship precompetitive consortium focused on streamlining the regulatory path for accelerating treatment of Neurodegenerative diseases.  I presently lead the Critical Path for Parkinson’s, a trans-continental consortium aimed at bringing together Parkinson’s disease data from around the world to accelerate effective delivery of treatments.

Dr. R. Allysa Stern, M.S., Ph.D., is an accomplished cell biologist with extensive experience using cell-based assays to study mechanisms of disease and toxicity. She received her Ph.D. in Physiology from North Carolina State University with a concentration on cellular physiology and disease modeling. She has years of experience developing novel 2D and 3D in vitro models using a variety of cell types from multiple tissues, including primary hepatocytes and stem cells. As a Product Applications Scientist at Cell Microsystems, she leverages her expertise in advanced imaging and cellular and molecular biology techniques for new product and assay development and customer support.

Dr. Janick D. Stucki is currently the CEO & Technical Director at AlveoliX, a Swiss SME providing innovative in-vitro solutions by combining unique microfluidic chip design with complex organ-on-chip modelling. He studied mechanical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bern. He has more than 10 years of experience in developing and commercializing organ-on-chips.

With 13 years experience in drug discovery, Lorna has worked in both the academic andindustrial fields to gain expertise in high-throughput screening and automation. Shecompleted her PhD in Cancer Therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research, London followed by a Postdoctoral research position at Imperial College London where she used automated robotics platforms to develop high-throughput assays for engineering biology. Her current role at GSK includes leading a team to develop cell-based assays, in particular using High-throughput Flow Cytometry, and implementing automation capabilities for complex cell-based screening.

"Johan Sunryd is a Scientific Solutions Consultant at Benchling, the leader in cloud informatics for life sciences R&D.  Johan Sunryd works with R&D organizations to understand their informatics needs and identify best ways to augment scientists’ productivity with software solutions. Prior to Benchling, Johan worked as an interdisciplinary scientist and engineer for various medical devices companies, ranging from early R&D to preclinical animal models. His education includes a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from UMass Amherst and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Michigan State University."

Ansley Tanoto is a Senior Automation Engineer at Metagenomi, where he works to expand the company's gene editing candidate screening capacity. He uses his scientific/programming expertise to design, build, and facilitate workcell buildouts and expansions. He is also heavily involved in design/deployment of connecting automation to Metagenomi's future LIMS system. Before joining Metagenomi, Ansley held engineering roles at PACT Pharma and Intrexon where he onboarded and transitioned workflows onto newly released platforms such as the Biomek I-series and Hamilton Vantage. Prior to that, he worked in operations development on Twist Bioscience's gene manufacturing workflow. Ansley received a B.S. in Molecular Cell Biology and minor in Bioinformatics from UC Santa Cruz.

Mike Tarselli, Ph.D., MBA is the Chief Scientific Officer for TetraScience, a Boston-based start-up building the Scientific Data Cloud. He has held scientific and leadership roles at SLAS, Novartis, Millennium, ARIAD, and Biomedisyn. Mike has received awards and fellowships from IUPAC, Wikipedia, ACS, NSF, and the Burroughs-Wellcome Trust. He volunteers in roles promoting scientific education and diversity, including the National Science Foundation, the Pistoia Alliance, the NIH Assay Guidance Manual, and the UMass College of Natural Sciences Advisory Board.

"I'm a molecular microbiologist committed to combating the notorious ESKAPE pathogens and multi-drug resistance. I am developing technologies that evolve and purify bacteriophage (phage) to rapidly generate and formulate therapeutic cocktails. Co-founding the phage technology service center “TAILΦR” provides a unique opportunity to develop intellectual property assets and treat patients on a compassionate use basis.

As Director of Operations for TAILΦR, I coordinate center development, client projects, research, phage discovery, and patient cases amongst team members. I also liaise between clinical, academic, and regulatory teams, including the FDA, for compassionate use patient cases. We are compiling libraries of pathogens and their corresponding phages to reduce response time to the next case or outbreak.

My many passions/hobbies include science outreach, fishing, stand-up comedy, meditation, and steelers football. Maybe one day I'll get to use the kayak I foolishly bought just before the birth of my daughter."

Peggy joined Plexium in 2020 to lead the targeted protein degradation drug discovery efforts. She has more than 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development in the biotechnology industry. Prior to Plexium, Peggy was a co-founder and Executive Director of Biology at eFFECTOR Therapeutics where she established their technology platform for targeting dysregulated mRNA translation for supporting oncology drug development and lead their eIF4A program (Zotatifin, Phase II) from concept to clinical development in solid tumor malignancies. She previously served as Director of Biology at Anadys Pharmaceuticals, Inc. She held positions of increasing responsibility during her tenure including leading the drug discovery biology efforts as well as supporting the development of Setrobuvir until the company was acquired by Roche Pharmaceuticals.

Jörg Tost received his PhD in genetics from the University of Saarbrücken (Germany) in 2004 devising novel methods for the analysis of haplotypes and DNA methylation patterns. After a postdoctoral stay in the technology development department of the Centre National de Génotypage (CNG, Evry, France), he led the Epigenetics groups from 2006-2012, before becoming Director of Laboratory for Epigenetics and Environment at the Centre National de Recherche en Génomique Humaine (CNRGH). The laboratory is involved in the development and application of technologies to analyze DNA methylation and other epigenetic modifications quantitatively at high resolution at target loci and genome-wide using state-of-the-art sequencing technologies as well as the development of bioinformatic tools for the processing of such data. The laboratory has focused the analysis of epigenetic changes in neurodegenerative and immune-related Jörg Tost (H-index=52) is author or co-author of more than 220 publications and senior editor of the journal “Epigenomics”.

Dr. Bas Trietsch, is the CTO and co-founder of MIMETAS. He is co-inventor of the OrganoPlate®, optimized it towards a mass manufacturable product and enabled the establishment of MIMETAS’ production facility. He developed the initial tissue models on the OrganoPlate and continues to support assay development in the OrganoPlate. As CTO he currently drives product development and grows Mimetas' tissue production, HTS based drug discovery and data science capabilities. Bas holds a Ph.D. in biopharmaceutical sciences from Leiden University and co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications and patents.

Asako is the Head of Drug Discovery at ThinkCyte and is responsible for leading the development of genome-wide and drug screening platform. Prior to ThinkCyte, she was a project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where she was a member of the University-Social Joint Division and collaborated with Nikon Corporation in the development of image-based screening using confocal microscopy. She was also a research associate at Duke University Medical Center, where she specialized in anatomical and functional analysis of somatosensory neurons. Asako holds a Ph.D. in Bioscience from Kyoto University.

Completed a PhD in chemical biology at University of Sheffield,UK with an emphasis on kinetic characterisation of heme biosynthetic enzymes in 2019. Before joining AstraZeneca in 2019 as a member or Protein Science followed by High Throughput Screening (HTS). Within High Throughput Screening, I have an interest in high throughput mechanism of action (MoA) studies which can be used to annotate biochemical screening outputs. 

Louis is CEO and Co-founder of Saguaro Technologies. He has built extensive experience over the the years in high-tech business management, business development and product development. Before starting Saguaro, Louis was Vice-President - Global Strategy - for a multinational high-tech company that he helped grow from 200 to 1000 employees in 5 years. Having grown through this experience, Louis decided to start Saguaro with his co-founder. Their purpose is to build a company that will become the most powerful leverage in accelerating life science discoveries and improving human health. 

M. Selim Ünlü received his Ph.D. (1992) degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in electrical engineering. Since 1992, he has been a professor at Boston University. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Engineering appointed in electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, physics, materials science and engineering, and graduate medical sciences. His research interests are in the areas of nanophotonics and biophotonics focusing on the development of biological detection and imaging techniques, particularly in high-throughput digital biosensors based on detection of individual biological nanoparticles, viruses, and single molecule counting.

Dr. Ünlü has authored and co-authored >200 journal articles and has over 12,500 citations (h-index of 59); edited one book; and holds 20 US/international patents. In 2021, he was selected as Boston University Innovator of the Year. Dr. Ünlü  is a Fellow of IEEE, Optica, and AIMBE. He was awarded the Science Award (2008) by the Turkish Scientific Foundation.

Fred oversees the biomolecular sciences, screening and lead discovery effort at Remix Therapeutics. He has more than 18 years of experience in a range of roles in drug discovery and held various leadership roles at H3 Biomedicine and Boehringer Ingelheim. Now, Fred is motivated to push the current boundaries of drug discovery with the Remix team. He received his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of British Columbia and completed his postdoctoral training as a Merck-sponsored Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellow at Harvard Medical School.

"PhD in Bioengineering from Pennsylvania State University

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Senior Scientist, Lead Discovery and Characterization, Amgen 2018-present
 Supporting discovery projects including targeted proteolysis for biophysical characterization to identify lead therapeutic candidates
 Representing discovery attribute sciences in various project team meetings
 Evaluating novel technologies to fulfill business needs
Scientist, Discovery Attribute Sciences, Amgen 2015-2018
 Supported discovery projects for binding analysis using multiple techniques (i.e., SPR, DLS and DSF) to understand biology, to validate target, and to identify lead therapeutic candidates (both small and large molecules)
 Developed membrane-protein-focused technologies ranging from novel reconstitution/solubilization strategies to advancing direct-binding assay
 Played a key role in the collaboration with Prof. Richard Murray (California Institute of Technology) in securing the funding from Amgen Chem-Bio-Engineering Award, and co-mentored the graduate student
 Evaluated and implemented novel technologies to fulfill business needs
Research Associate, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2013-2015
University of Delaware, and National Institute of Standards and Technology
 Determined membrane protein structural changes in the presence of additives using scattering techniques (i.e., DLS, SANS, and SAXS)
 Investigated role of various surfactants in stabilizing and crystallizing membrane proteins using multiple biophysical techniques (i.e., CD, NMR, ITC, and fluorescence spectroscopy)
 Developed chromatography-based methods (i.e., affinity, ion exchange, and size exclusion chromatography) to purify detergent-solubilized recombinant membrane proteins
 Calculated monoclonal antibody (mAb) interactions based on atomistic models to understanding the solution behavior of concentrated mAbs
Postdoctoral Researcher, National Institute of Standards and Technology 2011-2013
 Developed a surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based assay to investigate the stability and activity of membrane proteins under different solution conditions (i.e., pH, temperature)
 Designed a membrane-protein biomimetic platform for functional characterization of membrane protein (i.e., ion channels) using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy"

Dave Vance is an automation engineer at the DAMP Lab of Boston University. He has contributed to the campus-wide COVID-19 surveillance testing done in the Clinical Testing Lab as well as ongoing work at the DAMP Lab core facility. His expertise is in laboratory automation, specifically Hamilton hardware and Venus software and in planning and design of automated protcols. 

James Vandegrift is senior research associate in Analytical Development at Takeda in Lexington, MA. His primary focuses are glycan characterization and automation of test methods. He received his BS in chemistry from Ursinus College and has previously worked in DNA synthesis and analytical chemistry. James lives in Boston and enjoys hiking in his free time.

Arne is the Director of Automation, Process and Systems Engineering at Synthego.  Synthego is a genome engineering company with a mission to make CRISPR cell engineering readily available to any scientist or clinicians involved in direct patient care.  Arne has over 2 decades of experience developing and validating scientific instrumentation. He previously worked as product manager at a life science SaaS company, prior to that he was a software engineer at a diagnostics company, and previously a systems engineer at a liquid handling instrumentation company. Arne is passionate about the industrialization of Biology, addressed by multi-disciplinary teams. He holds a PhD in Experimental Physics from Ghent University, Belgium. During his PostDoc at Stanford University, CA, he focussed on Molecular Imaging Instrumentation.

Meghav Verma is currently working for National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences(NCATS/NIH) as a Product Manager, Robotics & Automation. His job is to create the vision and develop a state-of-the-art robotics and automation lab for the various scientific groups at NCATS and manage the ASPIRE program. Meghav works with the engineering team to develop various fixed and mobile robotic systems to automate the labs and create a digital eco-system of lab insturmentation using IoT to help the institute perform faster and more efficient research towards drug discovery and therapeutics development for rare diseases.

Dieter Wagner received his degree in Automation from the THM Friedberg and worked in sales and product management roles in several different industries including vacuum technology, optical disc, semiconductor and organic materials. During this time Dieter developed a passion for biotechnology and this led him to Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he is currently Product Manager for the Cytomat product line.

"Erica graduated from MIT with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 and began her career as a Rotational Engineer at Brooks Automation, working in various roles throughout the company before landing permanently in the Life Sciences division as a Systems Engineer. She transferred to product management with responsibility for automated cryogenic storage in 2021, looking after the products she used to do the engineering work for."

"Ramona L. Walls, Ph.D. is Executive Director of Data Science at the Critical Path Institute (C-Path). She oversees multiple efforts including the development of C-Path’s Data and Analytics Platform, expansion and modernization of C-Path’s data integration pipeline to encompass new data types, and development of a rare disease knowledge graph. Walls joined C-Path in December 2020 as a Data Scientist in Ontologies, Standards, and Metadata. In 2021 she was promoted to Associate Director of Data Science. Walls retains an appointment in the Bio5 Institute of the University of Arizona, where she has been Principal Investigator on multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and other funders. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers in fields as diverse as rare diseases, environmental health, evolution, biodiversity, sustainability, and space situational awareness. Walls received a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Resource Management and Horticulture at Penn State and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Stony Brook University and did a post-doc at the New York Botanical Garden. Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/cit..."

"My name is David Walsh, Ph.D. and I am an Assistant Group Leader at MIT-Lincoln Laboratory.  I manage a team of biologists and engineers focused on developing and transitioning innovative biotechnologies to government, academia, and industry partners.  The enabling capabilities of additive manufacturing, rapid prototyping, and integrated sensors have led to the development of high-throughput platforms for interrogating various human physiologies such as: the gut microbiome, the blood-brain-barrier, and liver.  My passion is to deliver the capabilities to improve accuracy, speed, and cost of drug discovery by improving throughput, scalability, and user-friendliness of advanced in vitro models (e.g. organ-on-chip)."

Jenny Wang has a master’s degree in Pharmacology and Physiology from McMaster University. She has over 20 years of experience with assay development and implementation in automation using different software. She has managed over 100 screens using Momentum, such as ELISA, numerous cell assays and LUMIER, against chemical libraries and siRNA libraries.

Jill is an accomplished bench scientist specializing in NGS and spatial transcriptomics. She started her NGS career in single cell genomics when only a handful of labs in the world had knowledge in this field. Jill comes from a background heavy in early R&D bringing cutting edge technology to the forefront. Her work has spanned across academia at MD Anderson through larger companies such as Ilumina, but really found her nitch in the smaller start up culture. She has taken this creativity cultivated from this background, and applied it to the art of supporting customers in the Field.

"Dr. Watrous is an analytical chemist and engineer with more than a decade of experience using mass spectrometry for small metabolite measures and associated informatics, both in academia and industry environments. Prior to co-founding Sapient, he was a postdoctoral researcher and subsequently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Jain Laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). During this time, he was responsible for developing fully automated, high throughput mass spectrometry-based workflows for global small molecule analysis in biological fluids. Dr. Watrous was also previously a scientist at Watson Pharmaceuticals, where he developed cGMP analytical testing methods for emerging generic drugs. At Sapient, Dr. Watrous is responsible for the generation, optimization, and standardization of Sapient’s rLC-MS systems and other innovative instrumentation and lab automation infrastructure.

Dr. Watrous earned his undergraduate degree in Bioanalytical Chemistry from California State University-San Bernadino and received his MS and PhD in Bioanalytical Chemistry from UCSD."

I lead a biomedical data science lab with a mission to reduce human suffering. We develop software and machine learning methods and approaches using genomics and microscopy data to study disease, improve clinical decision making, and perform innovative drug discovery. I received my PhD at The University of Pennsylvania in Genomics and I performed a postdoc at The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in image data science for drug discovery.

"Andrea is a Senior Director within the Discovery Sciences Group at Pfizer, where she oversees four teams, Functional Genomics, Cell Model Generation, Protein Homeostasis, and Protein Sciences.   She joined Pfizer in 2016, and prior to that she spent 10 years in the Lead Discovery Group at Bristol-Myers Squibb.  In both roles, Andrea has been involved in driving the evolution of cell models and assay screening methods to enable improved physiological relevance.  This includes the development and use of iPSCs and primary cells for target ID and lead generation.  Andrea’s teams have leveraged phenotypic screening for close to 15 years, with several lessons learned along the way. 

Andrea holds a PhD in Physiology and Molecular Biology from the University of Western Ontario."

Riley Whalen received a BS in biology from the University of Washington in 2020 and works as a research assistant in a cancer research lab at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR. Currently, she studies a novel population of circulating cancer cells that possess both cancer and immune cell characteristics, known as hybrid cells, that have been implicated in the metastatic cascade. Riley is also interested in novel cell populations and how their unique features affect living systems and has accepted an offer to attend a biomedical sciences PhD program at OHSU in the fall. 

Ceri Wiggins (PhD) is a Director in the Functional Genomics department at AstraZeneca, leading the Phenotypic Screening group. Her team is responsible for identifying novel targets to support AstraZeneca’s clinical pipeline, by coupling perturbation technologies such as CRISPR with complex cell models to screen at scale. Prior to AZ, Ceri spent 9 years at Horizon Discovery where she lead their R&D team in the development of Horizon’s CRISPR screening platform and internal target discovery initiative. She also led the scientific development and commercialisation of Horizon’s novel base editing platform Pinpoint™.  

John P. Wikswo is the University Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Physics and A. B. Learned Professor of Living State Physics at Vanderbilt University, and founding Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE). He received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. His group’s current work focuses on the development of intelligent well plates that serve as perfusion controllers, microclinical analyzers, and microformulators, and the refinement and use of tissue-chip models of the blood-brain barrier, blood-CSF barrier, airway, and engineered cardiac tissue constructs. He is merging multichannel microfluidic pumps and valves, sensors, mass spectrometry, computational systems-biology models, and artificial intelligence/machine learning software to create robot scientists operating as self-driving biological laboratories for microbial and mammalian cells. Dr. Wikswo has published more than 230 peer-reviewed papers, is a fellow of seven professional societies, and holds 44 patents.

I graduated from the University of Bath in 2020 with an Integrated Masters in Pharmacology. Now based within AstraZeneca's Global High Throughput Screening Centre, I have experience in a variety of biochemical- and cell-based assays to identify chemical equity for drug discovery across a range of therapeutic areas. I am interested in high-content imaging approaches, such as Cell Painting, to generate unbiased morphological profiles of chemical or genetic perturbations. 

"Sarah Williams is a Associate Research Leader at Charles River Laboratories working at Chesterford Research Park, Cambridge. Sarah is passionate about electrophysiology and in vitro assay development, with 12 years ion channel experience. 

Sarah’s interest in ion channels started in 2009 during a summer placement, following this she completed her PhD at the University of Southampton. After her PhD, Sarah did postdoctoral research at Brandeis University. Sarah moved back to the UK in 2016 to work for a Cambridge based contract research organization (CRO). In 2018 she moved to Charles River, where she has worked with both manual and automated patch clamp platforms. Sarah has worked on a range of voltage and ligand gated ion channel targets at Charles River, successfully delivering profiling projects and leading HTS projects from assay development into potency phases."

Scott Wolkenberg is Scientific Director in Janssen Global Discovery Chemistry and serves as Global Head of Parallel Medicinal Chemistry.  Scott’s focus is driving acceleration in all discovery pipeline stages through novel capabilities, to deliver high quality clinical candidates faster.  This includes high throughput experimentation, novel reactions, prediction, and lab automation.  Scott is a member of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Advisory Board, is past Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on High Throughput Chemistry and Chemical Biology, is a past member of the National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium SAB, and is an ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Mid-Career Investigator awardee.  He has co-authored more than 50 publications and numerous patents.  Prior to joining Janssen, Scott held positions in Medicinal Chemistry, Technology-Enabled Synthesis, and Chemical Biology at Merck & Co., Inc.  He received his B.A. from Cornell University and completed his Ph.D. with Dale L. Boger at the Scripps Research Institute.

Antony completed his PhD at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, studying the role and regulation of cell death processes in vertebrate ovarian development. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan, examining the role of insulin-like growth factor signaling in vertebrate embryonic development. He subsequently joined a research group at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he employed genetic approaches to study embryonic and postnatal germline development and regeneration. He joined Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. in 2011, where he now serves as the Senior Director of Product Design and Strategy. 

Paul Wylie, PhD has a long and robust commercial history of developing and commercializing multiplexed assay solutions primarily to Pharma and Biotech companies. He has a lot of extensive experience, working closely with research scientists to understand their problems and requirements to effectively help to provide robust multiplexed assay solutions. 

Dr. Xiao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University. He is also a principal investigator at the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI). Dr. Xiao and his research team focus on female reproductive biology, disease, and toxicology, including (1) the adverse effects of classic and emerging environmental contaminants on women’s reproductive health, in particular of women’s ovaries and associated ovarian functions, menstrual cycle, and fertility; (2) engineering an ovary-on-a-chip and a female reproductive-tract-on-a-chip using microfluidic and organ-on-a-chip technologies; (3) developing novel women’s birth control pills; and (4) investigating the effects of environmental exposure on women’s reproductive diseases such as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Dr. Xiao’s research is supported by EOHSI at Rutgers, NIH, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI), and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).

"2018-present: VP, Therapeutic and Translational Science at A2 Biotherapeutics, leading immuno-oncology projects from target ID to IND filing.

1997-2018: Amgen; varies scientist and group leader positions in Discovery Research; experienced in antibody and small molecule drug discovery as well as technology development
Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from Rice University"

Dr. Yao is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Nancy Allbritton at University of Washington. They have developed a picoliter thin layer chromatography (PicoTLC) technology that can be used to assay lipid signaling pathways in ultra-small samples, and even in single cells. If you are interested, please contact us at: yaoming@uw.edu

Viktoria Zieger started her bachelor's degree in physics in Heidelberg in 2015 and completed it with her thesis about simulations of the accuracy of dose delivery for particle radiation in cancer therapy. In 2018 she continued her studies with a master's degree in Muenster with a focus on nanophysics and biophysics. For her thesis, she constructed a novel optical setup that combined a light sheet microscope with optical tweezers and used it to carry out microrheological measurements while simultaneously acquiring 3D microscopic images. In March 2021 she started her PhD in the Laboratory for MEMS Applications at the University of Freiburg. As part of her project, she is developing a platform for automated 3D microtumor analysis for personalized therapy. In this context, she designs and tests different methods for both automated microtumor production and automated single microtumor deposition to enable and facilitate high-throughput drug screening.