Javin Oza

Engineering of cell-free systems, proteins & enzymes, and adopting bioengineering to the university classroom

Vaccines & Immunotherapies Online Symposium

The program features case studies in vaccine development for cancer and infectious diseases, offering insights into best practices and technological advancements. Engage in focused discussions and networking with thought leaders to understand immunotherapy innovations for cancer and autoimmune diseases. The event concludes with the release of the ‘Harnessing Vaccine Technologies & Immunotherapies with Best Practice Approaches’ report, summarizing key insights and emerging trends.

Oligo Chemistry and Therapeutics Online Symposium

Join global innovators at our symposium focused on oligo chemistry and therapeutics to explore advances in overcoming therapeutic challenges, optimising targeted delivery, and utilising analytical methods like liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Engage with experts on peptide-oligo conjugation, modification chemistry, and advanced synthesis technologies. Discuss clinical applications across disease areas and anticipate future uses. The event concludes with the ‘Harnessing Oligo Chemistry & Therapeutics Development with Best Practice Approaches’ report, summarising key insights and trends for effective utilisation.

Antibody Engineering with Novel Technologies Online Symposium

Join global innovators at our symposium on antibody engineering to explore cutting-edge topics such as best practice approaches, advanced therapeutics, and stability strategies. Engage with experts on AI applications and computational tools in antibody engineering. Discuss case studies on achieving stability through advanced methods. The event concludes with the ‘Harnessing Antibody Engineering with Best Practice Approaches’ report summarising key insights and trends for effective utilisation.

Rabia Yazicigil

Rabia Yazicigil is an Assistant Professor of ECE Department at Boston University. She was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT and received her Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in 2016. Her research focuses on the development of Cyber-Secure Biological Systems, leveraging living sensors constructed from engineered biological entities seamlessly integrated with custom-designed semiconductor chips. This unique synergy harnesses the advantages of biology while incorporating the reliability and communication infrastructure of electronics, offering a unique solution to societal challenges in healthcare, environmental monitoring, and sustainable biomanufacturing. She has received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2024), Early Career Excellence in Research Award for the Boston University College of Engineering (2024), the Catalyst Foundation Award (2021), Boston University ENG Dean Catalyst Award (2021), and “Electrical Engineering Collaborative Research Award” for her Ph.D. research (2016). She was selected as a member of the 2024 National Academy of Engineering (NAE) US Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) cohort.

Reza Zadegan

R. Clay Wright

Clay Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. His lab focuses on understanding and engineering chemical signaling pathways from plants and fungi. Clay received his BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from North Carolina State University and PhD in the same from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked with Professor Marc Ostermeier to engineer cancer therapeutic enzymes that are selectively active in the presence of a cancer marker. For his postdoctoral research, he worked with Professors Jennifer Nemhauser and Eric Klavins at University of Washington to study evolution and function of receptors for auxin, a critical plant growth hormone. Clay was recently awarded an NIH MIRA to further our understanding and engineering of chemically activated ubiquitin ligases, such as those that coordinate auxin signaling and other plant hormone signaling pathways.

Eric Young

Eric Young received undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering from the University of Maine at Orono. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He completed postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developing the MIT-Broad Foundry. Dr. Young is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, with affiliate appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research objective is to understand and engineer microbes that improve the human condition. This research program informs his educational goal – to train the current and future workforce for an economy shaped by engineered biology.

Fan Hong

Fan is interested in developing biomolecular tools to dive into the complexity of biology (decoding and regulating cellular functions on the molecular basis at the tissue scale). Before joining the faculty at the University of Florida, Fan was a Postdoc Fellow at Wyss Institute at Harvard University where he worked on the DNA advanced in situ spatial multi-omics (e.g., DNA thermal-plex) in the Yin Lab. Thermal-plex enables multiplexed fluorescent imaging of biomolecules with unprecedented feasibility and speed for tissue biospecimen analysis. Fan completed his Ph.D. at Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University and worked in the Yan Lab, Green Lab, and Sulc Lab, where he developed methods to program nucleic acids in vitro (e.g., Framework DNA nanoarchitecture), in vivo (e.g., SNIPR), and in silico (e.g., crowder-oxDNA) to address grand questions with chemical approaches to biology. Those methods enable the control of nucleic acid folding into complex framework biomolecular architectures from the nanoscale to the macroscale, the regulation of cellular gene expression based on the single nucleotide mutation in cells with de-novo-designed RNA riboregulators, and the investigation of the biophysical behavior of nucleic acid folding in the crowding cellular environment with molecular dynamics.

Priyanka Nain

I am Priyanka Nain, currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Delaware. Here, my research revolves around finding innovative solutions that integrate synthetic biology, sustainability, and healthcare. My Ph.D. is from the Chemical Engineering Department at IIT Delhi, where I was developing strategies to improve the production of biotherapeutic proteins. I am deeply passionate about sustainable biomanufacturing. I thrive on the scientific challenges involved in scaling up bioprocesses, from optimizing cell lines and media to fine-tuning fermentation feeding and control strategies, and analytical methods. But I also care deeply about the broader impact – delivering products that are both effective and accessible and manufactured in the interest of the environment.

Miguel Jimenez

Miguel Jimenez is an Assistant Professor at Boston University, where he runs el Microbial Integration Group. The group integrates engineered microorganisms with mechanical and electronic devices for applications in human health, agriculture, the environment, and entertainment.

Sarah Hartley

Technology governance is concerned with the decisions that shape how technology is funded, developed, regulated, tested, and deployed – it determines technology trajectories. My social science research takes a critical look at the politics and power in these governance decisions, particularly in efforts to open-up these expert spaces to diverse knowledge, values and visions through engagement and knowledge co-production – features that have become prevalent in technology governance in recent years. I’m particularly interested in the value tensions that exist in and between science and society when governance decisions are opened-up and, importantly, how to manage these tensions more effectively. I focus on the development and risk assessment of emerging technologies, particularly the biotechnologies (gene drive, genome-editing, genetic modification of animals, especially insects) and AL/digital technology applications in environment and agriculture. I am Co-Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence.

Biomarkers US 2024

Discover the latest advancements in biomarkers at the 8th Annual Biomarker & Precision Medicine US Congress. Join experts from global pharma, top biotechs, and renowned academic institutions to explore emerging tools and strategies in translational science, diagnostics, and biomarker development.

Built with industry experts in mind, the conference program highlights:
• Exciting biomarker technologies impacting R&D in 2024
• Multi-omics, spatial biology, digital markers, and next-gen diagnostics
• The opportunity to engage with regulators, diagnostics manufacturers, and biopharma peers

Willy A. Valdivia-Granda

I am the founder of Orion Integrated Biosciences. I lead a group of researchers developing new techniques to decode microbes’ genomic information and map short DNA fragments to their source of origin, virulence, and possible genetic manipulation. My research includes the use of artificial intelligence algorithms including large language models, neural networks, and generative adversarial networks to design a new generation of biotentities for biotechnology applications. I also lead the advancement of a new generation of analytical tools for risk assessment and early warning of biothreats that can affect health, trade, and national security. This work includes processing large data sets from multiple sources, including geospatial, trade, news outlets, security, and economic signals and indicators using machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. I have research projects with collaborators in several countries within the European Union, New Zealand, Guinea, Ukraine, Colombia, and Brazil. I serve as a subject matter expert and adviser to several funding agencies and policymakers within the U.S. government, and Hong Kong Research Council overseeing funding programs of more than USD 200 Million. This role not only underscores the significance of our work but also facilitates the integration of computer science principles into the development of solutions for pressing global challenges in health and security.

Alexander Refsnes Andrassy

Research in cell culture models and synthetic biology innovations

Lynn Rothschild

Lynn Rothschild is passionate astrobiologist focusing on the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere, while at the same time pioneering the use of engineering biology to enable space exploration. Her research focuses on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere. A graduate of Yale, Indiana University and Brown, she has brought her imagination and creativity to the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, articulating a vision for the future of synthetic biology as an enabling technology for NASA’s missions, including human space exploration and astrobiology. From 2011 through 2019 she served as the faculty advisor of the Stanford-Brown iGEM team. Her lab tested these plans in space on in the PowerCell secondary payload on the DLR EuCROPIS satellite. A past-president of the Society of Protozoologists, she is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, The California Academy of Sciences and the Explorer’s Club. She was awarded the Isaac Asimov Award from the American Humanist Association, and the Horace Mann Award from Brown University. She has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fellow seven times. Lynn was formerly Professor (Adjunct) at Stanford where she taught “Astrobiology and Space Exploration” for a decade.

Ian Blaby

Dr Blaby received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, as a Medical Research Council (MRC) fellowship recipient. After post-doctoral positions at the University of Florida and UCLA (supported by an NIH fellowship), he co-led a DOE Science Focus Area centered on functional genomics of phototrophs at Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY. Since 2019 he heads the DNA synthesis platform at the Joint Genome Institute, where he leads three groups focused on HTP DNA design and assembly, strain engineering and bioinformatic tool development/data analysis.

Channabasavaiah Gurumurthy

CB Gurumurthy (Guru), BVSC, MVSC, PHD, Exec MBA is the Director of Mouse Genome Engineering Core Facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, Nebraska and he is also a professor in the department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy. He develops and improves mouse genome editing technologies. In collaboration with Dr Masato Ohtsuka, Tokai University, Japan, he has published several landmark papers on CRISPR genome engineering technologies. Two of their breakthrough technologies, Easi-CRISPR and i-GONAD, are now widely adapted at core facilities and laboratories. Several hundreds to thousands of mouse models are generated each year using their methods. Guru has received over 100 invitations within USA and over 20 invitations from 12 countries to deliver keynote talks or presentations, to organize workshops and to chair sessions at conferences. He is one of the six researchers to receive inaugural Outstanding Genomic Innovator award from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Nils Averesch

Nils is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, University of Florida (UF). Before joining UF, Nils was a Research Engineer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University and an Associate Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Space Science and Astrobiology Division. Nils holds a PhD in Metabolic Engineering from the University of Queensland, Australia and an engineer’s degree in Biochemical Engineering from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.

Nils’ research comprises the rational engineering of microbial metabolism to increase the carbon efficiency of biochemical pathways for the assimilation of single-carbon compounds and the conversion thereof into advanced biomaterials. This serves the overarching goal to create a sustainable chemical industry on Earth “on the way” to new frontiers: developing circular production platforms based on microbial biotechnology could one day also support crewed long-duration space-exploration missions and -settlement.

Aditya Sarnaik

Aditya Pandharinath Sarnaik is an Associate Research Professional in the School for Sustainable Engineering and Built Environment (SSEBE) at Arizona State University (Polytechnic campus). He works at Arizona Centre for Algal Technology and Innovation (AzCATI). He is a Biotechnology graduate and a trained biochemical engineer, with expertise in bacterial (photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic) metabolic and protein engineering. He has experience with upstream as well as downstream processing/ process optimization of (engineered and wild-type) cyanobacteria at pilot scale.

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