Point of Care Diagnostics Keynote Speakers

John Connor Associate Professor, Boston University John Connor is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine and an investigator at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory. He received a B.A in Chemistry from Swarthmore College in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1999 from Duke University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship with Douglas Lyles at Wake Forest University, moved to Boston University continue his studies of RNA viruses. His laboratory research focuses on viruses that are associated with high fatality diseases such as Ebola, Marburg and Lassa. Within this focus, his laboratory has participated in the collaborative development of new diagnostic platforms for detecting highly fatal pathogens at the point of need and the identification of critical steps of virus replication that can be targeted to block viral replication. Professor Connor is a Research Investigator at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at the Boston University Medical School. Dr. Connor leads a team of researchers and collaborators who are interested in developing new vaccines, antiviral drugs and diagnostics for the detection and treatment of viruses like Ebola. His lab has worked to identify small molecule inhibitors of Ebola virus replication (featured as one of Discovery Magazine’s top 100 stories of 2013) and to develop vaccines that will protect against all known strains of Ebola. As part of a large collaborative group, his laboratory is helping to develop new diagnostic tools that are aimed at making it easier to identify individuals infected with viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever..
Samuel Sia Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University Samuel K. Sia is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. His lab focuses on using microfluidics for global health diagnostics and for 3D tissue biology. He obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Alberta, Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University, and postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry at Harvard University. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, National Science and Engineering Council of Canada Predoctoral Fellow, and Canadian Institute of Health Postdoctoral Fellow. Since 2005, he has been a faculty member of Columbia University's Biomedical Engineering department. His lab's work has been supported by the NIH (NHLBI and NINR), NSF, USAID/Grand Challenges Canada/Gates Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, American Heart Association, and World Health Organization. He was named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT Technology Review (2010), and is an elected fellow of AIMBE (American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering). His research has been covered by NPR, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, Voice of America, and Agence France Presse. He is a founder of Claros Diagnostics, a venture capital-backed company developing diagnostics products which was acquired by Opko Health, and Harlem Biospace, New York City's first life-science incubator.
Roland Zengerle Professor, University of Freiburg Full Professor with appointments at • IMTEK - Department of Microsystems Engineering, University of Freiburg • HSG-IMIT, Villingen-Schwenningen & Freiburg, Germany • BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies, Freiburg, Germany Prof. Dr. Roland Zengerle is full professor at the Department of Microsystems Engineering at the University of Freiburg and director at the “Institut für Mikro- und Informationstechnik” of the Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft (HSG-IMIT). The research of Dr. Zengerle is focused on microfluidics and specialises in lab-on-a-chip systems, non-contact microdosage of picoliter & nanoliter volumes, medical MEMS, bio fuel cells as well as micro- and nanofluidics modelling and simulation. Dr. Zengerle co-authored more than 250 papers. He is a member of the German national academy of sciences, Leopoldina.