Peter ErtlProfessor of Lab-on-a-Chip Systems, Vienna University of Technology Prof. Ertl holds an engineering degree in Biotechnology (University of Life Sciences, BOKU, Austria), a PhD in Chemistry (University of Waterloo, UW, Canada) and received his postdoctoral training as a biophysicist at University of California at Berkeley (UCB, US). Following a position as Director of Product Development at a UW spin-off venture (Canada), Dr. Ertl joint the Biosensor Technology unit at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). During his tenure at the AIT, Dr. Ertl was also granted a Fulbright Visiting Scholarship at UC Berkeley (2012) and conducted visiting scientist positions at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2013), the Medical Center of the University of California at San Francisco (2014). In 2016 he was appointed Professor of Lab-on-a-Chip Systems for Bioscience Technologies at the Vienna University of Technology (TUW), where his research focuses on the development of advanced in vitro diagnostic microsystems and organ-on-a-chip systems. Additionally, Dr Ertl held a visiting research appointment at Imperial College London (UK) in 2019 , is speaker of the Austrian Microfluidics Initiative (AMI) and editor of the open access journal Organs-on-a-Chip (Elsevier). |
Albert FolchProfessor of Bioengineering, University of Washington Albert Folch’s lab works at the interface between microfluidics and cancer. He received both his BSc (1989) and PhD (1994) in Physics from the University of Barcelona (UB), Spain, in 1989. During his Ph.D. he was a visiting scientist from 1990–91 at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab working on AFM/STM under Dr. Miquel Salmeron. From 1994–1996, he was a postdoc at MIT developing MEMS under Martin Schmidt (EECS) and Mark Wrighton (Chemistry). In 1997, he joined Mehmet Toner’s lab as a postdoc at Harvard-MGH to apply soft lithography to tissue engineering. He has been at Seattle’s UW BioE since June 2000, where he is now a full Professor, accumulating over 12,000 citations. In 22 years, he has supervised 19 postdocs (16% of whom have reached faculty rank), 36 graduate students (12 Ph.D. students, 25% of whom faculty rank, and 24 M.S. students), and ~43 undergraduates. In 2001 he received an NSF Career Award, and in 2014 he was elected to the AIMBE College of Fellows (Class of 2015). He served on the Advisory Board of Lab on a Chip 2010-2016 and serves on the Editorial Board of Micromachines since 2019. In 2022 he was elected a member of the Institute for Catalan Studies, one of the highest honors bestowed on Catalan scientists. He is the author of 5 books (sole author), including Introduction to BioMEMS (2012, Taylor&Francis), a textbook adopted by >103 departments in 18 countries, and Hidden in Plain Sight (MIT Press, 2022). Since 2007, the lab runs a celebrated outreach art program called BAIT (Bringing Art Into Technology), which has produced seven exhibits, a popular resource gallery of >2,000 free images related to microfluidics and microfabrication, and a YouTube channel that plays microfluidic videos with music which accumulate ~163,000 visits since 2009. |
Linda GriffithProfessor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Linda G. Griffith, PhD, is the School of Engineering Teaching Innovation Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering and MacVicar Fellow at MIT, where she directs the Center for Gynepathology Research and the Human Physiome on a Chip Project supported by the DARPA/NIH-funded Microphysiological Systems Program. Dr. Griffith received a Bachelor's Degree from Georgia Tech and a PhD degree from the University of California at Berkeley, both in chemical engineering. Dr. Griffith’s research is in the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Her laboratory, in collaboration with J. Upton and C. Vacanti, was the first to combine a degradable scaffold with donor cells to create tissue-engineered cartilage in the shape of a human ear. The 3D Printing Process she co-invented for creation of complex scaffolds has been commercialized for manufacture of FDA-approved scaffolds for bone regeneration. She is also a pioneer in devising ways to control nano-scale stimulation of cells by molecular cues, and in creation of 3D tissue models for drug development. The 3D perfused “LiverChip” liver tissue culture technology has been commercialized for applications in drug development. A current focus is integration of tissue engineering with systems biology, with an emphasis on endometriosis and other women’s reproductive diseases. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Popular Science Brilliant 10 Award, NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the MIT Class of 1960 Teaching Innovation Award, Radcliffe Fellow and several awards from professional societies. She has served as a member of the Advisory Councils for the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research and the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases at NIH. As chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee for Biological Engineering at MIT, she led development of the new Biological Engineering SB degree program, which was approved in 2005 as MIT’s first new undergraduate major in 39 years. |
James HickmanProfessor, Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Central Florida; Chief Scientist, Hesperos James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Biomedical Engineering, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he held the position of the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry. For the past thirty years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in the latter years in academia. While in industry he established one of the first bioelectronics labs in the country that focused on cell-based sensors and their integration with electronic devices and MEMS devices. He is interested in creating hybrid systems for biosensor and biological computation applications and the creation of functional in vitro systems for human body-on-a-chip applications. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the founder and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 166 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 34 issued patents out of 50 total patent applications. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for 2 consecutive terms, the premier society for Biomedical Engineering of which he is a Fellow. He is also a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) and National Academy of Inventors (NAI) as well as BioFlorida’s Researcher of the Year (2022). Dr. Hickman along with Dr. Michael Shuler, won the Lush Prize, in the Science Category, which Supports Animal Free Testing in 2015. |
Roger KammCecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Kamm is currently the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where he has served on the faculty since 1978. Kamm has long been instrumental in developing research activities at the interface of biology and mechanics, formerly in cell and molecular mechanics, and now in engineered living systems. Current interests are in developing models of healthy and diseased organ function using microfluidic technologies, with a focus on vascularization. Kamm has fostered biomechanics as Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics (2006-2009) and of the World Council on Biomechanics (2006-2010). Kamm currently directs the NSF Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems. He is the 2010 recipient of the ASME Lissner Medal (American Society of Mechanical Engineering) and the 2015 recipient of the Huiskes Medal (European Society of Biomechanics), both for lifetime achievements, and is the inaugural recipient of the ASME Nerem Medal for mentoring and education. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2010. Kamm is co-founder of two companies, Cardiovascular Technologies and AIM Biotech, a manufacturer of microfluidic systems for 3D culture. |
Shay SokerProfessor of Regenerative Medicine and Chief Science Program Officer, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine Dr. Shay Soker is a Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative medicine and an affiliated Professor of Cancer Biology, Physiology & Pharmacology, Biomedical Engineering and Surgical Sciences. Dr. Soker developed programs in neo-vascularization of bioengineered tissues, including angiogenic gene transfer to enhance tissue vascularization, cell therapy using vascular cells and ex-vivo revascularization of bioengineered tissues and organs. His stem cell research focuses on the identification and isolation of stem cells from different sources, including adult and fetal stem cells from amniotic fluid and placenta, and their directed differentiation to generate tissues in vitro and in vivo. In parallel, Dr. Soker’s group is exploring tissue-derived extracellular matrices as scaffolds for whole organ bioengineering. Recently, Dr. Soker applied 3D tissue engineering and bioprinting technologies to develop small 3D tissue constructs (organoids) for studying tissue development, as human disease models, for drug toxicity testing and drug discovery. Some of Dr. Soker’s projects are now being discussed with industry collaborators in order to create new regenerative medicine product. |
