Gary Bader
Gary Bader is a Professor at the Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto and an expert in Computational Biology. The Bader lab is developing computational methods and an ecosystem theory of tissue function that considers cell-cell interactions, cell growth, and cell internal mechanisms, such as pathways, reactions, and causal relationships, to help understand development, cancer and regenerative wound healing processes. See http://baderlab.org.
Anna Falk
Professor Anna Falk is leading a research team at Lund University focusing on cellular reprogramming and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to, i) create cellular models of the human brain for investigating mechanisms causing neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, ii) develop novel cell therapies for brain and spinal cord injuries, capitalising on the feature of stem cells as an unlimited starting material for any cell therapy product. Professor Falk has established and has/is directing core facilities at both Karolinska Institutet and Lund University that use cutting edge technologies to offer services in the area of Cell and Gene Therapy. Anna Falk is leading large consortia projects, IndiCell and StartCell both aiming to accelerate iPSC derived cell therapy to patients. Dr Falk is the director of Lund University ATMP centrum and the CSO of CCRM Nordic.
Kullervo Hynynen
Dr. Hynynen received his PhD from the University of Aberdeen, UK. He initially accepted a faculty position at the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 1993. In 2006, he was recruited to Sunnybrook Research Institute as a Senior Scientist and Director of the Physical Sciences Platform. In January 2020, he assumed the position of Vice President of Research and Innovation at Sunnybrook. He is a professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics and a Cross-Appointed Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the University of Toronto. He holds the Temerty Chair in Focused Ultrasound Research and is also Co-Director of the Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Additionally, he is a founder and Co-Executive Director of INOVAIT, a Canada-wide network providing training, networking, and funding to promote the use of AI in image-guided therapy. Dr. Hynynen has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers on basic and clinical research related to ultrasound therapy and holds approximately 30 patents or patent applications. He has received numerous research grants and contracts and has founded two companies.
Elmar Jaekal
Elmar Jaeckel is a trained gastroenterologist/hepatologist as well as endocrinologist/diabetologist and transplantation specialist. He is Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Program at the Ajmera Transplant Centre, University Health Network. He studied medicine at University of Hamburg, Yale University New Haven, University of California San Diego, University of Edinburgh and University of Sydney. He completed his medical training at the Hannover Medical School (MHH). He studied medical economics at the University of applied sciences in Hannover and received a bachelor as Medical Hospital Manager. He spent a four years postdoctoral research fellowship with Harald von Boehmer at the Harvard Medical School, Boston working on central and peripheral tolerance mechanisms. Since 2003, he has been leading the research group on immune tolerance and metabolic inflammation at the MHH. The group is focusing to establish tissue-specific tolerance in autoimmunity, transplantation and metabolic inflammation. Since 2008 he is attending for gastroenterology, hepatology, endocrinology and diabetology at Hannover Medical School. Since 2010 he has been the medical attending of the liver transplant program at MHH, one of the largest liver transplant programs within the Eurotransplant region. He was co-chairing the collaborative research center transplantation for 12 years (CRC738), the CRC on xenotransplantation (CRC TR127) funded by the German Research Foundation and the Integrated Research Center Transplantation (IFB-Tx) funded by Federal Ministry for research and education. Besides this he received funding from the German Research Foundation, Ministry of Health, European Community, Helmsley Foundation, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
David Malkin
Dr. Malkin completed his clinical training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), University of Toronto followed by a post-doctoral research Fellowship in Molecular Genetics at Harvard University where he discovered the link between germline TP53 mutations and the Li-Fraumeni cancer predisposition syndrome (LFS). He is currently a Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Biophysics in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He holds the CIBC Children’s Foundation Chair in Child Health Research, is a Staff Oncologist in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Director of the Cancer Genetics program, and a Senior Scientist in the Genetics and Genome Biology Program at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Dr. Malkin co-leads the SickKids Precision Child Health initiative. He co-directs the SickKids Cancer Sequencing (KiCS) program which integrates next generation sequencing (NGS) into clinical care of children with cancer, and Director of the pan-Canadian PRecision Oncology For Young peopLE (PROFYLE) initiative which is establishing a pipeline to incorporate NGS into novel clinical trials for children and young adults with hard-to-cure cancers across Canada. Dr. Malkin’s research focuses on genetic mechanisms of childhood cancer susceptibility. In particular, he has made significant contributions in development of early tumor detection approaches in LFS with more recent inroads into strategies for early interception/prevention of cancers in this disorder. Recently, his work has addressed the application of genomics to early cancer detection and treatment approaches for children and adults at genetic ‘high risk’ for cancer. Dr. Malkin’s research is funded by a variety of agencies and he has published over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He has received numerous national and international awards recognizing his clinical, research and mentorship work most recently including the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Community Award, the King Charles III Coronation Medal, the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research, and being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association of Cancer Research.
Laura Niklason
Dr. Niklason is the founder, President and CEO of Humacyte. Dr. Niklason founded Humacyte in 2005, while still a professor at Duke University. Humacyte is a regenerative medicine company of engineered blood vessels for dialysis access and for treatment of vascular trauma. Dr. Niklason’s scientific career has focused primarily on regenerative strategies for cardiovascular and lung tissues. She was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, and inducted to the National Academy of Engineering in 2020. She was also named (along with Bill Gates and Joe Biden) as one of 34 leaders who are changing healthcare by Fortune Magazine in 2017. Niklason received PhD from the University of Chicago in Biophysics in 1988 and received her MD from the University of Michigan in 1991. Dr. Niklason completed her medical training in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1996. She was a professor at Duke University from 1998 – 2005, before moving to Yale University in 2005.
Cristina Nostro
Dr. Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at University Health Network, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and holds the Harry Rosen Chair in Diabetes Regenerative Medicine Research. Her work is focused on the generation of pancreatic islets from human pluripotent stem cells with the goal of developing novel treatment for type 1 diabetes.
Marlene Rabinovitch
Dr. Rabinovitch is the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, and the Director of the Basic Science and Engineering Initiative of the Children’s Heart Center at Stanford University. Her research focuses on uncovering fundamental genetic, metabolic, and inflammatory mechanisms causing pulmonary hypertension that can be translated to the clinic. Dr. Rabinovitch graduated from McGill University Medical School and completed her pediatrics training at the University of Colorado and cardiology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School where she was Assistant Professor. She became Associate and Full Professor of Pediatrics, Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and Medicine at the University of Toronto, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Program at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Robert M. Freedom/Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair.
Milica Radisic
Dr. Milica Radisic is a Professor at the University of Toronto, Tier I Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and a Senior Scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute. She is an Executive Editor of ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, the Director of the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and Entrepreneurship and a co-Founder of the Centre for Research and Applications of Fluidic Technologies at the University of Toronto and a scientific lead of the Human Organ Mimicry Lab. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada-Academy of Science, Canadian Academy of Engineering, AIMBE, TERMIS and BMES. Her research focuses on structure-function relationships in organ engineering, biophysical modulation of tissues and development of new biomaterials that promote healing and attenuate scarring. She developed new methods to mature iPSC derived cardiac tissues using electrical stimulation. Her research findings were presented in over 260 publications with h-index of 71 and over 21,000 citations in journals such as Cell, Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Nature Methods etc. She is a co-founder of two companies: TARA Biosystems, that uses human engineered heart tissues in drug development and safety testing (acquired by Valo Health), and Quthero that advances regenerative hydrogels.
Trevor Reichman
Dr. Reichman completed his residency in General Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center and subsequently performed a fellowship in Abdominal Organ Transplantation and HPB Surgery in Toronto between 2009 and 2011. Following his fellowship, Dr. Reichman moved to the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana where he assumed the role of Co-Director of Living Donor Liver Transplantation and Pediatric Liver Transplantation. He also started and was the Co-Director of the abdominal transplant fellowship at Ochsner. After 5 years, he relocated to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia where he was the Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation and the Director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation. He returned to the Division of General Surgery and the UHN Transplant Program at TGH in 2019. He is the Surgical Director of the Pancreas Transplant and Islet Cell Programs and also directs the surgical fellowships for abdominal transplantation and HPB surgical oncology at the University of Toronto. His research interests include organ preservation, ex-vivo organ perfusion, and malignancies of the liver and pancreas.
Philip Tagari
Philip Tagari is currently Chief Scientific Officer of insitro, a leading Machine Learning – Drug Discovery company. His team of multidisciplinary scientists and engineers are redefining disease biology and implementing novel approaches to dramatically speed the delivery of meaningful therapeutics to patients with grievous disease. Prior to insitro, Philip spent a decade as Vice President of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) at Amgen Inc. During that time, his global teams advanced over 30 innovative molecules into clinical development and commercialization including Lumukras® (first-in-class KRASG12C inhibitor); Tarlatamab (DLL3 BiTE®); AMG133 (anti-obesity bispecific) and Efavaleukin alfa (AMG 592) a novel IL-2 mutein Fc fusion. He is a Director of CQDM (Consortium Quebecois sur la Decouverte du Medicament; Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery) and SAB member for BenchSci (biology machine learning) and NutcrackeRx (mRNA therapeutics)
Fyodor Urnov
Fyodor Urnov is a Professor of Molecular Therapeutics at UC Berkeley and a Scientific Director at its Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI). He co-developed the toolbox of human genome and epigenome editing, co-named genome editing, and was on the team that advanced all of its first-in-human applications to the clinic. He also led the effort that identified the genome editing target for an approved medicine to treat sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. A major goal for the field of genome editing and a key focus of Fyodor’s work is expanding access to CRISPR therapies for genetic disease. As part of that effort Fyodor directs the Danaher-IGI Beacon for CRISPR Cures – a first-in-class academia-industry partnership developing and advancing to the clinic scalable CRISPR-based approaches to treat diseases of the immune system.
Thomas Waddell
Dr. Waddell attended medical school at the University of Ottawa and completed his surgical and scientific training at the University of Toronto. During his PhD studies, he received numerous honours for his research work including the Governor General’s Gold Medal and the Royal College Prize for Resident Research. He was appointed as Assistant Professor in 2000, promoted to Associate Professor in 2004, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2010. He completed his term as the Pearson-Ginsberg Chair, Division of Thoracic Surgery, University of Toronto and Head of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at University Health Network/Toronto General Hospital in 2021. He has earned numerous distinctions, including the Blalock Scholarship from the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, a CIHR New Investigator Award, a CFI New Opportunities Fund Award, the George Armstrong Peters Prize in the Department of Surgery, a Wightman-Berris Individual Teaching Award, and was recognized with the Elliott Chair in Transplantation Research in 2005 and the Thomson Chair in Translational Research in 2010. In 2011, he received the highest research honour from the University of Toronto Department of Surgery, the Lister Prize and in 2022 received the Earl Bakken Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He has served as Chair of the Research Committee of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery as well as Chair of the Research Committee of the Thoracic Surgery Foundation for Research and Education. He was the founding CEO of XOR-Labs Toronto Inc, a medical devices development company commercializing organ perfusion from 2013 until its acquisition by Traferox Technologies in 2021. His research focuses on the chronic shortage of donor lungs, especially stem cell and regenerative medicine approaches to lung disease. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has received over 8M in peer-reviewed research grants.