PLENARY SESSIONS

Denmark

Agnete Kirkeby

Sweden

Malin Parmar

Malin Parmar is a professor in cellular neuroscience at Lund University in Sweden and a New York Stem Cell Foundation – Robertson investigator. Together with her lab she has shown in a series of high-profile publications how human fibroblasts can be converted into neurons, how glial cells can be reprogrammed into neurons in vivo, and how functional dopamine neurons can be generated from human embryonic stem cells.

She is the recipient of an ERC starting grant and an ERC Consolidator grant. Her research has a strong translational focus, she leads the European effort STEM-PD, designed to bring stem cell-derived dopamine neurons to clinical trials, and she collaborates within European and International networks as well as Industry partners to develop new, cell based therapies for Brain Repair with focus on Parkinson’s Disease.

Sweden

Sophia Hober

Sophia Hober is Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden. In addition to being part of the management team of the Human Protein Atlas she is working with the design and development of detection and purification systems including improvements of the alkaline tolerance of protein A and protein G for industrial purification of IgG/HSA (Currently a product sold by GE-Health care). Moreover, small bispecific protein domains, with ability to strongly and selectively bind to two different proteins have been developed. These domains have been designed for use in protein purification as well as for cancer theranostics. During the spring 2020 she has been part of a team developing a highly stringent serological method for the analysis of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Prof. Hober is the author of more than 120 full‑length scientific papers and has filed more than 20 international patent applications. She is cofounder of 4 start-up companies and member of several Board of Directors. She is also elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

United States

Amy Herr

Amy Herr is a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member at Sandia National Labs, earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and completed her B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science with honors from Caltech. Her research has been recognized by the NIH New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (Chemistry), and DARPA Young Faculty Award, & Visionary Award from the City of Berkeley and named to the Analytical Scientist’s top 100 most influential people in analytical science.

Professor Herr has chaired the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the Physics & Chemistry of Microfluidics and will chair microTAS 2020. She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the US National Academy of Inventors, an entrepreneur, and was recently appointed to the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at NIH. Her research program lies at the intersection of engineering design, analytical chemistry, and targeted proteomics – with a recent focus on cytometry spanning fundamental biological to clinical questions.

United States

David Weitz

David Weitz received his PhD in physics from Harvard University and then joined Exxon Research and Engineering Company, where he worked for nearly 18 years. He then became a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania and moved to Harvard at the end of the last millennium as professor of physics and applied physics. He leads a group studying soft matter science with a focus on microfluidics, biophysics, materials science and flow in porous media. Several startup companies have come from his lab to commercialize research concepts.

United States

Ileana Cristea

Ileana Cristea is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Her laboratory investigates mechanisms of cellular defense against viruses. Towards this goal, she has promoted the integration of virology with proteomics and bioinformatics. She has developed methods for studying spatial and temporal virus-host protein interactions, bridging developments in mass spectrometry to important findings in virology. For example, her laboratory has contributed to the emergence of the research field of nuclear DNA sensing in immune response, and has discovered sirtuins as broad-spectrum antiviral factors. Dr. Cristea is the Past-President of the American Human Proteome Organization (US HUPO), the chair of the Biology/Disease-driven Human Proteome Project (B/D-HPP) of HUPO, and the co-chair of the Infectious Disease team of HUPO B/D-HPP. She has taught the summer Proteomics Course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for over ten years, and is Senior Editor for mSystems, Associate Editor for the Journal of Proteome Research and on the Editorial Boards of Molecular Systems Biology and Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. She was recognized with the Bordoli Prize from the British Mass Spectrometry Society (2001), NIDA Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research (2008), Human Frontiers Science Program Young Investigator Award (2009), Early Career Award in Mass Spectrometry from ACS (2011), ASMS Research Award (2012), Molecular Cellular Proteomics Lectureship (2013), Mallinckrodt Scholar Award (2015), Discovery Award in Proteomic Sciences at HUPO (2017), and the Princeton University Graduate Mentoring Award (2020).

United States

John Yates

Session Topic: New Technological Advancements in Proteomics
Presentation Title: The 3D Proteome and the Potential for Conformational Biomarkers

John R. Yates is the Ernest W. Hahn Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at Scripps Research. His research interests include development of integrated methods for tandem mass spectrometry analysis of protein mixtures, bioinformatics using mass spectrometry data, and biological studies involving proteomics. He is the lead inventor of the SEQUEST software for correlating tandem mass spectrometry data to sequences in the database and developer of the shotgun proteomics technique for the analysis of protein mixtures. His laboratory has developed proteomic techniques to analyze protein complexes, posttranslational modifications, organelles and quantitative analysis of protein expression for the study of biology. He has received awards including the ASMS Biemann Medal, HUPO Achievement Award, Christian Anfinsen Award (Protein Society), Analytical Chemistry award (ACS), Ralph N. Adams Award, Thomson Medal (IMSF), John B. Fenn Award (ASMS), HUPO Discovery Award. He is currently the EIC at the Journal of Proteome Research.

Sweden

Mathias Uhlen

Mathias Uhlen's research is focused on protein science, antibody engineering and precision medicine and ranges from basic research in human and microbial biology to more applied research, including clinical applications in cancer, infectious diseases, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and neurobiology. His research has resulted in more than 600 publications and he is co-founder of 12 biotech companies. Since 2003, he has led an international effort to systematically map the human proteome and transcriptome to create a Human Protein Atlas using antibodies and various omics technologies. This effort has so far resulted the Tissue Atlas (2015) showing the distribution of proteins across human tissues and organs, the Cell Atlas (2016) showing the subcellular location of human proteins in single cells and the Pathology Atlas (2017) showing how cancer patient survival is tied to RNA and protein levels. He is member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in USA, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA), the Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is the President of the European Federation of Biotechnology and is chairing the International Working Group for Antibody Validation (IWGAV). From 2010-2015, he was the founding Director of the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) which is a Swedish national center for molecular bioscience.

United States

Amy Herr

Amy Herr is a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member at Sandia National Labs, earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and completed her B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science with honors from Caltech. Her research has been recognized by the NIH New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (Chemistry), and DARPA Young Faculty Award, & Visionary Award from the City of Berkeley and named to the Analytical Scientist’s top 100 most influential people in analytical science.

Professor Herr has chaired the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the Physics & Chemistry of Microfluidics and will chair microTAS 2020. She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the US National Academy of Inventors, an entrepreneur, and was recently appointed to the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at NIH. Her research program lies at the intersection of engineering design, analytical chemistry, and targeted proteomics – with a recent focus on cytometry spanning fundamental biological to clinical questions.