Invited speakers
Peter Carmeliet (BE)
Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), Vesalius Research Center, Catholic University of Leuven
W www.vib.be
E peter.carmeliet@vib-kuleuven.be
Resume
Peter Carmeliet is Director of the VIB - Vesalius Research Center, at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He graduated as Doctor in Medicine in 1984, and completed his PhD in Medicine in 1989. During his Postdoctoral work at the Whitehead Institute, MIT in Cambridge USA, he acquired the knockout technology. After his return to Leuven in 1992, Carmeliet started his own research group with a focus on blood vessels and the role of VEGF in angiogenesis. By developing transgenic mice lacking VEGF, he discovered that the VEGF molecule is a key player in angiogenesis. Carmeliet has made contributions to the understanding of how blood vessels grow (angiogenesis) in health and disease. His findings have led to the (pre)clinical development of novel therapeutic strategies for angiogenic diseases, such as cancer and blindness, which are currently being evaluated in clinical trials.Carmeliet also showed that PlGF is a disease-restricted candidate in many angiogenic disorders and tested the therapeutic potential of anti-PlGF. Anti-PlGF clinical studies are currently ongoing in collaboration with industrial partners. In 2001, Carmeliet documented that low VEGF levels in mice and in humans cause motorneuron degeneration, similar to patients suffering the incurable disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). These studies not only provide evidence for a role of VEGF in neurodegeneration, but also opened new research avenues and therapeutic opportunities, which have resulted in clinical tests of VEGF delivery for ALS patients. Carmeliet is currently interested in the neurovascular link. Dr Carmeliet's achievements have been recognized by several Honors and Awards, such as Ernst Jung Medical Award 2010, Hamburg, Germany; Joseph Maisin Prize for Excellence 2010 for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Belgium; Doctor Honoris Causa, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Germany (2010); ERC Advanced Research Grant (2010); Member of the German Academy of Science Leopoldina (2009); Francqui Chair, University of Louvain-Brussels, Belgium; 2007: Lucian Award for research in Circulatory Disease, Canada, Francqui Chair (Brussels); 2006: Sheila Essay Award, San Diego; Francqui Chair (Liège); 2005: Interbrew Baillet Latour Health Prize; 2002: Nobel Forum Lecture (invited by Nobel Committee); Franqui Prize, Belgium; Harvey’s Centennial Celebration Lecture, Italy; Outstanding Investigator Award; 1999: Elected member of EMBO; 1995: Marion Barnhart Memorial Award.
Timothy Newman (UK)
Biophysics, University of Dundee
W www.dundee.ac.uk
E t.newman@dundee.ac.uk
Resume
Prof Newman received his BA in Physics from the University of Oxford in 1988, and his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Manchester in 1991. His doctoral and post-doctoral training focused on the quantitative understanding of non-equilibrium processes in physical systems (such as fluids, magnets, and superconductors). In 2000, while at the University of Virginia, Prof Newman began studying biological systems, focusing initially on population dynamics. He joined the physics faculty of Arizona State University in 2002, and around that time his interests shifted more to multicellular, cellular, and intracellular dynamics. In 2008 Prof Newman became Director of the Arizona State University Center for Biological Physics. He accepted the position of Professor of Biophysics and SULSA Research Chair in Systems Biology at the University of Dundee in January 2011, and, on moving to the UK, took over as new Editor-in-Chief of the UK biophysics journal, Physical Biology. The main emphasis of his work is understanding and quantifying the effect of fluctuations due to the discreteness of components in complex biological systems. His research utilises both large-scale computer simulations and analysis of stochastic processes. He is currently working on three main problems: multicellular dynamics in embryo development, rare event statistics of metastasis formation, and spatio-temporal fluctuations in intracellular interactions.
Hans Roubos (NL)
DSM Biotechnology Centre, Delft
W www.dsm.com
E hans.roubos@dsm.com
Resume
Hans Roubos is senior scientist Bioinformatics at the DSM Biotechnology Centre (Delft, NL). Before, he received an M.Sc. degree (1997) in Bioprocess Engineering from Wageningen UR and a PhD degree in Biotechnology and Systems&Control Engineering at Delft University of Technology (2002) for his work on bioprocess modelling and optimisation, applied to clavulanic acid production in Streptomyces clavuligerus. Thereafter, he worked as a consultant at HaloteC. Since 2003, he has been with DSM and was involved in various bioinformatics, genomics, enzyme engineering and metabolic engineering projects. He published over 15 journal articles and contributed to 7 book chapters. Main area of interest is microbial strain development with a focus on synthetic biology, mathematical models and bioinformatics.
Luis Serrano (ES)
Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG-EMBO), Barcelona
W pasteur.crg.es
E luis.serrano@crg.es
Resume
Luis Serrano did his Ph.D. at the CBM (Madrid, Spain) on Cell Biology. Then he spent four years in the laboratory of Prof. A.R. Fehrs (MRC, UK) working on protein folding. In 1993, he became groupl leader at the EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) working on protein folding and design. Ten years later, he was appointed head of the Structural&Computational Biology programme at the EMBL and he started to work on systems biology. By the end of 2006 he moved back to Spain to lead a programme working on systems biology, where he was appointed vice-director before finally becoming the CRG director last July 2011. His group is currently focused on synthetic biology, engineering and designing of biological systems. He is EMBO and RACEFyN member and received the Marie Curie Excellence Award. He has also been awarded with the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant and participates as principal investigator in many research projects financed both by the European Commission (through the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. He is Professor of ICREA and has directed 12 Ph.D. theses. He has published more than 240 papers in international journals. He has always been very mindful about the importance of the successful transfer of scientific discoveries to the society. He was involved in the creation of one of the first Spanish biotech companies (Diverdrugs) in 1999. He is also co-founder of Cellzome, EnVivo and TRISKEL. Some of his work has been commented in Spanish newspapers (El Pais, LaVanguardia, El Mundo...), in the radio and other journals like Newsweek.
Xinguang Zhu (CN)
CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai
W www.picb.ac.cn/PSB/
E xinguang.zhu@gmail.com
Resume
Plants are the ultimate source of food, fiber, and energy for our society. More and more theoretical and field evidences suggest that further dramatic increase in crop yields can only come from improved photosynthesis. Our group combines computational and experimental approaches to identify new options to increase photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency.
Education:
Ph.D., 2004, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (US), Advisor: Prof. Stephen P. Long. Thesis: Computational approaches to guiding biotechnological improvements in crop photosynthetic efficiency
Employment:
2008 – Present: Junior group leader, Partner Institute for Computational Biology, German Max Planck and Chinese Academy of Sciences; Joint PI in Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, SIBS, Shanghai, CN.
2006 – 2008 Research Scientist, Department of Plant Biology, UIUC, US.
2004 – 2006 Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Department of Plant Biology/Department of Computer Science, UIUC, US.
