Speakers

  • Valentina Boeva
    Institut Cochin, Paris, France
    Valentina Boeva is a group leader at the Institut Cochin / Inserm U1016, Paris. The research objective of her team is to understand the link between genetic and epigenetic changes in cancer and decipher the role of epigenetic modifications in cancer development and progression. The team welcomes both experimental and bioinformatics approaches. Valentina and her group designed and implemented bioinformatics tools in two main areas: (i) Analysis of genomic alterations in cancer genomes: FREEC/Control-FREEC, SVDetect, SV-Bay, ONCOCNV, QuantumClone; and (ii) Analysis of ChIP-seq data: MICSA, HMCan, HMCan-diff and Nebula (http://boevalab.com/tools.html). The team also develops computational techniques for integration of high-throughput data applied to cancer research.
  • Charles Cantor
    Agena Biosciences, Sequenom, Retrotope and Boston University, USA
    Dr. Charles Cantor is a co-founder, and retired Chief Scientific Officer at SEQUENOM, Inc., the leading provider of noninvasive prenatal diagnostic testing. He consults for a number of biotech companies including SEQUENOM, AgenaBiosciences, Strand Life Sciences, Trovagene, Ann Jema, ProdermIQ, In Silico Biology, and he is executive director of Retrotope. (which he also co-founded) Dr. Cantor is professor emeritus of Biomedical Engineering and of Pharmacology and was the director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He is currently adjunct professor of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, adjunct professor of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Institute for Research, distinguished adjunct professor of Physiology and Biophysics at UC Irvine and adjunct professor at the Moscow institute of Physics and Technology. Prior to this, Dr. Cantor held positions in Chemistry and then in Genetics and Development at Columbia University and in Molecular Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Cantor was educated in chemistry at Columbia College (AB) and at the University of California Berkeley (PhD). Dr. Cantor has been granted more than 60 US patents and, with Paul Schimmel, wrote a three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry. He also co-authored the first textbook on Genomics titled ‘The Science and Technology of the Human Genome Project’. In addition, he has published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. and The National Academy of Inventors. His major scientific accomplishments include the development of pulsed field electrophoresis, immuno-PCR, affinity capture electrophoresis, the earliest uses of FRET to characterize distances in protein complexes and nucleic acids, the standard methods for assaying and purifying microtubule protein, various applications of nucleic acid mass spectrometry, and methods for noninvasive prenatal diagnostics. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the new field of synthetic biology.
  • Gabriele Dubini
    LaBS, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
    Gabriele Dubini received his master degree (MSc) in Mechanical Engineering cum laude in 1988 and his PhD degree in Bioengineering in 1993 from Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.
    In 1993 and 1994 he worked as a Research Assistant in the Cardiothoracic Unit of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children – NHS Trust, London, UK. An Assistant Professor of Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer at the Energy Engineering Department of Politecnico di Milano (1996), he was then appointed Associate Professor (2001) and Full Professor (2007) of Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano.
    From 2003 to 2007 Gabriele Dubini was the Director of the Laboratory of Biological Structure Mechanics (LaBS, www.labsmech.polimi.it) of Politecnico di Milano. He was a member of the Scientific Panel of the Coordination Centre on NanoBiotechnologies and Nanomedicine at Politecnico di Milano from 2007 to 2012. From 2008 to 2012 he was a member (elected) of the Council of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) and the Secretary-General for the 2010-12 biennium. Former Coordinator of the Biological Engineering Section at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering ‘Giulio Natta’ (2013-2017), he has been recently appointed the Deputy Director of the Department.
    Most of Gabriele Dubini’s research activity has dealt with experimental and computational Biomechanics. His research has covered a number of topics, such as microcirculation, the hemodynamic optimization of blood circulation after pediatric cardiac surgery procedures, heat and mass transfer in tissues and medical devices, preoperative planning of minimally invasive vascular procedures. His most recent research interests are in the field of the design and characterization of microfluidic devices for medical and biotechnological applications.
  • Olivier Elemento
    Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA
    I direct the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, an Institute that focuses on using genomics and informatics to make medicine more individualized. My research group and I combine Big Data with experimentation and genomic profiling to accelerate the discovery of cancer cures. In cancers, we are elucidating the patterns of aberrant pathway activities, rewiring of regulatory networks and cancer mutations that have occurred in cancer cells. We are also trying to understand how tumors evolve at the genomic and epigenomic level. We use high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, bisulfite conversion followed by sequencing – specifically RRBS-, ATAC-seq, exome capture and sequencing, single cell RNAseq using DropSeq) to decipher epigenetic mechanisms and regulatory networks at play in malignant cells and study how they affect gene expression. Our research has led to the development of the first New York State approved whole exome sequencing test for oncology, which is now used routinely on patients treated at Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork Presbyterian Hospital. I have had the privilege to mentor over 15 wonderful Weill Cornell graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
  • Abel David González-Pérez IRB, Barcelona, Spain
    Biochemist with a PhD in Bioinformatics, with more than 40 articles published in international peer-reviewed journals. He main expertise area is cancer genomics, with seven years of postdoctoral experience within Dr. Nuria Lopez-Bigas lab. He is currently a Ramon y Cajal fellow and a Research Associate within the lab, which is within the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). He has participated in several international cancer genomics initiatives, such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), and he is currently part of the scientific committee of the Spanish Group of Breast Cancer Research.
  • Bertrand Adanve Genetic Intelligence, Inc, New York, USA
    CEO and co-Founder of Genetic Intelligence, a New York-based startup that is pioneering AI-based genetic systems that pinpoint the causal genetic features at the basis of inherited disease in order to bring about curative therapeutics and swift diagnostics for everyone. Bertrand holds a Ph.D in chemistry and bioengineering from Columbia University. His varied experience include leading a residential construction business to pay for college, extensive work with biotech-startup incubator Acidophil, and management consultancy at McKinsey & company. He delights in self-learning including history, AI applications, and distributed systems.
  • Daniele Merico
    Director of Molecular Genetics, Deep Genomics Inc., Toronto, Canada
    Daniele Merico received his Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology and his Master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Universita di Milano-Bicocca (2003 and 2005, respectively). He then received his Molecular and Cellular Biology PhD from Universita di Milano (2009).

    Daniele Merico was a post-doctoral fellow under the supervision of Drs. Gary D. Bader and Andrew Emili (Donnelly Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada) from 2009 to 2011. His post-doctoral activity focused on pathway and network analysis of gene expression microarray and proteomics data applied to cardiomiopathy and tumor mouse models.

    Since 2011, Daniele Merico manages the bioinformatics core facility at TCAG (The Centre for Applied Genomics, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada), under the direction of Dr. Stephen W. Scherer. As a core facility manager, he is responsible for the next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis pipelines, including human whole exome and whole genome resequencing and variant annotation, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, methyl-seq, de-novo transcriptome and genome assembly. His current research interests are focused on genome annotation for clinical applications, disease gene discovery for rare disorders, as well as pathway/network analysis of rare genetic variants in autism and schizophrenia.

    Daniele Merico has authored or co-authored 18 peer-reviewed Pubmed-indexed journal articles, 3 peer-reviewed journal articles indexed by other services, as well as 4 peer-reviewed articles published as conference proceedings.

  • Bud Mishra
    Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Tandon School of Engineering, NYU, New York, USA
    Professor Bud Mishra is an educator, an inventor, and a mentor to technologists, entrepreneurs, and scientists. Professor Mishra founded the NYU/Courant Bioinformatics Group, a multidisciplinary group working on research at the interface of computer science, applied mathematics, biology, biomedicine, and bio/nanotechnologies as well as the Tandon-Online program on Bioinformatics Engineering. He has industrial experience in computer and data science (aiNexusLab, ATTAP, behold.ai, brainiad, Genesis Media, Pypestream, and Tartan Laboratories), finance (Instadat, Pattern Recognition Fund, and Tudor Investment), robotics, and bio/nanotechnologies (Abraxis, Bioarrays, InSilico, MRTech, OpGen, and Seqster).
    Professor Mishra is currently a professor of computer science and mathematics at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, professor of engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, professor of human genetics at MSSM Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, visiting scholar in quantitative biology at CSHL Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and professor of cell biology at NYU SoM School of Medicine. He has a degree in science from Utkal University, in electronics and communication engineering from IIT, Kharagpur, and MS and PhD degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a fellow of IEEE, ACM, AAAS, and National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT (Kharagpur), and a NYSTAR Distinguished Professor