Antti Aalto received his PhD in microbiology from the University of Helsinki (Finland), and conducted postdoctoral studies at UC San Diego (USA). He worked in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands before arriving at VTT Technical Research Center of Finland in 2020. Since 2022 he has been the leader of the Protein Production team, which focuses on basic and applied research of filamentous fungi as cell factories for protein production.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Julyana Acevedo is a scientist in the analytical development department at Sangamo Therapeutics, a genomics medicine company. At Sangamo, she has established and developed potency and purity assays to ensure strength and safety of AAV-based gene therapies. For this work, she has utilized methods such as bioassays, ELISAs, ddPCR and CE-Western among others to characterize AAV drug products for several programs. Julyana obtained her PhD in molecular biology from the University of Southern California. She has been involved in analytical development for biologics since 2020, with broad experience in early/ late phase analytical development and CMC.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Emel Adaligil is a Senior Scientific Manager at Genentech where she leads macrocycle discovery and mRNA display platform. She received her PhD in chemistry from Tufts University where she developed peptide antibiotics composed of D-amino acids active against S. aureus and MRSA with the same action mechanism of vancomycin. Then, she completed her postdoc studies at Genentech working on developing cell-permeable macrocyclic peptides, structure elucidation of macrocyclic peptides by NMR spectroscopy, and computational methods and technology development of mRNA display platform.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

J. Javier Aguilera earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he investigated the distinct effects of glycosaminoglycans on protein folding and aggregation of Serum Amyloid A isotypes. He conducted postdoctoral research in virology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where he studied gp120 variants and engineered pseudoviruses to better understand interactions with CD4 receptors and neutralizing antibodies. At PPD, he gained expertise in GxP principles, later advancing his bioanalytical skills at BioAgilytix in Cambridge, MA. Today, Javier applies his broad experience to clinical research and development at Moderna, supporting ADA, APA, PK- PD and biomarker programs for mRNA-based therapies within the Bioanalytical and Molecular Assays team.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Cristian is a skilled scientist with a background in biotechnology and protein science. After earning a Bachelor's in Pharmacology from UCSB, Cristian began his career at Quidel where he contributed to the development and optimization of immunoassays. More recently, he works at BMS within the Discovery Biotherapeutics department. Cristian focuses on optimizing purification strategies, scaling up processes, and developing innovative solutions for challenging biologics.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Alex Alexandrov is an Associate Director at Abilita Therapeutics in San Diego, CA, with over 20 years of experience in the biotech industry. In his current role, he manages programs and provides technical leadership, focusing on protein expression, protein engineering, membrane protein production, and MSP nanodisc formulations. Recently, Alex has specialized in antibody discovery, employing techniques such as phage display and biophysical characterization assays to evaluate the developability of therapeutic candidates. His expertise has been instrumental in advancing early-stage drug discovery, particularly in oncology. Alex earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and completed postdoctoral studies at UC San Francisco and the Scripps Research Institute.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

I have had a long interest in the engineering of antibodies for therapeutic use. Following my PhD, I humanised antibodies at Scotgen Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Aberdeen, UK from 1991 to 95. I then focused on the engineering and functions of constant regions in Mike Clark’s group, University of Cambridge, UK, in collaboration with NHS Blood and Transplant, tailoring the Fc for different indications. In 2017, I joined LifeArc, a not-for-profit life science organisation, where I now lead the antibody engineering team.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

No bio available.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

My career path at Genentech started with PhD in Biophysics at Indian Institute of Science and post-doctoral studies in Molecular and Cell Biology Department under the mentorship of Randy Schekman at UC Berkeley. I started my career in Genentech in 2013 as a Cancer Biologist and gained extensive research and project lead experience in handling small molecule drug discovery project working along with cross-functional teams. Currently, I am leading a team in Protein Sciences Department as a Scientific manager and helping the group to grow in new directions by introducing and streamlining new high-throughput automated workflows to support protein expression and production.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Kellon A. A. Belfon, Ph.D., is a Senior Computational Chemist at Parabilis Medicines, specializing in molecular modeling, protein dynamics, and peptide drug design. He has expertise in molecular dynamics, free energy calculations, forcefield development, and AI-driven co-folding methods, with a focus on advancing peptide-based therapeutics. At Parabilis, he leads computational efforts that integrate AI-driven modeling with physics-based simulations and high-throughput screening to optimize the affinity, stability, cytosolic exposure, and pharmacokinetics of novel peptides. His prior experience includes roles at Roivant Sciences, internships at Genentech and Merck, and doctoral research in the Simmerling Lab at Stony Brook University, where he contributed to protein forcefield development and investigations into the dynamics of viral proteins such as coronavirus spike mutants. A decorated U.S. Army veteran and recipient of the NIH NRSA Fellowship and the Intel/ACM Computational Science Fellowship, Dr. Belfon is committed to applying computational innovation to accelerate next-generation drug discovery.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Ashok Bhandari is Executive Vice President, Chief Drug Discovery and Preclinical Development officer at Protagonist Therapeutics with over 25 years of experience and drug discovery of peptide therapeutics. Dr. Bhandari has served as SVP/VP of Chemistry and Process Research in prior roles at Protagonist. Ashok Joined Protagonist in 2011 and focused on the discovery of novel peptide therapeutics leading to Protagonist's clinical pipeline. Dr. Bhandari received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) and conducted his post-doctoral work also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Gaurav Bhardwaj is an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington and the Institute for Protein Design. He received his doctoral degree from the Pennsylvania State University. He did his postdoc with Dr. Kit Lam at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. David Baker at the University of Washington, Seattle. His lab focuses on developing computational and experimental methods to design peptides for therapeutic applications.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Prabhat Bhat is a Research Senior Associate in Dr. Dehua Pei’s lab, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on developing a modular, cell-permeable protein delivery platform capable of transporting diverse therapeutic cargoes-including peptides and enzymes-across cellular membranes and in vivo. His work has contributed to multiple publications and patent filings. Prabhat is particularly interested in overcoming intracellular delivery barriers that limit the translational potential of protein- and peptide-based drugs. By engineering delivery domains and evaluating pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, and therapeutic efficacy in preclinical models, he aims to advance next-generation biologics toward clinical application. His broader interests include drug delivery, chemical biology, and translational therapeutics.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Alex Blanco is a scientist at Nabla Bio, where she focuses on de novo antibody design using generative AI and high-throughput experimental validation. Her work contributes to the development of novel therapeutics targeting challenging proteins, including GPCRs and other multipass membrane proteins. Prior to joining Nabla, Alex earned her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she studied HIV latency and immune cell modeling and worked at AbbVie in oncology target discovery.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Dr. Bogyo is a Professor of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University. He received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Bates College in 1993 and a doctorate in Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. Dr. Bogyo established an independent scientific career as a Faculty Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco in 1998. In 2001, Dr. Bogyo established the Chemical Proteomics Department at Celera Genomics focused on applying small molecule probes to the field of drug discovery. Dr. Bogyo then joined the Department of Pathology at Stanford University in July 2003 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and to full professor in 2013. Dr. Bogyo has published over 300 primary research publications and currently serves on the Editorial Board of several journals. Dr. Bogyo is also a member of Stanford’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) and is a consultant for several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in the Bay Area. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Searle Scholar Award, The Terman Fellowship and the Burroughs Wellcome Investigators in Pathogenesis award. He is the co-founder of Akrotome Imaging, a company developing imaging contrast agents for detection of surgical margins.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Steven Bowen Ph.D., is a former Investigator and Director of FDA’s Team Biologics in what is now the Office of Inspections and Investigations (OII) where he participated in and oversaw inspections and compliance activities for CBER-regulated biologic drugs including vaccines, cell and gene therapies, and human plasma derivatives. He also spent 5 years in CDER’s Office of Biotechnology Products as a CMC reviewer and Team Leader, managing the review of CMC information in IND and BLA applications including the development and validation of manufacturing processes and analytical methods for recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies. Steven has a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD before joining the FDA in 2014. He is currently a Principal Consultant at Eliquent Life Sciences, advising clients on CMC strategy and GMP compliance for biologics.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Born and raised in Trenton, NJ, Dr. Bowers obtained his BA from the University of Chicago and went on to complete his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2007, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, under the guidance of Prof. David Crich. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Professor Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School, where he studied the chemistry and biosynthesis of peptide-based natural products. In 2012, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is jointly appointed in the School of Pharmacy and Department of Chemistry. The labs research focuses on biochemical and biosynthetic methods for the discovery of new peptide therapeutics, including mRNA display and macrocycles. For this work, Dr. Bowers has won a number of awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award and Young Investigator Award of the Boulder Peptide Society.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

No bio available.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

No bio available.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Robert is currently the Acting Leader of the Biomolecular Structure and Function Group at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR), a joint research institute of the University of Maryland and NIST, in Rockville, Maryland. Robert applies biophysical measurements to define structure and dynamics of biologics, including the emerging platform of oligonucleotide therapeutics. In particular, Robert seeks to push the limits of NMR methodologies to provide a multi-attribute assessment of structure and structure-related parameters for drug substances. Robert received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Wake Forest University in 2005. He then entered the field of structural biology as a NIH/NIST NRC postdoctoral fellow under John Marino (NIST) and Stuart Le Grice (NCI). Under their direction, Robert performed high resolution NMR studies on important nucleic acid elements from various viruses.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Oleg Brodsky is a principal scientist in the Structural Biology and Protein Sciences group at Pfizer, which is part of the medicinal chemistry department and larger Pfizer worldwide research and development organization. With 20 years of experience in high-throughput structure-based drug design techniques, Oleg has supported early-stage drug discovery efforts in various therapeutic areas, with current focus primarily on oncology targets. In his current role, Oleg is responsible for protein expression, purification, and biophysical characterization of various recombinant protein targets in support of high throughput screening, biochemical assay development, and structural characterization efforts. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2004, Oleg spent several years at Syrrx, a small biotechnology company focused on developing and optimizing high-throughput, parallel protein expression and purification technologies and workflows. Oleg received his B.S. degree in Bioengineering from UC San Diego in 2001, and after joining Pfizer completed his M.B.A. from UC Irvine in 2008.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Mary Ann Brown joined Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) in 1992 as a Data Entry Associate. At that time CHI was a start-up company with many roles to fill and explore. She quickly realized that conference production which combined creativity and love of learning was the path for her. Mary Ann’s conference portfolio is varied from biologics to batteries where she is organizes over 15 scientific meetings a year along with being a Team Lead for several Key Events. Mary Ann graduated from Doane College in 1978 with degrees in Biology, Environmental Studies, and Geology.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Nicola obtained a First Class degree in Applied Biochemical Sciences from the University of Ulster in 1997, then worked as a molecular biologist for SmithKline Beecham. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Nottingham in 2001 and moved back to industry to work on high-throughput cloning and validation of therapeutic cancer antigens for Oxford Glycosciences and subsequently Celltech R&D. Nicola then worked at the University of Oxford for 17 years, building and leading the Biotechnology Group at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) and more recently, as an Associate Professor, and Head of the Protein Production Small Research Facility (SRF) in the Centre for Medicines Discovery (CMD). From September 2021, she led the Enzymology and Protein Engineering Team at Exact Sciences Innovation in Oxford, producing proteins for cancer diagnostic research. Since January 2024, she rejoined the SGC, working as a consultant (Chief Operating Officer, Protein Sciences) coordinating protein production across the 6 SGC sites and recently started as a Professorial Research Fellow in Protein Sciences at UCL in London.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Mark is a senior executive and serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience and a proven ability to innovate and transform R&D concepts into successful commercial products. Most recently, as founder and CEO/CTO of Lassogen, Inc., Mark focused on advancing lasso peptides as a new class of programmable therapeutics for treating challenging diseases such as cancer. Previously, Mark served as CTO at Genomatica, where he built the team, IP portfolio, product pipeline, and technology platform to rationally engineer metabolic pathways and microorganisms for small molecule biosynthesis and commercial manufacture. Prior to Genomatica, Mark was SVP and Head of R&D at Diversa Corporation, where he led a large team that leveraged state-of-the-art metagenomics, environmental library screening, and directed evolution technologies to develop a range of enzyme products with applications in food, nutrition, animal feed, and pharmaceuticals. Prior to Diversa, Mark was a director at Chiroscience Pharmaceuticals, a U.K. company focused on developing chiral drugs (e.g., levobupivacaine) and technologies for accelerating drug discovery (acquired by Celltech). Mark was a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Duke University for four years, following five years in Central Research at DuPont, where he invented the DuPHOS technology for the generation of novel amino acids, peptides, and other therapeutics. Mark received a B.A. in chemistry (minor in philosophy) from Rutgers University. He earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Yale University and performed postdoctoral work at MIT with Nobel laureate Barry Sharpless. Mark has published over 85 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and is an inventor on over 200 issued patents. Mark has received many honors and awards and has presented over 300 lectures at major conferences and universities.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Dr. Harmen J. Bussemaker is a Professor of Biological Sciences and Systems Biology at Columbia University and co-founder of Metric Biotechnologies, Inc. He leads a research team that develops computational methods integrating next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and machine learning to model protein function. His group was among the first to apply language models and deep learning to the interpretation of non-coding DNA, and continues to advance biophysically interpretable machine learning approaches. These methods allow for highly accurate quantification and prediction of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions, using large-scale NGS datasets.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Fei Cai, Ph.D. in Biochemistry, is a Scientist IV at Genentech. Before joining Genentech, she worked as a project scientist for many years at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in synthetic biology and macromolecular assemblies. In 2017, she joined the Diversity Display Lab, led by Dr. Yingnan Zhang, at the Early Discovery Biochemistry department of Genentech. Since then, she has been involved in numerous projects aimed at discovering therapeutic peptide binders for disease-related targets, utilizing phage display, yeast surface display, and mRNA display as technology platforms. Over the past four years, she has been deeply involved in collaborative projects with DeepSeq.AI, focusing on AI-assisted peptide library design and screening.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Maria Calderon Vaca holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and a Master’s in Business and Science. She is a PhD student at the University of Miami in the Department of Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering, working in the Soft Matter Product Design Lab. Her research aims to transform product development into a data-driven process by uncovering how protein interactions, from the molecular to the bulk scale, influence formulation performance, using advanced characterization techniques. Maria brings six years of R&D experience in the personal care industry, applying formulation insights from that sector to biopharmaceutical challenges, and is passionate about science communication and mentoring the next generation of researchers.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Edson Norberto Carcamo-Noriega is a founding scientific member, Investigator, and Head of Biochemistry at AI Proteins, where he leads the development of high-throughput protein production and automation protocols. His pioneering workflows enable the production of over 1000 high-purity proteins per week, achieving an optimized, four-day transition from DNA to protein. He has a PhD in Biochemical Science with Honorable Mention at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and his MSci in Health Science, also with Honorable Mention, at Universidad de Sonora in Mexico. His postdoctoral work included advanced biochemical and biological characterization of scorpion venom, focusing on isolating toxins with specificity for human sodium and potassium channels and identifying small molecules with antibiotic potential. He further refined his expertise by optimizing antibody fragment (scFv) expression in bacterial and yeast systems and conducting toxicological evaluations for antivenom applications. In his subsequent work at the Institute for Protein Innovation, Dr. Carcamo-Noriega specialized in de novo protein design and high-throughput production, which now serves as a cornerstone of his contributions to AI Proteins. His comprehensive training and research background in molecular biology, heterologous protein expression, purification, and characterization have positioned him as a leader in high-throughput protein production and characterization.

• Peptide Targets: Discovery, Expression, and Validation

Nikki Cerniuk has a background in T cell therapy research. She enjoyed the science, but wanted to lend herself to broader applications that offered more opportunities for collaboration. She joined Cambridge Heathtech Institute as a Conference Producer in 2022. Her love of continuous learning, science, and communication proved her to be a excellent complement to the role. Nikki graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Florida with a degree in Cell and Molecular Biology.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Henry Chiou recently retired as Senior Director and General Manager for the Delivery and Protein Expression business within Biosciences at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Spanning 30+ years, he and his teams have developed products such as the Expi family of 293, CHO and Sf9-based expression systems, Lipofectamine 3000, and other Lipofectamine-family transfection reagents, production systems for cell and gene therapy viral vectors such as AAV MAX system, Neon and Neon NxT electroporation instruments and most recently, a panel of high performance, low toxicity LNP lipid reagents. Henry has authored multiple publications on mammalian transient expression and frequently teaches courses and lectures on this subject. Prior to joining Thermo Fisher, Henry worked in small to mid-sized biotech companies on non-viral gene therapy. Henry received his doctorate from Harvard University in Molecular Pharmacology, following which he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in viral expression systems at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the biomedical engineering department at Johns Hopkins University, working in the laboratory of Professor Jamie Spangler. I received my B.S. from the University of Wisconsin in Biochemistry and Mathematics. I then worked for 2 years engineering antibodies against cancer targets at the immunotherapy startup Invenra prior to beginning graduate studies in biochemistry at the University of Oregon, working in the laboratory of Professor Mike Harms. My Ph.D. thesis focused on characterization of ligand recognition by the innate immune receptor Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), incorporating both mechanistic and evolutionary perspectives. In my current position, I am working on generating and characterizing multispecific antibody-drug conjugates against PD-L1. In my research, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach that integrates protein engineering, biophysical measurements, in vitro functional assays, in vivo experiments, and computational modeling.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Mark received his training from: BA Biophysics at UC Berkeley, PhD Biochemistry at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and conducting postdoctoral work at ETH-Zürich and Biozentrum of University of Basel. His work experience has spanned from being an Organic Chemist at Microgenics developing chemical conjugation of enzymes; Chemistry Professor at Seton Hall University getting grants on prokaryotic membrane protein biochemistry; Research Investigator at Abbott Labs on Mammalian Membrane Protein Drug Discovery; Associate Director at Janssen Research and Development leading the Process Analytical Sciences Team responsible for clinical development of biotherapeutics, cell, and gene therapies. He is now CSO for Tavotek Biotherapeutics working on differentiated products for auto-immune and oncology diseases.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Dr. Pei-Hsuan Chu is an accomplished scientist with over 15 years of experience in high-throughput screening, protein engineering, and translational science. As the Associate Director in Biologics Engineering at AstraZeneca, she has led the design and implementation of sophisticated automated workflows that have transformed the way therapeutic antibodies are discovered. Her expertise in creating scalable, automated platforms has resulted in significant improvements in speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for antibody production pipelines. These contributions have delivered a measurable impact, from NGS-based validation methods to high-throughput antibody production that reduces bottlenecks in production and accelerates candidate selection.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Dr. Matthew A. Coleman is a senior biomedical staff scientist and group leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well an adjunct professor in the department of Radiation Oncology at University of California Davis School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry from Boston University. Dr. Coleman has authored over 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals, published proceedings and book chapters covering a diverse breadth of molecular biology and biochemistry. He has over 25 years experience in developing biotechnology and characterizing genomic responses of genotoxic stressors.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

I have held my current position in the Department of Chemistry at Oklahoma State University since 2014 after moving from the University of California San Diego where I worked as a Staff Scientist at the Center for NMR Spectroscopy and Imaging of Proteins. I graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor’s degree as a Biology major and Chemistry minor. I then attended Kansas State University where I earned a PhD in Biochemistry in the lab of Dr. John Tomich. My research dissertation focused on the channel activity and structures of several channel-forming peptides derived from the human M2 glycine receptor in an effort to develop therapeutics for the treatment of channelopathies such as Cystic Fibrosis. I then moved to the University of California San Diego as a Post Doctoral Scholar in the lab of Dr. Stanley Opella where my studies focused on the structural and dynamic characterization of the membrane viroporin protein p7 from Hepatitis C Virus for the development of anti-HCV drugs. My current research interest is in determining the structure, dynamics, and interactions of membrane glycoproteins. Glycoproteins are a large class of proteins, taking part in nearly every biological process. They participate in the immune system as antibodies and as factors in the major histocompatibility complex interacting with T cells as part of a the adaptive immune response. They are also involved in white blood cell recognition, cell growth, differentiation, cell-cell interactions, and protein folding. Glycoproteins are also indicators for various cancers. A large number of important glycoproteins are integral membrane proteins. They can be found in the lipid bilayers that make up the plasma membrane and the membranes of organelles. Two of the proteins that my lab is specifically interested in are Sarcoglycan, involved in maintaining the integrity of muscle cells, and whose malfunction can lead to Muscular Dystrophy; and Syndecan, a protein used as a marker for several cancers including breast and prostate. Understanding the properties of these important macromolecules is an incredibly important component to the development of treatments of human disease involving glycoproteins.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Chris joined CHARM Therapeutics, an AI-driven biotech company as Director and Head of Protein Sciences in 2022. CHARM’s research focuses on novel approaches for cancer drug discovery using protein and ligand co-folding algorithms for hard-to-drug targets. Prior to this, Chris was the Director of Protein Science at Peak Proteins, but for most of his career he studied the biochemistry and structural molecular biology of DNA repair and replication. He was a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield for 6 years and performed his postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, working at the Structural Genomics Consortium and Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. During this period Chris was also a College Lecturer in Biochemistry at The Queen’s College, and a Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Christa Cortesio, PhD, is a Director at Kite Pharma, a Gilead Company. She has more than 12 years of biochemistry-related industry experience and currently leads a team at Kite Pharma focused on the design, production, and characterization of critical protein reagents to support CAR T cell discovery and drug development efforts. Dr. Cortesio received her PhD in biomolecular chemistry with Anna Huttenlocher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied mechanisms of cell migration and cancer cell invasion. Subsequently, she did postdoctoral work aimed at understanding cytoskeletal regulation during clathrin-mediated endocytosis with David Drubin at the University of California, Berkeley. Christa has authored 17 manuscripts published in several journals, including Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Cell Science, and Scientific Reports.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

David Craik is a Group Leader and Professor of Chemistry at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and undertook postdoctoral studies at Florida State University and Syracuse University before taking up a lectureship at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1983. He was appointed Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Head of School in 1988. He moved to University of Queensland in 1995 to set up a new biomolecular NMR laboratory, and is currently a UQ Laureate Fellow and the Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science. His research focuses on applications of cyclic peptides, toxins, and NMR in drug design. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society and has received numerous national and international awards for his research, including the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award from the American Chemical Society. He has authored more than 850 papers and has trained 100 Ph.D. students over his career.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Dr. Lieza Danan is a scientist, two-time biotech entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of LiVeritas Biosciences, a full-stack AI company reinventing analytical testing for biologics and regulated therapeutics. With a PhD in Biological Chemistry and over a decade of experience leading mass spectrometry, analytical development, and quality control functions across startups and global labs, she brings deep technical expertise and operational insight to regulated method development. Under her leadership, LiVeritas has contributed to over 10 IND and BLA submissions by deploying GxP-ready, AI-native infrastructure that integrates assay design, validation, and regulatory automation. Her work spans advanced structural characterization, post-translational modification analysis, and automated workflows for high-throughput labs. A champion of regenerative leadership and system integrity, Dr. Danan is building a new standard for compliance-first innovation in biotherapeutics.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Charlotte Deane, MBE, is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, Executive Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Co-Founder of Dalton Tx. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served on SAGE, the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and acted as UK Research and Innovation’s COVID-19 Response Director. In 2025, Charlotte was elected as a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). At Oxford, Charlotte leads the Oxford Protein Informatics Group (OPIG), which works on diverse problems across immunoinformatics, protein structure and small molecule drug discovery using statistics, AI and computation to generate biological and medical insight. Charlotte’s research focuses on the development of novel algorithms, tools and databases which are openly available to the community. They are widely used in both academia and industry and embedded in pharmaceutical drug discovery pipelines. She is a member of several advisory boards and has consulted extensively with industry, having also established a consulting arm within her research group as a way of promoting industrial interaction and use of the group’s software tools. Charlotte is part of the team leading OpenBind, a £8 million government-backed consortium aiming to create the world’s largest open dataset of drug-protein interactions to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery. She also serves as one of five experts advising the UK Government’s new AI for Science strategy, which aims to boost AI adoption across research and accelerate scientific discovery.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Iskandar Dib received his education at Graz University of Technology and the Research Center Applied Biocatalysis. After obtaining his PhD he joined the team of VALIDOGEN where he is now heading the DSP and Analytics department. His areas of expertise include process development for up- and downstream processes applying DoE tools for process understanding. Furthermore, he has a key role in business development, discussing and designing projects in close collaboration with clients to best meet their development needs.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Hardik Dodia is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, where he works on metabolomics for human health, with a focus on metabotyping. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where his research centered on model-guided bioprocess optimization for recombinant protein production. By integrating mass spectrometry-based spent media analysis with dynamic flux balance modeling, his work provided strategies to improve titers and productivity in microbial systems. Dr. Dodia completed B.Tech. in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, giving him a strong command of pharmaceutical chemistry. His expertise in bioprocess development, metabolomics, and computational modeling is reflected in multiple publications in these research domains, and his work has been recognized with the Ph.D. Excellence Award from IIT Bombay. Beyond academia, Dr. Dodia has consulted with industry on bioprocess and media development, bringing a translational perspective to emerging biomanufacturing challenges. His broader interests include advancing precision fermentation, biotherapeutics, and data-driven strategies for improving human health.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

As Chief Scientific Officer at Salubris Biotherapeutics, Dr. Dong leads the early-stage R&D pipeline across immuno-oncology, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases, spearheading activities from target identification and early drug discovery through candidate nomination, IND applications, early CMC, and clinical development. Her work encompasses diverse biological modalities, including antibody-protein fusions, multi-specific antibodies, and antibody drug conjugates. Prior to Salubris Biotherapeutics, Dr. Dong held various positions at prominent biotech companies, including Xilio Therapeutics, Alkermes, Novartis, and Flagship Pioneering portfolio companies. Throughout her career, Dr. Dong has successfully advanced multiple therapeutic programs through critical IND milestones. Dr. Dong earned her bachelor's degree from Peking University and her Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta. She completed postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Takashi is COO of GeneFrontier Corporation (GFC) since 2010, focusing on cell-free technology, especially the PURE system. He earned a Ph.D. in cell-free protein expression system from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2000, and co-founded GFC in 2003 after working in venture capital in life science industry.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

Ertan Eryilmaz is Vice President of Biologics at InduPro, where he leads the Molecular Discovery Engineering and Protein Sciences teams. He provides scientific leadership and strategic direction with a focus on advancing biologics from target identification through IND. Previously, Ertan was VP of Biologics at Xilio Therapeutics, directing discovery strategies for new biologics-based therapies. At Takeda Oncology, he managed antibody discovery campaigns, led technology development, and contributed to a robust immuno-oncology pipeline. Earlier, he headed the Biotherapeutics Engineering team at Agensys (Astellas Pharma), where his group discovered enfortumab vedotin (PADCEV), an FDA-approved nectin-4 ADC. He also contributed to bispecific antibody format development at Boehringer Ingelheim, with several candidates now in clinical trials. Ertan holds a B.S. in Physics from the Middle East Technical University and a Ph.D. in Physics from the City University of New York. He completed postdoctoral research at Weill Cornell Medical College and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and is an inventor on multiple patents and co-author of numerous publications in biologics R&D.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Esposito is currently the Director of the Protein Expression Laboratory (PEL) and Project Lead for the RAS Reagents Core at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in Frederick, Maryland. The 38 employees in the PEL clone, express, and purify proteins from a variety of host organisms in support of the NCI RAS Initiative and for investigators at the National Institutes of Health. In addition, the PEL invents and develops novel technologies for improving protein expression and production, focused heavily on baculovirus expression technology and combinatorial cloning. Prior to his role as director, Dr. Esposito led the Clone Optimization Group in the PEL for nine years and was responsible for the generation of over 15,000 expression clones, 400 new expression vectors, and several technological innovations in protein expression. Dr. Esposito received his B.A. in Chemistry at La Salle University in Philadelphia, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the laboratory of Dr. John Scocca at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School where he studied bacteriophage site-specific recombination. Dr. Esposito then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Craigie at the NIDDK, where he studied the protein-DNA interactions involved in the HIV integration reaction. Prior to joining the FNL in 2001, Dr. Esposito worked for three years as a Staff Scientist in the Protein Engineering group at Life Technologies, where he helped to develop the Gateway recombinational cloning system. Dr. Esposito has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the fields of protein expression and DNA recombination.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Iman is currently working as Director of High Throughput Protein Expression group in Biologics Discovery organization at Johnson and Johnson. Prior to this role, he worked in Protein Engineering group at Merck. He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering with focus in Synthetic Biology at Penn State University.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Dr. Felices received his Ph.D. in immunology from UMASS Medical School in 2008, where his research focused on innate and adaptive immune subsets. He then pursued an industry postdoctoral fellowship at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, in Cambridge, MA, in the Developmental and Molecular Pathways group where he studied signaling pathways involved in liver injury and tumorigenesis. In 2011 he joined the University of Minnesota as a T32 postdoctoral fellow in the division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, focusing his research on Natural Killer (NK) cell biology, prior to becoming an assistant professor. Dr. Felices’ group focuses on methodologies to improve NK cell immunotherapy, with a particular focus on cytokine signaling and development NK specific biologics. In recent years Dr. Felices has been dedicating most of his effort on a Tri-specific Killer Engager (TriKE) platform to target NK cells to tumors while providing a cytokine signal.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

As the Head of End-to-End AI Foundations for Large Molecules Research at Sanofi, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack spearheads strategic and operational AI and digital initiatives to revolutionize large molecule drug discovery. Yves is at the forefront of numerous digital transformation endeavors at Sanofi, driving the increased utilization and effectiveness of AI in drug discovery. One notable initiative he spearheads is Biologics-AI Moonshot aimed at elevating the role and influence of AI in Antibody and Nanobody discovery. Prior to joining Sanofi, Dr. Nanfack served as the Head of Structural and Digital Drug Discovery at EMD Serono. There, he directed a team of computational scientists and structural biologists, driving advancements in both large- and small-molecule drug discovery across diverse therapeutic domains. He was instrumental in digitally transforming EMD Serono's approach to large molecule research by integrating advanced data analytics and mining platforms. Furthermore, he pioneered the application of AI/ML and predictive modeling techniques for the discovery and optimization of antibody-based molecules, contributing significantly to multiple projects that progressed to clinical development stages. Dr. Nanfack holds a master’s in computer sciences from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and PhD in computational biology with a specialization in systems biology from Universität van Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Daron has been at Bristol-Myers Squibb for 16 years focusing on both in silico and in vitro pre-clinical immunogenicity risk assessment and mitigation. He received his PhD training at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester and conducted his post-doctoral studies at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to BMS, he worked on understanding mechanism of action of several immune-modulating biologics including anti-CD3 and anti-GITR mAbs.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Technologist in Public Health from Bio-Manguinhos/Fiocruz, part of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. She holds an undergraduate in Pharmacy, a postgraduate degree in Industrial Pharmaceutical Technology, and a Master’s degree in Immunobiological Technology. She works in a competitive intelligence office as Foresight Analyst and has experience in technological foresight (TF), P&D, and good manufacturing practices and quality control for vaccines, biopharmaceuticals and diagnostic test.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

I am the Chief Scientific Officer at EpiBiologics. I bring over 20 years of experience as an executive manager leading innovative discovery research groups focused on turning novel ideas into clinical stage therapies to battle cancer, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative diseases. During my time at Elan Pharmaceuticals and Seagen, I headed the discovery and delivery of over 6 phase 1 clinical candidates that integrated novel antibody, chemistry, and protein engineering technologies. Most recently I was the Vice President of Therapeutic Discovery Research at Seagen where she led a 60+ member team comprised of chemists, protein engineers, immunologist and cancer biologist focused on discovering new treatments for cancer patients. I trained as an Immunologist at the University of Colorado and went on to complete a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Immunology at National Jewish Health.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Michelle Gaylord is an experienced scientist with over 13 years in biotherapeutics, specializing in process improvement, platform development, and upstream workflows from cloning through large-scale protein expression. Her expertise spans automation, streamlining inefficiencies, and optimizing production to accelerate timelines and increase output across small- to large-scale, manual, and high-throughput platforms. Beyond her scientific work, Michelle is a dedicated nonprofit leader, actively serving with Soroptimist International, National Charity League, and Project Mercy Baja. She is passionate about empowering women, strengthening families, and supporting underserved communities through fundraising, advocacy, and hands-on service projects. At the intersection of science and service, Michelle brings a proven ability to solve complex problems, lead cross-functional teams, and create sustainable, purpose-driven impact.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Alayna is an Associate Director within Biologics CMC Developability at AbbVie. Her team oversees biophysical and structural screening of biotherapeutic candidates in late Discovery timelines. Training in structural biology and mass spectrometry inform her interest in developing mechanistic based understanding of protein structure/function relationships. Additionally, she is interested in maximizing the impact of the complex data sets enabled by recent advances in analytical techniques and data capture.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

No bio available.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Mona is a Senior Scientist in the Cell Engineering and Analytical Sciences (CEAS) group, part of Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (JJIM). She leads the development of mass spectrometry-based platforms for tRNA analysis and metabolomics, as well as the characterization of monoclonal antibodies. Mona collaborates closely with external teams to integrate advanced analytical approaches and has established internal capabilities for tRNA analysis using mass spectrometry, enabling a comprehensive understanding of cellular responses and the functional impact of tRNA modifications. Additionally, her work in metabolomics and biotherapeutic characterization drives innovative solutions to optimize cell factory productivity and bioprocess efficiency at J&J.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Dr. Grasso's major area of investigation is focused on the molecular mechanisms by which synthetic peptide leptin mimetics influence energy expenditure, glucose homeostasis, serum lipids, and cognitive function. Our laboratory has recently shown that oral administration of synthetic peptides representing discreet domains of mouse leptin, reduces food intake, body weight gain, and serum glucose levels, normalizes serum lipid profiles, increases tissue sensitivity to insulin peripherally and in the brain, and improves episodic memory. These observations indicate that the entire leptin molecule is not required for its metabolic and neurologic effects, and that smaller peptides encompassing one or more active domains of leptin may contain sufficient information to (a) compensate for endogenous leptin deficiency or defective transport across the blood-brain barrier, (b) induce satiety, (c) stimulate weight loss, (d) regulate blood glucose and serum lipid levels, and improve episodic memory. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) has been called “Type 3 diabetes” because of its association with insulin resistance in the brain, suggesting a very strong metabolic influence on cognitive function. We are currently investigating the effects of leptin mimetics on this link in mouse models of AD, vascular dementia, and Down syndrome.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Peyton Greenside is the co-founder and CSO of BigHat Biosciences, an early-stage Bay Area startup developing an AI-first experimental platform to radically reduce the difficulty of designing antibodies and other therapeutic proteins. Before BigHat, Peyton was an inaugural Schmidt Science Fellow, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute, a scientific founder of Valis, and holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MPhil in Computational Biology from Cambridge University, and a BA in Applied Math from Harvard.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Haotian Guo is the founder and CEO of Ailurus Bio, driving innovation at the intersection of synthetic biology and AI to advance life sciences and biotechnology. He has pioneered synthetic organelle technologies leveraging liquid-liquid phase separation to transform applications ranging from metabolic engineering to recombinant protein production, with his work featured in Cell and major media outlets. Haotian earned his Ph.D. from the University of Paris and has contributed to research and education at leading institutions, including INSERM, Tsinghua University, MIT, UCSF, and Fudan University.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

Ben Hackel is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. He earned degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin (B.S., advised by Eric Shusta) and MIT (PhD, advised by Dane Wittrup) and performed postdoctoral research in the radiology department at Stanford University (Sam Gambhir). Since its inception, the Hackel lab has applied protein engineering technologies to develop physiological molecular targeting agents for molecular diagnostics and targeted therapy, with a focus on oncology and infectious disease.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Rachel Harding is a structural biologist and early-stage drug discovery scientist with expertise in protein biochemistry and open science. She leads a research group at the University of Toronto and is cross-appointed to the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), where she focuses on understanding challenging and understudied proteins relevant to neurodegenerative disease and neglected areas of drug discovery. Dr. Harding has extensive experience in protein production, purification, and characterization, with a strong track record of enabling structure-function studies and high-throughput screening campaigns. She is a core contributor to the Target2035 initiative, where she champions open data sharing and collaborative models for protein science. Through initiatives like the Protein Donation Program, Dr. Harding is helping to build scalable, reproducible infrastructure to accelerate hit discovery by making high-quality reagents and screening results accessible to the global research community.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Winston is the VP Computational Sciences and Engineering at LabGenius, where he leads a team of experts in data science, machine learning, and software development to expand LabGenius’ ML-driven discovery platform capabilities. He has extensive experience leading the development and application of computational tools to advance both antibody therapeutics (BigHat Biosciences) and diagnostics (Serimmune). Winston holds a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University, where he was a NSF GRFP fellow.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Hooman Hefzi is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark leading the Advanced Mammalian Cell Engineering group. The group’s focus is optimizing biologics production through data-driven improvements to host cell lines, leveraging high-dimensional omics data and AI/ML classifiers for target identification. Previously, he led the Omics and Modeling Team in Biologics Technical Development at Biogen. Hooman received his Ph.D. in Dr. Nathan Lewis’s lab at UC San Diego.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

Tim has 15 years’ experience contributing to immunogenicity risk and mitigation strategies for large molecules and advanced therapies at Roche and Pfizer, from early discovery projects to those in clinical development and post-marketing. During the last ten years he has contributed immunology expertise to the development of an in silico immunogenicity model, with the purpose of improving predictions of clinical immunogenicity for drug candidates. Tim previously worked on vaccine development and holds a PhD in Immunology from the University of Oxford.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Maximilian Hoerner is a leading expert in molecular optogenetics and has been at the forefront of the field since its emergence. He joined Prolific Machines as Head of Optogenetics in 2022, driven by a passion to translate this powerful technology into impactful industrial applications. Max earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Molecular Biotechnology from Heidelberg University. Following a research stay at Harvard University, he pioneered the application of photoswitches to control apoptosis with light during his Master’s thesis. Building on this foundation, Max pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Freiburg, where he developed innovative strategies to control mammalian cell signaling through optogenetics. After a brief postdoctoral period, he established his own research group at the University of Freiburg and spearheaded the concept of extracellular optogenetics. Beyond optogenetics, Max brings broad expertise in synthetic biology, mammalian cell line engineering, and protein production and purification.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Dr. Parisa Hosseinzadeh is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon, with affiliate faculty status in Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health and Science University. Her research integrates biochemistry, computational biology, and protein engineering, with a focus on cyclic peptides, metalloproteins, and novel enzyme design. A former postdoctoral researcher in David Baker’s Institute for Protein Design, she has advanced computational and experimental methods that are now shaping the field of peptide science. Dr. Hosseinzadeh’s work has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (DP2), a Baxter Foundation Award, and multiple institutional honors for teaching, mentorship, and diversity. Beyond research, she is a dedicated mentor who has trained postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates, many of whom have earned fellowships, awards, and placements in leading programs.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

With nearly a decade of experience in biologics research and laboratory automation, Jennifer Houtmann is a Senior Assay and Automation Scientist at AstraZeneca, working in Biologics Engineering to design and validate high-throughput, end-to-end automated workflows for binding and functional assay screening. Due to her hybrid skill set in scientific and programming disciplines, successful implementation of these workflows across a range of therapeutic modalities is anticipated to increase screening capacity 8-10 fold by 2026. Prior to AstraZeneca, Jennifer previously worked at Incyte Corporation, where she led an initiative automating cell line development processes for biologics production and characterization. There, she oversaw equipment design and integration and created high-throughput hardware and software solutions that decreased scientist hands-on time by as much as 70%. Jennifer has demonstrated leadership in technology implementation as evidenced by her expertise spanning from method development with cutting-edge robotics to strategic process optimization using programming and statistical software.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Xichan (Jack) is a director at Aureka Biotechnologies, overseeing discovery programs from target selection to preclinical candidates and identifying developable lead antibodies using Aureka’s proprietary platforms. Previously, he worked as a senior scientist in the pharmaceutical industry, advancing Biologics and CAR-T therapeutics. Jack is a co-inventor on several patents and has published extensively in top journals, including Molecular Cell, eLife, and Nucleic Acids Research. He serves as an editor for Medicine Journal and reviews for respected publications. Jack completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

No bio available.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Robert Hughes received a PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2007 and performed post-doctoral studies at Duke University and UNC - Chapel Hill. In his current position at East Carolina University, he leads a group of graduate and undergraduate scholars with a primary emphasis on the development of optogenetic protein-based reagents for the control and monitoring of biochemical pathways. Ongoing projects include the development of light-activated biosensors for the detection of oxidative and energetic stress in cells; optogenetic reagents that initiate biochemical pathways ending in cell death; and library-based methods for the production of improved protein chimera via a linker optimization strategy. Other areas of interest include the creation of novel immobilized enzyme formulations with biotechnology applications and the development of protein biocatalysts for the asymmetric synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds.

• Peptide Targets: Discovery, Expression, and Validation

Ian Hunt is currently Global Head of Science Engagement in Biomedical Research, Novartis. Ian is a co-founder and head of Novartis Genesis Labs, an internal start-up program for supporting the rapid prototyping of new therapeutic technologies at Novartis. He is also responsible for fostering scientific engagement across the Novartis research organization, with an overarching goal to leverage institutional knowledge to accelerate breakthrough science. Prior to Genesis Labs, Ian worked in HR and held various leadership roles in protein sciences in the UK and US for Novartis. Ian was also a member of the research team which developed Kisqali (ribociclib), a cell cycle inhibitor used in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Ian holds a PhD in protein sciences from the University of York, UK. After completing his PhD, Ian conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Leeds, UK where he investigated structure-function relations of membrane transport proteins.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Hwang is a Scientist 4 at Genentech in the Peptide Therapeutics team under the Early Discovery Biochemistry department. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University, where she studied and investigated epigenetic protein-protein interactions, and completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University, leading and developing small molecules for engineering protein dynamics. Since joining Genentech in 2019, she has investigated various signaling pathways involved in disease pathogenesis using peptides as a tool. She currently focuses on the identification and development of disulfide-constrained peptides (DCPs) using phage-display technology, supporting pipeline projects at Genentech, and the bioproduction of DCPs using the E. coli system to support DCP research.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Yuri Iozzo, PhD eqv (AKA Egor Svidritskiy) is a structural biologist and machine learning expert whose early research, while at UMass Medical School, on translation termination uncovered foundational insights into ribosome dynamics. He has been at the forefront of advancing cryo-electron microscopy techniques, including the development of Ensemble cryo-EM. He led the charge in applying cryo-EM innovations to biologics drug discovery at Sanofi. As Head of the Digital Biology group at ModeX Therapeutics, Yuri drives the integration of machine learning to de-risk and accelerate therapeutic R&D, combining structural biology and AI to enable next-generation discovery pipelines

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Dave earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Bridgeport in December 2009, where he was captain of the NCAA Cross Country Team. Following graduation, he was selected to represent Team USA at three World Championships. He is a two-time 100-mile United States Track and Field Association National Champion. In April 2021, Dave returned to pursue a Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from Sonoran University in Tempe, AZ. He was involved in multiple projects at the Ric Scalzo Institute for Botanical Research at Sonoran University and presented HSV1 research at AANP in 2023. He also presented a poster on Lymphedema and Naturopathic Approaches to Lymphatic Malignancies to OncANP in 2024. He plans to complete a postgraduate naturopathic medical residency and to pursue a career in chronic pain management and naturopathic oncology. His goal is to sit for the FABNO exam through OncANP. Dave has shadowed FABNOs from coast to coast. In his spare time, Dave enjoys spending time outdoors hiking with his dog and spouse. He is an NWB and Team RWB volunteer. Dave is a graduate of the ND program and, as a student, was enrolled in the Regenerative Medicine Honors Program at the Neil Riordan Center for Regenerative Medicine, where he was conducting an observation study on the efficacy of PRP and Prolotherapy for the treatment of chronic pain. He was president of his cohort in 2021 during the pandemic and helped work with the administration on the COVID task force. Dave has been a tutor & TA for many classes. Currently, he is the incoming PGY1 resident physician at a private practice in Seattle, Washington, where he will work towards his FABNO. He was president of his cohort in 2021 during the pandemic and helped work with the administration on the COVID task force. Dave has been a tutor & TA for many classes including Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Physical Medicine, & Immunology where he lectures to first year medical students on Immunology CD4 MCH class 2 and CD8 T cytotoxic cells MCH class 1, HLA Matching, T cell receptors, perforins, granzymes, the complement cascade, Natural Killer Cells, Antigen Presenting Cells, Th0 cells, Tfh cells, TH17, TH22, cytokines, CD28, basophils, dendritic cells, cross-presentation, central tolerance, VDJ recombination, bone marrow, antigens, mucous associate lymph tissues, long lived plasma cells, and CAR- T therapy. His interests are in the space of refractory and relapsed blood cancers, and he plans to research bispecifics along with patient care and a career in higher education. He can be reached via email at rundavejamesnmd@gmail.com; d.james@sonoran.edu; and for public speaking and private coaching for long-distance runners at rundavejames@yahoo.com. His IG & X are @rundavejames.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

No bio available.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

I am a neurosurgeon by training, and I specialize in precision drug delivery to the brain through image guidance and advanced neuroimaging. After completing postdoctoral fellowship and spending several years as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, I joined University of Maryland, Baltimore and served as a co-director of Program in Image Guided Neurointerventions (PIGN). I have authored over 110 peer reviewed papers, made several patented inventions and I am a continuously NIH supported researcher since 2013. The high quality of my journal reviews has been recognized by society supported journals: STROKE through Outstanding Reviewer Award and NEUROCRITICAL CARE through Top Reviewer Award. I am also a steering committee member of Children Brain Tumor Drug Delivery Consortium (CBTDDC) and co-founder of Society for Image Guided Neurointerventions (SIGN), which organized two successful conferences. I have also launched two start-ups in the field of image guided neurointerventions: IntraART and Ti-com.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Dr. Joseph Jardine is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research. He obtained his BS in Biochemistry from the University of Washington and completed his PhD at Scripps Research under the mentorship of William Schief, focusing on rational vaccine design. Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Jardine was awarded the HHMI/Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellowship, working with Dennis Burton to analyze vaccine antibody responses and engineer antibodies. In 2017, Dr. Jardine moved to Boston to help establish the Institute for Protein Innovation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing protein and antibody engineering. In 2019, he returned to IAVI/Scripps, where he established a research group that integrates immunology and protein engineering.

• Peptide Targets: Discovery, Expression, and Validation

Zahra Jawad is the CEO and Founder of Creasallis, an antibody engineering company looking at improving the penetration of antibodies into solid tumours. The company was founded in 2022 and has undergone two fundraising rounds with a recent seed round raise in February 2025. Creasallis has won several startup awards in 2022 and 2023. Zahra has previously engineered antibodies at Agenus, LifeArc, GSK and Domantis for a number of therapeutic areas. She did her PhD in Protein Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Charlie Johannes is the Founder, President, and Chief Scientist at EPOC Scientific, CO-founder, VP and board member of the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium, and former Vice President of Exploratory Chemistry at Fog Pharmaceuticals, where he helped pioneer the development of hyper-stabilized helical peptides (Helicons™). With over 25 years of experience as a drug hunter and platform innovator, Charlie has led efforts in novel modality design, medicinal chemistry, and chemistry-enabled therapeutic platforms across industry and academia. At EPOC, he advises biotech startups, RLT companies, and venture firms on peptide therapeutics and translational strategy, with clients including Unnatural Products, 48Hour Discovery, Atommap, and others. Previously, he served as Head of Organic Chemistry at ASTAR in Singapore, where he led national peptide drug discovery initiatives, secured over $60 million in funding, and forged a landmark collaboration with Merck. He also held key scientific leadership roles at Forma Therapeutics, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Eisai, and multiple research institutes under ASTAR. Charlie earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Boston College under Prof. Amir Hoveyda, where he developed early applications of Ring Closing Metathesis for macrocycle and natural product synthesis.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Dr. Joshi is Faculty (Instructor) in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India in 2013, he did his postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where his work was focused on the development of inflammation-responsive drug delivery systems for multiple therapeutic applications. Dr. Joshi’s prime research focus is drug delivery and biomaterials. Technologies developed by Dr. Joshi have been patented, published, and licensed to 2 different startups in Boston (Alivio Therapeutics and Frequency Therapeutics)--one already advancing through Phase 2 trials. In 2012, he was recognized by MIT’s Technology Review Magazine (TR35) as being one of the top innovators and was also awarded the prestigious Lockheed Martin India Innovation award for his work. Dr. Joshi’s work has been highlighted in multiple media outlets and scientific journals around the world, including The Economist, Science Daily, Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), Fierce Biotech, Medical Xpress, and Nature Reviews Rheumatology.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Yutaka Kuroda earned his undergraduate degree in physics from ETH Zurich, where he was introduced to biophysics and NMR by Professors Gerhard Wagner and Kurt Wüthrich. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo under Professor Akiyoshi Wada, focusing on protein biophysics and early bioinformatics. He held research positions at PERI (Protein Engineering research Institute, Osaka), the Whitehead Institute at MIT, and RIKEN, contributing to protein engineering and structural genomics. Since 2004, he has been an associate and full professor of biotechnology at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, specializing in protein engineering, control of immunogenicity of protein aggregates, and the use of small protein domains as seeds for vaccine development.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Seema Kantak is a biopharma executive and leader with extensive experience in biopharma strategy and has led product-driven R&D organizations for 22 years. Currently, she is Senior Vice President at Exelixis, a commercial oncology company, and heads the biologics and biotherapeutics division. She was responsible for establishing, building, and advancing a biotherapeutics portfolio and is leading the effort to determine future clinical candidates for Exelixis pipeline. This includes external innovation focusing on the identification, evaluation, and early development of biologics assets and starting internal capabilities. She leads the scientific strategy on collaboration alliances in biotherapeutics. Prior to joining Exelixis, Seema consulted for venture funds, was Chief Scientific Officer at a start-up, Symic Bio, and Vice President of Research and Preclinical Development at Nektar Therapeutics, where she was responsible for global projects in oncology, inflammation, and pain and was also a program team leader on Nektar’s NKTR-214 program from discovery to IND. She was also Managing Director, Site Head, and Board Director of Nektar’s subsidiary in India and was instrumental in establishing a high-performing R&D organization. Prior to that, Dr. Kantak held scientific positions at XOMA, Celera Therapeutics, and Axys Pharmaceuticals. She has served in an advisory role to biotech start-ups since 2017. Dr. Kantak has contributed to several IND submissions in multiple therapeutic areas with a focus on Oncology. Dr. Kantak is a cancer biologist and pharmacologist by training and received her PhD in Cancer Biology from Wayne State University School of Medicine, finally completing her postdoctoral work at UCSF. Dr Kantak also holds a M.S. in Biology from Wayne State University and a M.S. in Biophysics from Bombay University.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Director, Biologics Optimization, Discovery Research, Amgen, Inc.; PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Postdoctoral at the University of Chicago and University of Arizona, Tucson; Visiting Scientist, University of Rio de Janeiro; over 20 years of industrial experience in column protein purification and high-throughput magnetic protein purification technologies.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

I am currently working as an Associate Director at Johnson & Johnson, where I lead a team focused on the production of soluble and complex membrane protein targets to support therapeutic antibody discovery. I have a wide-ranging background in both academia and industry, working on pathogenic microbes, the mechanistic understanding of intracellular trafficking, critical reagents, cell culture automation, and complex membrane proteins. I obtained my Ph.D. in Molecular Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Additionally, I have served as an editorial board member and authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and patents.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Soohyun Kim, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, working in the laboratory of Dr. Peter S. Kim. He earned his Ph.D. under the mentorship of Dr. Junho Chung at Seoul National University, where he built a strong foundation in antibody discovery and engineering. His current research focuses on the development of bi- and multispecific antibodies for therapeutic applications against infectious diseases. Dr. Kim has contributed to the full pipeline of antibody discovery and translation, from molecular design to clinical development. He holds four granted patents, has led three technology transfers, and played a key role in the development of an antibody currently undergoing Phase I clinical trials (Identifier: NCT06235541). In addition to therapeutic antibody engineering, Dr. Kim integrates AI-driven approaches into protein design to accelerate the development of next-generation biopharmaceuticals. He is passionate about leveraging multidisciplinary collaboration to translate basic science into real-world treatments and continues to push the boundaries of molecular engineering to address unmet clinical needs.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Niko Kley is an accomplished scientist and biotech executive with a multifaceted track record in applied research, drug discovery and development, company building and high value biopharma partnerships. His work ranged from discoveries on root causes and drivers of hereditary and sporadic forms of cancer to pioneering specialized technologies for discovery and design of targeted small molecules, molecular glues, and conditionally acting biologics for novel immunotherapies. His work led to advancement of novel drug modalities into clinical trials and FDA approval. Several of his innovations are core to Orionis’ technology platforms. Niko was a co-founder of FORMA Therapeutics [acquired by Novo Nordisk in 2022] and has served as an executive scientific leader at various biotech organizations and pharma [BMS]. He was a Research Professor at the Dept. of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts General Hospital), holds a PhD from the Max Planck Institute/Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich, and a BSc with Honors from Leeds University (UK). He (co)-authored over 65 peer reviewed scientific publications, various book chapters and dozens of patents. Niko received several awards, including the Otto Hahn Prize.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Dima Kozakov received an MS in Applied Mathematics and Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Currently he is the Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at Stony Brook University, Affiliate Member at Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, and Affiliate Member at Institute of Advance Computational Sciences. Before joining Stony Brook he held a research faculty position at Boston University. Dr. Kozakov is interested in method development for modeling of biological macromolecules, with emphasis on molecular interactions and drug design. Dr. Kozakov’s approaches, PIPER for protein docking and FTMap for hotspot identification, are heavily used in the pharmaceutical industry and are consistently top-performing in blind molecular modeling completions.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Vikash Kumar is a senior scientist in the biologics process research and development division at Merck Research Laboratories. He works on developing innovative solutions to the challenges that comes with the commercial manufacturing of ever-expanding biologics portfolio. He graduated with a PhD in chemical and biochemical engineering from University of Maryland Baltimore County where he worked on development of Aero Yield flask which is based on breathable wall technology. The Aero Yield flask is made of gas permeable material, can be mounted on the shaking incubator and provides comparable performance to that of stir tank bioreactors at a fraction of the cost. His other work involves non-invasive sensor development to monitor critical process parameters in the fermentation processes, media development, development of cell-free protein expression system for high-yield protein synthesis, and bioreactor modeling using computational fluid dynamics simulations. Vikash is very passionate about biomanufacturing and believes a shifted focus on engineering scaled down efficient and affordable systems holds the key to making personalized medicine a reality.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Dr. Pin-Kuang Lai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2011 and 2013, respectively, and completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 2018. His doctoral research focused on developing computational and experimental approaches to study antimicrobial peptides. From 2018 to 2021, Dr. Lai conducted postdoctoral research at MIT, where he investigated antibody stability at high concentrations. Dr. Lai has collaborated with leading pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Merck, Sanofi, and Takeda, as well as national laboratories such as NIST and Brookhaven. His work focuses on advancing computational tools, including machine learning and molecular simulations, alongside biophysical characterization methods such as NMR and SAXS, to predict and analyze antibody aggregation and viscosity at high concentrations. He also explores the underlying mechanisms driving these phenomena. In addition to his academic and research endeavors, Dr. Lai serves as an Assistant Editor for the mAbs journal.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Dr. Jed Lampe is a multi-R01-funded principal investigator, educator, and scientific leader in the ADME/DMPK field. After receiving his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Washington studying under Professor William Atkins, he completed post-doctoral training at UCSF under the tutelage of Professor Paul Ortiz de Montellano. Currently, he serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, Skaggs School of Pharmacy, where his research interests involve the application of bioanalytical, biophysical, and computational techniques to understand and predict drug metabolism and disposition in special populations, including neonates, pregnant persons, cystic fibrosis patients, and African Americans. Dr. Lampe has made seminal contributions to our understanding of drug metabolism and drug toxicity in both the developing fetus and the neonate. Additionally, he is chair of the NIH DBDT study section and also serves on the FDA Scientific Advisory Board and on several journal editorial boards, including: Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS One, and Drug Metabolism and Disposition.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Mimi brings over 25 years of experience producing industry-leading conferences across multiple continents. She joined CHI in 2013 producing biologics and bioprocessing programs and has since been an integral part of CHI's flagship events such as PEGS Boston, PEGS Europe, PepTalk, and the Bioprocessing Summit. She also spearheaded the early international expansions of PEGS to Shanghai and Seoul prior to COVID-19. Earlier in her career, Mimi produced Drug Discovery Technology (DDT) and Bioprocess International with IBC/Informa in the U.S. and Asia. Before relocating to the U.S., she was based in Singapore, where she developed and launched telecom events throughout Asia including Singapore, Japan, China, and India. Prior to producing conferences, Mimi worked at Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) in Singapore and Japan, coordinating marketing strategies along the US-Asia trade routes. Mimi holds a BA from National University of Singapore and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Ji Min Lee is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Her research group uses interdisciplinary approaches in synthetic biology, engineering, and epigenetics to study innate biological systems and to develop new tools for basic science and biomedical applications. Dr. Lee’s translational interests span nucleotide or protein-based drug discovery and development for applications in oncology and regenerative medicine, and development of new technologies for overcoming current drug resistance. Dr. Lee obtained her PhD in Biological Sciences from the Seoul National University, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Epigenetics. Dr. Lee was previously Principal Scientist of Business Development team, Samsung Bioepis, and Research Staff of Therapeutic Antibody Group, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT).

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Professor Sabrina Leslie studied honours physics and mathematics at the University of British Columbia twenty years ago before moving to UC Berkeley where she obtained her PhD in optical physics in 2008, followed by her Mary Fieser postdoctoral fellowship in biophysics at Harvard University 2009-2011. There she invented a tether-free, high-throughput single-molecule imaging technology called Convex Lens-induced Confinement (CLiC), which established her as a pioneer in single-molecule investigations. In 2012, she became an Assistant Professor at McGill University and founded her research group in the Physics Department. There she developed CLiC into a platform technology and used it for new single-molecule studies of nucleic acids, proteins, polymers, nanomaterials, biologics, and cells. In 2019 she was honored with the Young Investigator Award from the Biophysical Society of Canada, and in 2020 she was elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) College of New Artists Scholars and Scientists. In 2021, she and her team re-located to the Michael Smith Labs at UBC where her Associate Professor appointment is joint with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and affiliated with the School of Biomedical Engineering, Genome Science and Applied Technology and Bioinformatics programs.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Daniel Leventhal, Ph.D. has over 6 years of experience working at the intersection of immunology and machine learning to predict and mitigate unwanted immunogenicity. Daniel has led teams at Xaira Therapeutics and Generate Biomedicines developing machine learning models and experimental systems to understand and control key immunological processes underpinning the immunogenicity of biotherapeutics. Prior to entering the immunogenicity field, he worked in immune oncology, advancing T-cell receptor therapies and immune-engineered bacteria for cancer treatment. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology and an M.S. in Translational Sciences from the University of Chicago, where he studied tumor-associated regulatory T-cell development and antigen specificity.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

My name is Yinyin Li, Principal Scientist from Genentech, Department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology. I gained my PhD from Texas A&M University and pursued my postdoc training at Stanford University, specializing in immunology and biology. Currently, my work focuses on large molecule drug discovery and immunogenicity risk assessment for biotherapeutics.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Julie Ming Liang, PhD is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Opera Bioscience. Liang is a synthetic biologist and interdisciplinary scientist combining her chemistry, metabolic engineering, and strain development training to create innovative solutions toward a sustainable future. She received her PhD in biological sciences from the Tullman-Ercek lab in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at Northwestern University. There, Liang was instrumental in developing Opera Bioscience’s core technology, a gram-negative bacterial protein production platform that reduces the cost and developmental timelines for making reagents, enzymes, and therapeutics. She engineered the type III secretion system (T3SS) to secrete heterologous proteins to eliminate steps in the most expensive part of protein manufacturing: downstream processing and purification. Her research resulted in the creation of constitutively active T3SS strains which do not require inducer in the culture media to activate protein secretion, reducing the total media cost by 28% and the total cost of protein production by up to 10%. Before her role at Opera Bioscience, she was a strain engineer at Amyris, developing yeast strains to ferment sugar into renewable fuels.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Yiting Lim, PhD is a Senior Scientist II in the Cell Line Development group at Just-Evotec Biologics in Seattle, WA. Yiting received her PhD in Pathobiology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, completed postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center prior to joining Just-Evotec Biologics, and has developed innovative technologies in both academia and industry.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Christina has spent the last 25+ years creating more than 300 events hosted by CHI. She is the creator and driving force behind the PEGS Summit, now in its 18th year, and the Molecular Medicine Tri-conference, now in its 29th year, and has identified and developed emerging topics including bispecific antibodies, genomics, molecular diagnostics, phage display, point-of-care diagnostics, bioinformatics and many more. Christina emphasizes the importance of bringing together the academic and industrial sectors to create environments where innovation is fostered and commercial applications are advanced.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Dr. Ewa Lis is the Founder and CEO of Koliber Biosciences, a pioneering computational biology company that leverages an advanced AI platform for the discovery and optimization of peptides. With a rich background in both computer science and biological sciences, Dr. Lis's expertise encompasses deep learning, data augmentation, graph networks, and various domains of biology and chemistry. Before establishing Koliber Biosciences in 2014, she held key positions at Life Technologies, Genomatica, and Reveal Biosciences, where she contributed to the development of diverse technologies ranging from algorithms for pathology tissue classification to tools for genome engineering research and sustainable microbial chemicals. Dr. Lis earned her BA in Chemistry from Cornell University and her PhD in Biological Sciences from The Scripps Research Institute.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Wenshe Ray Liu (Texas A&M University) is the Harry E. Bovay, Jr. Endowed Chair and Professor in Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He earned his B.S. degree from Peking University in 2000 and his PhD degree under the direction of Professor Michael D. Toney from UC-Davis in 2005. He finished a two-year postdoc training with Professor Peter G. Schultz in the Scripps Research Institute and started his independent research career in 2007 at Texas A&M University as assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and then full professor in 2016. Professor Liu was the inaugural holder of the Emile & Marta Schweikert Professorship from 2014 to 2018, Gradipore Chair in Chemistry from 2018 to 2022, and the inaugural holder of the Harry E. Bovay, Jr. Endowed Chair in Chemistry since 2022 at Texas A&M University. He previously directed the TAMU Chemistry Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and is currently serving as the director of the Texas A&M Drug Discovery Laboratory. The focus of his research is to invent novel chemical biology techniques to study posttranslational modifications of chromatin and build generally applied platforms for the identification of therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases. Professor Liu is a longtime advocate of diversity and inclusiveness in research and has been committed to train underrepresented students. He has also co-led a training program for postdocs with diverse backgrounds.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Dr. Love is heading an area utilising automation to advance drug discovery and development across the Novo Nordisk value chain. Prior to his work at Novo, he was working in the USA for 15 years at different academic and biotech companies, developing high-throughput methods focusing on antibody development and protein production, in particular integral membrane proteins. Prior to this, he was educated at Oxford and Cambridge University, where he trained as a structural biologist.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Simon Low is currently Senior Director of Biologics Discovery and Innovation at CUE Biopharma, leading the protein engineering and development of CUE Immuno-STAT platforms. Simon graduated from University of Kansas Medical Center as a protein chemist and has spent 20+ in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including Pfizer and BMS, working in the areas of structural biology, protein production, and characterization. His area of focus is in early discovery and novel technologies towards development of therapeutic molecules.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Andrew J Maier is a Principal Scientist in the Purification, Microbiology, and Virology department at Genentech. His work combines wetlab and computational methods to streamline the purification development of biologics, drawing on a background in both Chemical and Biological Engineering (BS, University of Colorado Boulder) and Computer Science specializing in Machine Learning (MS, Georgia Tech). His publications and patent applications cover topics such as purification process modeling, spectroscopic process monitoring, and the prediction of molecular properties related to manufacturability.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

After completing my PhD in Pharmacology, in which I developed new biotherapeutics to reduce complications in diabetic patients, I started a post-doc with Dr. Yves Durocher to generate a new inducible expression system for the large-scale production of difficult-to-express recombinant proteins. I am currently Research Officer at National Research Council of Canada where I am developing platforms for diagnostic and analytical applications.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

Alex Martinko is a scientist, entrepreneur, and leader in antibody engineering and protein sciences, with over a decade of experience developing therapeutic antibody technologies. As the Senior Director of Antibody Engineering and Design at Cartography Biosciences, Alex leads a multidisciplinary team specializing in antibody discovery, computational antibody engineering, and protein science to develop highly specific cancer therapies using bi- and multi-specific antibodies. Alex earned his PhD in Chemistry & Chemical Biology from UCSF under the mentorship of Dr. Jim Wells. His research included the discovery of novel antibody targets for RAS-driven cancers, which led to a licensing agreement with a major biopharmaceutical company. Additionally, he developed an innovative antibody technology for small molecule regulation of antibody function, which became the foundation for Soteria Biotherapeutics, a venture-backed startup co-founded by Alex to further advance this platform. Prior to joining Cartography, Alex was Senior Director of Antibody Engineering at Soteria Biotherapeutics, where he led a team of scientists in advancing the T-LITE™ platform. This bispecific T-cell engager technology enables small-molecule-controlled activation, offering a safer and more effective dosing strategy for T-cell engagers. With expertise spanning protein engineering, chemical biology, and cancer immunotherapy, Alex has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications and patents. He remains dedicated to translating innovative science into transformative therapies that improve patient outcomes.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Aimee Mattei is the Director of Immunoinformatics at EpiVax. Her team provides in silico immunogenicity risk assessments supporting research, collaborative, and commercial projects. She leads the development of novel in silico methods for assessing the immunogenic risk of biotherapeutics and their impurities. She holds an M.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and has previous experience in the manufacturing of peptides supporting research programs from concept assessment through lead optimization in the endocrinology and oncology therapeutic areas.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

My journey has evolved from systems biology to practicing medicine, to co-leading the digital transformation and virtual care initiatives at a large IDN, to healthcare data interoperability, to machine learning analytics, to investing in healthcare technology (diagnostic, therapeutic, value-based care delivery incorporating virtual care and virtual clinical trials). He is board member and/or advisor to a diverse portfolio of AI and Health IT companies.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

I graduated from Worcester State University with a double major in both Chemistry and Biology. I started my career working at Abbvie in Worcester, moving to Acceleron and now at Novartis. Over the past ten years, I have worked on multiple LC- and CE-based techniques for multiple therapeutic modalities including biologics, conjugates, and cell and gene therapies.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Mark McCoy is currently a Sr. Principal Scientist in the Quantitative Biosciences group at Merck & Co, Inc. where he uses structural biology and biophysical studies to understand details of protein structure, function and behavior. His early discovery work on PD-1-antibody interactions provided the first understanding of Keytruda’s mechanism of action. His most recent research is on understanding details of intermolecular interactions of therapeutic proteins which has discovery applications to developability and design as well as development and manufacturability applications that include formulation and coformulation. Prior to joining Merck, Mark worked at the Wistar Institute, the University of Pennsylvania and at the Sterling-Winthrop Pharmaceutical Research institute. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and carried out postdoctoral research at ETH-Zürich.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Rob Meijers is the Head of Neuroscience at the Institute for Protein Innovation (IPI), a non-profit institute with a mission to provide impactful protein tools to the life science community. Dr. Meijers was trained as a structural biologist and has published on structural mechanisms of neuronal and immune receptors, as well as methods for the efficient production, conditioning and characterization of these receptors. Prior to IPI, he was a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) were he established a sample preparation and characterization facility for the European Research area.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Dr. Menacho-Melgar obtained his Ph.D. at Duke University, under Dr. Michael D. Lynch. After his graduate studies, he founded Roke Biotechnologies focused on advancing protein manufacturing. At Roke, he leads the manufacturing and commercialization of molecular biology reagents. Dr. Menacho-Melgar has 13 peer-reviewed publications and is co-inventor in 6 patents. His work includes developing readily scalable standardized processes for protein expression, eliminating the need for any process development. It also includes the engineering of novel E. coli strains with advanced capabilities such as enhancing protein titers or reducing downstream purification steps.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Dr. Messing received his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2008, studying structural biology in the lab of Mario Amzel. While in the lab, he solved the structures of viviparous14, a dioxygenase in maize and key enzyme in abscisic acid production, and the structure of the RNA, pyrophosphohydrolase BdRppH, from Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus involved in RNA decapping. He subsequently moved on to the Laboratory of Fred Dyda at NIDDK, where he worked on transposases and solved the structure of TnpA(REP) from E. coli. In 2015, he joined the Protein Expression Laboratory at Frederick National Labs, where he purifies difficult-to-produce protein reagents for the RAS Initiative.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

No bio available.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Sidharth Mohan is a Principal Scientist II at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine at Spring House, PA, and is responsible for developing high-throughput analytics & purification workflows, alongside informatics & automation processes in Biologics Discovery. Prior to J&J, he worked at Avitide Inc. (now a Repligen company) in the analytical team, developing custom affinity purification solutions via high-throughput technologies. He trained as a scientist at The Ohio State University (Ph.D. in Biophysics), having worked on protein sequence-based design and structural stability studies. He holds an engineering degree in Biotechnology from the P.E.S. Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, and worked as a Software Engineer prior to returning to his scientific roots. Along the way, he embraced music as a drummer, supported independent music journalism, and fell in love with riding motorcycles and mountain bikes.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Deborah joined ProFound Tx in 2024 as the VP of Protein Sciences to lead protein and antibody development campaigns. Prior to ProFound Tx, Deborah was with Abcam for 5 years, leading the Protein Development and Sequencing Platforms, responsible for protein and sequencing needs for Abcam. Prior to Abcam, she spent 16 years working in both the reagent and therapeutic spaces. For many years she led Antibody Production at Cell Signaling Technology. From there she joined Merck Research Laboratories, where she led the team responsible for antigen & antibody generation within Biologics Discovery.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

George earned a B.S in Electronics and a M.S in Biomedical Physics from Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon. He subsequently worked as a Biomedical Engineer at the Hotel-Dieu de France University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2017, George joined Temple University to pursue a Ph.D. in Bioengineering. Since 2022, he has been a Senior Scientist at Merck, where he has made substantial contributions to various marketed vaccine products and clinical candidates across multiple platforms, including live virus vaccines, virus-like particles, pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, and mRNA vaccines. His work involves automating assays that support the vaccine pipeline using large robotic liquid handlers. Additionally, apart from supporting the pipeline, George applies his expertise in data science to enhance automation and data analysis processes within the Vaccines Analytical Research and Development department with cross-functional partners. He also currently serves as the departmental representative on the Onboarding and Training team for Analytical Research and Development.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Dr. Andrew Nixon is currently Senior Vice President, Global Head of Biotherapeutics Discovery Research at Boehringer Ingelheim. In this role, Andy leads the organization responsible for all biologic drug discovery efforts. Immediately prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim in 2017, Andy was Vice President of Biotherapeutics Discovery at Magenta Therapeutics. At Magenta he established and led the team responsible for generating antibody drug conjugates that could serve as an alternative to traditional myeloablative conditioning regimes. Prior to joining Magenta in 2016, Andy held roles of increasing responsibility at Dyax Corp., including serving as Vice President of Discovery Research. In this capacity he led the DX-2930 program, a fully human antibody inhibitor of plasma kallikrein, from discovery to development and built Dyax’s internal research pipeline that resulted in the acquisition of Dyax by Shire in January 2016. DX-2930 was subsequently approved in 2018 and is marketed as TAKHZYRO. Additionally, Andy has been responsible for over 100 antibody discovery programs resulting in numerous clinical candidates and approved biologics. Andy completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Prof. S.J. Benkovic, in the Department of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, where he was involved in the development of techniques to facilitate enzyme engineering. Andy earned his PhD from the University of London for studies completed at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Christoffer Norn, PhD, is Co-Founder and CEO of Skape Bio, a Copenhagen biotech pioneering AI-designed miniprotein therapeutics; Skape Bio’s optical pooled screening combined with state-of-the-art protein design has already delivered first-in-class GPCR agonists and antagonists. Previously, Dr Norn trained in David Baker’s Nobel Prize-winning protein-design lab at the University of Washington, where he co-created the world’s first AI-designed enzyme, self-assembling nanoparticles, and ultrasensitive protein biosensors.

• Peptide Targets: Discovery, Expression, and Validation

Professor Ray Norton holds a personal chair at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His lab employs a range of biophysical approaches, as well as molecular modelling and design, in studies of peptides and proteins from venomous organisms; one of the venom-derived peptides he helped develop is about to enter Phase 2 clinical trials for autoimmune diseases. He is also developing peptides as anti-infective agents with a novel mechanism of action and as novel treatments for Type 2 diabetes. Ray has received numerous national awards, published over 420 articles, has an h-factor of 81, and his papers have been cited > 24,800 times (Google Scholar). He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Toxicon and Toxicon: X, a member of the Council of the International Society on Toxinology, and an elected Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Dr. Olga Obrezanova is a Principal Scientist in the Augmented Biologics Design group at Biologics Engineering, AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, UK. With 20 years of experience, Olga specializes in applying machine learning & artificial intelligence and developing computational tools for biologics and small molecules drug discovery. Her work is focused on preclinical immunogenicity assessment of biologics and advancing in silico approaches for predicting immunogenicity and developability.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Momoko Okuda is researcher at pharmaceutical technology division in Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. She joined Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2015. She has worked for drug discovery projects for 8 years. Currently she is working for the analytical development department in CMC manufacturing. She has extensive experience ranging from drug discovery to CMC development.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Erica Ollmann Saphire, PhD is a Professor of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Her research explains, at the molecular level, how and why viruses like Ebola and Lassa are pathogenic and provides the roadmap for medical defense. Her team has solved the structures of the Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, Bundibugyo and Lassa virus glycoproteins, explained how they remodel these structures as they drive themselves into cells, how their proteins suppress immune function and where human antibodies can defeat these viruses. A recent discovery revealed why neutralizing antibodies had been so difficult to elicit against Lassa virus, and provided not only the templates for the needed vaccine, but the molecule itself: a Lassa surface glycoprotein engineered to remain in the right conformation to inspire the needed antibody response. This molecule is the basis for international vaccine efforts against Lassa. Dr. Saphire was also the galvanizing force behind the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium and is the Director of this organization. This consortium, an NIH-funded Center of Excellence in Translational Research, unites 44 previously competing academic, industrial and government labs across five continents to understand and provide antibody therapeutics against Ebola, Marburg, Lassa and other viruses. Dr. Saphire’s work has been recognized at the White House with the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, with young investigator awards from the International Congress of Antiviral Research, the American Society for Microbiology, and the MRC Centre for Virus Research in the United Kingdom. She has been awarded a Fulbright Global Scholar fellowship from the United States Department of State and a Mercator Fellowship from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, to develop international collaborations using cryoelectron microscopy to further global health.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Dr Erika Orban was born in Hungary, where she received her master`s degree in molecular biology. She joined the Research Group of Peptide Chemistry Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where her research focused on selective tumor targeting. After receiving her PhD, she joined the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, where she was working on the cell-free expression of G-protein Coupled Receptors. After returning to her home country, she became first a bioassay developer, later the lead of the Binding Assay Team at the Bioanalytical Department, Biotechnology Business Unit at Chemical Works of Gedeon Richter. She moved to the United States in 2020 for family reasons and she joined Zoetis as a Principal Scientist in 2021 and she leads the Protein Discovery and Bioanalytic Team under Protein Therapeutics.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Dr. Papoian received his PhD at Cornell University under guidance of Dr. Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel Laureate. He continued with postdoctoral work with Dr. Michael Klein (National Academy of Sciences member) and Dr. Peter Wolynes (National Academy of Sciences member), studying quantum and protein physics. He has held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and subsequently at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently the first Monroe Martin Professor at the University of Maryland, in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Institute for Physical Science and Technology. He received numerous awards, including Beckman Young Investigator, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He uses computational chemistry, physics, and machine learning to study biological processes at multiple scales, from protein dynamics and epigenetics to cellular-level processes, such as immune cell activation and neuronal dynamics. He is also the co-founder and CSO of DeepOrigin Inc., a startup company that accelerates drug discovery through pioneering combination of physics-informed AI, quantum methods, and molecular dynamics.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

No bio available.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

Tatjana leads the Protein Sciences team at Rondo Therapeutics, an IO biotech company developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of solid tumors. Her team focuses on the development of antibodies advancing drug candidates from discovery stage to IND enabling studies. Tatjana has over a decade of experience in protein biochemistry and has previously worked at several biotech companies including Alector, Synthekine, Caribou Biosciences, and Genentech in a variety of research and therapeutic areas.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

My undergraduate degree is in Chemistry from Hope College. I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I spent time as a Post Doc at Fox Chase Cancer Center outside Philadelphia and a shorter time in the Dermatology department at the University of Pennsylvania. I worked at Novartis/Syngenta designing high through-put screens. I have spent the last 21 years running the Protein Expression Facility at the NIEHS.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Dr. Maryam Sarmazdeh is an assistant professor of Chemical Engineering. Her research is focused on biomolecular engineering and synthetic biology to develop novel biotechnology tools and products to solve major issues in human health, sustainability, and environment. Her research group is interested in targeting metalloproteinases by engineering protein scaffolds such as antibody and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) using directed evolution and rational design.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Narendiran Rajasekaran, PhD, is an accomplished drug discovery scientist and immunologist with diverse experience in biomedical research. He is an inventor and author in multiple peer reviewed publications and patents in immuno-oncology and autoimmunity. Rajasekaran in currently leading the therapeutic antibody discovery and research programs in immuno-oncology at Coherus Oncology. Previously, Rajasekaran served as a tenure track faculty at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and principal investigator of multiple NIH-funded research programs investigating the interaction of the tumor-microenvironment and NK cells in tumors. His earlier work at Stanford University focused on the role of radiation-resistant Tregs and innate immune cells in autoimmune diabetes and arthritis and tested carbon nanotubes as drug carriers for treating arthritis. Rajasekaran received his Ph.D in Immunology with magna cum laude from University of Konstanz, Germany followed by an Arthritis Foundation Fellowship for his post-doctoral studies at Stanford University. He subsequently joined the faculty at NAU before moving into his current role as Director of Research at Coherus Oncology.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Dr. Reczek holds a PhD in biochemistry, molecular, and cell biology from Cornell University and has over 20 years' industry experience in biologics and small molecule drug discovery research and development. He has held various roles including leading US Biologics Research Protein Production and Characterization and overseeing Operations for Sanofi's US Large Molecules Research Platform. Currently he is Department Head for US Biologics Research and focuses on the discovery and delivery of innovative biologics to conquer complex diseases via multi-targeting, smart biologics, and intelligent drug design.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Wayne Reed is the Murchison Mallory Professor of Physics at Tulane University, with a joint appointment in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His work involves quantitative characterization of equilibrium properties and non-equilibrium processes and kinetics in macromolecular systems. This includes work with monoclonal antibodies, lipid nanoparticles, and gene therapy delivery vehicles, and realtime monitoring and control of polymerization reactions. He has over 150 peer reviewed articles, 12 issued patents, and is currently writing a textbook, 'Biophysics and Macromolecules'.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Nigel F. Reuel is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State University, Associate Department Chair, and is the Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and Entrepreneurial Fellow from the ISU College of Engineering. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 2014 under the guidance of Prof. Michael Strano. After graduating, he attempted to commercialize his PhD work in a startup, Volvox Biologic Inc. (Boston), and then consulted at a larger life science tool company that obtained the startup IP (Maryland). He then worked as a Research Investigator (PI) at DuPont’s historic Central Research and Development campus (Wilmington, DE) for two years on projects ranging from wireless power transfer, sensors, and precision agriculture. He was then promoted as the corporate technology scout, where, for 8 months, he traveled to universities and incubators to find technology for the CTO office at DuPont. Although this was an exciting role at a large company, he quickly realized that making technology was more personally rewarding than finding it and was pleased with the opportunity to come to Iowa State University and become an entrepreneurial-minded professor. Currently his group has over 15 active technology disclosures at ISURF, two granted ISU patents, and three startup company offshoots (Skroot Laboratory Inc., Zymosense Inc., Frugi Biotech Inc. with the latter being acquired by BigHat Biosciences in 2022). Dr. Reuel’s work has been recognized by the ACS BIOT Division Young Investigator Award (2024), NSF Career Award (2021), NIH Outstanding Early Investigator Award R35 (2020), and 3M Nontennured Faculty Award.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

Guilhem Richard, Ph.D., is the Chief Technology Officer of EpiVax, Inc. and has over 10 years of experience in computational immunology and vaccinology. Dr. Richard joined the EpiVax immunoinformatics team in 2014, developing new models for understanding the interaction between the immune system and protein sequences, while supporting EpiVax’s commercial and research programs. He spearheaded the development of a new computational platform for the development of personalized, neoantigen-based cancer vaccines (Ancer), and conducted subsequent translational work at EpiVax’s subsidiary company, EpiVax Therapeutics, Inc., from 2019 to 2024 where he served as Chief Scientific Officer/Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Richard has been leading innovation efforts at EpiVax since 2024 and is overseeing the development of its next generation of immunoinformatics tools. Dr. Richard holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Boston University and a M.Eng. in Bioinformatics and Modeling from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Lyon, France.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Nathan is Director of the Biologics Discovery and Development team at LifeArc, focusing on delivering antibody therapeutics and bridging the gap between early phase discovery to the clinic. Nathan’s previous roles were Director at LabGenius focused on the discovery and engineering of T-cell engagers using AI/machine learning to generate non-intuitive antibody designs for immune-oncology, following a role as Head of Antibody engineering at MiroBio discovering antibody agonists against checkpoint receptors for autoimmune diseases. Prior to this Nathan lead the Antibody Discovery team at OXGENE developing a proprietary mammalian display to screen naïve antibody libraries against integral membrane proteins and 11 years at Heptares Therapeutics engineering and facilitating/solving the atomic structures of GPCR co-ligand complexes by x-ray crystallography.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Prof. María Rodríguez Martínez is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine and a member of the Center for Systems and Engineering Immunology. With a foundation in physics, she transitioned into systems biology during her postdoctoral research at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Columbia University. Before joining Yale, she spent a decade at IBM Research Europe, where she led the Computational Systems Biology team and directed large-scale interdisciplinary initiatives, including EU consortia focused on advancing personalized medicine for cancer. Her research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and immunology, focusing on developing interpretable and generative deep learning approaches to model the adaptive immune system. Her team integrates protein language models, high-throughput immune repertoire sequencing, and multi-modal data to decode the sequence-structure-function relationships of T and B cell receptors. Recent work explores how machine learning can identify immune signatures associated with autoimmune diseases. Collectively, her work aims to bring computational precision to immune receptor analysis, supporting the rational design and safety assessment of next-generation immunotherapies.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Nathan Rollins is a founding scientist at Chai Discovery, where he applies over a decade of expertise in computational protein design to advance next-generation therapeutics. He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University. As a first employee at Seismic Therapeutic, he helped launch the company and supported multiple protein programs to IND, developing machine learning models to optimize therapeutic properties. At Chai Discovery, he builds frontier AI models for structure prediction and atomistic design of biomolecules, work that directly contributed to the Chai-2 breakthrough-a model capable of de novo antibody design in a 24-well plate and within just two weeks.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Chris Ross is currently Associate Director Business Development, Licensing for Lonza, a global CDMO. Chris has been a commercial professional in the Biotechnology and Life Sciences industries since 1999. Chris has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and used to work in a laboratory as an Analytical Chemist running instruments before moving to the commercial side of the business. Chris also has a Master of Business Administration. Chris joined LinkedIn on September 19, 2004 and his member number is 1,134,889 of the 1.2 Billion members on LinkedIn as of 2025. Chris is known on LinkedIn as an avid reader and reviewer of mostly non-fiction books.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Richard R. Rustandi is a Senior Principal Scientist in Vaccine Research Analytical Development at Merck Co. He obtained his BS in Chemistry from University of Hawaii and his MS and PhD in Chemistry from University of Chicago. He did his postdoctoral work in Institute of Physical Chemistry at University of Zurich, Switzerland and continued at Harvard Medical School and finally at University of Maryland studying protein structure using multi-dimensional NMR spectroscopy. His current research focus is the development and application of various capillary electrophoresis and other separation techniques in vaccines and therapeutic proteins. The main emphasis is on capillary western advancement towards streamlining the analytical development of vaccine products from end to end including host cell proteins. Another area of focus is receptor-antigen binding using various methods such as ACE, SPR, automated ELISA, ITC, size-based separation, Fluidity-diffusion, as well as benchtop NMR and EPR spectroscopies. He is currently an Associate Director at CASSS, Member of Editorial Board for Electrophoresis, CE Pharm committee 2012-2020, Scientific committee for LACE 2021-present.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Stefano Sammicheli obtained a PhD in Immunology from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and trained as postdoctoral fellow at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute and the Francis Crick Institute where he joined the Group of Prof. Caetano Reis e Sousa to work on cancer immunity. In 2018 he joined Roche Innovation Center Zurich as a Senior Scientist developing antibody-based programs for cancer immune therapies. Currently he is the Director of Innate Cell Engagers at Ichnos Sciences, and he is leading several therapeutic antibody discovery programs, one of which has reached FDA approval and Phase I trial.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Nicholas has been a member of the Biologics Characterization, Expression, and Purification (BiCEP) group in Large Molecule Research at Sanofi for 5 years. He specializes in the mid-to-large-scale production of various protein formats, with an emphasis on automation and high-throughput workflows for AKTA and uHPLC systems. Nicholas has an interest in applying data analysis and machine learning solutions to gain better insights into protein yield and quality data. Alongside pipeline and technology development work, he also serves as a protein production representative for two programs in the Large Molecule Research portfolio.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Gautam’s diverse scientific experience includes leading development of analytical and biophysical methods that are critical to CMC batch release and characterization of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. His expertise also extends to rational formulation design, as demonstrated by delivery of several safe and effective formulations to clinical trials for recombinant protein-based VLPs, therapeutic proteins, and genetically engineered oncolytic viruses. More recently, Gautam has been involved in advisory roles on projects emerging from the newer vaccine technologies, with a focus on analytical characterization and assays for mRNA and viral vectored vaccines. Apart from his extensive work on vaccines and biologics, Gautam led biochemistry, biophysics, and protein science teams in target-based discovery of antibacterial therapeutics. He has published extensive research papers, book chapters, and review articles. During the 27 years that Gautam spent in pharmaceutical industry, he headed R&D departments and groups at Merck, AstraZeneca, and MedImmune (AstraZeneca Biopharmaceuticals). For the past few years, he has been associated as a Subject Matter Expert with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has collaborated with the Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness Innovations. In addition, he has been a CMC advisor for several vaccine initiatives in the US and in developing countries.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Dr. Sarkar has been in the mRNA and gene therapy space for a little over a decade now. His work at Stanford University pioneered the use of epigenetic reprogramming to reset cellular age without erasing cell identity. The earlier stages of the reprogramming process were shown to reverse many aging phenotype, but after a certain point the developmental programming also starts to reverse. His work involved developing and characterizing new constructs and protocols to push the boundaries of the age reversal without overstepping into de-differentiation. From this work, he spun out Turn Biotechnologies - the first company built around this technology. This approach has since become a premiere solution in longevity biotech space. In observing the broader challenges of delivering large molecule drugs, he went on to start his second venture - reThink64 - which is developing new paradigms for delivering mRNA, peptide and gene therapies.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Hetal Sarvaiya is a Director within Quantitative Translational ADME Sciences (QTAS) department at AbbVie based of the South San Francisco location. In her current role at AbbVie, she leads a global bioanalytical team that supports. In vitro bioanalytical characterization and quantitation of biologics and genetic medicine modalities across all therapeutic areas using mass spectrometry-based approach. Her team also provides Mass-spec based proteomics support towards in vitro model characterization as well as biomarker and disease MoA studies. She also leads bioanalytical platform selection and implementation of integrative BA strategies across biologics projects from discovery through development. Previously, she has had several different roles as part of AbbVie-Stemcentrx where she led protein science team focusing on ADC conjugation, analytical and bioanalytical characterization efforts. She has extensive experience (~20 years) in the application of mass spectrometry-based approaches for characterization and quantitation of biotherapeutics. Prior to AbbVie, she had been at Merck and Momenta Pharmaceuticals (now a Janssen company).

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Tomi is Founding Chief Drug Hunter and President of Maestro Therapeutics, an emerging R&D enterprise dedicated to transforming and accelerating peptide modality therapeutics. Most recently, Tomi was a Distinguished Scientist, Global Chemistry at Merck & Company where he led a Peptide Drug Hunter Network. Prior to joining Merck & Company in 2014, Tomi was the Founding Chief Scientific Officer at Aileron Therapeutics from 2007 to 2013 and Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at Ariad Pharmaceuticals (recently acquired by Takeda for $5.2B) from 1997 to 2006. He is credited with building a stapled peptide technology platform at Aileron Therapeutics as well as driving a $1.1B strategic R&D collaboration with Roche Pharma. He is a peptide, peptidomimetic, de novo nonpeptide, small molecule and natural product drug hunter and has contributed to the discovery of three marketed drugs (Scenesse®, Iclusig® and Ridaforolimus), a Phase II clinical candidate (ALRN-6924) and preclinical development of renin inhibitors, HIV protease inhibitors, Src SH2 antagonists, and dual Src/Bcr-Abl kinase inhibitor. Tomi is credited with >600 scientific publications, patents, and presentations. He holds Adjunct Professorship and/or Scientific Advisory Board appointments at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Arizona and Northeastern University Center for Drug Discovery.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Since 1990, I've solved challenges with colleagues at Genetics Institute, Pfizer, Adnexus and Bristol Myers Squibb in carbohydrate chemistry, protein refolding, structure determination, and fit-for purpose chemical modification. My main roles in discovery at BMS are project management and leading an expert production team in creating and characterizing multispecific binders, reagents, adnectins and ADC addressing cancer resistance, neuroscience and immune disorders.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

Dr. Schöneich is the Takeru Higuchi Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at The University of Kansas. He received his PhD in Chemistry in 1990 from the Technical University Berlin, Germany. Between 1987 and 1991 he worked in the Department of Radiation Chemistry at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on oxidation reactions of peptides and proteins in vivo and in vitro, and their potential consequences for the development of stable protein pharmaceuticals, biological aging, and age-related pathologies. He has published about 288 papers in the field of peptide and protein oxidation reactions.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Ian Scott is a research scientist and member of the Protein Therapeutics team at Gilead Sciences. He has more than 15 years of experience in protein purification, focusing on multi-specific antibodies, Fc-fusion proteins, antibody fragments, and other challenging proteins.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Dr. Aude Segaliny is an accomplished scientist in cancer research and preclinical pharmacology. As a founding scientist of Amberstone Biosciences and its Tumor Microenvironment Activated Therapeutics (T-MATE™) Platform, she has executed critical projects and delivered on key milestones throughout her career. Dr. Segaliny is a responsible leader who drives effective communication between internal teams and external collaborators, advisors, and partners. Dr. Aude Segaliny has over 15 years of experience in immunology, cell biology, cytokine and receptor biology, microfluidic single-cell functional screening platform, and in vitro/in vivo characterization assays, with a focus on cancer therapeutics discovery. She received her PhD training with a heavy focus on cytokine biology in the context of bone cancer. Her PhD study brought new insights into IL-34 biology in the pathogenesis of osteosarcoma, where she generated an anti-IL-34 therapeutic antibody. During her postdoctoral tenure at UCI, Dr. Segaliny led multiple translational research projects including one where she delivered a stem cell-based candidate therapy for metastatic breast cancer. This significant research contributed to a successful technology licensing to and pre-IND filling by a commercial biotech partner based in California. In her current role at Amberstone, Dr. Segaliny leads a team of immunologists, biomedical engineers, and in vivo biologists to identify and characterize Amberstone’s next-generation immunotherapeutic antibodies by leveraging cutting-edge technologies and external collaborations. She was instrumental to the establishment of the company’s proprietary T-MATE discovery platform (licensed out in 2023), which has been crucial to the company’s leading programs, including the ABS-101 development candidate currently in pre-IND.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Oksana Sergeeva, Ph.D. is a Principal Scientist in the Translational Sciences at EvolveImmune Therapeutics, an immuno-oncology biotech based in Branford, CT. She leads solid tumor T-cell engager programs from discovery to IND-enabling studies. Dr. Sergeeva holds a B.S. in chemical biology from Harvey Mudd College and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from MIT. She did her postdoctoral training in cell biology at the Global Health Institute of EFPL in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has authored over 40 papers, international conference abstracts, and patents.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Ayla Sessions is Associate Director of High Throughput Production in the Biologics Engineering department at AstraZeneca, where she leads the deployment and management of automated solutions to produce multi-milligram quantities of biologics. Her team is responsible for automating end-to-end biologics production at a range of fit-for-purpose scales, supporting the rapidly evolving multispecies space. With nearly a decade of experience in pharmaceutical companies and startups, Ayla draws on her PhD in Bioengineering to design and implement tailored automation strategies for biologics production and screening. Her teams have successfully delivered thousands of molecules across more than 30 pipeline programs, driving advances in hit screening, hit-to-lead conversion, and the development of automation solutions for AI and machine learning applications.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

I have devoted more than 30 years to understanding basic mechanisms of antigen recognition and immune responses, measuring and predicting immune activity, and developing disease intervention strategies against cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases and allergies. My early work, in the mid-80s to mid-90s, related to the demonstration that the main biological function of MHC is to bind epitopes. From those studies we further developed the notion that different MHCs have distinct binding specificities that can be used to predict epitopes. Since then, our group has defined motifs for over one hundred different class I and class II MHC variants expressed in from humans, and several other species. Throughout the last fifteen years I have been the PI of the Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource, freely available to the scientific community, which host immune reactivity data, and a series of bioinformatics algorithms to assist in the prediction and evaluation of immune responses. Our group also discovered and characterized how MHC variants can be grouped according to broad functional specificities (MHC supertypes), greatly facilitating epitope classification, characterization and understanding the basic rules of epitope-MHC interactions. Over the last 32 years, I have been continuously involved in hundreds of epitope identification studies, in cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, and infectious disease. By probing the IEDB, it can be established that I have been involved in identifying over 6,500 different epitopes.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Evgenyi Shalaev, PhD, AAPS Fellow, is a Distinguished Research Fellow in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Abbvie Inc, Irvine, California, USA, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Minnesota. Dr. Shalaev held the Royal Society Fellowship in Pafra Biopreservation and the University of Cambridge, UK, postdoctoral research appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University, and worked at the Institute of Carbon (Russia), Institute of Molecular Biology (Russia), and Pfizer Inc. (USA), before taking his present position. His responsibilities in Abbvie are focused on biological drug products covering both controlled release dosage forms and conventional formulations such as solutions and freeze-dried powders. Dr Shalaev’s research interests include: amorphous and other disordered solids; phase transitions in aqueous systems during freezing and drying; chemical and physical stability of small molecules and biologicals; development and scale-up of freeze-drying processes. He has published over a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and patent applications.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

Zach is an MD/PhD student in Michael Jewett's laboratory at Northwestern University. His research focuses on using cell-free systems to engineer conjugate vaccines to improve their synthesis and immunogenicity. Zach obtained his B.S. from Davidson College in 2018. Prior to joining Northwestern's MD/PhD program, Zach conducted a Fulbright Research Scholarship in Botswana and performed clinical research at Duke University.

• Peptide Targets: Discovery, Expression, and Validation

Yang Shen, PhD, joined Regeneron in 2018 and currently serves as Executive Director, Antibody Engineering in Bispecific Department and Co-Chair of Protein Therapeutics, Pipeline & Technology Section. Yang founded Antibody Engineering Group and played an instrumental role in establishing Altibody platform. He and his team work on designing, producing, and screening alternative format molecules to deepen our understanding of biology and create new therapeutic opportunities at Regeneron. He received his PhD in Structural Biology from Columbia University. Prior to joining Regeneron, Yang held increasing roles at ImClone Systems and Eli Lilly between 2008 and 2018.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

No bio available.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 2

Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Cell Origins with over 15 years of experience in peptide discovery. Her work focuses on phage display-based strategies to develop targeted peptides for oncology, including peptides for radioligand imaging and therapy.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

No bio available.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

No bio available.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

No bio available.

• SYMPOSIUM: AI/ML Approaches in Immunogenicity Prediction

Alex has built his career around applying machine learning to problems in biology. He has over a decade of experience in computational biology and 30+ publications spanning work at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At RubrYc Therapeutics, Alex managed antibody discovery campaigns using machine learning to produce drug molecules with exquisite epitope-selectivity, leading to the company’s acquisition by iBio in 2022. Now, Alex is driving the development of iBio's machine learning branch for epitope-steered antibody discovery.

• Recombinant Protein Production - Part 1

Dr. Cheemeng Tan is an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California Davis. He received a bachelor’s degree (first-class honors) from the National University of Singapore and an M.S. degree in High-Performance Computing from Singapore-MIT Alliance. In 2010, he obtained a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. He then worked as a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lane Center for Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon University. He has received several awards, including the Medtronic Fellowship, the Society-in-Science: Branco Weiss Fellowship, a Young Investigator Grant from the Human Frontier Science Program, the Scialog Fellow, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering New Innovator, and NIH NIBIB Trailblazer.

• SYMPOSIUM: Predictive Protein Production

Joanne brings more than 15 years of industry experience building R&D teams and advancing drug candidates through development and clinical proof-of-concept studies. Prior to Parvus, Joanne served as Head of Translational Sciences at Nkarta and Sana Biotechnology and Head of Clinical Biomarker at Schrodinger. At Arcus Biosciences, Joanne served in a series of leadership roles developing biomarker strategies and advancing the pre-clinical pipeline. Joanne earned her BSc with honors and PhD in Immunology and Developmental Biology from Trinity College at the University of Toronto.

• Peptide Therapeutics: Accelerating Discovery and Development

Ipek Tasan completed her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Supervised by Prof. Huimin Zhao, she worked as part of the NIH 4D Nucleome project, and her doctoral research focused on mammalian genome engineering by CRISPR/Cas9 and discovery of novel tools for live cell imaging of gene movement in the nucleus and studying its impact on gene function. She then continued as a postdoctoral fellow in the Zhao lab while also serving as a program coordinator at the Molecule Maker Lab Institute. Following this, she joined Amgen as a postdoctoral fellow, where she worked on developing efficient, high-throughput methods for screening protein variant libraries and demonstrated the utility of massively parallel reporter assays to identify novel genomic hotspots for high protein expression. Currently, she is a senior scientist at the Arc Institute, working in the Genome Engineering Technology Center.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Peter Tessier is the Albert M. Mattocks (Endowed) Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, and a member of the Biointerfaces Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware (2003, NASA Graduate Fellow) and performed his postdoctoral studies at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT (2003-2007, American Cancer Society Fellow). Tessier started his independent career as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007, and he was an endowed full professor at Rensselaer prior to moving to the University of Michigan in 2017. Tessier’s research focuses on designing, optimizing, characterizing and formulating a class of large therapeutic proteins (antibodies) that hold great potential for detecting and treating human disorders ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. He has received a number of awards and fellowships in recognition of his pioneering work: Pew Scholar Award in Biomedical Sciences (2010-2014), Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2014-2015), Young Scientist Award from the World Economic Forum (2014), Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society (2015) and NSF CAREER Award (2010-2015).

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Olena Tokareva is Director of Hit Discovery at Parabilis Medicine, where she leads efforts to discover therapeutic peptides targeting challenging protein surfaces. She spearheaded the development of the Trimerizer platform, which identifies helical peptides that form ternary complexes between an E3 ligase and a target protein, functioning analogously to small-molecule molecular glues. She also directed creation of the Griptide platform, which delivers exceptionally high-affinity bi-helical binders against challenging targets. Prior to joining Parabilis Medicine, Dr. Tokareva advanced protein engineering at Bayer AG, deploying a phage-assisted continuous evolution platform to generate proteins with novel mechanisms of action. She previously held an NRSA F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Tufts University and MIT, where she integrated experimental design with computational modeling to develop silk-based non-viral gene delivery systems. Dr. Tokareva earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biotechnology from Tufts University, pioneering a new family of spider silk block copolymers to elucidate sequence-structure-assembly relationships in biomaterials.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Sarfaraj Topia is Group Leader of Small-Scale Antibody Production & Automation at UCB Pharma, where he leads a team focused on developing and implementing automated workflows for antibody production, product quality check and logistics. Sarfaraj has built extensive expertise in bioprocessing, early-stage therapeutic development, and laboratory automation. His work has been recognized through contributions to high-impact antibody research and the successful integration of cutting-edge technologies to streamline therapeutic discovery pipelines. At UCB, he has overseen the deployment of innovative automated platforms that accelerate DNA-to-protein workflows, improve reproducibility, and expand high-throughput capabilities-helping bridge scientific innovation with scalable solutions. Sarfaraj brings a strong track record of scientific leadership, process optimization, and technology implementation, making him well-positioned to share insights on the future of automation in biologics research.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Huyen Tran is currently a Director in Formulation Research in Bioproduct Research and Development at Eli Lilly and Company, working in the development phase of biologic formulations. She was a group leader in Formulation and Delivery and Platform Lead of Oral Peptide Delivery in Biotherapeutics Discovery Research. She holds PhD, MSc and BS in Pharmaceutics focusing on the development of controlled release formulations and nanoparticle-based delivery systems for improving oral drug bioavailability. Huyen had 5+ years of Postdoctoral experiences in formulation development of nanoparticle-based delivery systems for small molecules, DNA and RNA for cancer therapies and treatment of inflammatory diseases. Since joining Lilly in 2015, she has been leading formulation development in Discovery phase including identification and implementation of new formulations and drug delivery technologies to overcome challenges of oral peptide delivery. Huyen is an author of nearly 40 publications and co-inventor of 4 patents and 2 patent applications on formulation development, nanoparticles for drug delivery and oral peptide delivery.

• Biotherapeutics Aggregation and Preformulation Strategies

No bio available.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Anastasia Velentza is currently VP and Head of Biology at Vilya, a biotechnology company founded on computational design of novel macrocycle drugs against difficult targets to address unmet medical need with the purpose to transform patients’ lives. Anastasia is also the Founder and Owner of AVeNew Insights, a Consulting Company providing service and advice across all aspects of Drug Discovery. Previously, she was the Head of Discovery Technology at Plexium, a Targeted Protein Degradation company. Anastasia has more than 20 years in Drug Discovery, with expertise in Discovery Biology and Molecular Pharmacology across multiple therapeutic areas, modalities and targets. Before Plexium, she held positions of increasing responsibility at Novartis, Dart Neuroscience and Ferring Pharmaceuticals. Anastasia was NIH Research Award scholar in a drug discovery training program at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at the University of Patras in Greece, and a Ph.D. from the same institution in Bioorganic Chemistry, funded by a competitive scholarship and EU programs. Anastasia has received awards at national and international conferences for her research, which has been documented in more than 25 publications, patents, and abstracts.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Thomas von Erlach, PhD co-founded Vivtex and joined as its Chief Scientific Officer when Vivtex was formed as a MIT spin-off in 2018. Prior to that he led the interdisciplinary efforts around gastrointestinal model systems for oral drug delivery applications at the Laboratory of Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Giovanni Traverso at MIT. Dr von Erlach obtained his PhD from Imperial College London in Bioengineering and a BSc and MSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. His research interest include advanced in vitro models for drug development, oral drug delivery and gastrointestinal pharmacology. His work is published in several high impact journals such as Nature Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering, and Nature Communications.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

Even Walseng is a director in Biologics Engineering R&D, AstraZeneca. He is leading a team working on novel modalities and multispecific formats, including T cell engagers.

• Advancing Multispecific Engineering to the Clinic

Curtis Walton, Ph.D. is the Director of Automation and Process Optimization at the Institute for Protein Innovation (IPI). He brings deep expertise in laboratory automation, bioinformatics, and protein engineering, with a strong track record of building scalable workflows that accelerate scientific discovery. Curtis holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Ottawa, where he developed novel biocatalysts for pharmaceutical applications. At IPI and in previous roles, he has led multidisciplinary teams and spearheaded the integration of cutting-edge automation platforms, transforming research pipelines through innovative, data-driven approaches.

• Automation in Protein Discovery

Dr. Xiangdan Wang is an experienced bioanalytical scientist with more than 17 years of experience in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Wang obtained her PhD in Bioanalytical Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. She then joined Genentech and has been focusing on biophysical characterization of proteins and understanding protein-protein interactions using label-free biosensor-based methods. She is currently working as a Senior Principal Scientist in the Bioanalytical Sciences Department at Genentech. Dr. Wang has supported many projects by providing critical biomolecular interaction characterization data that were included in regulatory submission documents, reports, and publications.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Dr. Wei Wang is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Therapeutic Discovery department of Amgen Inc. Since joined Amgen in 2006, she has worked on research and development of numerous biological therapeutics. She has made invaluable contributions to several biotherapeutics in clinical trials and three in market. She has co-authored over 20 research study reports for IND filing, over 40 peer-reviewed publications and contributed to 8 patents. She earned her PhD in Biochemistry from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, followed by postdoctoral training at UCLA School of Medicine. She has near 30 years of experience on the application of SPR technology in the research and development of biotherapeutics.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Dr. Christopher Wassif has a wide breadth of knowledge having spent 27 years working at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA in the fields of Genetics, Rare Diseases, Biomarker discovery/validation, and high throughput small molecule screening. With 90 plus peer reviewed manuscripts and multiple book chapters he is a well-respected leader in multiple fields of research. In 2022, Dr. Wassif transitioned to AstraZeneca as Director of Molecular Engineering and Antibody Technologies and global lead for the Machine Learning for Antibody and Biologics (MLAB). In his current role he leads a dynamic team of scientist converging the powers of AI/ML to facilitate and accelerate biologic discovery.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Dr. Phil White is a distinguished pharmaceutical leader with extensive expertise in CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) and biologics development. With over two decades of experience, he has made significant contributions to the advancement of mRNA therapeutics and vaccine development. As a former Vice President at Moderna, he played a pivotal role in the development and regulatory approval of COVID-19 vaccines, including leading CMC strategy for multiple international submissions. His expertise spans the development of complex biological products, including mRNA-LNP formulations, from early-stage research through commercialization. Dr. White has successfully led the development of innovative analytical tools and formulation strategies that have enhanced process consistency and manufacturing scale-up. His work has directly contributed to the delivery of over 800 million vaccine doses, and he has authored CMC content for over 40 programs covering multiple modalities. Currently serving as an mRNA CMC Fellow, he continues to bridge scientific and regulatory disciplines through strategic planning and clear communication.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Brian White is a senior director of chemistry at Parabilis Medicines. He obtained his B.S. in chemistry at Emory University in Atlanta, and his Ph.D. in the lab of Marc Snapper at Boston College working on synthetic methods towards medium rings. He was a postdoctoral fellow in Yoshito Kishi’s laboratory at Harvard University, focusing on semisynthetic erythromycin derivatives. He worked at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals from 2009-2013 on small molecule sirtuin modulators, and at Tarveda Therapeutics from 2013-2019, working on the development of peptide drug conjugates. He joined Parabilis Medicines in 2019 and has worked on developing stapled peptides to target traditionally undruggable proteins beta-catenin and the transcription factor ERG.

• SYMPOSIUM: Peptide Drug Hunting 101: The Life of a Peptide

David Wood is currently a professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University, where he continues to work on self-cleaving tag technologies for research and biopharmaceutical applications. He holds an undergraduate degree from Caltech with a double major in biology and chemical engineering, as well as a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Chemical Engineering, and has experience in downstream processing and proess development at Amgen and Bristol Myers Squibb. He has published over 50 papers, book chapters and reviews in protein engineering, and holds several patents on technologies developed in his lab. Most recently, he is a co-founder of Protein Capture Science; a company formed to commercialize his split-intein technology for protein purification.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Anna M. Wu, Ph.D, is professor and chair, Department of Immunology & Theranostics and co-director, Center for Theranostic Studies, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, and professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at City of Hope in Duarte, California. She also holds the title of research professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, where she previously served as professor and vice chair. While at UCLA she also held positions as director, Cancer Molecular Imaging Program, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and co-associate director, Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging. She is a past chair of the California Breast Cancer Research Council, fellow and past president of the World Molecular Imaging Society, and a fellow of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. She is the recipient of the 2018 Suffrage Science Award and the 2022 Gold Medal from the World Molecular Imaging Society. Dr. Wu’s research interests include engineered antibodies and proteins for targeting, imaging, and therapeutic applications in cancer and immunology, including the use of SPECT, PET, optical and multimodality approaches. Dr. Wu is the co-founder and chief scientific advisor to ImaginAb Inc., which develops and commercializes engineered antibodies for clinical imaging in cancer and other diseases. Dr. Wu received her A.B. degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Postdoctoral studies were conducted at Yale University and at University of California San Francisco.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches

Dr. Jiansheng Wu is the Head of CRO Services and Senior Vice President at WuXi Biologics. With vast experience and expertise in protein sciences, he has been instrumental in establishing global protein production facilities and developing cutting-edge technologies. Having participated in over 50 drug development projects, Dr. Wu is a leading authority in automated expression, purification, and characterization of diverse proteins. Previously at Genentech for 15 years, he made significant contributions to innovative protein expression and purification technologies.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Dr. Gang Yin is an accomplished scientist and experienced R&D team leader with over 20 years of expertise in research and drug development. With a proven track record of success as a project leader on multiple programs, Dr. Yin has contributed to the progression of several programs into clinical trials. Dr. Yin is an expert in ADC and cytokine biologics development strategies, with a particular emphasis on strain engineering, antibody discovery, expression, purification, conjugation, and drug lead characterization. He is the pioneer of site-specific ADC development through non-natural amino acid incorporation.

• SYMPOSIUM: (Re)Discovering Protein Expression Platforms

Daniel Yoo is a Scientific Associate Director in Amgen's Large Molecule Discovery group, where he leads teams that develop promising protein therapeutic candidates and design innovative automation solutions. His areas of expertise include protein purification and analytics, high-throughput automation and informatics, and protein folding & modifications. Daniel Yoo received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Rochester in 2003.

• Advanced Tools for Purification and Quality

Kevin is a passionate, committed CMC subject matter expert, developing biologics to help patients and serving biotech community by teaching CMC-related training courses. Kevin has served leadership positions developing therapeutic biological products at AbbVie, AnaptysBio, Catalent Biopharma Solutions (CDMO), IGM Biosciences and Opthea. Kevin not only has in-depth expertise in Analytical Development but also has broad experience in Biologics CMC operation. In the past decades, he has successfully managed many biological drug candidates from early development to commercial. In addition to developing therapeutic biological products in-house, Kevin also had extensive experience working with external CDMO and CRO, including production cell line development, bioprocess development, DS/DP cGMP manufacturing, process characterization, process performance qualification (PPQ), formulation development by DoE, analytical procedure development and validation, reference standard qualification, extended characterization, and CMC analytical comparability.

• Analytical Strategies for Novel Biologics

Fangzhu Zhao is an A.P. Giannini Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Jim Wells at UCSF. She received her Ph.D. from Scripps Research under Dr. Dennis Burton, where she studied the discovery and engineering of anti-viral neutralizing antibodies to guide vaccine design and therapeutics. Her current research focuses on engineering bispecific antibodies to induce targeted protein degradation, modulate extracellular proteolysis, and enhance payload delivery.

• SYMPOSIUM: Engineering Multispecifics: Oncology and Beyond

Aline Oliveira started as an oncology expert with a Master's and PhD from INCA. With over 16 years in biopharmaceutical development, she has held key roles as R&D Project Manager and Portfolio Manager. Joining the Competitive Intelligence Office (Aicom) at Bio-Manguinhos, Aline leverages her deep industry knowledge to conduct strategic foresight studies and gather critical information that informs leadership decision-making.

• Novel Formats and New Antibody Approaches