PLENARY SPEAKERS

Anne-Marie Caminade is Director of Research Exceptional Class at the CNRS, and the head of the “Dendrimers and Heterochemistry” group at the LCC-Toulouse (France). After two PhDs in Toulouse and two Post-docs (IFP-Paris and Von Humboldt fellow in Saarbrücken), she holds a CNRS researcher position since 1985. She developed several aspects of phosphorus chemistry. Her current research interest is on dendrimers (hyperbranched nanomolecules), in particular on their use as catalysts, for nanomaterials and for biology/nanomedicine. She is the co-author of about 415 publications, 40 book chapters and 30 patents (h index 57).

Speech title: Dendrimers as tools towards nanomedicine

Ick Chan Kwon is a Tenured Principal Research Scientist and Director-General of Biomedical Research Institute in Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). He is also a Professor of KU-KIST Graduate School in Korea University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the College of Engineering at Seoul National University in 1982 and 1984, respectively. He received his Ph. D. in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from University of Utah in 1993. After a post-doctoral training at Center for Controlled Chemical Delivery in University of Utah, he joined KIST in 1994. He served as a vice president (2005-2008) and president (2008-2010) of the Korean Society of Molecular Imaging and currently serves as an Editor for Asia of the Journal of Controlled Release (Elsevier). He is a fellow of The Korean Academy of Science & Technology and a member of The National Academy of Engineering of Korea. His main research interest is development of smart nano-probes for theragnosis and molecular imaging with polymeric nanoparticles. He received Samsung Polymer Science Award from The Polymer Society of Korea (2013) and Academy Award from The Korean Academy of Science and Technology (2014). He has published over 360 peer-reviewed articles (total citation 14,500, h-index 69 by Web of Science) and delivered 70 invited lectures at International Conferences.

Speech title: Theragnostic Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery Systems

Dennis E. Discher is the Robert D. Bent chaired Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Penn’s new Physical Sciences of Oncology Center funded by the NIH’s National Cancer Institute. He is an elected member of both the US National Academy of Medicine (the Institute of Medicine, IOM; 2015) and the US National Academy of Engineering (2012). He received a Ph.D. jointly from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco in 1993 for studies of cell membrane biophysics and spliceform biochemistry, and was a US National Science Foundation International Fellow in computational biophysics at the University of British Columbia until 1996. He has coauthored more than 200 publications with over 30,000 citations that range in topic from matrix effects on stem cells and physical properties of the cell nucleus to mechanisms of ‘self’ recognition by macrophages and self-assembling polymers applied to disease, with papers appearing in Science, Cell, and several Nature journals. He has delivered 500 invited, keynote, plenary, and named lectures in the past dozen years. Additional Honors include a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the US National Science Foundation, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation of Germany, a LabEx Visiting Fellow at the Institut Jacques Monod – Paris, and Fellow of the American Assoc’n for Advancement of Science (AAAS). www.seas.upenn.edu/~discher

Speech title: From Nano Shape & Self Recognition to Flexibility in Cancer Treatment and Stem Cell Differentiation

Jackie Y. Ying received her B.E. and Ph.D. from The Cooper Union and Princeton University, respectively. She joined the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, where she was Professor of Chemical Engineering until 2005. She has been the Founding Executive Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore since 2003. For her research on nanostructured materials, Prof. Ying has been recognized with the American Ceramic Society Ross C. Purdy Award, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, American Chemical Society Faculty Fellowship Award in Solid-State Chemistry, Technology Review’s Inaugural TR100 Young Innovator Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award, Singapore National Institute of Chemistry-BASF Award in Materials Chemistry, Wall Street Journal Asia’s Asian Innovation Silver Award, International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Jubilee Medal, Materials Research Society Fellowship, Royal Society of Chemistry Fellowship, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellowship, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship, Crown Prince Grand Prize in the Brunei Creative, Innovative Product and Technological Advancement (CIPTA) Award, and Academy of Sciences of Iran Medal of Honor.

Prof. Ying was elected a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. She was named one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era” by AIChE in its Centennial Celebration. She was selected by The Muslim 500 in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 to be one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims. She was selected as an Inaugural Inductee for the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014. She was the inaugural winner of the Mustafa Prize “Top Scientific Achievement Award” in 2015. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Nano Today, which has an impact factor of 15.000.

Speech title: Nanostructured Biomaterials for Medical and Biological Applications

Dr. Rabah Boukherroub received a PhD in chemistry from the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. He is currently a CNRS research director at the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN), University Lille1, France. He is Associate Editor for ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. His research interests are in the area of functional nanomaterials, surface chemistry, and photophysics of semiconductor/metal nanostructures with emphasis on biosensors and lab-on-chip applications, and development of new tools for studying molecular dynamics in vivo. He is a co-author of 350+ research publications and wrote 25 book chapters in subjects related to nanotechnology, materials chemistry, and biosensors. He has 8 patents or patents pending.

Speech title: Nano-antibiotics: A rational design of functional nanoparticles to combat bacterial infection

Since 2008 Professor Dr. Fabian Kiessling is leading the Institute of Experimental Molecular Imaging at the Helmholtz Center of Applied Engineering of the RWTH-University in Aachen. Aim of his research is the development of novel diagnostic probes and imaging tools for a disease specific diagnosis and therapy monitoring. In this context, the main focus is on the investigation of angiogenesis related processes. Fabian Kiessling studied Medicine and did his thesis at the University in Heidelberg. Until the end of 2002, he worked as resident in the Department of Radiology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. In 2003 he changed to the Department of Medical Physics in Radiology of the DKFZ as leader of the Molecular Imaging group. In parallel he did his clinical training at different Departments of the University of Heidelberg and received the board certification as Radiologist in 2007. Fabian Kiessling did his habilitation in experimental radiology in 2006. In 2008 he founded the invivoContrast GmbH together with Matthias Braeutigam. Fabian Kiessling is author of more than 240 scientific publications and book chapters, edited two books and received many research awards, among those the “Emil Salzer Price for Cancer Research” and the “Richtzenhain Price”. Professor Kiessling is in the Editorial board of several scientific journals including Radiology, European Radiology, American Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Current Medicinal Chemistry, Frontiers in Bioscience and the Open Organic Chemistry Journal. He is founding member of the European Society for Functional and Molecular Imaging in Radiology (ESMOFIR), currently treasurer of the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI), founding member of the ESMI working group “Image Guided Therapy and Drug Delivery (IGTDD)“ and he was chairman of the “Molecular Imaging” subcommittee of the European Society for Radiology (ESR). Furthermore, he was program chair of the European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM) in 2014 and he is program chair of the World Molecular Imaging Conference (WMIS) in 2016.

Speech title: Considerations on the design of nanoparticles for diagnostic, theranostic and therapeutic purposes

Claire Wilhelm, physicist affiliated to the Condensed Matter section of the CNRS, has oriented her research to the biomedical field since obtaining her PhD in 2002 in soft matter physics. Her works during this last decade lied at the crossroads of magnetism, biophysics and nanomedicine and were resolutely multidisciplinary, taking advantage of the physical properties of magnetic nanoparticles to develop more effective treatments and new methods of medical investigation. She was appointed CNRS research director in 2013, she received the CNRS bronze medal in 2011, and the Louis Ancel prize in 2014. She is currently the grantee of an ERC consolidator on magnetic tissue engineering and biotransformation of nanoparticles in living tissues.

Speech title: Magnetic nanoparticles in cell therapies: from combined approaches in cancer treatment to magnetic tissue engineering

Professor Kenneth A. Dawson is Director of the Centre for BioNano Interactions (CBNI). The scientific focus of this Centre is to understand the interaction of nanoparticles with living systems (www.ucd.ie/cbni). The Centre seeks to clarify the controlling factors for these interactions, and to support applications in nanotherapeutics and nanosafety.

Prof. Dawson is Chair of Physical Chemistry, Chairman of the National BioNanoscience Action, and co-ordinator of the European Infrastructure in the arena. He has experience in the management of large scale EU projects, including multi-sectoral cross-disciplinary research projects and other international programs. He has received several international prizes, including the 2007 Cozzarelli prize from the National Academy of Sciences USA, as well as IBM, Packard, Canon, Sloan and Dreyfus prizes.

Prof. Dawson’s professional roles include representing Ireland on various international bodies, including the OECD and ISO working groups on standards for Nanotechnology. He is currently Senior Editor of Physica, Associate Editor of Journal of Nanoparticle Research, and former President of the European Colloid and Interface Society. He has been an advisor on nanoscience matters in the EU New Risk Committee of the European Commission, as well as the Advisory group of the European Medicines Agency.

Speech title: The Drive to Master the Foundation Principles of Nanoscale interactions with living Organisms

Christian Serre, 45 years old, is an engineer from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de Paris. He obtained a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1999 at University of Versailles St Quentin, France. After a post-doctoral fellowship in the USA in 2000 within the CNRS-Rhodia Inc. joint laboratory, he moved to a permanent CNRS research position in 2001 in the ‘Porous Solids’ research group in Versailles. Since 2009, he is currently director of research at the head of the Porous Solid Group in Versailles. He received the CNRS bronze medal in 2006, a European Research Council starting grant in 2008 devoted to the bioapplications of Metal Organic Frameworks and the Solid State Chemistry award of the French chemical society in 2010. His research topics deal with the synthesis, structure determination and applications, particularly in biomedicine, of porous hybrid solids. He is currently coauthor of more than 240 articles and 15 patents.

Speech title: Biocompatible Metal Organic Frameworks in Nanomedicine

Professor Philippe Barthélémy is the team leader of the ChemBioPharm team of the INSERM unit ARNA and is an expert in hybrid, bioinspired molecules, including nucleoside lipids, glycosylated nucleoside lipids, amino-acid nucleoside lipids and lipid oligonucleotide conjugates. His contribution to this field has been recognized by several prizes including the “Ministère Oseo 2011 Emergence », «Tremplin Entreprise/ESSEC 2011 », Future of innovation (InnovaDay, 2010), « Young observer of IUPAC » Pékin, Chine, (2005) and Ottawa, Canada, (2003). P. Barthélémy was a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University (Lavoisier Grant and Emory Fellowship). P. Barthélémy worked also as a Visiting Associate Professor at Duke University in 2001. In 2005 he was appointed as full Professor at the University of Bordeaux Segalen. Philippe Barthélémy was Vice President of the University of Bordeaux Segalen in 2012..  He is the cofounder of the startup inanov created in 2014. Philippe Barthélémy  published >100 publications in peer-reviewed journals > 15 patents, >100 communications and conférences.

Speech title: Nucleic acid chemistry for nanomedicine

Elias Fattal is a full professor in Drug Delivery Science at the University of Paris-Sud in Châtenay-Malabry, France and has been President of APGI from 2003 to 2010. He received his Pharmacy Degree (1983) and Ph.D. (1990) from the University of Paris-Sud and followed an internship in Pharmacy at the University of Lille (1984-1986). After visiting the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco for a post-doctoral position (1990-1991), he became associate Professor (1992) and full Professor at the University of Paris-Sud (2000). He is heading the Institut Galien Paris Sud. Over the past 25 years, he has made fundamental and applied contributions to the fields of drug delivery using nanotechnologies for targeted or local delivery of drugs and nucleic acids. Several of his inventions have been licensed to the pharmaceutical industry. Recently, he has been involved in the development of an adjuvant to antibiotics able to reduce resistance by adsorbing residual colonic antibiotics (clinical phase I). Prof. Fattal has authored more than 220 refereed articles and 30 book chapters. He has issued 10 international patents and has received the Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress (PSWC) Research Achievement Award. He serves in the editorial board of 7 journals among which the Journal of Controlled Release.

Speech title: Nanotechnologies for targeted delivery of nucleic acid

Kostas Kostarelos read Chemistry at the University of Leeds and obtained his Diploma in Chemical Engineering and PhD from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, studying the steric stabilization of liposomes using block copolymer molecules. He carried out his postdoctoral training in various medical institutions in the United States and has worked closely with Professors Th.F. Tadros (ICI plc, UK), P.F. Luckham (Imperial College London), D. Papahadjopoulos (UCSF, USA), G. Sgouros (Memorial Sloan-Kettering, NY, USA) and R.G. Crystal (Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY, USA). Following his promotion to Assistant Professor of Genetic Medicine and Chemical Engineering in Medicine at Cornell University Weill Medical College, he relocated to the UK as the Deputy Director of Imperial College Genetic Therapies Centre in 2002. In 2003 Kostas joined the Centre for Drug Delivery Research and the Department of Pharmaceutics at the UCL School of Pharmacy as the Deputy Head of the Centre. He was promoted to the Personal Chair of Nanomedicine and Head of the Centre in 2007.
Kostas joined the University of Manchester in 2013 and is an Honorary Professor of University College London.

Speech title: The Curious Case of 1D and 2D Carbon Nanostructure Pharmacology & Toxicology