Speakers

María José Alonso is Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her lab has pioneered numerous discoveries in the field of nanomedicine, notably in the area a vaccination, transmucosal drug delivery and precision medicine in oncology. She has coordinated consortia financed by the WHO, the Gates Foundation and the European Commission and has authored more than 325 scientific contributions with H factor: 104. She is the inventor of 25 patent families, most of them licensed to industry and she has participated in 3 start-up ventures. She has been among the TOP TEN in Pharmacology (Times Higher Education international ranking, 2010) and in the “Power List” of the most influential researchers in the field of Biopharmaceuticals (The Medicine Maker) She has hold high responsibilities as Vicerrector of Research and Innovation, Trusty of the Spanish Research Council and Adviser to the Ministries of Sciences and Innovation and Health. She si now a member of the Council of the Spanish Agency of Research. She was President of the CRS in 2018-19 and she is Editor-in-Chief of the Drug Delivery and Translational Research, an official journal of the CRS. She is part of the editorial board of 12 journals. She has received 55 awards, among them the “National Research Award”, considered as the highest distinction from the Spanish Government, the Jaume I Award and the Founders, WIS and Outstanding Service Awards of the CRS, Inc. She is a member of 5 Academies in Spain and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium and of the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM). She was awarded with an “Honoris Causa” doctorate by the University of Nottingham.

Rashid Bashir received his bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University and his MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is a Professor of Bioengineering, the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, and is the Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering. He is co-founder of two startups that have emanated from his group. He has authored or co-authored 300+ journal papers and 200+ conference papers and abstracts, given 150+ invited talks, and received 65 patents. He was an NSF Faculty Early Career Award winner and the IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award. He is a member of US National Academy of Inventors, US National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Since 2008 Professor Dr. Fabian Kiessling is leading the Institute of Experimental Molecular Imaging. Aim of his research is the development of novel diagnostic probes and imaging tools for a disease specific diagnosis and therapy monitoring. He authored over 400 publications and book chapters, edited four books, and received multiple research awards and honours among those the "Emil Salzer Prize for Cancer Research” and the “Richtzenhain Prize”. Since 2019, he has been on the list of Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers (Web of Science).

Chris Porter is Director of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His interests include the role of the lymphatic system in drug absorption, improving the absorption of poorly water-soluble drugs and the potential utility of dendrimers and other nanomaterials as drug delivery systems. Chris has published more than 270 peer reviewed papers (30,000 citations, h-index 89) and has attracted >$35m in funding. He is an inventor on >15 patent families which have been the subject of licencing/assignment deals. The most significant of these are with Seaport Therapeutics (Boston) to develop the Glyph® lymphatic targeting technology (completed Phase 1 and Phase 2a clinical trial in 2023) and Starpharma (Melbourne) to develop the DEP® dendrimer-based drug delivery system. He is a Clarivate Analytics highly cited researcher and a fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

Professor Kate Schroder heads the Inflammasome Laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB, UQ), as an NHMRC Leadership Fellow. She was also the founding Deputy Director, and then Director of the IMB Centre for Inflammation and Disease Research (2014-2022). She is a non-executive Director of the South Australia Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). Kate’s graduate (PhD 2005) and postgraduate studies defined novel macrophage activation mechanisms and surprising inter-species divergence in macrophage inflammatory programs. As an NHMRC CJ Martin Fellow in Switzerland, Kate then trained with Prof Jürg Tschopp, a pioneer in the inflammasome and cell death fields. Upon returning to Australia, Kate established the Inflammasome Lab in 2013. Kate’s laboratory is defining mechanisms of inflammasome signalling, antimicrobial defence and inflammatory disease. Kate’s lab co-invented inflammasome inhibitors entering Phase 2 clinical trials as anti-inflammatory drug candidates, under commercialisation by UQ start-up company, Inflazome, for which Kate served on the Scientific Advisory Board. Inflazome recently sold to pharmaceutical giant Roche for $620M plus milestones, in the largest ever deal for Australian academic intellectual property. Kate regularly serves on Scientific Advisory Boards for biotech start-ups (e.g. Quench USA) and big pharma (e.g. Novartis ATI, Switzerland). Kate is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, having published >140 articles in top journals, and was honoured with the 2020 Australian Academy of Science Nancy Millis Medal.