Our Guest Speakers
Prof. Dr. Andreas Geier (Section 1)
ZIM - Zentrum für Innere Medizin, University Hospital Würzburg, Germany
Prof. Geier finished his preclinical and clinical studies of Medicine at Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich and at the Medical Branch of the University of Texas in Galveston. After his residency and fellowship in internal medicine/gastroenterology he became associate professor at Aachen University and later private lecturer at UniversitätsSpital in Zurich. Since 2012 he is head of the division of hepatology at University Hospital Würzburg.
Besides his clinical career Prof. Geier has also pursued a scientific path which led him to a habilitation at Aachen University in 2004. He has been group leader and head of hepatological laboratories in Aachen and Zurich. Currently, Prof. Geier is professor of medicine and hepatology at Justus-Maximilians-University Würzburg and speaker of the German NAFLD Clinical Study Group.
Dr. Benjamin Izar (Section 2)
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Boston,
USA
Dr. Izar has attended Justus Liebig University School of Medicine from 2004 to 2010, where he has afterwards worked on his doctoral thesis with the title "The hepatic response following infection with Listeria monocytogenes". After obtaining his Ph.D. in 2013 he moved to Cambridge, Massachussetts where he finished his internship, residency and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.
Currently, Dr. Izar is employed as an associate scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Furthermore, he is a faculty member of the Harvard Program in Therapeutic Sciences and Laboratory for Systems Pharmacology as well as an attending physician at the Melanoma Disease Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. For his work, Dr. Izar has received many honors and awards including his most recent award, the Claudia Adams Barr Award for Innovative Cancer Research (2017).
Prof. Dr. Martin R. Wilkins (Section 3)
Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
Since his travelling fellowship to St Louis USA funded by the British Heart Foundation in 1987, Prof. Wilkins has been active in cardiovascular research. For the past 25 years he has led a bench-to-bedside programme investigating the molecular basis of pulmonary hypertension and evaluating new treatments. His work has made major contributions to the development of two new classes of drug for pulmonary hypertension and more recently provided insights into the roles of iron and zinc in pulmonary vascular homeostasis.
His work is recognised internationally and has been honoured through a Liebig Professorship (2014) and honorary membership of the Kyrgyz National Academy of Sciences (2013). He is Past-President of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute, a global network of experts in the field and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. Prof. Wilkins played a major role in shaping the Imperial Academic Health Sciences Centre and is currently Head of the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London and Director of the National Institute of Health Research - Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility at Imperial.
Prof. Dr. Stefan Hüttelmaier (Section 4)
Institute of Molecular Medicine, Division for Molecular Cell Biology ZAMED,
Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany
Prof. Hüttelmaier finished his studies of biotechnology in 1997 and graduated with a dissertation titled "Aspects of cell adhesion: The function of vinculin and vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein VASP in actin-membrane attachment" with high honors in 2000. He was NBL3-Junior Group Leader and was appointed as professor of molecular cytology at University hospital Halle/Saale in 2009.
Since 2010, Prof. Hüttelmaier is director of the Core Facility Imaging (CFI) and speaker of the GRK 1591 "Posttranscriptional control of gene expression: mechanisms and role in pathogenesis".
Dr. Amit Umesh Joshi (Section 5, GGL Alumnus)
Stanford University, California, USA
After obtaining his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Pune, India and Dundee, Scotland, Dr. Joshi has begun research for his doctorate in molecular biochemistry in Giessen, which he finished in 2014. During that time he has been a visiting student at the University of Bern and the University of Caen Basse-Normandie. Dr. Joshi has also successfully graduated from the GGL.
Since his graduation he has been working as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where he has been investigating novel therapeutics targeting mitochondria in models of Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Furthermore, he has been working on the development of new tools relevant to his research and the development of novel biomarkers for monitoring disease progression and treatment efficiancy in Huntington's disease.
Prof. Barry T. Hinton (Section 6)
School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
After studying Pharmacology & Biochemistry and Reproductive Physiology in London and Cambridge, Prof. Hinton became a Ph.D. student at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, where he successfully obtained his Ph.D. in 1979. After starting as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia, he was finally appointed as professor in 1995 - a position he is still holding today. Prof. Hinton has received many awards for his research and teaching, including his most recent award: the Distinguished Andrologist Award of the American Society of Andrology (2016).
Prof. Hinton's main research interest is the morphogenesis of the developing Wolffian/Epididymal duct, about which he has published many articles in renowned journals and talked on many international conferences.
Prof. Dr. Ranil Wickramasinghe (Section 7)
Ross E Martin Chair in Emerging Technologies, Ralph E Martin Department of Chemical Engineering,
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
Prof. Wickramasinghe has obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Melbourne, Australia in Chemical Engineering. After that he obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He then worked for 5 years in the biotechnology/biomedical industry in the Boston area before joining the faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Colorado State University. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas in 2011 where he holds the Ross E Martin Chair in Emerging Technologies. He is active in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and has also served on the Board of Directors of the North American Membrane Society. He is the current Center Director of the Membrane Science, Engineering and Technology (MAST) Center, a NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.
Prof. Wickramasinghe’s research interests are in membrane science and technology. His research focuses on synthetic membrane-based separation processes for purification of pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals, treatment and reuse of water and for the production of biofuels.
Prof. Andreas Zumbühl (Section 8)
Department of Chemistry, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Prof. Zumbühl studied Organic Chemistry and obtained his PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry in Zurich. After his graduation in 2004 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at MIT and Biophysics at Biozentrum Basel. From 2008 to 2012 Prof. Zumbühl was Maître Assistant at the University of Geneva until he was finally appointed Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at the University of Fribourg in 2012, where he is now working on chemical lipidology.
Prof. Zumbühl's main research interest is the synthesis of artificial phospholipids and their applications in biology and medicine. His current project is on approaches for non-spherical and surface-activated liposomes
Prof. Dr. Urs Niggli (Section 9)
FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Frick, Switzerland
Prof. Niggli has obtained his Master's degree in Agricultural Sciences in Zurich. In the following years he had been researching in the field of weed physiology and ecology to obtain his doctor's degree in 1985. After being head of the of the working group weed research at today's Agroscope ACW in Switzerland from 1985 to 1989, he is now director of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) since 1990.
Prof. Niggli is a member of various research organizations such as the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research or the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Action Plan (NAP) of the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture. His main research interests are weed biology and weed development in meadows and fields as well as the physical, biological and chemical control of weeds.