Ivo studied Bioengineering and has over 35 years of experience in microbiology. He has worked for different companies like Roche, Methrom, ETH Zurich and Fluka/Sigma-Aldrich/Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany and also co-authored the book – “Brewing Microbiology“.

Frederic is Global Product Manager for Food and Beverage Testing solutions at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany for 2 years. Seasoned with over 24 years of experience dedicated to Microbiology and Biotechnology for Food and Beverage safety, Frederic held positions in testing laboratories and honed his skills in product development and product management over years in addition to ISO / AFNOR Normalization and Validation activities.

Paul Rodwell gained his PhD in 1986 from the University of Reading where he studied Chemistry and Organic Photochemistry and gained experience in a wide range of analytical techniques. He subsequently worked in a variety of drug discovery and drug development roles in agrochemical, veterinary and pharmaceutical market sectors, gaining experience in the application of separation science and mass spectrometry, specialising in chiral separations, preparative chromatography and SFC. He is based in the UK and joined Sigma Aldrich in 2012, transferring to the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016. Currently he is a Senior Technical Advisor in the Analytical Chromatography Workflows group

Allison is a Principal Scientist at Aptevo Therapeutics in Seattle, WA, where she leads the Bioanalytical and Pharmacokinetics group. Her team focuses on the development of pharmacokinetic, immunogenicity, and biomarker assays for early preclinical to clinical stage support of ADAPTIR™ bispecific antibodies. Allison received a Master of Science degree in Cell Physiology from Case Western Reserve University in 2005. Prior to joining Aptevo, she was a Principal Scientist at Pfizer in La Jolla, CA in the BioMedicine Design department where she specialized in large molecule program management, bioanalytical assay development, and implementation of new technologies.

Dr. Anabel Lermo is a Research Scientist with demonstrated experience in the field of In-Vitro Diagnostic (IVD), skilled in the design of complex platforms for immunoassay sensing. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry (Honoured) from the UAB of Barcelona. Her thesis was focused on the design of biomolecular approaches in electrochemical biosensing devices for alimentary field. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Analytical Chemistry Division UAB as a leading researcher of investigation projects for immunoassay development applied to biosensor design in the alimentary and clinical fields. Then, she joined Biokit (a company of the Werfen group) for 7 years, developing chemiluminescent immunoassays for automated platforms in the field of infectious diseases. Her activities were mainly focused on the optimization of key component formulation and analyser assay parameters, transferring the reagent to production, generating all the documentation required for verification, validation and registration of the product in various regulatory agencies (CE, Shonin and CFDA). She currently works at Pragmatic Diagnostics developing new assays where immunometric technologies are integrated with appropriate analytical platforms in a streamlined and efficient manner for IVD industry.

Andreas received a PhD in molecular microbiology for his research and diagnostics work on Listeria. He has 27 years experience at Merck. In his role as Senior Global Product Manager his focus is on dehydrated culture media for the Pharma, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage industries. He is a member of AOAC RI Advisory Council and has authored over 50 publications.

She joined Kraft Jacobs Suchard in December 1998 to head up the research microbiology laboratory in Munich. Later on Anett concentrated on chocolate, biscuits and other low moisture foods including supplier developments and approvals. She also consolidated the scientific basis for microbiological process controls in low moisture foods by performing validation studies for nut & cocoa processing. Following a regional role for Microbiology in the Eastern European, Middle East & African Region she was globally designing food safety programs, rolling out training modules related to food safety and further supporting supplier development. Anett was also the global expert for thermal processing within Mondelez International.

Anitaben Tailor brings over 10 years of immunoassay platform experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. After her post-doctoral fellowship, she held faculty positions at Johns Hopkins and NIH; then joined the industry in a global role with Merck's Life Science division. More recently, she focuses on the technical marketing of the Immunoassay portfolio within Pharma and CROs.

Anne Connors is a Senior Field Marketing Manager at Merck, specializing in pharmaceutical microbiology applications. Anne’s areas of expertise are in Environmental Monitoring, Pyrogen, and Sterility testing, as well as pharmaceutical microbiology regulations. Anne holds a B.S. in Organismal Biology and has over 14 years of industry experience. Previous to her role at Merck, she was a Senior Scientist in QC Microbiology, specializing in validation and method development and as a subject matter expert. Anne is also actively engaged as volunteer faculty and for the PDA.

Dr. Anne-Grit Klees is responsible for Innovation & Product Life Cycle Management with regard to microbial air samplers and culture media for aseptic process simulations in pharma cleanrooms and isolators. With a professional background in microbiology, she has been working in product and marketing management within the health industry for more than 30 years.

After finishing his Ph.D. and postdoc studies in genetics, Arne joined Wiley & Sons as Editor-in-Chief leading the editorial team of Wiley’s B2B business. After 15 years in the publishing business dealing with scientific data, he moved to Merck's Connected Lab group as the product manager for AnIML converters to make scientific data easier available to anyone, without being limited to text, journals or books.

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he developed novel high-performing nanomaterials for drug delivery and cancer treatment. With a decade of experience in particle production and characterisation across a range of scales, Ben is now focussed on the field of microfluidics, working extensively with customers to develop custom microfluidic systems and manufacturing methodologies. Ben has worked on applications ranging from drug encapsulation in micro and nanoparticles to surface functionalised microbeads for biological applications.

Bettina is the global franchise product manager and lead expert for titration at Merck. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the instrumental analysis business, especially with Karl Fischer Titration, general Titration, Reference Materials and Diagnostics. Her responsibilities include improving and simplifying titration processes, drive new technologies and advancing applications and reagents.

She works always closely together with the QC and application laboratories for titration as well as with the R&D department to develop titration continuously. Bettina is a graduated engineer and holds a degree in Chemical Technology from the University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt Germany and a degree as Medical Technical Laboratory Assistant from the Medical Technical Academy Esslingen, Germany.

Brooke Gilliam is a Global Product Manager covering MILLIPLEX^® panels. Prior to joining the Product Management team, Brooke managed the custom immunoassay R&D team and designed new immunoassay kits for protein biomarker detection. She earned her B.A. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL, USA and her M.S. from Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, USA.

Casey Jowdy obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular genetics from Ohio State University. Over the past 15 years, Casey has gained research experience through his doctoral program, postdoctoral fellow, and industry-related work where he worked on projects related to the genetics of the central nervous system development, heart failure, cancer and rare undiagnosed human diseases. Currently, Casey works in the functional genomics group. In his present role, he works with a team of scientists to use CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tools to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of gene function. Our life science business offers a complete set of products for the interrogation of complex biological questions.

Global segment manager focused on the medical devices and clinical testing industries with a previous role supporting diagnostics manufacturers. Eight years experience in supporting industries that focus on risk mitigation and 21 years with the company. Prior to joining Merck, Caspar was a molecular biologist with university education and lab experience in human genetics and protein signaling.

Cécile Delbos is Innovation Execution manager in Research and Development at Merck. With a strong expertise in Project Management, she started in 2019 a new mission in R&D on Innovation culture enhancement through the implementation of a dedicated consultancy team. She is also part of the Sustainability Governance team, which supports the business in improving eco-design practices, to be able to propose a more sustainable global product offer.

Dr. Chantal Bazenet is a cell biologist with over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and biomarker research in both academic and pharmaceutical settings. She has long-standing experience in identifying and quantifying biofluid biomarkers of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation and has established highly sensitive assays to quantify biomarkers in preclinical and cellular models and in clinical human biofluids (CSF, plasma).

Christine S. Falk, PhD., is a full professor for Transplant Immunology and director of the Institute of Transplant Immunology at Hannover Medical School (MHH). She focuses on mechanisms of ischemia/reperfusion injury and consequences for innate and adaptive immunity, especially tissue-resident T and NK cells in the context of lung, heart, and kidney transplantation. She graduated with a Ph.D. at the Institute of Immunology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, in the field of tumor immunology. She continued to work on T and NK cell recognition of solid tumors as a postdoc fellow at the Institute of Molecular Immunology, Helmholtz Centre Munich. In 2004, she received her Venia Legendi at LMU for Human Immunology. From 2006 to 2010, she worked at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, as group leader of the Research Group “Immune Monitoring” with a strong interest in the improvement of cancer immunotherapy by understanding the mechanisms involved in treatment resistance.

Christine Falk has a long-term research interest in transplant and tumor immunology and the interface to infectious diseases in solid organ transplantation. Major aspects of her research are tissue-resident lymphocytes and the identification of "common denominators" of tumor vs. organ rejection and protection from infection. She published more than 150 peer articles in international peer-reviewed journals and received the Walter Schulz award for Tumor Immunology. At MHH, she is a trusted lecturer of the DFG, a member of dissertation and research committees, and vice president of the German Society of Immunology (DGfI). Since 2014, she serves as a board member of the German Cancer Aid Foundation and an editorial board member of several scientific journals.

Christine Kornmeier joined the MILLIPLEX^® Product Management team in 2016 after a career in discovery research biology focusing on Inflammatory Mediators at Pfizer and legacy Pharmacia and G.D. Searle/Monsanto. She is currently a Product Manager for the MILLIPLEX^® immunoassays.

For 7 years she participated in the development of scientific research projects in areas such as isolation of Extremophilic organisms with biotechnological potential, autoimmunity, systemic lupus erythematosus and genetic expression in mycobacteria. He has also collaborated in the academy of Molecular Biology teaching this subject at the IPN / National School of Biological Sciences.

Prof. Debabrata Maiti received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 2008 under the supervision of Prof. Kenneth D. Karlin. After postdoctoral studies at MIT with Prof. Stephen L. Buchwald, he joined the Department of Chemistry at IIT Bombay in 2011. His research interests are focused on the development of new and sustainable synthetic and catalytic methodologies. Currently, he is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Recent Awards: Sun Pharma Science Foundation Research Award (2021), Professor P K Bose Memorial Award (2021), The (Late) Shri. G.D. Gokhale Lectureship Endowment (2021), CRSI Bronze Medal (2021), Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2020)

Recent Publications:

• Arene Diversification via Distal C(sp2)-H Functionalization
  Dutta, U.; Maiti, S.; Bhattacharya, T.; Maiti, D.
  Science, 2021, 372, 701

• Traditional and sustainable approaches for the construction of C-C bonds by harnessing C-H arylation
  Grover, J.;† Prakash, G.;† Goswami, N.; Maiti, D.
  Nat. Commun., 2022 (ASAP)

• Pd-catalysed C-H functionalisation of free carboxylic acids
  Dutta, S.; Bhattacharya, T.; Geffers, F. J.; W.; Bürger, M.; Maiti, D.; Werz, D. B
  Chem. Sci., 2022 (ASAP)

Visit Prof Maiti's Web Page

Prof. Dexi Chen is the Director of the Beijing Institute of Hepatology since 2010, mainly focused on the molecular and cellular biology of infectious diseases, and the mechanisms of hepatocarcinogenesis induced by HBV. Previously, Prof. Chen led the HIV research lab at You`an hospital with his team publishing more than 70 papers. For his outstanding contributions, Prof. Chen has received numerous honors including the State Council Special Allowance Award, the 2nd prize of Chinese Medical Science, and the Technology Award.

Dominic Warrino is the Senior Scientific Advisor at KCAS (KS, USA). Dominic joined the company in 2013 and brought with him expertise in a full range of bioanalytical techniques including ECL, ELISA, RIA, flow cytometry, ELISpot, cell-based assays, and Luminex^® assays. He also serves in business development as a technical consultant. Dominic has 20 years of experience developing and validating immunological assays for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He most recently spent the past several years in the Biopharma Services department at Viracor-IBT (MO, USA) (formally IBT).

Currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Dimitris Kardassis (IMBB-FORTH) working on the role of the nuclear receptor HNF4α in lipid metabolism. Work so far, reveals new targets of HNF4α involved in High-density lipoproteins (HDL) metabolism and the development of steatosis and enriches our knowledge on HDL functionality in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). During her first postdoc in the lab of Prof. Vasso Episkopou (Imperial College London) and Efstathia Thymiakou investigated the role of a newly identified ubiquitin ligase, Arkadia2C, in motor axon growth. The work was published in PLosBiology in 2013, revealing an involvement of BMP-Smad signaling in motor axon advancement. During my Ph.D. in the lab of Prof. Dimitris Kardassis (IMBB-FORTH), I studied the transcriptional regulation of ABCA1, a membrane transporter of cholesterol and phospholipids, which plays important role in reverse cholesterol transport and protection from atherosclerosis (Biochemistry. 2007 Oct 16;46(41):11473-83, Biochim Biophys Acta. 2014 Jun;1839(6):526-36). I am a member of the European and Hellenic Atherosclerosis Society and of the Hellenic Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and have presented my work in many national and international conferences.

Dr. Elena Vicentini is a biotechnologist with over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development in pharmaceutical and CRO settings. She has considerable experience in the development and validation of ligand-binding assays following regulatory guidelines and subsequent use in sample analysis to support PK/TK of large molecules, anti-drug antibodies, and biomarker quantification for both preclinical and clinical studies.

Dr. Estelle Riche holds an engineering degree in chemistry from ESCOM (France) and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). Her responsibilities include understanding the potential impact of water contaminants on the results of laboratory tests and providing support to scientists regarding the optimal use of purified water in their experiments.

Dr. Frank Michel is Analytical & Chromatography Scientific Advisor for Asia-Pacific, training and communicating the technical background of new and innovative analytical techniques, products, and applications. During 20 years in Analytical Chemistry, he focused on HPLC in pharmaceutical analysis, but additionally gained deep experience into other analytical techniques and application areas such as environmental analysis. Dr. Frank Michel is a member of the Separation Science working group in the German Chemist Society (GDCh) and is particularly interested in stationary phase chemistry for both gas and liquid separations.

Ginger Milne is a chemist working as a Research Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology in the Medical Center at Vanderbilt University. Based within the School of Medicine, she has directed the Eicosanoid Core Laboratory for almost 14 years where she collaborates with and oversees the provision of analytical services to researchers both within Vanderbilt University and across the globe. Using Waters Corporation equipment, the lab performs 16 validated, highly precise and sensitive mass spectrometry assays, several of which were developed by Milne’s team. Milne and her team are focused on measuring prostaglandin metabolites in urine as biomarkers of cancer.

Member of the Scientific customer support team at Merck Life Science, specialist for Photometry, more than 35 years of experience in the field of environmental analysis, including 20 years in product management for photometry. Currently responsible for trainings, lectures, publications.

Hanna Ritzén is currently Managing Director of Research and Development at Mercodia AB (Uppsala, Sweden), a Swedish biotech company that specializes in the development and production of ELISA assays as well as bioanalytical services. Hanna is responsible for the development of commercial IVD and RUO ELISA kits as well as the method development, validation, and sample analysis in bioanalytical services. Hanna started with Mercodia in 2002 as a Product Development Scientist and has been involved in the CAPA process and life cycle management of ELISAs as well as the standardization and harmonization of methods.

Haydn Boehm has over 20 years of experience in marketing and business development within the Life Scientific sector. He has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Nottingham, UK.

Dr. Koenitzer is an immunologist by training and has been working in the Bristol Myers Squibb R&D department in Princeton, NJ since 2016. During her time at BMS she has focused on small molecule and biologics drug discovery in the immuno-oncology space; particularly in the area of T-cell checkpoint inhibitors and myeloid cell mediated immune suppression. One of her current job responsibilities is overseeing the biomarker profiling team, which provides high-throughput sample testing—using Luminex^® multiplex assays—among other formats—to the entire BMS research community.

Jose M. Galarza, DVM, PhD, is the CEO and Founder of TechnoVax, Inc. and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of virology and vaccine development. Before founding TechnoVax, he was Principal Scientist and leader of the influenza subunit vaccine development program and member of the vaccine technology advisory board at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. At Wyeth, he led the team that invented influenza Virus-Like Particle (VLP) vaccine technology. Dr. Galarza received a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and a Doctorate in Microbiology from the University of La Plata in Argentina.

Joseph is a general engineer, trained in system mechanical design and programming. He is developing automated systems at Merck since 2020. He his also part of the sustainability governance team, helping the team to apply eco-design practices to develop more sustainable products.

Kristen Schultz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from the New York Institute of Technology. She is the Global Franchise Product Manager for Air Monitoring & GC Consumables. Prior to joining us, she worked in quality assurance and control (QA/QC) management; HAACP; equipment and process validation (IQ/OQ/PQ); and manufacturing management in the food/beverage, life sciences and medical device industries.

Lawrence Rentoul is the Portfolio Lead for ELISAs and Specialty Assays. He joined the company in 2008 and has spent the majority of the time working in the field of biomarker analysis, either directly with researchers or strategically within the business. In 2017, he moved from Edinburgh in the United Kingdom to St. Louis, Missouri, USA to be based with his R&D, Quality, and Manufacturing colleagues, and joined the Product Management team.

Dr. Lawrence Wangh received his undergraduate degree in biology at Brandeis University in 1968 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from The Rockefeller University in 1973. He then went to England as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow and worked at the Medical Research Council laboratories in Cambridge and London. In 1977, he returned to the Biology Department of Brandeis University to teach courses in developmental biology, reproductive biology, and evolution, where he established a laboratory research program in those same fields.

In the course of that work he and his laboratory colleagues invented a novel method for efficient non-symmetric amplification of very small amounts of DNA. From 1997 through 2016, with approximately 10 million dollars of support from grants and biotechnology companies, he and his team invented three PCR additives: ThermaStop™, ThermaGo™, and ThermaStop™-RT, that enhance the specificity and sensitivity of both asymmetric and symmetric (standard) PCR reactions, as well as RT-PCR.

In 2016 Professor Wangh launched ThermaGenix, Inc. a company dedicated to commercializing the revolutionary reagents and methods invented in his laboratory. In 2017 ThermaGenix™ and our company signed a distribution agreement to sell ThermaStop™, ThermaGo™, and ThermaStop™-RT worldwide.

Dr. Lee May May is presently the Principal Scientist, R&D of Advanced Analytical under APAC Labs in Merck, Singapore.
She received her Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Analytical Chemistry and Toxicology from the University of Hull and her PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of East Anglia, UK. Dr. Lee May May has more than 30 years of experience as a bench chemist in government, R&D and commercial organizations.

Lloyd Lam, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at AbbVie Inc, North Chicago. Dr. Lam has been in apoptosis research for 10 years. His primary interest is to define dependency of cancers to anti-apoptotic proteins and identify determinants of response to selective apoptosis compounds. Dr. Lam received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and did his postdoc in Dr. Louis Staudt’s lab at NCI, NIH in Bethesda.

Lynn Stephenson joined Merck, then Sigma-Aldrich, 10 years ago after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Washington University in Immunology. She began her career first as a Senior Technical Service Scientist before moving to Product Management where she managed the Protein and Enzymes and then the Specialty Biochemical portfolios. From product management, she moved to a role in marketing supporting the Applied Markets, including In Vitro Diagnostics. As part of her role, she leverages her internal knowledge of our internal quality and regulatory systems to support our IVD customers and sales teams.

Markus Prengel holds a master’s degree in business chemistry and is based in Darmstadt, Germany. He first spent two years in the Quality Department of the Life Science division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and has served as a Global Product Manager for Pharma and Food & Beverage Microbiology QC Products for the past four years.

Matthias Nold completed his Ph.D. studies in organic chemistry at the University of Basel Switzerland in 2004. He joined Sigma-Aldrich Switzerland in 2008 as a product manager for analytical standards. Since 2016, he has been a global product manager for reference materials at Merck with a special focus on reference materials for food and beverage testing.

Megan Muroski joined Merck in September 2019 as a Global Product Manager for Energy and Nanomaterials for Materials Science. Megan has 11 years of multi-disciplinary experience in government, pre-clinical, and academic laboratories specializing in the use of nanomaterials in diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Her current role as product manager develops and commercializes innovative technologies for energy and nanomaterials applications.

Dr. Mansfield is in his 32nd year at Merck in Bedford, Massachusetts, and is currently an Applications Development Scientist in the Biosystems and Regulated Materials R&D Group. His initial work focused on interactions of biomolecules with membrane surfaces for western, Southern, and northern blotting. That was followed by work on sample processing and concentration of protein solutions using centrifugal filtration devices. For the past 20 years, he has been working on the utilization of membranes and other porous materials in immunodiagnostic tests and medical devices.

Project Professor (2020-present), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Chief (2009-2020), National Institute of Health Sciences, Tokyo, Japan
Associate Professor (1995-2009), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Assistant Professor (1989-1995), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Post-doctoral fellow (1987-1989), Cancer Institute, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Tokyo, Japan.
Ph.D. (1987), Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Naomi Pintel Baer is a highly regarded Business Development Consultant at our company where she supports early-stage biopharma companies developing scalable upstream and downstream processes for advancing biologics into the clinic. She has more than 30 years of experience in the industry, including in the areas of research, process development, and QC biomonitoring. She began her career at a molecular biologist at Dupont. She graduated with a BS degree in biology from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, PA.

She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University where she developed novel biomaterials for applications in tissue engineering, cell transplant, and drug delivery. Her research interests include 3D Bioprinting, novel drug delivery technologies, biomaterials for regenerative medicine and innovations in nanomaterials.

Petra has worked with chromatography for 40 years. She started her career in separation science in 1983 using several chromatographic methods, including HPLC, TLC, GC and solid-phase extraction (SPE), for food control in a governmental institution lab. In 1986 she joined the pharmaceutical R&D and QC department (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) where she developed HPLC methods for R&D and QC of pharmaceutical APIs and formulations as well as for diet convenience foods. From 1991 on she supported customers in different positions with technical and application-related inquires in Europe as a sales specialist for HPLC instruments, also providing technical support for chromatography and complaint management. Since 2002 she has been a Global Product Manager for Analytical Chromatography (HPLC). In 2014 she began focusing on thin-layer chromatography (TLC). Since April 2018 Petra has had global responsibility for analytical HPLC columns.

He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Delhi, India, followed by his post-doctoral fellowship at University at Buffalo where he developed different nanoparticle formulations for applications in drug delivery and imaging. During his research at Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School, he designed various nanoparticle and implants-based drug delivery systems for combined chemoradiation therapy. He has 50+ peer-reviewed publications on nanoparticles-based formulations in cancer imaging and drug delivery applications.

Reeti Maheshwari is a Research Scientist with >10 years’ experience in immunoassay development across different platforms in a variety of therapeutic areas. She also has >5 years’ experience as a clinical lab scientist. She holds a Master’s in Medical Biochemistry (GNDU, India), and another Master’s in Biotechnology from Illinois State University (Normal, IL).

Sarah Hamren was the former head of the SMC^® Custom Assay and Sample Testing group until 2021. She has over 30 years of experience in biopharma research and development and her past experience includes work at Chiron Corporation, Bayer Corporation’s Biotechnology division, Tethys Bioscience, and Singulex^® Inc. before joining us. She is co-author on 15 peer-reviewed publications and holds 2 U.S. patents. Sarah’s experience effectively partnering with a broad array of clients has culminated in hundreds of successful biomarker assay development projects.

Since 2016, Shane has covered immunoassay platforms, including ELISAs, MILLIPLEX^® multiplex assays using the Luminex^® xMAP^® system, and the Single Molecule Counting (SMC^®) platform, in the New York City metro area. Prior to this role, he was a research scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Shane’s background is in immunology, and he did his graduate studies at Columbia University, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Silvia Garulli has a University Degree in Food Science and Technologies. With 18 years’ experience in microbiology, she joined Sidel in 2006, where she is now the manager of Group’s aseptic technologies and microbiology laboratories. Her role entails the management of scientific projects on beverages and on innovative decontamination technologies; Drafting of scientific experimental design for R&D projects; Customer proximity providing trainings and technical support.

Tim Cser is a Senior Technology Specialist with Merck. Tim graduated in 1997 from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with a degree in Microbiology with an emphasis on Industrial Microbiology. Tim started his career with Clorox working on antimicrobial effectiveness studies. He continued his career at Biolog where he gained 7 years of experience with microbial identifications. For the last 14 years he’s worked at Merck in a variety of roles involving Pharmaceutical/Biotech QC Microbiology.

Dr. Bradley is director of Immunogenomics in the Genomic Medicine Center at the Children’s Mercy Research Institute, Children’s Mercy Hospital, in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and an assistant professor of pediatrics and pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a pediatric genomic immunologist who directs a research laboratory determined to understand how immune responses are regulated in order to develop tools to engineer immunity. His lab uses genomic technologies to dissect the molecular and cellular mechanisms that shape the immune response and to discover how human genetics impact immunity, with the goal of improving vaccines and immunotherapies. Prior to joining Children’s Mercy, Dr. Bradley was an assistant professor of medicine at the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, North Carolina, USA.

Tom Angel is a biochemist with a keen interest in the application of high-resolution mass spectrometry to address a wide range of unmet needs and longstanding challenges in biological sciences. Tom has more than 15 years of experience in biomedical research, expertise in mass spectrometry-based protein analysis and proteomics. In his current position as Senior Scientific Adviser at GSK (Brentford, UK), Tom is charged with advancing the application of stable isotope metabolic labeling supporting portfolio development by delivering protein turnover assays (kinetic biomarker assays) for bespoke targets.

Ph.D. in Genetics and Development Columbia University, New York , 1980 B.Sc. Biology University of Patras Greece. POSITIONS: 2011-present Professor in Developmental Biology, Faculty of Medicine; 1995-2011 Group Leader MRC CSC Institute, Imperial College London; 1992-1994 Lecturer St. Mary’s Medical School, London. EXTERNAL APPOINTMENTS: 2006-2007 Director Alexander Fleming Institute, Athens Greece (Visiting); 2013 Visiting Professor, Columbia University, New York (Sabbatical)

Dr. Xiang MA received his B.S. degree from Tianjin University (Tianjin, China) in 2003 and his Ph.D. degree from East China University of Science & Technology (Shanghai, China) in 2008. Dr. Ma worked as a Research Associate at Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University (Ohio, US) from 2011 to 2012 and as a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley in 2017. He is the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). He became a full professor at ECUST since 2016. His current research interests mainly focus on functional supramolecular machines, switches, stimuli-responsive supramolecular polymers and organic photo-electro material based on dyes. Dr. Ma has published 140 papers in international journals with an H-index of 44. Prof. Ma won the National Science Fund for Distinguished Youth Scholars of China in 2021. Now he serves as Executive Editor of Dyes and Pigments and on the board of Color Index of the Society of Dyers and Colourist, SDC.

Yan Nikhamin is an immunoassay specialist at Merck, based in New York. He is trained in Cell and Molecular Biology and has worked in developing CAR-T cells. Yan has been with Merck for 9 years helping our customers by sharing his experience.

Youssef Gaabouri joined the company in 2009 and has held various positions (Engineering, Biomanufacturing), focused on technologies for downstream processing, for monoclonal antibody and vaccine manufacturing. Before joining the company, he worked at Sanofi Pasteur as Project engineer for Vaccine manufacturing. Youssef holds an Engineering Degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires (ENSAIA) de Nancy-France with a focus on Biotechnology Processes.

Since 2017, Dr. Young Min has worked for GI Innovation, Inc. as the head of SMART division and co-founder. His main activity is the construction of SMART platform technology, which is comprised of the screening & selection method for an "easy-to-express protein" structure with the therapeutic function of a target disease and its stable high-production cell line development. He holds a doctorate degree in immunology from POSTECH, South Korea, where he concentrated on the comparative genomics and systems biology interpretation of transcriptional regulatory network during inflammation.

Anke is responsible for innovation and new product development for in-process testing in the pharmaceutical industry. Anke worked as a Technical Assistant in the pharmaceutical field prior to studying food science with a focus on marketing and sales. In 2008, she joined Biotest AG and became International Product Manager for alternative pyrogen and Mycoplasma testing. In 2011. Anke joined our company as Global Product Manager and has been responsible for various product portfolios, including bioburden applications & rapid technologies.

Estelle graduated in biology and biotechnology from a leading French engineering school and has more than 27 years of experience in the F&B and pharmaceutical industries. She has spent 15 years in different European and global marketing roles in the Process Solution division of our company, covering the complete downstream processing portfolio, from bioreactor clarification, through chromatography purification, viral filtration, to final fill and finish in aseptic environment. In 2017, Estelle joined the Biomonitoring division as Senior Product Manager for sterility testing devices, focusing on microbiology and quality control, including compendial, alternative and rapid sterility testing.

Adrien has gained more than 10 years of experience at our company in developing highly innovative life science products for the pharmaceutical industry and collaborating with the global scientific community. Adrien has worked in different positions across R&D, validation and marketing.

John Stevens joined the company in 2004 and held a variety of positions in our HPAPI facility, focusing on project leadership in the scale up and first-time GMP production of HPAPIs and complex APIs and lead the site MSAT team for 3 years. In 2019 he took on a role as a field marketing senior specialist for the actives & formulation team. Currently,  John supports the life science services commercial team in the small molecule modality. John received his M.S. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin.

Benjamin Ross-Johnsrud is an acoustic technology expert for cell therapy processing at Merck. As part of his role, Ben leads customer engagement activities, demonstrating the capabilities of our acoustic cell processing technology, the ekko™ System.

He is an expert in conceptualizing new manufacturing paradigms, using the full breadth of acoustics to adapt process requirements to the growing needs of commercial cell therapy supply. Ben is a co-inventor on 17 patents to date, with a drive to expand our company's product offering to power the next generation of cell therapies. Ben has his B.S. in engineering from Western New England University.

Robert Scott is a mechanical engineer III in the acoustics processing and engineering Group at Merck.

In his role, Rob is responsible for process and application development, demonstrating the capabilities of our ekko™ Acoustic Cell Processing System for over three years. He initially joined FloDesign Sonics as an intern from Western New England University's engineering program where he received two degrees, an M.S. in engineering management and a B.S. in mechanical engineering.

Abigail Guce-Merriam leads the downstream process development, located in our Burlington, MA, facility. Her group mainly focuses on client molecule downstream process development, process tech transfers to GMP production, and DS formulation study.

A biophysicist and structural biologist by training, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Prior to joining the company in 2018, Abby was a downstream process development SME and protein purification expert in MassBiologics (CDMO) and UMASS Medical School Structural Lab.

As a technical lead in our company, Josh has served as a technical point of contact ensuring technical activities are completed on track. Josh has more than 25 years of experience in applied separations in the non-GMP pilot and GMP manufacturing environments, including managing clinic manufacturing operations in both upstream and downstream areas. His expertise includes technology transfer, process implementation, process monitoring, and troubleshooting investigations.

Josh is a chemical engineer and has a B.S from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a M.E. degree from Tufts University.

Thomas Kipping is a distinguished expert in the field of pharmaceutical technology and formulation development. Thomas is currently the Head of 3D Printing & Solubility Enhancement at Merck. With more than 15 years of experience spanning across various sectors within the pharmaceutical industry including drug product development and CDMO services, he has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing pharmaceutical sciences and enhancing drug development processes.

Xianghao Zuo received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Stony Brook University. He is now the deputy director of R&D at Triastek, Inc., specializing in developing 3D-printed drug products and improving the solubility and bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs.

Paul holds a B.S. in biochemistry from Imperial College London and has an M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemical engineering from University College London. Paul has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 20 years and has held a number of roles in this capacity, including managing bioprocesses for early phase clinical material, CMC regulatory affairs consultancy, and downstream bioprocessing technology consultancy. Currently, Paul is a senior manager responsible for the DSP strategy for the BioContinuum™ next-generation processing platform.

Paul Genest has a B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of New Hampshire, USA. His graduate work/thesis involved converting a batch chromatography protein purification process into a continuous operation. He has since been an application engineer, focused on Mab protein purification (Koch Membrane Systems, Wyeth BioPharma, and Merck). He has many publications in the area of parvovirus filtration and 25 years of experience in the field working with these filters.

Magali Toueille, Ph.D., studied biological science and held various research positions in public institutes in France and Switzerland. She then joined Pall Life Sciences as senior manager of chromatography applications. Following this, she served as head of downstream process development at Genethon for five years. In 2020, she became downstream process development manager at Merck, for the CDMO business. She leads downstream process development for client and internal improvement projects, continuously optimizing purification processes and enhancing process development programs.

Céline Raymond, Ph.D. is an upstream process development manager at our End-to-End Biodevelopment Center Martillac, France. She leads upstream process development activities for client projects as well as internal projects aimed at continuously optimizing the performance of our developments.

After studying chemical engineering and biochemistry in France and Canada, Céline joined our End-to-End Biodevelopment Center Martillac in 2015 as upstream scientist before taking on the role as the head of the department in 2019. Celine holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

Margarethe Richter, Ph.D. is a pharma application specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific where she develops new applications related to pharmaceutical hot melt extrusion and twin screw granulation. She earned her Ph.D. degree (Dr.-Ing.) researching at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on thermodynamic and reaction kinetics. Margarethe is a chemical engineer by training and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

Desmond G. Hunt, Ph.D. is the scientific liaison to the Packaging and Distribution and Dosage Forms Expert Committees, where he works to develop and revise standards at the United States Pharmacopeia (USP).

He has authored many publications, is a frequent speaker and instructor on topics related to pharmaceutical packaging, particulate matter in parenteral and ophthalmic dosage forms and good storage and transportation practices. He also participates on industry Working Groups and Technical Committees. Desmond obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Monica Cardona is a senior program manager for single-use and integrated systems at Merck. She has worked in life sciences for more than 20 years. She has had several global roles in technical, strategic, and operational marketing. Monica holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Hofstra University and a master’s in biology from Adelphi University. She has published and lectured internationally on a wide range of filtration, validation, and single-use bioprocessing topics. Monica is on the board of directors and a founding member of Bio-Process Systems Alliance (BPSA). She is also a part of the BioPhorum Single Use Leadership Team. At Merck, Monica works cross-functionally with quality, Emprove^®, regulatory, operations, R&D and commercial teams, to create and implement product portfolio enhancement programs that differentiate product offering, improve customer satisfaction, and drive portfolio growth.

Janmeet Anant has been providing regulatory consulting for biopharmaceutical manufacturers for more than 10 years. Janmeet has a global Regulatory Affairs Certification (RAC), a B.S. in Chemistry, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology.

Som is a consultant with customers for regulatory compliance, closed processing, and other areas in biopharmaceutical applications. He is also a member of PDA and ISPE industry associations. Som has worked in different functions within Merck for the last 19 years, including heading technology management, tech service, BioReliance^® filter validation lab, commercial role, and business development areas. He also worked for a year in QA/QC as well as obtained one year of academic experience in microbiology.

Subhasis supports the technical consultation for downstream processing for the APAC region. He has a Ph.D. in biochemistry with post-doctoral experience from The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. He has contributed to several publications in international peer-reviewed journals and conducted presentations in numerous national and international Conferences.

Kathryn Martin Remington, Ph.D. is a member of the field technology management group and provides U.S. clients with technical and regulatory support. Kathy joined the organization in 2010 from Catalent Pharma Solutions where she established a viral clearance program. She was also the section head of the viral validation group for Bayer Healthcare. During her nearly 20 years in viral clearance, she has authored a number of publications on the viral safety of biopharmaceuticals. Kathy earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in microbiology from the University of Montana.

Kate Smith is a principal scientist in the viral clearance services team. Before joining BioReliance^® contract testing services in 2007, Kate worked in the purification development group at Lonza, Slough for 17.5 years where she was responsible for the management of viral clearance studies supporting worldwide IND and BLA submissions. Kate brings her purification process and manufacturing experience combined with 30-plus years of viral clearance expertise to her role, providing technical support to the clearance teams and our clients based in Europe and APAC.

Nargisse El Hajjami, Ph.D. Eng. is a senior consultant for novel modalities and the global lead for mRNA technology within our bioprocessing strategy operationalization group. Nargisse is a molecular microbiologist and bioprocess expert with 11 years of experience combining scientific research, process development, and biomanufacturing engineering. In her current role, Nargisse focuses on novel modalities business development by leading strategic initiatives, supporting go-to-market strategies, providing directions to operationalize the business strategy, as well as supporting customers to build, grow, and optimize their manufacturing processes.

Tom currently manages the MSAT Americas purification process engineering team, which is responsible for supporting end-users of Merck's solutions for chromatography, TFF, single-use, and systems technologies. Tom received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Northeastern University.

Laurens Vergauwen is an EMEA process development scientist and a global vaccine and viral therapies process development focal point lead. In this role, Laurens supports customers in the development and optimization of various downstream purification technologies (chromatography, TFF, clarification, sterile and viral filtration). Being able to work with different types of manufacturers has enabled him to gain knowledge about purification strategies for various biopharmaceuticals, including mRNA. He obtained his M.S. in industrial biochemical engineering at the University of Leuven (Belgium).

Partha is a senior technology consultant, currently covering India subcontinents in the fields of sterile filtration and filter validation services for the last 13 years. His technical competencies include downstream process development for biopharmaceuticals (esp. small molecules/peptides) and in-process troubleshooting (shop floor issues and regulatory queries). He is also responsible for the design and process development of complex parental formulations.

Chuck Raye has 14 years of experience in the bioprocessing industry, designing, validating, and managing single-use (SU) components and systems. He has also supported operational teams in the manufacturing of SU systems. In his current role, he works directly with customers, R&D, and operations to develop solutions that advance SU technology in the fill finish processes of sterile filtration and filling. Chuck holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University.

Charlotte graduated from the Grenoble Alpes University (UGA) with a BSc. and MSc. in molecular and cellular biology as well as a Ph.D. in neurobiology. She also has a professional certification in the management of health and biotechnology industries from the ESTBB Biotechnology School in Lyon. In her current role, she drives the development of differentiated and integrated solutions comprised of cell lines and cell culture media for vaccines and cell gene therapy applications.

Ratish Krishnan is a senior strategy consultant in novel modalities bioprocessing. He has nearly 15 years of bioprocessing experience in vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, and viral vector modalities from pre-clinical to late-stage process characterization, validation, and commercialization activities. Ratish has led process development teams at Novartis and Pfizer prior to his current role where he serves as a global subject matter expert for viral vector manufacturing and provides strategic guidance to stakeholders and key customers. He is active in thought leadership activities at scientific conferences, technical webinars, and key authorship contributions in peer-reviewed articles.

Ross Bemowski oversees the analytical development for new API products coming out of the API R&D group located in Madison, WI. He is also the technical lead for Chetosensar™ technology platform. Prior to this, he was an analytical development scientist supporting the CDMO offering from our company.

He studied synthetic organometallic chemistry and received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.

Jeffery (Jeff) Carroll has been with Merck for more than seven years and is currently the team leader for ADC Express in process and analytical development for bio-conjugation/bio-organic contract manufacturing. He is an expert synthetic chemist and a champion for utilizing new linker chemistries to accelerate early ADC development. Jeff previously worked at Monsanto Co. and Pfizer Inc., specializing in small molecule synthesis for herbicides and pharmaceuticals which is showcased in 11 publications and 12 patents to date.

Jeff has a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois-Champaign, Champaign, IL, and an M.S. in organic synthesis from Rice University, Houston, TX with his thesis on perfluoro-cholesterol analogs as a treatment for familial hypercholesterolemia.

As a food chemist by training, Almut von der Brelie has more than 17 years of experience in the global B2B marketing for functional cosmetic, food and pharmaceutical ingredients in highly regulated markets. In her current position as a strategic product manager, she is driving product innovations for solid dosage forms with a focus on the design of tablet film coatings and taste optimization.

Axel Fun is the principal scientist for virology in development services, responsible for developing new assays for the virology portfolio and providing scientific and regulatory advice regarding virus safety testing. Axel has extensive experience in virus research and biosafety testing and has been in his current role for almost 5 years.

Axel holds an M.S. in Infection & Immunity and a Ph.D. in virology from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Prior to his current role, Axel worked for 5 years as an academic researcher at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Alberto Santana is the biologics biosafety services product manager, responsible for the development of new services and portfolio development. Alberto has experience across the biopharma and pharma industries, including product management with Roche and Janssen.

Alberto holds an MBA and an M.S. in Pharmaceutical Management from the IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, and an economics degree from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Caracas, Venezuela.

Dr. Arnab Roy is the Global Product Manager for Reference Material. In his current role, he supports the custom reference materials business across different application workflows.

Paul F. Killian, Ph.D., is an R&D director with more than 30 years of experience as an analytical chemist. He manages the analytical technologies team which provides bioanalytical, imaging, polymer characterization, small molecule analytics, and spectroscopy support to new product development, including performing extractable studies on new products. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts and an M.S. in public health from Boston University.

Tobias Rosenkranz heads the biomolecule formulation team in the liquid formulation R&D department in Darmstadt. His lab mainly focuses on formulation challenges arising in protein formulations, such as protein viscosity and aggregation. A biophysicist by training, he holds a Ph.D. from the HHU Düsseldorf/Research Centre Jülich. Prior to joining the company in 2017, Tobias was a basic researcher at UIUC (US) and UNSW Australia.

Gerd Walter is a director in customer application, downstream, with more than 25 years of experience. He has a wide range of biotech knowledge on mAbs, recombinant proteins, vaccines, VGT, plasma, classical pharma, as well as cGMP understanding from upstream to downstream and final filling.

Braj Nandan Thakur is the global product manager for data analytics and automation software. He works to build roadmaps and strategies for software that meet and anticipate industry needs and assist companies in their digital transformations. Braj has implemented enterprise-level digital solutions from R&D through to manufacturing. He holds a master’s degree in bioinformatics from the University of Allahabad and a PGDM from the Institute of Management Technology, Hyderabad, India.

Alison Armstrong is the global head of the field technology management team. She was appointed senior director, UK development services in 2009, and established a client-facing technology management team in 2015. This team is responsible for scientific and regulatory advice and fully supports clients. Alison has authored several articles on trends in biosafety testing and is a member of regulatory taskforce groups related to rapid technologies. She is an invited speaker at global conferences. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular virology from the University of Glasgow.

Manjula Aysola is a senior regulatory consultant in the global regulatory management team. She is an expert on regulatory requirements for quality control of biopharmaceuticals including cell and gene therapies, and she has expertise in regulatory expectations for single-use manufacturing systems and cell/gene therapies manufacturing. With Merck for more than 16 years, Manjula led several R&D projects for bioreactor process development and cell culture media evaluations for stem cell therapies with the organization.

She was previously with Millennium Pharmaceuticals, focused on oncology target and biomarker discovery. Manjula earned her M.S. degree in genetics from Clemson University.

Eva received her B.S. in chemistry and biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Since graduating, she has held roles in multiple organizations, conducting pre-clinical, process development, engineering, and manufacturing activities for monoclonal antibody and viral vector therapeutics. Within Merck, she leads a team responsible for all upstream and downstream scale-up R&D to develop best-in-class lentiviral and AAV manufacturing products and templates.

Thomas Briel is strategic marketing manager at Merck and responsible for a broad portfolio of excipients for liquid formulation. He has more than 6 years of experience in the pharma and biopharma industry with different positions in the field of pharmaceutical formulation. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in biology from the Technical University of Munich. In parallel to his Ph.D. and industry roles, Thomas acquired a B.S. in economics with a focus on marketing.

Andrew Koch is a customer applications specialist at Merck, supporting bioprocessing customers in sterile filtration with a focus on single-use redundant filtration and pre-use post-sterilization integrity testing. He has presented at several conferences and workshops on single-use final filtration assembly design. Andrew has a B.S. in medical biology from the University of New England and an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University.

Daniel (Danny) Galbraith is head of product characterization strategy and is responsible for both strategy development and R&D growth focused on the BioReliance^® services portfolio. He started his career in the contract research market in 1996 after five years in academic post-doctoral research. After nearly ten years of working with vaccines, regulations, and biologics, Daniel founded a company focused on the development of novel assay technologies to better understand new drugs. He holds a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Glasgow, an MSc in Forensic Science from the University of Strathclyde , and a Ph.D. in immunological and molecular biology studies at the University of Abertay.

Omar Lamm is currently the global head of analytical services and development within our process solution services area of the business. He is responsible for commercial and operational aspects of product characterization and analytical development for various modalities. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he has 20 years of experience supporting contract biopharmaceutical product development both in the lab focusing on mass spectrometry and full-scale analytical development programs and in the field supporting clients.

Stephen Wing is a senior product manager with our company responsible for developing and providing digital solutions, and connecting customers with key analytical and logistical data to improve overall business operations. He joined our company in 2019 to develop and implement these critical capabilities. Prior to joining our company, he held various product management and product development roles with GE in the digital, life sciences, and oil & gas businesses. He has an M.S. in engineering management from Northeastern University and BSME from Boston University.

Kyle Reder is a segment strategy manager for cell & gene therapy, supporting BioReliance^® biosafety testing services. With more than 10 years of experience as a biologist, technical specialist, and product manager supporting cell and gene therapy manufacturers, Kyle provides insights into business and technology trends across the CGT landscape. Kyle has a B.Sc. in biomedical sciences from the University of Lynchburg.

Theresa did a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, working on the development of a continuous process line for the tableting of hot-melt extruded pellets. Her main activities at RCPE remained in continuous manufacturing, with a focus on process development and the investigation of material attribute effects on the processability of powders.

Michela Beretta is a Ph.D. student in chemical engineering. Her research started at RCPE in the development of controlled drug release systems and is currently focused on the field of material science for continuous manufacturing.

Sébastien joined Merck in 2005 and is now vice president and head of BioReliance^® end-to-end solutions based in Martillac, France, where he leads the CDMO branch dedicated to large molecules within the life science business. Sébastien also supports the development of new and innovative biomanufacturing technologies and solutions in collaboration with the company’s process development team.

Kira graduated from the St. Petersburg State Chemical and Pharmaceutical Academy with a degree in biotechnology engineering. She began her career in the Sanofi Group and developed in various positions at Janssen, Johnson & Johnson. In 2015, Kira joined R-Pharm as a marketing manager and soon achieved the director position of the hepatology department. Since 2019, Kira has been leading the Olokizumab project by overseeing all matters related to the ex-Russia product launches. As of today, Kira has accumulated 14 years of experience in sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry.

Piotr Kaczmarek joined the organization in 2013 to focus on the execution and development of analytical assays. He earned his MSc and Ph.D. in chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, MD.

Dana is an applications engineer within our Global BioPharm Center of Excellence Applications Engineering group. Her areas of expertise include tangential flow filtration, single-use systems, analytical assays, development of proof statements, best practices, and integrated processing solutions for the production and purification of biotherapeutics. She holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from Slovak Technical University and a bioengineering certificate from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Sarah holds a degree in biochemistry engineering from the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Lyon (INSA, France). She started her career with Merck in 2006 as a technical support engineer before moving to downstream field marketing with local, then global responsibilities. In her current role as part of the strategy deployment team, she specializes in downstream operations and systems.

Aniruddha Bose is a global product manager with more than 13 years of experience in biotechnology markets. Before joining Merck, he managed screening and process development projects at Biocon. Later, at GE Life Sciences (Cytiva), Aniruddha moved into business development and field marketing. In his current role, he oversees the roadmap, development, and market for Bio4C™ Suite software and automation products. He earned degrees in biotechnology from Bangalore University (B.S.) and Vellore Institute of Technology (M.S.) and a postgraduate degree in business management from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies.

Edmund Ang, a senior technical expert, joined Merck's BioReliance biosafety testing in 2017. He provides technical support on CMC testing of biotherapeutics to biopharma developers and manufacturers in Asia Pacific. He holds a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of Edinburgh and conducted his postdoctoral research on cell signaling at Stanford University and National Cancer Centre, Singapore.

Smita Rajput is Merck's liquid formulation expert for parenterals and ophthalmics. Smita has 8 years of professional experience working across multiple roles in pharmaceutical product development. Her expertise in formulation development of injectables and ophthalmics enables her to identify and address unmet market needs. With her expertise, Smita provides consultations for the selection of excipients in the injectable and ophthalmic segment. She has a Ph.D. in pharmaceutics.

Martin De Cecco is the technology lead for product characterization at Merck, overseeing the development of new analytical testing services. Martin has over 12 years’ experience developing methods for the characterization of novel biotherapeutics, having worked in the CRO industry and previously at a leading LC-MS vendor. He holds a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry and an MSci degree in Forensic & Analytical Chemistry.

Simone Biel provides regulatory and scientific expertise to our customers and internal stakeholders globally with a focus on single-use technology. Over the years, Simone has supported biopharmaceutical drug manufacturers’ implementation of single-use technology in their manufacturing process. With her deep understanding of single-use technology market needs and industry trends, she is the subject matter expert to ensure that product performance meets quality and regulatory requirements. Simone holds a Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt in microbiology.

Lisa Kretzschmar is the head of field applications for cell therapy processing. She brings more than ten years of experience in the cell and gene therapy industry, specializing in automating cell processing workflows. Her leadership to customize cell processing applications has enabled progression from research to clinical to commercial cell therapy projects. With a consultative approach to integrating novel equipment, she remains well-connected among cell therapy developers. Lisa continuously seeks emerging technology knowledge to offer platform and process development advice.

Takao Ito is a principal consultant, focused on biopharmaceutical processing, for Merck. He has worked in the area of bioprocess engineering for more than 20 years. He has more than 20 years of experience in the area of bioprocess engineering, working across multiple technologies within bioprocess development, scale-up, and GMP manufacturing. He currently helps the intensified bioprocess grow and evolve innovative technologies for the upstream/downstream applications. Takao Ito holds an M.S. in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.

A molecular biologist by training, Lars has been working in several regulatory positions in pharmaceutical industry (for both drug products and pharmaceutical raw materials) as well as contributing to a number of industry associations, joining Merck in 2012.

Currently, he is responsible for a team of regulatory experts in life science regulatory management. The team is working on regulatory topics mainly related to APIs and excipients, supporting a number of manufacturing sites as well as global activities.

Tobias is a director of process and analytical development at our center of excellence for drug delivery compounds in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. With 20+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Tobias leverages his broad expertise in process development, technology transfers, scale-up, GMP manufacturing, analytical development and project management to support our CDMO service offerings. He holds a doctoral degree in Chemistry from the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Christian Cattaruzza is a microbiology and biochemistry engineer by education (University of Montpellier, France). He joined Merck in 1996 and has accumulated 25 years of experience in sales and marketing roles in the life sciences industry. He now leads strategy and marketing for the BioReliance^® End-to-End Solutions portfolio of late-stage CDMO services.

Corinne Lavie-Cambot is a biotech engineer by education (INSA, Toulouse, France) with 20 years of industrial experience in biotech project management, innovation, process development, GMP production, and process validation.

David Delvaille is a biotech engineer by education (ENSTBB, Bordeaux). He has specialized in mammalian/microbial process development participating in multiple process validation projects over the last 15 years. His team is in charge of stage I/stage II strategies including scale-down model activities.

Janice Tan heads the upstream MSAT (manufacturing sciences & technology) team in Asia Pacific, excluding China. She and her team are responsible for providing application and technical consultation on upstream bioprocesses as well as presenting holistic and innovative upstream solutions to customers. Prior to joining, she was involved in developing customized media and feed formulations and applying multi-omics technologies for cell line engineering, media, and process development. Janice received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the National University of Singapore.

Kristen Heslin joined Merck in 2011 and currently heads the NA and EU program management office for commercial and internal strategic projects and program management. She was previously the director of global implementation, responsible for building product characterization services. Her 20 years of experience spans toxicology services, business development, and strategic execution. Kristen holds a B.S. in biomedical sciences from Texas A&M University, an MBA from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, and is a certified PMP (Project Management Professional) by the Project Management Institute.

Joshua Huffer is a technical specialist focused on BioReliance^® biosafety testing services. Drawing on more than 19 years of experience in the biotech industry, Joshua provides biosafety scientific, technical, & regulatory consultancy in support of the pre-clinical phase through commercialization of products spanning from monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and vaccines to cell & gene therapies. He has an MBA from Webster University in Missouri, U.S., and a B.Sc. degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech University in Virginia, U.S.

Kathleen Ongena has been part of {hcampany} for more than 10 years. She currently manages contract research projects and media development in the cell therapy bioprocessing group, providing expertise in cell culture, media formulation, product and assay development. Kathleen’s previous roles have included R&D scientist and R&D manager in our research solution business. As an R&D manager, she was responsible for developing and driving the technical strategic roadmap for the cell culture systems franchise. She led the application development and validation for multiple products within this franchise. Kathleen earned her Ph.D. from the University of Leuven, Belgium in the fields of molecular and cell biology generating transgenic mouse models to study psoriasis. 

Mark Ventresco is a product manager supporting the cell therapy manufacturing portfolio. In his role, Mark manages the Stemline^® media portfolio, consisting of various expansion and maturation cell culture media optimized for clinical and manufacturing environments. He also supports new product development initiatives including cell therapy manufacturing systems. Mark holds a B.S in chemical engineering and an M.S. in plastic engineering.

Steven McDade is an associate director of sales development APAC, responsible for supporting customers on virus clearance capabilities and providing technical and regulatory support. Steven has worked in the biosafety testing field for more than 24 years, 18 with BioReliance^® contract testing services. He has worked in a variety of roles including technical sales manager in APAC, business development manager for clearance services, EMEA & Asia, and senior technical specialist for the cell and gene therapy portfolio. Steven graduated with a BSc (Hons) in microbiology from Glasgow University in 1999. 

David Loong is our senior consultant, novel modalities APAC, bioprocessing strategy. Previously, David held roles as a senior scientist in biotech startups encompassing cell & gene therapy process development services, mAb discovery, and preclinical development. He has an extensive track record providing contract research services as a senior research scientist at AMRI Global, and as a product custodian for API GMP manufacturing at GSK. He holds a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the Australian National University and a BTech(Hons) from Massey University (NZ) specializing in chemistry and process engineering.

Josephine leads RNA therapeutics initiatives across the APeC region, where she fosters customer collaborations, drives innovation, and transforms scientific insights into sustainable go-to-market strategies. With more than 16 years of experience spanning lab management, technology management (chromatography and TFF), customer training, segment market development (plasma, vaccine, mRNA), strategy consultation, and customer applications for novel modalities, Josephine has successfully led cross-functional programs and international partnerships. She is also an active contributor to thought leadership and scientific publications. Josephine holds a Master’s degree in Bio-resources and Agriculture from National Taiwan University, specializing in protein and molecular science.

Kimberly D. Stewart is an R&D scientist with broad experience in protein and nucleic acid chemistries. In her current role, Kimberly leverages her expertise in molecular recognition applications to support the development of a cell therapy manufacturing platform. As an early-career scientist, Kimberly maintains an imaginative approach to complex queries, working to introduce novel process solutions where necessary. Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry and has a unique composite of knowledge in chemical biology, analytical instrumentation, and molecular-level assay development.

Jack Saloio is an R&D engineer who has been developing acoustic technologies for biopharmaceutical and cell therapy manufacturing for more than six years. In his role at Merck, he has led design selection, process optimization, and automation efforts within the ekko™ Select project. His experience with this novel technology continues to play an important role as the project progresses. Jack holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Western New England University.

Jessica Shea is the Emprove^® senior program manager responsible for filters, single-use, and chromatography resin portfolios within Merck. Previously, she was responsible for extractables and leachables global support for the BioReliance^® validation services. She has more than 15 years of E&L experience, including method validation, designing of custom testing, and interpreting industry and regulatory guidance. Jessica has a B.S. in biochemistry and an MBA.

Alfonso Lavorgna has worked in the biosafety testing field for 6 years focused on the BioReliance^® service portfolio. During this time, Alfonso has worked as a scientist overseeing development and validation of a wide variety of safety testing required to manufacture clinical and commercial products. In his current role as Operations Manager, Alfonso oversees the daily management of a wide variety of assays or tests required to characterize product or material safety. Alfonso earned his M.S. in medical biotechnology from the University of Naples in 2005 as well as a Ph.D. in viral oncology in 2009.

Tanja Henzler studied biology in Tübingen and received her Ph.D. in virology at the Ruprechts Karls University Heidelberg. She joined Merck in 2002 with a focus on protein characterization and protein analytics. After evaluating new technologies for the life science business of the company, she coordinated an interdisciplinary and cross-divisional innovation project. She now leads the liquid formulation R&D department, focusing on protein stability and controlled release of biomolecules.

Julian Mochayedi is the strategic marketing manager for mRNA solutions and is responsible for the strategy development and positioning of the mRNA offering based on the acquisition of AmpTec, a leading mRNA CDMO. He holds an M.Sc. in bioprocess development and a Ph.D. in translational immunology from the University of Heidelberg with expertise in the area of in vivo gene editing. 

Olivia Merkel is a professor of drug delivery in the department of pharmacy at LMU Munich. She was an assistant professor of pharmaceutics and an associate faculty member of oncology at Wayne State University, Detroit, heading research labs both in Detroit and Munich. Her research centers around targeted RNA delivery in cancer, inflammatory diseases, and viral infections with a focus on pulmonary administration. Prof. Merkel holds a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical technology from Philipps-Universität Marburg and received several awards. She is an author of more than 100 articles and book chapters and a member of several scientific organizations.

Ulrich Reichert heads the regulatory management - pharma and food materials organization of the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. He is responsible for registration of APIs and excipients with health authorities (master files), and he acts as the principal contact for site registration with the GMP-supervisory authority. Ulrich is a pharmacist by training, holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in drug regulatory affairs,  and has more than 20 years of experience in quality and regulatory requirements for raw and starting materials in the pharmaceutical industry. 

Christopher J. Barbosa joined Acuitas Therapeutics in 2014 and has been part of the company’s rise to a leadership position in the application of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics. He collaborates with Acuitas partners on a wide range of lipid nanoparticle therapeutic applications such as mRNA encoded antibody therapies, gene editing, and vaccines, including the first approved COVID-19 vaccine – the mRNA-LNP therapeutic COMIRNATY^® – produced in collaboration with a BioNTech/Pfizer partnership. The Acuitas proprietary delivery technology is a key part of the innovation leading to this highly effective vaccine.  He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and biotechnology from The University of British Columbia, Canada, and has held several leadership roles in the research and development of novel drug delivery systems.

Ramesh is currently the head of operations, BioReliance^® Validation Services lab of Merck at Bangalore which provides aseptic filter validation services to Asia & Oceana, Middle East, Africa, LATAM, and Mexico along with the Indian subcontinent. Previously, he was managing the technology management team in India at Merck. Ramesh has more than 20 years of experience in aseptic processing and validation of injectables. He is currently pursuing his doctorate program in extractable and leachable from Kuvempu University.

Sumit Gupta is a technical expert for Bioreliance^® filter validation services based in Bangalore, India. He supports creating and developing the global standard operating procedures, specifications, and other best practices to support microbial services. He provides regulatory responses and technical consultation to improve practices throughout the global labs.

He has worked at Merck for 15 years, heading lab operations for aseptic filter validation studies including physical testing, bacterial retention testing as well as extractable and leachable studies and validation studies.

Kevin Grollier graduated from the Lyon Pharmaceutical Industry Institute (IPIL), with an M.S. in pharmaceutical production specializing in biotechnology. At our company, he is a PAT implementation and support engineer in charge of implementing Raman projects at customer sites, training ProCellics™ Raman Analyzer users, and providing technical support on hardware, software, and data analysis topics. Before joining our company, he worked at Merial (now BIAH) as a QA validation engineer where he had the opportunity to work on various validation projects.

Laetitia Botrel is head of business planning & operations of our biologic contract development and manufacturing services, BioReliance^® End-to-End Solutions. She leads and coordinates cross-functional and strategic projects, such as commercial manufacturing building and related activities. She has 12 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including 6 years heading the GMP manufacturing facility of the Biodevelopment Center in Martillac, France.

Jérôme Pionchon is a facility engineering subject matter expert with experience leading the activities of engineering and maintenance. He has 20 years of experience in the pharma and biotech industry with 10 years of experience designing and constructing pharma & biotech plants.

Daniel Joseph Price is a strategic marketing manager for our portfolio of solubility enhancement excipients. Prior to his current role, Daniel was a Marie Curie Fellow, conducting research on solubility enhancement with amorphous formulations. Daniel is an active member of several academia/industrial consortia on the topics of innovation in oral solid dosage forms and has published extensively on the topic in peer-reviewed journals. Daniel has a B.S. and an M.S. in chemistry from the University of Leeds and a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical technology from Frankfurt Goethe University.

Claudia Widmann is a regulatory expert in our pharma registration group. Her main activities include dossier creation and maintenance for products developed at the corresponding location in Switzerland. The product manufacturing is specialized among other products in lipid excipients. Claudia holds an M.S. in regulatory affairs from the Technische Universität Lübeck, as well as an M.S. and Ph.D. in a nanotechnological field of expertise.

Rima Obeid studied pharmacy and public health. She has a Ph.D. in clinical biochemistry at Saarland University, Germany. She is a recognized researcher in the field of micronutrients and the health of vulnerable groups and is part of a global network of scientists applying methods of evidence-based medicine in the nutrition field. Prof. Obeid conducted and published numerous clinical studies on the role of folate in health and diseases.

Jean-Pierre Knapp studied chemistry at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He dedicated most of his extensive professional life to folates, including the development of analytical methods. With his profound analytical expertise, he serves as an elected expert to the SwissMedic and EDQM Expert Group on Chemistry. His folate expertise has also been incorporated into the US Pharmacopeia. He joined our company in 2008 and manages analytical and quality affairs for Arcofolin^® and pharmaceutical ingredients.

Leo Ohrem is a strategic marketing manager and has been with Merck for more than 23 years. With an engineering background and degrees from the University of Aachen, Germany, and Cornell University, NY, USA, Leo has expertise in solid dose excipients and formulation technologies. Leo has experience in handling customer projects, production process development, regulatory support, and audits, as well as complaint management. Furthermore, he has been leading a development group and pilot plant unit for more than 5 years.

Ashok Kumar leads the single-use and integrated systems team for India and has been with the company for 11 years. His areas of expertise include single-use and integrated systems processing. He is also responsible for customer training in India and Singapore. Prior to joining our company, Ashok was a process engineer at Sartorius Stedim India, where he was responsible for all custom-engineered fermentation systems. Ashok has an M.S. in biotechnology and an M.S. degree in operations and marketing management.

Giuseppe Camporeale holds an M.S. in biotechnology and a Ph.D. in chemistry, both from the University of Bari (Italy). He joined the company 5 years ago. He’s worked as a technical service specialist for the full process solution portfolio of chemicals, and as field marketing specialist for the Actives & Formulation (A&F) franchise. In these roles, Giuseppe has supported the A&F business in Europe and Asia, advising our customers on quality, regulatory compliance, and performance of our chemicals and services for pharmaceutical manufacturing and formulation.

Greg Pirozzi has 30 years of biotechnology industry experience with more than 20 years in various project management and technology development roles. In his current role, Greg manages a broad range of client projects including analytical and molecular assay development, transfer and validations, as well as extensive stability studies covering bulk, final drug product, and cell bank materials.

Previously, Greg led a variety of drug development projects including biologics and viral vectors for oncology, cardiovascular, ocular, and infectious disease vaccines and therapies. Greg holds a Ph.D. from New York University Medical Center.

Pamela Hamill, Ph.D. is a technical consultant supporting the BioReliance^® Contract Testing Services, providing clients with scientific and regulatory advice for quality control testing of biological therapies and novel modalities. Pam was previously principal scientist overseeing clients' custom potency assay development. Prior to this, Pam managed diagnostic services at the Rabies Centre of Expertise at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and performed post-doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia. Pamela has a Ph.D. in virology from the University of Glasgow.

Shiksha Mantri holds a Ph.D. in chemical biology from the University of Oxford, U.K., and did her postdoc at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She joined Merck as the global technical product manager for synthetic lipids, where she was responsible for managing the lipids portfolio and custom manufacturing businesses. She continues to support the top industry players and young start-ups in the fields of RNA delivery and vaccines as the global marketing manager for RNA solutions.

Daniel Treffer is the founder of MeltPrep which develops dedicated equipment for ASD and implant formulation development work of thermoplastic formulations. The proprietary and patented VCM technology is based on his Ph.D. findings. Professor Khinast supervised his work at the RCPE in Graz, Austria, from 2011 to 2016. Daniel faced several challenges in hot melt extrusion development projects and recognized the need for novel tools for faster and lower material usage for formulation developments. His invention, vacuum compression molding (VCM), can prepare extrusion-like samples with a few mg of material.

Dr. Wolfe is an R&D scientist in the Molecular Workflow Tools group for Merck, specializing in new product and application development. She earned her Ph.D. from Tufts University in Medford, MA in 2016, followed by a postdoctoral position at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. Her research interests focus on the protein response to DNA damage. Dr. Wolfe joined Merck in 2020.

Matthew is the global product training manager for Merck’s Diagnostic and Regulated Materials Division. For the last 15 years, he has created and lead hands-on wet lab workshops, conferences, webinars, and internal training programs on a wide range of life science technologies. He holds degrees from Michigan State University (Zoology, BSc.) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Cell and Molecular Biology, PhD). 

David leads a team responsible for introducing new API products and implementing new technologies inside of actives and formulations R&D. Prior to this role, David was a manager and process chemist specializing in API process development. David earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Colorado State where he studied under advisors, Yian Shi and Albert Meyers.

Sarah Sheridan provides scientific, technical, and regulatory consultancy on biosafety testing, including services offered under the BioReliance^® Testing Services portfolio. Drawing on over 25 years of experience in the human and animal health biotech industries, Sheridan supports the company's global client base spanning pre-clinical to commercial phase biosafety testing of client manufactured products including vaccines, monoclonals and cell & gene therapies. Sheridan is an active member of several industry forums and holds a Ph.D. in veterinary science from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Lisa joined Merck in January 2010 as an analytical project lead, responsible for ADCs. She brings with her more than 25 years of experience in both organic synthesis and analytical sciences and has had the opportunity to contribute to many projects ranging from discovery to full development, but none has been as exciting as the emergence of ADCs. She also has an extensive chromatography background with experience in integrated LC/MS screening systems.

Prof. Burnouf received his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of Lille, France. He is a world leader in the field of plasma fractionation, being at the forefront of the development and industrial implementation of new fractionation and virus inactivation and removal technologies of plasma products. His current research interest includes human platelet lysates (HPL) products for regenerative medicine and cell therapy. He has published more than 280 papers on plasma protein therapeutics in many international journals, and he is an inventor of 24 patent families.

Mona is a scientist in cell culture media and perfusion systems R&D. She received her B. Sc. and M. Sc. in biotechnology and biopharmaceutical technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Giessen. Before joining our company in 2015, she worked at Sanofi, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, and Leica Microsystems. Mona has experience in downstream processing as well as quality management and quality control. She has worked on a variety of topics, including in-process reduction of ammonia, perfusion, and high cell density cryopreservation.

Alison Dupont is a senior applications engineer within the single-use and integrated systems group. She holds an M.S. in chemical engineering. Her current role is to be the “customer ambassador” on active product development projects within the single-use and integrated system product pipeline. Alison has more than 14 years of experience in MAb processing in both upstream and downstream, with a focus on intensified processing.

Allyson Fournier has been highly involved with the development of a line of novel cell retention filters and systems to be used on a perfusion bioreactor. She supports the single-use and integrated systems R&D team to provide application work for the launch of new products. Allyson brings a background in chemical engineering and biotechnology.

Brandon Medeiros is an upstream process engineer in our bioprocessing R&D organization. Since joining the company in February 2017, Brandon has led the Upstream Process Innovation Center which supports the organization through the development and production of industry-relevant cell culture processes. Prior to joining our company, Brandon worked in upstream process development for Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, and EMD Serono. Brandon holds a B.S. in biology from Northeastern University.

Patricia (Tish) Kumpey is an associate upstream scientist. She has spent nearly 25 years in the bioprocess industry, optimizing upstream bioreactor conditions for mammalian and microbial systems. Tish has taken her knowledge of process development into the early steps of process development; namely, cell line development. By taking a holistic view of upstream bioprocessing, she hopes to alleviate current bottlenecks in upstream. 

Andrea Hawe is co-founder and chief scientific officer of Coriolis Pharma, a science-driven contract research organization for drug product development of biopharmaceuticals (protein, peptides, oligonucleotides, ATMPs, vaccines), with a focus on formulation, lyophilization technologies, and analytics (GMP and non-GMP). Andrea holds a Ph.D. from the LMU (Munich) in pharmaceutical technology. She is an expert in protein formulation and protein characterization, and she has published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Daniel Weinbuch is an analytical service specialist at Coriolis Pharma. He holds a Ph.D. from the Leiden University (The Netherlands) in biopharmaceutical sciences, for which he studied the pharmaceutical aspects of subvisible particles. As part of his Ph.D. project, Daniel investigated nanoparticulate impurities (NPIs) observed in pharmaceutical-grade sugars. He works for Coriolis Pharma. His previous work experience includes positions at Ratiopharm (now Teva) in Germany and Boehringer Ingelheim in the U.S. and Japan.

Mochao Zhao is the global product manager for single-use membrane chromatography. She has worked on multiple monoclonal antibody, viral, and VLP vaccines, as well as oncolytic viral therapy projects to optimize downstream process architecture. Mochao has a B.S. in chemical engineering and biosciences from McMaster University and an M.S. in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University. 

Ranjeet Patil heads a global team of bioprocessing experts for the vaccine and viral therapy segment. In his current role, he and his team provide consultative expertise to address process challenges and guide the development of innovative solutions. For the past 10 years, he has been working in various technical functions across both North America and Asia. His previous roles included: early-stage bioprocess development, virus clearance validation, and process optimization as well as troubleshooting. Ranjeet is a bioprocess engineer and holds a post-graduate degree from Northeastern University in Boston.

Raphael Gübeli leads field marketing activities of chemical raw materials for biopharmaceutical manufacturing in Western Europe. In his role, he heads technical field programs and supports customers in the application of raw materials from R&D to manufacturing scale. In his previous position as a technical product manager, he was responsible for the global technical positioning of a portfolio of biopharma raw materials. Prior to this, Raphael worked as a scientist at MedImmune, Cambridge, UK, in formulation development. He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Freiburg, Germany, and a Bachelor/Master degree in biotechnology from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Josselyn Haas Durr is a biomanufacturing engineer manager active in the EMEA life sciences MSAT group (Manufacturing Sciences & Technology). His main activities are the development of biopharmaceutical processes, process optimization, implementation, scale-up, and troubleshooting, focusing mainly on the clinical and commercial-scale areas, especially for the tangential flow filtration. Josselyn is also carrying out investigations on process deviations. Josselyn holds an M.S. in biotechnology engineering from the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Technologie des Biomolecules” (ENSTBB) de Bordeaux (France).

Meghan Higson is a research scientist currently working in the BioContinuum™ platform application and innovation group, with a focus on downstream processing. Her activities include purification of mAbs, tangential flow filtration, flow-through polishing, and process analytics. She joined the company in 2004 and has held various roles in several groups throughout the organization.

Sandeep Mora leads the BioContinuum™ platform downstream process development team, focusing on integrated processing solutions for downstream mAb purification. His expertise includes process development and automation, and scale-up and scale-down of embedded systems. Sandeep holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Sanjay Poman has more than 30 years of experience in developing and supporting Chromatography techniques - GC/ TLC/ HPLC. In his current role as an application scientist, he is involved in application development for supporting customers in pharmacopoeia monograph methods.

Christian Frech was appointed professor for bioanalytics at the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences in 2002. Since 2004, he has been the head of the institute for biochemistry at the university  as well as the director of the Steinbeis Transfer Centre “Technical Consulting.”  Frech has a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in biochemistry from the University Bayreuth, Germany. His main research interests are in downstream processing of biomolecules with a focus on therapeutic proteins, antibodies, and viruses.

David Bohonak is the vaccines and viral therapies market segment manager. He has 14 years of experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, including roles on R&D and manufacturing sciences teams focused on developing new technologies and best practices for downstream processes. David holds B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware.

Anshuman Bansal heads the process analytics team within the BioContinuum™ Platform. Anshuman comes with 20 years of experience in the biotech industry, supporting the production of various products. He founded Simplyfeye, a bioprocess data analytics software company that was acquired by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in June 2019. Prior to founding Simplyfeye, he held various positions in manufacturing and MSAT groups previously at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (India), Amgen Inc. (USA), and Abbott Laboratories (USA). Anshuman holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India. and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama.

Craig has more than 20 years of experience in the biotech industry and has always worked directly with biopharmaceutical manufacturers. His breadth of experience includes lab-scale process development, commercial process troubleshooting and optimization, new product introductions to the marketplace, and commissioning of new manufacturing plants.  His current role encompasses virus risk reduction in all areas of the biomanufacturing process, with a focus on upstream virus risk mitigation. Craig has a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Brad is the director of lab operations for next-generation sequencing services. He has 15 years of experience developing and implementing molecular-based methods for the purposes of lot release and characterization testing in a variety of biologically derived products.

Elizabeth is a commercial project manager in St. Louis, MO, mainly supporting ADC projects. Prior to her current role, Elizabeth was a quality engineer within the organization, supporting cleaning, change control, and validation, and she was instrumental in getting the site prepared for the commercial manufacture of ADCs. She has a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences from Purdue University. 

Kerry has 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry within the quality assurance group and 7 years as a forensic scientist with the Illinois State Police. Kerry works in Merck's site quality area for the St. Louis site which manufactures APIs, excipients, and biological buffers for the pharmaceutical industry, including antibody drug conjugates (ADCs). She received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Truman State University.

Jake has been with Merck for 8 years, developing and manufacturing ADCs ranging from preclinical to commercial. During this time, he has developed, optimized, intensified, characterized, and scaled-up ADC processes.

During his 8 years as principal production scientist at Merck, Gary has been actively involved in the transfer, scale-up, validation and manufacture of numerous projects of clinical and commercial bioconjugations . He has 25+ years of experience in upstream and downstream manufacturing and management, all in cGMP regulated environments.

Estelle has experience working as a formulation and process engineer on drug delivery programs for several biotech companies in Boston. She has joined Merck as a global strategic marketing manager for synthetic lipids. In this role, she is responsible for managing the lipids portfolio and custom manufacturing businesses supporting top industry players and young start-ups in the fields of RNA delivery and vaccines. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford, the U.K. where she worked on developing ultrasound-responsive lipid-based drug delivery systems.

Nelli heads the protein stability laboratory in process and formulation materials - technology and innovation (T&I) at Merck. In this role, she is mainly responsible for the development of new technologies to improve the stability of biomolecule formulations. Her previous work experience includes a postdoc position in Analytical R&D at AbbVie. She holds a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Dortmund in Chemical Biology, investigating the structure and dynamics of biomolecules.

Satish has 17 years of experience in research, sales, sales development, field marketing, and technology management. He is an expert in cell line development, upstream process development using E. coli, and CHO platforms for expressing biotherapeutics and biosimilars. For the past 7 years, he has worked with the Technical University Munich, Hetero, Aurobindo, and others associated with Merck, supporting our bioprocess business in India. Sateesh holds a double masters, one in biotechnology from Bangalore University and one in molecular biology from the University of Skovde, Sweden.

Daniel Buescher is a product manager for digital solutions. He owns the product management responsibility for new growing, customer-facing digital solutions. He focuses on the development and implementation of differentiated digital services & business models, evaluation of market needs, and strategic product placement.

Daniel joined Merck in 2017 and has held different leading positions within automation, software development, digitalization, and process excellence. Daniel holds a Dipl. Ing. in electrical engineering from Technical University Darmstadt.

Danielle Clare is an Application Research Scientist at Merck working in analytical sample preparation, workflow tools, and microfiltration. In this role, she has focused closely on microfiltration use in regulatory and practical methods for air, wastewater, and soil monitoring, as well as the application development of microfiltration tools. She has a strong background in analytical chemistry and quality control (radiopharmaceutical and reagents) that has helped support her three year tenure in at Merck. Danielle is assisted in her work by her three parrots and pursues stained glass and printmaking in her spare time.

Prof. Xiaoming Feng received his B.S. in 1985 and M.S. in 1988 from Lanzhou University. Then, he worked at Southwest Normal University (1988−1993) and became an associate professor in 1991. In 1996, he received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Chemistry, CAS. He went to the Chengdu Institute of Organic Chemistry, CAS (1996−2000) and was appointed professor in 1997. He did postdoctoral research at Colorado State University (1998-1999) with Prof. Yian Shi. In 2000, he moved to Sichuan University. He was selected as an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. He focuses on the design of chiral catalysts, the development of new synthetic methods, and the synthesis of bioactive compounds. He received numerous awards and honors including the Physical Science Prize of Future Science Prize in 2018; Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress in 2019; the Tan Kah Kee Science Awards, Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020.

Prof. Ning Jiao was born on May 13, 1976, in Shandong, China. He graduated from Shandong University with a bachelor’s degree in 1999. He continued his studies in Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Shengming Ma, where he was awarded a PhD degree in 2004. He conducted post-doctoral research at Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung (MPI) Mülheim under the supervision of Prof. Manfred T. Reetz from 2004 to 2006. He joined the State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs of Peking University in 2007 and stay there since then. His current research efforts are focused on new methodologies development mainly on oxygenation, nitrogenation, and halogenation reactions; the inert chemical bonds functionalization; bioactive compounds synthesis and drug discovery. He was the recipient of the Xplorer Prize, The first prize in Natural Science Award of Ministry of Education, the first prize in Natural Science Award of Beijing.

Prof. Yizhou Li is a professor in Medical Chemistry and group leader in chemical biology in the School of Pharmacal Science, Chongqing University, China. Yizhou graduated in Chemistry in 2014 from the Peking University, China, where he remained for his PhD in Organic Chemistry. He was a postdoc at ETH Zurich in the group of Professor Dario Neri until 2017, and tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Chongqing University until the beginning of 2019. Dr Yizhou’s area of expertise is DNA-encoded chemical library, chemical biology on nucleic acids and target identification.

Dr. Chung’s specialties include internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, critical care medicine, and clinical pathology. As Assistant Professor in Laboratory Medicine at National Taiwan University Hospital, he focuses on altered metabolic and mitochondrial regulation in the pathogenesis of various pulmonary diseases and critical illnesses.

Dr. Winston Liao Wupeng obtained his Ph.D. degree from the department of pharmacology, NUS and had his postdoctoral training in University of California, San Diego and Columbia University, USA. He’s currently a senior research fellow under Prof. Fred Wong in the department of pharmacology, NUS. The major interests of his research are to investigate the pathogenesis of and to develop mechanism-based pharmacological agents for the treatment of respiratory diseases such as asthma, COPD and pulmonary fibrosis.

Dr Fabian Zieschang is the Global Product Manager for Mercks photometers and analytical test kits for food and beverage testing and water and environmental analysis. He holds a PhD in physical-organic chemistry and has several years of experience in spectroscopy and photometric analysis.

Sam is a graduate of Chemical Engineering and has more than 20 years of experience in the food and beverage industry and adjacent segments. He started with us in 2006 in the Philippines.

Christof is head of quality control at the mRNA Center of Excellence in Hamburg, and he is responsible for the development, coordination, and implementation of state-of-the-art mRNA analytics. Before dedicating himself to the mRNA business, he gained experience in several positions within the pharmaceutical industry for traditional vaccine manufacturing. Christof holds a Ph.D. in cellular biochemistry from the University of Bielefeld.

Prof. Berit Olofsson has a PhD from in synthetic organic chemistry from KTH, Stockholm, Sweden in 2002. She conducted post doctoral studies at Bristol University, UK with Prof. Aggarwal in 2003-2004. Returning to Sweden, she became assistant supervisor in the group of Prof. Bäckvall at Stockholm University (SU). She started her independent career as Assistant Professor at SU in 2006, focusing on hypervalent iodine chemistry. After some years as Associate Professor, she was promoted to Full Professor in 2013. Since 2019, she also serves as the Dean of Chemistry.
Selected commissions of trust: Secretary of the Division of organic chemistry at EuChemS, Member of the international advisory board of Angew. Chemie, Chair of the board of SUCCeSS (tockholm university center for circular and sustainable systems).

Roja Azees is the Senior Product Manager of the LANEXO^® System from Merck’s Connected Lab digital program. She is a Biotechnologist with more than eight years’ combined experience in Sales, Marketing and Product Management in the Life Science sector.

Jacquie continues to lead and develop Merck's initiatives and programs that meet the sustainability needs of customers. Currently, she develops and leads product recycling options such as the Biopharma Single Use product recycling program. Jacquie has had more than 20 years of experience within the life sciences industry, holding positions in biological research, training, sales, and sales support as well as a program manager on several product development projects for detection instrumentation platforms. Jacquie holds a bachelor's in biological sciences from Hood College.

Jane Murray joined Sigma-Aldrich in 2008. Following the acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in 2015, she was appointed global head of green chemistry for the life science division. Jane has a strong background in chemical research—having completed her Ph.D. at the University of York, where she researched green oxidations of organosulfur compounds using hydrogen peroxide. Having grown up next to a national park, Jane finds herself naturally driven to progress scientific innovations that help protect the environment. Jane has leveraged her experiences to effectively collaborate with fellow chemists in academia and pharma. Her efforts have resulted in the development of numerous publications supporting the uptake of green chemistry practices. Jane was awarded an Environment+Energy Leader 100 Honorée in 2020.

Dr. Cameron Weber is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemical Sciences and a Deputy Director of the Centre for Green Chemical Science at the University of Auckland. He completed his undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Sydney before taking up postdoctoral research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Imperial College London including a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship held at Imperial College London. He moved to Auckland in 2017, firstly as a Lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology before taking up his current position at the University of Auckland in 2019.  His research focuses on alternative solvents such as ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents and switchable solvents including understanding their fundamental liquid structure, their effect on chemical reactivity and their use in extraction and separation processes. 

Tony Patti is a Professor in the School of Chemistry at Monash University. Tony has over 35 years of experience in tertiary education and as a university researcher. His research interests are focused on green chemistry approaches for the utilisation of biomass feedstocks for extraction, processing and production of valuable chemicals for numerous applications. Applications of green chemistry in agriculture are of particular interest and he has undertaken several projects involving soil chemistry, fertiliser development and understanding the role of natural organic matter in the soil. He has also undertaken extensive consulting research and development with numerous companies in areas related to organic amendments for agriculture and food waste valorisation. In early 2020 he was appointed Director of the ARC funded Industrial Transformation Training Centre for “Green Chemistry in Manufacturing”. He is also the Course Director for the Monash Master of Green Chemistry and Sustainable Technologies. He has a strong commitment to PhD and postgraduate training in green chemistry and improving the employability of PhD graduates.                 

Lukasz is a digital practitioner focusing on Industry 4.0, IoT, Cloud, and digital strategy building. He combines his passion for technology with business and industrial insights to design the Facility of the Future for the biopharmaceutical sector. Lukasz’s background is in digital transformation projects, technology implementation programs, innovation, and R&D initiatives. He gained experience working at IBM, Accenture, and Merck. Lukasz is the founder of Architects for Business, a company that focuses on delivering meaningful innovation across industrial sectors.

With more than 12 years of experience in the life sciences industry, Nishant Gupta has held various roles in core manufacturing operations, MSAT, tech transfers, and consulting. He has a strong background in process technologies and process data analytics and works with biopharma companies around the world to understand their current challenges and needs for digital maturity. He leads Merck’s commercial development and customer engagement efforts for the Bio4C™ Software Suite. Nishant holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in biochemical engineering and biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

With more than 20 years of experience, Philippe Eberhard is a senior IT innovation manager in software & automation at Merck. He worked in the highly regulated in vitro diagnostics at Johnson & Johnson. Philippe’s current role focuses on the supplier side of the biopharma industry, finding innovative ways to solve business problems using the latest technologies. He has a passion for bringing user-centric solutions that solve the toughest technical and analytics challenges while maintaining the highest level of compliance with industry standards.

René Reinbigler is a software architect within the BioContinuum™ Platform. He has 30 years of experience in the biopharma industry, designing upstream and downstream equipment and supporting customers around the world in setting up, qualifying, and troubleshooting the production process of monoclonal antibodies. René is the co-author of 25+ patents in the area of bioprocessing and is currently working on innovative solutions which have the potential to transform how the bioprocess is being executed.

Marc-Antoine Kaag is Senior Product Manager for Sampling strategy at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt Germany. He brings over 15 years of experience in the Life Science industry. Marc-Antoine has held various roles from Product Validation, Engineering to lifecycle Product management. His most recent mission is on the development & execution of a new strategy for the Sampling portfolio, in order to support Biopharma industry evolution over times. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology & Food safety from Paris VI and a Master in Quality & Business organization from the University of Strasbourg. 

Dr. Sadao Ozawa is a senior upstream customer application specialist in the process solutions division of Merck. He is based in Tokyo and has been with the company for 26 years. Recently, he has supported the Japanese upstream process development and manufacturing as well as the market development of cell and gene therapy. He holds a Ph.D. from the Science University of Tokyo in biochemical engineering.

Chris Kornfeld has more than 11 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and is currently part of our company's MSAT team as an upstream technical consultant. He has held various positions in his career, starting as a scientist in upstream R&D, a project manager, and, most recently, as a field application specialist. Through proactive technical collaboration, Chris enables our customers to remove roadblocks from their upstream processes so they can drive their programs forward. He holds a bachelor's degree in biology and psychology from St. Louis University and an economics degree from Washington University.

Sabine Bessières Recasens leads the Environment Monitoring products for Pharma cleanrooms and isolators in the Field Marketing BioMonitoring Life Science Western Europe at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. She works for health industry since more than 25 years in Product and Marketing Management: first in development and sales of solutions for blood components preparation and medical diagnostic, then methods for industrial microbial testing more in Pharma, Biopharma. She is involved in users’ regulatory guidance and microbiology scientific support, trainings and conferences and has been a member of the French committee AFNOR X44B "Cleanrooms for 10 years. 

Anne Grit Klees is lead expert and portfolio manager in the environmental monitoring segment of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Anne-Grit received her PhD in Microbiology at Philipps University Marburg in 1992. She has more than 25 years of experience in managing instrumentation and consumables for microbial testing in pharma, food and beverage industries. Her focus is air and surface monitoring in cleanrooms and isolators, with expertise in regulatory, technical and user requirements. She is always involved in innovation projects to improve our customers experience with new and compliant solutions.

Benoît Ramond is Doctor in Pharmacy at the University of Paris XI in France and obtains a PhD in Microbiology. He has more than 30 years of experiences in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Since 2016 he is Head of Microbiology and Sterile Technology Expertise in Sanofi Group including Aseptic Processing, Barrier Technologies, Environmental Monitoring Program, Cleaning and Disinfection, Visual Inspection. In his function he has also a leading role in the Annex 1 implementation program within Sanofi.

Andrea Conti is the senior expert on microbiology working as part of the Centre of Excellence for Sterile at Aspen, Normandy, France. Degree on microbiology at Rome “La Sapienza University”, he as now more than 21 years of experience on pharmaceutical industry. His career started at Sanofi, Italy, as microlab Team Leader, then he had the role of microlab manager. Left Italy, he become sterility assurance manager for 6 years at Sanofi-France and now he is part of Aspen since 2020. He as a long experience on environmental monitoring, trend analysis and sterility assurance and recently he has developed Contamination Control Strategy for some processes at Aspen. Main job now is to give assistance to 3 sterile sites for strategies and troubleshooting on sterile domain.

Audrey Schultz is the expert on microbiology working for Sterility Quality Assurance department at Delpharm, Saint Rémy sur Avre, France. She as now 20 years of experience on pharmaceutical industry, started as microbiological lab manager and QC manager. She become sterility assurance manager since 2017 with the management of environmental monitoring, trend analysis, risk analysis and she is QA project leader. She is working with the Delpharm sterility group to develop the CCS and the new Annex 1 gap assesment.

Louisa Patterson who moderated the discussion is the Head of Field Marketing and Validation Services, BioMonitoring Life Science Western Europe for Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Louisa has worked in the Life Science industry for the past 20 years holding several different roles in Global Strategic Accounts, Marketing and Sales. Throughout her career she has worked closely with customers within the Pharmaceutical and Biotech, Diagnostic and Contract Testing Industries to understand and support specific industry related needs as well as defining key strategies to address these markets. She graduated in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and earned her Master’s degree in Cellular Biology from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, partnered with the AO Zentrum, Davos, Switzerland.

Rain is the USP technical application expert for SEATW & Oceania region in our company, based out of Singapore. She provides upstream technical application consultation and consideration for customers developing mAbs, vaccines, and cell and gene therapies. 

Rain has more than 8 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. She began her career as an R&D scientist. Prior to joining us, she worked in product management at ThermoFisher, supporting the life science industry. Driven by curiosity, she takes pride in providing the best possible solution and perspective in problem solving.

Saskia is a dedicated specialist for analytical methods in chemical rapid testing in the fields of food and beverage production, environmental testing, and disinfection control. From rapid visual tests, to precise reflectometric and photometric solutions, to new digital opportunities, she will share insights in advantages and challenges of various rapid chemical testing options and introduce new opportunities for lab testing in the future.

 Thomas Hitz studied biochemistry at the University of Zurich and completed his PhD in 2003 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in the Department of Material Sciences and Post Doctorat in 2006. He provides market support at Mettler-Toledo and has more than 15 years' experience in application development, sales and customer training, and as a technical advisor for product development. He provides support for complex automation solutions and is an expert in automated Karl-Fischer titration. 

Andrea Krumm studied biotechnology before gaining a PhD in Cell and Cancer Biology. After four years as an applications specialist for optical analytical devices used in academic and pharmaceutical research, she joined Tosoh Bioscience GmbH in 2020 as a product manager for analytical columns. Andrea is responsible for gathering customer requirements, application areas and addressing these with new and existing products of the analytical columns line.

Cory joined the company in 2013, starting in the Chemical Standards division, developing and validating analytical methods for testing the purity of certified reference materials using GC and LC methods.  After serving in several R&D and Marketing roles, in 2024, he assumed his current role where he is in charge of the design and execution of the company's large molecule reference material strategy.

Since 1981, Henry has worked in both the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, developing protein expression systems in bacterial, insect, and mammalian hosts. He joined our company in 2001 as an R&D manager, and currently leads a viral vector producer cell lines R&D group. 

Andi Ushijima is a scientist in the viral vector innovation and technology group at Merck. She has a lot of experience with upstream bioprocessing, working on bioreactor development and scale-up of monoclonal antibodies, virus-like particles, and viral vectors. She received her B.S. in bioengineering at UCSD.

Jerome Dalin holds an Msc/engineering degree in industrial manufacturing and biological engineering. He started his career at Sanofi Pasteur 21 years ago, focusing on vaccine process development in France, Canada & USA. In 2013, he joined our company to manage bioprocessing sales and later transitioned to the Strategy organization to lead global initiatives for vaccines and the Factory of the Future. In his current role, Jerome is at the helm of Alliance Management, driving the development of the BioContinuum™ platform across the biopharmaceutical industry.

Thomas Hauser works for G-CON Manufacturing in business development within the EMEA region. He works to educate the market for offsite prefabricated and prequalified factory and clean-room solutions in a drive to bring forward the pharmaceutical facility of the future. He also supports companies in the life science segment, mainly for expansion strategies, strategic facility implementation, start-up support, and pharmaceutical packaging supply and technologies. 

Before 2020, Thomas worked in various leading global positions in business development, strategic implementation, and sales in the pharmaceutical packaging field, namely in injectables, semi-solid and oral-solid packaging. He has more than 25 years of experience dealing with the global life science Industry and its market and manufacturing requirements. Thomas holds an international MBA from the University of Ottawa / Canada, and a BA in European business from the ESB Reutlingen and the ESC Reims.

Senior Research Scientist in the Antibody Discovery group at Merck in Rocklin, California. Sean earned his Master’s degree focused in Molecular Biology from CSU, Sacramento. He is an expert in molecular biology techniques including molecular biology assay development, vector design, recombinant PCR methods for gene synthesis and mutagenesis, lentiviral/retroviral transduction, and recombinant protein expression. Protein analysis includes ELISA development, HPLC, IHC techniques and staining, and Western Blot. Developed transient transfection platform used by ISCO (Integrated Supply Chain Operations) for antibody production. Created a stable cell line platform using CHO (CHINESE HAMSTER OVARY) cells and developed a proprietary vector technology to produce recombinant antibodies for use in multiple applications. Sean is currently involved in multiple animal welfare projects as well as overseeing the stable cell line process.

Juliet earned her M. Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Tehran, Iran, and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Juliet was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the cancer research field at the University of California, Berkeley. Juliet became an expert in developing mouse hybridomas before joining Merck in 2014. Juliet and her team at Merck established a Single Cell Cloning platform to generate novel rabbit and goat monoclonal antibodies. Juliet has generated several recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibodies, including antibodies that detect mutation and phosphorylation in biopsy sections. These antibodies are used for IVD IHC applications. She also performs tissue DNA sequencing, which is a part of the process of generating mutant antibodies. She has recently joined the stable cell line platform team to develop stable cell lines expressing recombinant antibodies. This platform uses CHO (Chinese hamster ovary) cells to produce recombinant antibodies.

Michael Moehlenbrock Ph.D. is currently a Business Development Manager and specialist in diagnostic immunoassays for Merck. Before this role, Michael held several roles in product management including head of product management for Merck Research Antibodies portfolio. Michael has his Ph.D., and Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from St. Louis University where his interdisciplinary research areas of focus included microfluidic analytical chemistry, enzymatic biosensors and biofuels cells, enzymology, and metabolic substrate channeling, and materials chemistry

David is an application specialist at Merck. He is an expert in several ISO technical committees that develop reference methods for food microbiology.

Dr. Kulkarni has 10+ years of experience in the nanoparticle drug delivery field. He has published more than 35 peer-reviewed articles, is a co-inventor on 14 patents, and holds many awards, including the inaugural Nanomedicines Innovation Network’s postdoctoral fellowship in gene therapy. His work contributed to clinical translation, including scale-up and manufacturing of LNP systems in accordance with GLP and GMP regulations.

He is a leader in the design and development of LNP formulations of small molecule and nucleic acid therapeutics. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Stephan studied chemistry in Regensburg, Germany, and he joined Alnylam Europe 2004 as a scientist in the analytics group. He has also worked at Roche Kulmbach and Axolabs, where he is now a team leader, responsible for 12 employees, in non-regulated analytics.

A leader in the development of more than 100 analytical methods, Stephan has more than 18 years of extensive experience with HPLC chromatography and MS as well as various techniques that support the characterization of oligonucleotides (including mRNA).

Dr. Olga Lihoradova is a molecular biology/virology scientist with 25+ years of experience. She holds a Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology, and she has vast experience in various areas of biology, protein expression, virology, and vaccine development.

For the past 8 years, Olga has been specializing in mRNA technology. In her current role at Sanofi, she is utilizing her previous experience to develop mRNA therapeutics.

Caitlyn is a Senior Product Manager for BioProcessing Integrated Systems. She is a product specialist and brings a well-rounded perspective to bioprocessing product development, having led innovation projects across the medical device, additive manufacturing, and life science industries.

Caitlyn has established her expertise in mRNA and serves as a subject matter expert in the cross-section between novel modalities and novel ways of manufacturing.

Dr. Scheinert is a molecular biologist and received his Ph.D. from Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel. In 2005, he was co-founder and managing director of AmpTec GmbH, a leading mRNA CDMO, which was acquired by Merck in 2021. Since the acquisition, he is managing director of our mRNA Center of Excellence in Hamburg.

He has more than 20 years of experience in research & development for the manufacturing of synthetic RNAs. He has a strong passion for therapeutic mRNAs as novel drug products for individualized medicine.

Rakesh Bobbala works as an applications engineer at Merck. Currently, he is working on developing PAT tools for improved process understanding and process control in upstream bioprocessing. Rakesh has a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal. His other fields of interest are perfusion process development, process modeling, and developing digital tools to enable the smart manufacturing of therapeutics.

Dr. Mo Heydarian (he/him) earned his B.S. in biotechnology from James Madison University, his M.S. in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics from The George Washington University, and his Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Heydarian has worked on community-based, open-source projects including the Galaxy and AnVIL Projects, focusing on providing equitable resources and training for under-represented minority groups. In his current role, Dr. Heydarian develops rapid biosafety tests for adventitious agents and characterization of emerging RNA technologies.

Rakesh Bobbala works as an applications angineer at Merck. Currently, he is working on developing PAT tools for improved process understanding and process control in upstream bioprocessing. Rakesh has a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal. His other fields of interest are perfusion process development, process modeling, and developing digital tools to enable smart manufacturing of therapeutics.

Prateek leads global marketing activities for key strategic segments of small molecules and therapeutic proteins. He has been with Merck for 8 years and in the life science industry for well over a decade. Before moving to strategic marketing, Prateek had been working closely with customers as a sales manager, helping them choose the most optimal products for their formulation needs. He is a pharmacist, a business management graduate from NMIMS Mumbai, and has worked with BASF prior to joining our company.

Allyson Caron is an R&D Manager in the BioProcessing Single-Use & Integrated Systems team at Merck. She joined the company in 2015 after completing her B.S. in chemical and biological engineering from Tufts University. Allyson has been involved with multiple projects to develop and commercialize new technologies with a focus on upstream cell culture and, more recently, on process analytical technologies (PAT). Today she leads a team of scientists and engineers who provide applications work for product development. Allyson also holds an M.S. in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University.

Jennifer McGrath is currently an R&D Scientist in the Antibody Discovery group at Merck based in Livingston, Scotland UK. Jennifer earned her B.Sc. in Genetics at The University of Glasgow. Jennifer joined Merck in 2013 as a manufacturing scientist focusing primarily on upstream processing and monoclonal antibody production through tissue culture and fermentation. As an R&D Scientist, she is involved in developing antibodies, scaling, and optimizing new products, and improving current processes. Jennifer provides technical support to the Livingston facility developing new products and processes to support the supply of diagnostic products.

Sinead McManus is currently an R&D Manager in the Antibody Discovery group at Merck based in Livingston, Scotland, UK. Sinead earned her B.Sc. in Biotechnology from Dublin City University, Ireland. Sinead joined Merck in 2006 and has held various roles in the company. Sinead has introduced many different single-use manufacturing processes to the Livingston site which are now routinely used by ISCO (Integrated Supply Chain Operations) for antibody production. Sinead oversees the entire process from developing antibodies, scaling and optimizing fermentation conditions, developing purification processes, and transferring the antibodies to production for antibody manufacture.

Dr. Johanna Tornatzky is a Global Product Manager for Spectrophotometry consumables in the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, focusing on applications in environmental, water and food & beverage testing using spectrophotometric methods, now having 8 years of experience in product management and customer service in this field.

Andrea works for 14 years as product manager and is a dedicated specialist for photometric instruments in the fields of wastewater and environmental testing, food & beverage production and disinfection control. From handheld colorimeters to precise spectrophotometers, she will share insights in advantages and functionalities of various instrument options and the importance of data validation. 

Sheriff received a PhD in immunology & microbiology for his research on HIV. He joined Merck in 2013 and has since worked in marketing for core product franchises and in sales for the company’s Biomonitoring business. Earlier this year he became Operations Liaison Director for Biomonitoring.

Dr. Nur Wahid M.Si has 20+ Years Experience in Halal Industry. Along with his current role, he is also an active member of National Halal Board, Indonesia Council of Ulama (DHN MUI) and Assessor of Halal Competency. He is also Working Group Member of Indonesia National Work Competency Standard (SKKNI) as Halal Auditor and Halal Supervisor, and actively involved in international halal community education.

M. James Ross is a senior scientist at Merck. In his past 2.5 years with the company, he has focused on sample preparation primarily dealing with biological samples. James received his BA in Chemistry from Hiram College and his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

Ina is a senior strategy manager for the company's Life Science Services and external Consulting Services business. With a business chemistry and consulting background, Ina is well-equipped to solve both technical and business problems. In this webinar, Ina focuses on helping our customers build capabilities in biologics and novel modalities. Furthermore, she is in charge of driving key strategic expansion projects. Based in Singapore, she works mainly with customers in the APAC and middle-east region to build the bridge between a company's vision, strategy, and execution.

Dr. Michael Bellucci is a senior director at XtalPi, Inc. where he leads a research team that develops algorithm technologies for solid form development and risk assessment as well as drug discovery. Prior to his current role, he was a research scientist at MIT in the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing where he led many research projects in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. His solid-state research has focused on combining computational chemistry and A.I./machine learning methods to study processes and properties associated with molecular crystals, such as solubility, morphology, surface adsorption, polymorphic transitions, and nucleation and crystallization.  Michael is a theoretical and computational chemist by education and holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Boston University.

Stacy Shollenberger holds an MS degree in Biochemistry from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Penn State University. She has more than 12 years of experience in analytical and bioanalytical product and method development. Currently, Stacy is a senior manager of process analytical technologies (PAT) at Merck and is responsible for defining the PAT strategy to move testing from traditional off-line quality control (QC) to QC on the bioprocessing floor.

Dr. Daniel Kutscher is a biochemist and experienced life-science professional with global responsibilities as a product manager for analytical HPLC. Daniel received his Ph.D. in 2011 from Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Alfred Pingoud. After completing his Ph.D., he moved to New York City, USA, and worked until 2018 as an HPLC product specialist, supporting customers in various industries. Daniel currently works for Agilent Technologies as a product manager - strategic marketing with a strong focus on better connecting the analytical with the (bio-) process world.

David Luedeker is a principal scientist at Merck, working in the solid formulation R&D group supporting the development of novel excipients. David holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Münster, dealing with the screening and analytics of pharmaceutical cocrystals and salts. He has more than 4 years of industrial experience in the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on the characterization of active compounds and stabilization techniques for solid oral dosage formulations.

Dr. Birgit Stöffler studied chemistry and graduated with a Ph.D. She then worked as a scientific assistant at Merck. Since qualifying as a safety engineer, she has worked in the occupational safety department at Merck for over 20 years. She became a certified BG RCI trainer in 2010 and has been an expert in the Committee on Hazardous Substances since 2015. Since 2018, she has held a lectureship at Darmstadt Technical University and teaches students how to prepare a risk assessment for activities involving hazardous substances. She passes on her decades of expert knowledge in the form of books, journal articles, oral presentations, podcast episodes, and LinkedIn posts.

Dr. McFarlin's research focuses on two main areas: 1) The physiologic and immunologic consequences of weight gain and loss, and 2) The use of nutritional countermeasures to maximize immune health after exercise. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed articles, and his research has been funded by numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, Private Foundations, and Industry sources. Dr. McFarlin is a fellow of both The Obesity Society and American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He also is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Texas Chapter of ACSM and as the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Exercise Science. Dr. McFarlin is a previous recipient of ACSM New Investigator Award and various Teaching Excellence Awards for his innovative use of technology in instruction.

Helen joined Merck in 2017 and joined the process and analytical development team in St. Louis in September 2020. She has been leading the binding assay development, focusing on Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)-based assays to characterize biologics including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). She received a Ph.D. in chemistry focused on biosensor development from Massey University (New Zealand) and completed her postdoctoral research at Durham University (United Kingdom).

Jeff Gordon is the OEM Sales Manager for Tissue Diagnostics. He has a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Arkansas. In his over 17 years in the diagnostic Immunohistochemistry industry, he has served as a technical consultant managing territories covering most of the United States and Canada, as International Sales Manager, and as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Cell Marque before transitioning to OEM Sales Manager for us. His roles have involved sales, marketing, customer care/complaint handling, and product development. He has given over 60 IHC-related workshops and webinars at a local, state, national, and international level.

Named among the World's Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters, Professor Liu specializes in bringing organic soluble materials into aqueous media, with a focus on the exploration of their unique applications in biomedical research, environmental monitoring, and electronic devices. A recipient of multiple prestigious awards including the L'Oreal Women in Science National Fellowship, Asia Rising Star, Singapore National Institute of Chemistry-BASF Materials Award, Singapore National Research Foundation lnvestigatorship, Elsevier Materials in Society Lectureship, NUS Provost's Chair Professorship and the President's Technology Award, Professor Liu was recently elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of Singapore Academy of Engineering and Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials, in addition to invitations to serve on editorial boards of 15 international refereed journals. Dr Liu holds 28 patents, of which 15 are licensed to companies across the US, UK, and Asia, and co-founded a start-up company Luminicell to commercialize her bioprobe technology based on fluorogens with aggregation-induced emission.

Dr. Rainer Jordan studied chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany and as an IAS fellow under Prof. T. Saegusa at Kyoto University, Japan. He joined Prof. K.K. Unger’s group in Mainz and worked as a PROCOPE fellow at C.N.R.S. Paris. In 1996, he obtained his doctoral degree in Chemistry under Prof. Unger from the University of Mainz. After his postdoctoral work under Prof. Ulman at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY, USA, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the same university. He returned to Germany and joined the group of Prof. O. Nuyken at the Technische Universität München for Habilitation. In 2009, he became full Professor, and Chair of Macromolecular Chemistry at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. His research interests include polymer chemistry, surface chemistry, self-assembly, biomimetic systems, nanoscience, and nanomedicine.

Stefan Przyborski holds an academic position as Professor in Cell Technology at Durham University. He has over 25 years of experience in cell biology with specific interests in cell culture technology, neuroscience and stem cell research. In recent years he has developed a multi-disciplinary approach to develop novel ways of solving biological problems. In regard to cell technology, he is involved with the research, development and commercialization of technology to enhance the environment in which cells are cultured, to improve their growth, differentiation and function. He is a recognized leader in the area of three dimensional (3D) cell culture and frequently contributes to inter/national meetings on this topic. His first degree in anatomy and cell biology still to this day underpins his strong belief in the fundamental principle of how the structure is related to function at the cell and tissue level. This is a critical aspect in cell culture where changes to cell shape radically impact cell behavior, which plays a major role in 3D cell culture.

Dr. Anne-Grit Klees is a Global Product Manager Environmental Monitoring at Merck. She is a microbiologist who received her PhD from the University of Marburg in 1992. After working at Pall as a medical officer, she moved on to become a global product manager at Biotest AG, heipha Dr. Müller GmbH and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. She has gained considerable expertise in environmental monitoring in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular with ready-to-use culture media and microbial air samplers for air, surface, and personnel monitoring.

Debra Freeman has been a Technical Consultant with Cell Marque for seven years. Before joining Cell Marque, she was working as a Research Associate at numerous Biotech companies in the Bay Area. Her territory is the Western United States, not including CA. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding, being outside and playing with her family.

Cheri Drennan has more than 27 years of experience in the diagnostics industry. She started her career with Merck as a Senior Scientist in Molecular Biology. She has held positions within Technology Transfer, Operations management, and project/portfolio management before joining the DxS marketing team, where she is passionate about helping contract manufacturing customers achieve their diagnostic product commercialization goals. Cheri holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois.

Robbie has 10 years of experience in various scientific industries. He started his career with Merck as a Production Chemist. He has held positions within Technology Transfer, Operations management, and project/program management before joining the DxS marketing team, where he supports assessing business opportunities and project management through Commercialization. Robbie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Westminster College and a Masters of Science degree from Southern Illinois University- Edwardsville (SIUE).

Chee Mun was previously responsible for Advanced Technology Development at Becton Dickinson & Co. (Asia-Pacific). He focused on identifying new business opportunities and developing product concepts & technologies to address unmet needs of customers from China, India and other Asia Pacific economies. Prior to this appointment, Chee Mun was the General Manager for the first international subsidiary of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, based in Singapore. Chee Mun holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a B.Sc. (Honours) in Cell & Molecular Biology from the National University of Singapore.

Aziz received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, where he studied the transport of bacteria-based drug delivery vehicles. He completed a postdoctoral appointment at Washington University in St. Louis investigating engineered 3D microphysiological systems for disease modeling and vascular development. Aziz joined us in 2017 and is currently involved in projects that focus on the development of cell-based products within the field of drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology (ADME/Tox).

Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she utilized both bacterial genetics and protein biochemistry to elucidate the activity of a ubiquitous protein family. She completed her postdoctoral work at Washington University in St. Louis and then took on industry roles in metabolic engineering and protein biophysics. In 2017, she joined the Specialty Assays R&D group at Merck, where she launched products including SAvPhire Monomeric Streptavidin and SEQPLEX-i WGA and WTA kits. She currently leads an R&D team developing new catalog products for NGS library preparation, molecular biology, and epigenetics.

Brian earned his Ph.D. in Physical-Organic Chemistry from Michigan State University, studying heme chemistry. He went on to become acquainted with molecular biology as a postdoctoral fellow at Syracuse University characterizing drug-DNA interactions. He joined SigmaAldrich’s first attempt at a dedicated R&D team in 1987. He has developed many products and has several patents in the area of nucleic acid chemistry.

Gardener is responsible for the commercial licensing of Synthia™, the revolutionary retrosynthetic design software. She received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Brown University under Professor Jason Sello where she worked on developing new methodology for synthesizing antibacterial peptide natural products. Prior to joining Merck in 2018, Gardener was a senior scientist at Vitae Industries, a pharmaceutical technologies start-up in Providence RI.

Adèle is the Global Product Manager for Environmental Monitoring, after 3 years in Technical Support at Merck (Process Solutions) and a background in the Food and Beverage industry and microbiology.

Faris Omary has a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering and has been working for Cell Marque for 5 years. He was a Technical Consultant serving the United States East Coast for 4 years before joining the International team as a Distributor Account Manager. Faris brings experience in sales and technical support he gained from his customers in the field to our International distributors to help grow sales in their respective territories. In his spare time, Faris enjoys spending time with his family and enjoys playing sports including soccer, basketball, snowboarding, and more.

Leah Hartman has been a Technical Consultant with Cell Marque for a little over a year. Her territory includes AR, IN, KY, MI, OH & TN. She was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she received her B.S. in Biology. She currently lives in Roseville, CA, near Cell Marque’s headquarters. In her spare time, she is likely to be found hiking or fly fishing.

Richard Henry received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Juniata College in 1963 and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University in 1966. After a postdoctoral year in separations at Purdue University with Professor L. B. Rogers, he joined DuPont in 1967 at the Experimental Station in Wilmington, DE and became one of the first employees of the DuPont Instrument Products Division in 1969. Dick worked closely with Dr. Jack Kirkland and others in the development of HPLC columns and packing materials while at DuPont.

After about 10 years with Spectra-Physics and consulting on the west coast, he joined the Penn State University chemistry faculty in 1985 where he was Director of Analytical Laboratories and taught Instrumental Analysis to chemistry majors. In 1985, he also founded Keystone Scientific, Inc. where he developed HPLC columns and related separation technology. He retired from both Penn State University and Keystone Scientific in 2002, and remains active teaching short courses on separation technology and as a consultant.

Dick has research interests in separation mechanisms and all applications of new LC column technology. He is also interested in new analytical techniques, especially the rapidly growing fields of UHPLC, chiral HPLC, LC-MS, and multidimensional separation methods. He served two terms as Chairman of the ACS Subdivision on Separations (1998-2002) and has also served for many years on its Executive Committee.

Bob Shirey received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Shippensburg University and his M.S. degree in Biochemistry from West Virginia University. Bob started working at Supelco in 1984 as an R&D chemist focusing on GC and GC/MS applications. Eventually, Bob started to specialize in sample preparation and played a key role in the development of the VOCARB purge trap line. Since 1993 Bob’s primary responsibilities have been on the development of SPME fibers and hardware along with SPME applications. Bob has written multiple SPME articles for journals and books. Bob continues to focus his efforts on SPME in the development of the BioSPME product line and new SPME coating chemistries. He especially enjoys interacting with customers and learning how they are using the SPME technology.

Kevin C.-W. Wu did his Ph.D. at The University of Tokyo, Japan (2001-2005). After postdoctoral researches at Waseda University in Japan (2005-2006) and at Iowa State University in USA (2006-2008), he returned to the Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University where he is now a full professor. His research interests are the structural design and tailoring of functional nanoporous materials for sustainable chemistry & engineering applications including biomass and plastic conversion, biomedicine and energy devices. He has received several awards recently, including the Humboldt Researcher in 2018, the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (Asia/Pacific region) in 2019, and the Outstanding Researcher Award (from Asia/Pacific Associations of Catalysis Societies) in 2019, and the Outstanding Research Award from Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan in 2018 and 2020, and the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (cross-field) in 2021

Steven Richardson has 18+ years of cell culture experience, including technical management, bioprocess development, and academic research. Steven joined our CHOZN R&D Program in 2009 with a focus on applying multivariate analysis in the development of upstream biopharmaceutical platforms to increase critical process knowledge.

Currently, Steven is working as a technology consultant and is responsible for providing holistic and innovative solutions to emerging biotech. Steven received his M.S. in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University.

Kaelyn is the associate director of ADC and Bioconjugation Services, leading the strategic marketing initiatives for the growing ADC CDMO landscape within the Life Science Services organization. Prior to joining the services business, she commercialized chemical biology products into the Sigma-Aldrich portfolio for early drug discovery research, including bioconjugation, probes, and targeted protein degradation.

Kaelyn received her B.S. in biochemistry at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, and her Ph.D. in chemical biology at Indiana University in Erin Carlson’s lab.

Kaelyn is the associate director of ADC and Bioconjugation Services, leading the strategic marketing initiatives for the growing ADC CDMO landscape within the Life Science Services organization. Prior to joining the services business, she commercialized chemical biology products into the Sigma-Aldrich portfolio for early drug discovery research, including bioconjugation, probes, and targeted protein degradation.

Kaelyn received her B.S. in biochemistry at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, and her Ph.D. in chemical biology at Indiana University in Erin Carlson’s lab.

Kate Achtien, Program Manager BeyondCHO Products and Innovations, received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering Applied Science from Washington University. Throughout her 14-year tenure at Merck, her work has focused on the improvement of upstream biotherapeutic production processes. Her experience includes the creation of novel and improved biopharmaceutical expression cell lines, leading custom cell line development projects, and the development of platform catalog solutions. Currently, she is the program manager for the Upstream Solutions for BeyondCHO products, which include cell culture media and cell lines for viral vector production. Prior to working at SAFC Biosciences, she studied the biomechanics of heart morphogenesis at the Biomedical Engineering Department at Washington University.

Katie Schewe is a product manager in the upstream bioprocessing group. She has been with Merck for more than 5 years in various roles from product management to quality assurance of API manufacturing. Prior, she worked at Eli Lilly and Co. in various analytical R&D roles for both large and small molecules as well as in field sales.

Katie has a background in chemistry with her master’s degree in Chemistry from IUPUI—Indianapolis. She has experience ranging from manufacturing to field sales to help better understand the needs of our customers to deliver solutions.

Antoine Heron has a Ph.D. in cell biology with 25 years of experience in cell & gene therapy. He has a proven track record in developing innovative solutions for the transplantation of organs, single-use systems, and specialty cell culture media for use in the clinical production of human stem cells.

As an experienced R&D scientist working on cell therapy process innovation, Dr. Heron is fully committed to advancing cell & gene therapy manufacturing solutions for patients with unmet medical needs.

Danielle DiTirro, Ph.D. is a technical specialist in Technical and Scientific Solutions for BioReliance^® Services. She provides scientific and regulatory support in biosafety testing and characterization of biological therapeutic products with a specialty in cell and gene therapies. She has five years of industry experience in assay development for cell and gene therapies and vaccines with a focus on quality control and diagnostics.

Danielle received her master’s from San Diego State University and earned her doctorate in molecular and cellular biology from Brandeis University.

Jean-François is our head of commercial manufacturing and has been based at our Martillac site since he joined the organization in July 2021. He has been focusing on the construction and qualification of our new commercial manufacturing building, setting up of our new team and the associated LEAN tools, and the transferring the production process within our new production building.

Jean-Baptiste joined Merck as a bioproduction process and equipment engineer in 2013. Since he joined the company, he has been responsible for leading the technical transfer of biotech products and the cleaning and process validation (PPQ) for new products as well as supporting the troubleshooting of clinical and commercial manufacturing. His role expanded in 2014 when he became Manufacturing Science and Technology Manager for our Biologics CDMO and took on the responsibility of setting up a Manufacturing Science and Technology team to continue driving these activities.

Anique ter Brake, Ph.D., is an associate in the biotechnology team. Anique joined M Ventures in February 2020 as an analyst. Anique completed her Ph.D. in the field of biomedicine, specifically focusing on chronic kidney disease-induced cardiovascular complications. During her Ph.D., Anique studied mechanisms of vascular calcification and potential interventions in cellular and animal models.

Anique obtained a master’s degree at the VU University Amsterdam in biomedicine and fulfilled the extracurricular trajectory science-based business at Leiden University. Anique is based in Amsterdam at the M Ventures head office.

Loic Sebileau (MSc) is a graduate engineer from INSA and University Paris-Saclay. He spent 20 years in the industry, holding several executive positions in R&D and strategic business development in Europe and in the US. His international background gives him a thorough understanding of the drivers of innovation management and strategic partnership development in the medical and pharma industry.

Since 2019, he has been the Technology Transfer Officer and Industrial Partnership Manager of the Leon Berard Comprehensive Cancer Center (CLB) and the Cancer Research Center of Lyon (CRCL), France.

As Co-CEO at ErVaccine Technologies, Nathalie is responsible for facilitating business growth & strategy by building strong partnerships and collaboration and by raising financial resources. Prior to this, Nathalie gained significant experience in the healthcare industry, fulfilling various C-level positions from Alliance Management & Business Development & Corporate Communication at DBV Technologies, a French biotech company that is double listed on Euronext & Nasdaq. In 2018, Nathalie also co-founded Adaptõ, an innovative healthcare company developing clothes and accessories dedicated to people with Type 1 Diabetes, which collection launched in June 2020 in connection with the French diabetic association (AJD) and is now acquired by a retailer.

Nathalie holds an MSc degree in Cardiovascular Pharmacology of University Claude Bernard-Lyon 1 and University Pierre and Marie Curie and an Executive MBA from INSEAD.

Barbara has over 30 years of industrial microbiology experience and is currently working in Regulatory Marketing at Merck. She is an active member in several national and international bodies addressing microbiological topics in ISO, CEN, IDF and IFU, including the ISO Working Groups ‘General requirements and guidance for microbiological examinations’, ‘Method validation’ and ‘Culture media’.

Johanna Simon, Ph.D., is heading the formulation discovery and analytical characterization team within the early formulation screening service at Merck. Her work focuses on the preclinical formulation development of custom lipid nanoparticles for nucleic acid modalities. After receiving her Ph.D. in chemistry, Johanna has continued her scientific career as a postdoctoral researcher with a focus on developing lipid-, polymer- and antibody-functionalized nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery in vivo. Johanna has authored 50-plus peer-reviewed articles in leading journals in the field of drug delivery sciences.

Dr. Markus Obkircher has 25+ years experience in analytical and organic chemistry, and he has participated in chemistry research with the groups of Andrew Myers (Harvard University) and Bernd Giese (University of Basel). Since 2013, he has been responsible for R&D of high quality reference materials and proficiency testing at Merck. His experience also includes Metrology, ISO accreditation and certification processes, GMP, GLP for the synthesis of APIs as well as syntheses in solution and on solid support in mg to kg scale and various isolation and purification methods.

Tomasz Dziedzic has seven years of experience in reference materials production and proficiency testing. He is specialized in analytical techniques, chromatographic instrumentation, including HPLC and GC, and quantitation and qualification techniques (RS, KF, LOD, MP, BP, RI, TOC, FTIR, Raman, OR, TOF, titration). He is responsible for developing and evaluating new Proficiency Testing products as well as technical support for internal and external customers. Dziedzic holds a Master's degree in Analytical Testing from University of Wyoming.

Ben Glasspoole is the Head of Emerging Chemical Synthesis at Merck.

Rosemary Sweetwood has worked with SMC^® technology for over 7 years in diagnostic development, assay development, and custom manufacturing, as well as managing clinical sample testing projects for our SMC^® Sample Testing customers. With almost two decades of research experience working in government research labs (FDA and VA), Academia (UCSF), and Biotech/Pharma (Dynavax, MedImmune/AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Singulex), Rosemary has publications spanning neurology, virology, and immunology. She has also worked in early-phase vaccine research with several vaccines that have gone into clinical trials, and biomarker assay development has been a critical function throughout Rosemary’s career.

Gates joined Merck in 1979 and has been a Market Segment Manager for more than 15 years. As a manager, he has identified and commercialized more than 500 internally produced and OEM new products. Prior to that, he was involved with our R&D and was in charge of production of blood proteins, electrophoresis and affinity chromatography product lines. He was also responsible for the production of over 100 enzymes from various sources early in his career. He earned his Masters degree in chemistry from the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1983.

Ramille Shah, Ph.D. is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Dimension Inx, LLC, a start-up developing transformative advanced manufacturing materials and processes for medical and non-medical spaces. Professor Ramille Shah has over 20 years experience in the biomaterials and tissue engineering fields with an expertise in developing and characterizing new biomaterial strategies for tissue and organ regeneration including the use of natural and synthetic polymer systems, self-assembling biomaterials, gene and growth factor delivery systems, and 3D-printable biomaterials that have led to over a dozen issued and pending patents, as well as high impact publications in journals such as Science, Advanced Materials, and Science Translational Medicine. She spent 9 years at Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Materials Science and Engineering and Surgery (Transplant Division) and was recently recruited to the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Bioengineering where she is currently a part time Associate Professor. As head of the Shah Tissue Engineering and Additive Manufacturing (TEAM) Lab, she has been focusing on the development, characterization, and translation of new functional 3D-printable materials that are compatible with room temperature extrusion-based 3D printing for both biomedical (e.g. complex tissue and organ engineering) and non-biomedical (e.g. energy and advanced structural) applications.

Adam Jakus, Ph.D. is the co-founder and Chief Technology of Dimension Inx, LLC, a start-up developing transformative advanced manufacturing materials and processes for medical and non-medical spaces. Adam received his BS and MS degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech, where he worked on the development and testing of new energetic material systems. In 2010, he began working at Northwestern University with Dimension Inx’s other co-founder, Ramille Shah, Ph.D. While at Northwestern, Adam invented and developed an entirely new, materials-centric approach to 3D-printing and advanced manufacturing, now referred to as 3D-Painting, and hundreds of new 3D-printable materials for medical and non-medical purposes. These materials include, but are not limited to the high tissue and organ regenerative Hyperelastic Bone™, 3D-Graphene, Tissue Papers, and Fluffy-X. With approximately 10 years and many thousands of hours of bioprinting and tissue regenerative 3D-Printing experience, Adam leads the field, providing expertise to several not-for-profit bodies looking to establish guidelines, guidance, and certifications related to the emerging fields of tissue and organ fabrication. He is the author of numerous granted and pending patents, high impact medical and non-medical publications, book chapters, and editorials related to advanced manufacturing and 3D-printing of biomaterials and non-materials.

Marilyn Romieux (Vicente) is the Strategic Marketing Director for Pharma microbiology QC for Merck. She started as an R&D Scientist in the field of rapid microbiology before moving to a marketing role where she created a new range of application services designed to support users in developing and implementing microbiology QC methods. Her recent background as Head of Technical Marketing also includes employee education, customer training, and application development. With an extensive knowledge of microbiology QC and nearly two decades in serving the pharma industry, she recently took the role of Strategic Marketing Director, where one of her assignments is leading the marketing of Merck's Robotics & Automation offer. She graduated in Cell Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Strasbourg, France, and earned her Master’s degree in Life Sciences from AgroParisTech in Paris, France.

Dr. Metzakopian is a research fellow at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where he focuses on identifying genes which confer resistance to chemotherapy drugs in embryonic stem cells and to oxidative stress agents in dopamine neurons.

Dr. Shafer leads a team responsible for product development of Merck’s RNAi and genome editing portfolios. He orchestrated the creation of Merck CRISPR collection of reagents.

Dr. Alli Lynch is an Application Development Scientist, supporting both Molecular Reagents & Tools and Cell & General Tools businesses. Dr. Lynch earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from University College Cork where she characterised several genes from the gut bacteria Bacteroides using classical microbiology and molecular techniques.

Dr. Charlie Huang has more than 20 years of experience in multi-discipline environments. He is a full-spectrum industrial executive with experiences ranging from concept generation, upstream research, product design, development, manufacturing to commercialization.

He has demonstrated scientific expertise in the fields of life science, in vitro diagnostics, biotechnology and nanotechnology. He also has significant commercial expertise in business development, commercial strategy, project & team management, technology analysis & transfer, licensing, grants, and intellectual property.

Prior to joining Anteo, Charlie held senior management roles in several public listed healthcare and IVD companies including Panbio Ltd., Alere, Cellestis Ltd. and QIAGEN. He is working with the Anteo team to develop strategies, patents, products and services for industrial and life science applications and commercialization.

He holds a BSc in Life Science and an MSc in Molecular Engineering from NCHU. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Queensland. He has published scientific papers with strong impact factors and is co-inventor of many granted patents in the fields of novel diagnostics, medical devices, metal complex applications and energy.

As the Director of Sequencing Technologies at SomaGenics, Inc., Dr. Barberan-Soler oversees technology development and innovative products to facilitate non-coding small RNA analysis by Next Generation Sequencing. Since joining SomaGenics in 2013, his work has contributed to the development of the most accurate library preparation technology to profile miRNAs from total RNA samples (RealSeq^®-AC). Dr. Barberan-Soler is involved in numerous product development efforts to allow for more accurate quantification of RNA from diverse samples types. Prior to joining SomaGenics, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the CRG in Barcelona and previously received his PhD in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Katherine Stenerson is an Analytical Sciences Liaison within the Applied Solutions Group at the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. Her technical experience and expertise are in developing workflow solutions for extraction and analysis to address problems related to analytical testing, with a focus on the areas of food & beverage, cannabis, and environmental testing. Prior to joining us, Katherine worked as an analytical chemist in the personal care products industry, and as a GC chemist and supervisor in the environmental testing industry. She has been a member of the American Chemical Society, Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley and AOAC. Her activities within AOAC include serving on several working groups and an expert review panel.

Jamie Brown is a Senior R&D Scientist. His primary role for the past 34 years has been developing products for both air and water sampling for collecting volatile organic compounds. He is the resident expert in Thermal Desorption and Purge & Traps sample introduction techniques for Gas Chromatography. He also routinely assists regulatory agencies EPA, OSHA, and NIOSH with method development and has been an active member of the ASTM D22 Air Quality Committee.

Mr. Allinson is vice president of Biomarker Sciences and leads the Biomarker Services group at Biologics Development Services (now Immunologix Laboratories) in Tampa Bay, Florida. He was previously the head of Biomarker Strategy at LGC in the United Kingdom and brings over 40 years of experience in developing and working with biomarkers, including their use in drug development across all therapeutic categories and phases of development. Before joining LGC, Mr. Allinson spent 22 years in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service clinical pathology services before moving into the contract research industry where he managed central, bioanalytical, and biomarker laboratories at a number of contract research organizations. He was part of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Ligand Binding Assay Bioanalytical Focus Group (LBABFG) Biomarker Committee, which published the first consensus white paper on biomarker assay validation requirements in drug development. He also coauthored the first white paper on the validation of multiplexed biomarker assays as well as other leading white papers on the subject.

Klaus Buckendahl received a degree in engineering from the FH Münster University of Applied Science in Germany, majoring in instrumental analysis. He started his career in the technical service at Sigma-Aldrich providing support for the Supelco^® line of analytical products. Over the last 20+ years, he held various positions within the company including Product Specialist and Technical Marketing Manager for Sample Preparation in Europe, among others. Currently he works as an Analytical Science Liaison at Merck in the analytical chemistry business unit.

Stacey received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, studying the dysregulation of cell cycle proteins by varicella zoster virus. After completing a postdoc at UConn investigating herpes simplex virus DNA replication, she moved to St. Louis for a second postdoc at WashU School of Medicine dissecting the role of sonic hedgehog signaling in brain cancer. She joined MilliporeSigma in early 2016 as a member of the Cell Design Studio, a team focusing on genetically engineering cells for customers and off-the-shelf products. She helped develop the team’s current workflow using next generation sequencing for CRISPR screening and currently leads a team of scientists performing gene editing and next generation sequencing.

Jill began her career in 2007 as an Associate Scientist in the Mission Operations Functional Genomics group, where she worked with RNAi, ZFN, and CRISPR products. In 2014, she joined the Cell Design Studio, where she uses gene modifying products to engineer custom cell lines for customers. Jill received her Master's degree in Biology from Washington University in Saint Louis this past spring in 2020. In CDS, she works with a variety of cells including hard to transfect monocytes to induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC). She was one of the leads that worked towards bringing NGS technologies in-house, and continues to support the NGS process.

Michaela Oberle started her career at Merck as a lab technician apprentice in 1992. She took over responsibilities in various departments and became specialist for analytical, preparative and flash chromatography. In 2000 she joined the Pigments and Cosmetics Research team in Darmstadt, Germany and held an R&D specialist position, where she was responsible for the extraction and analysis of natural compounds as well as for cosmetic efficacy screenings including skin and hair applications. Since 2012 Michaela Oberle acts as a R&D specialist in the Advanced analytics “Thin layer chromatography” department and took over responsibility for product development, customer requests, TLC applications and international trainings for TLC issues. She holds a degree of Bachelor of science in Business Chemistry.

Jim Cooper is a Cell Biology Application Scientist working in the Public Health England (PHE) Culture Collections Scientific development Group. He has over 20 years’ experience of delivering authentic cell cultures for researchers in academia and industry and has a wide and deep knowledge of cell biology applications and how to integrate them with cell culture processes. For many years Jim played a key role in ECACC, managing internal development projects, custom cell culture projects and ECACC's internationally renowned cell culture training courses. Jim is a member of the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC) and has a growing reputation as an enthusiastic speaker, delivering many seminars on good cell culture practice to Institutes and companies across the UK and Europe and carrying out site visits to helptrouble-shoot cell culture problems. Jim is currently is developing and characterising novel in vitro models.

Bruce is the Application Scientist for Karl Fischer titration within the instrumental Analytics team. With more than 11 years’ experience in QC and Product Development business, he is very familiar with the different aspects in Karl Fischer Titration and works closely together with our application laboratories to support method development and expand application support for our customers. Prior to this, he was and Analytical Chemist and Research Chemist in the chemical industry. Bruce has a BS in Chemistry from the University of Cincinnati.

Lauren Kacmarcik is a product manager focused on developing solutions that advance sterile filtration. She holds a B.S. in Management and Engineering for Manufacturing from the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Ravi Ganapathy has more than 29 years of professional work experience in the hospital, biotech research, and vaccine industry. He has hands-on experience in development, manufacturing of recombinant (bacterial/yeast-derived), bacterial, and viral vaccines. Having led R&D, production, and quality assurance teams, he has an extensive understanding of manufacturing and R&D-related quality & regulatory requirements for the commercialization of biotech products, especially vaccines, and the related GLP & GMP documentation. He joined Hilleman Laboratories Singapore Pte. Ltd. as the Director–CMC R&D in April 2022.

Maria Elena Bottazzi is an internationally recognized tropical and emerging disease vaccinologist, global health advocate, and co-creator of a patent-free, open-science COVID-19 vaccine technology that led to the development of Corbevax, a COVID-19 vaccine for the world. She pioneers and leads innovative partnerships for the advancement of a robust vaccine development portfolio tackling diseases that affect disproportionally the world’s poorest populations, making significant contributions to catalyze policies and disseminate scientific information to reach a diverse set of audiences. In 2022, alongside physician scientist Peter Hotez, she was nominated by Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher of Texas for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dea Marsendah is a vaccine practitioner, biotech enthusiast, and life science professional. She has 13 years of experience in vaccine manufacturing which has given her a wealth of knowledge and deep understanding in the field of vaccine production, particularly Hib and Typhoid vaccines. Most recently, she has been involved in Covid-19 scale-up vaccine manufacturing. After completing her master's degree in biotechnology from Bandung Institute of Technology, her enthusiasm for learning motivated her to enroll in the Professional MBA Program at Tanri Abeng University in Indonesia. She has spoken at some significant international conferences on bioprocesses and biopharmaceuticals. Between those, Dea enjoys exploring the world's deep sea as scuba diver.

Bin Wang is the director of the technical & scientific solutions group at Merck, where he leads strong globally networked teams including MSAT, technical operation, tech service, and field service. This group is the technical function of bioprocessing and provides comprehensive solutions covering process development and scaling-up, FCD & process engineering, technic inquiry & consultation, HW qualification & implementation. Prior to this position, Bin led our Asia biomanufacturing team to support PD, scaling up, and implementation activities for Asia biopharmaceutical companies. Between 2016 to 2017, Bin Wang worked in the Merck USA MSAT team to provide technical solutions for biopharmaceutical companies in North America.

Vivek Joshi, Ph.D. is an Applications and Market Adoption Manager developing new products and applications for products that span analytical workflows, molecular and protein science workflows and cell culture workflows. Prior to joining us, Dr. Joshi worked on high throughput LC‐MS applications at ArQule. Dr. Joshi’s doctoral research focused on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), and he completed postdoctoral studies of MIPs and capillary electrochromatography. Recently, Dr. Joshi was the presenter of a sample preparation module as part of the Drug Dissolution Training offered by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP).

Tony Ancrum is a Global Product Manager Environmental Monitoring at Merck. He is responsible for air samplers, hygiene detection methods and applications and environmental monitoring. He joined the Merck team in 1996 as part of the R&D team in charge of Instrumentation design for Hygiene. He holds a B.Sc. in Electronics.

Dr. Taha, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, specializes in food chemistry and biochemistry. Dr. Taha completed his Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto, Canada. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 2014 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. His research focuses on understanding the role of dietary lipids and lipid-like compounds on brain function. He is also the founder of Certo Labs.

Dr. Natasha L. Pirman is an Application Scientist for Molecular Workflow Tools where she is involved in developing new sample preparation products and applications for both protein and nucleic acid applications. Prior to joining us, Dr. Pirman utilized her expertise in protein biochemistry to explore structural protein changes to Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and human kinase disease models for drug target investigations.

Nicolas J. Hauser received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, MN. He completed a Ph.D. degree in Analytical Chemistry from University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY. His focus during graduate school was method development for proteomics using mass spectrometry. Nick joined Merck (formerly Resource Technology Corporation) in May 2008 and began work as an analytical chemist performing R&D and QC on RTC’s vast portfolio of products. Nick is currently a Product Manager in the Reference Materials Franchise for Merck and oversees several products used in pharmaceutical analysis.

Michael E. Hurst received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Since joining Merck (formerly Cerilliant Corporation) in October 2011 as a Reference Material Product Specialist, Michael’s career has maintained a focus on Reference Materials and their role in streamlining analytical workflows. He has additionally held responsibilities in Sales Management, directing the North American Reference Materials Specialist organization. Currently a Product Manager in the Reference Materials organization of Merck, Michael has core responsibilities in Microbiological reference materials, pH calibration buffers and physical properties CRMs.

Yuki is the downstream process technical application expert for North Asia. He is based in Japan. He provides downstream technical application consultation, marketing, and troubleshooting for customers developing biopharmaceuticals. He began his career as an academic researcher and, prior to joining Merck, he was a postdoctoral researcher at a national research institute in Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in human biology from The University of Tsukuba, Japan; and a B.S. in anatomy and histology from The University of Sydney, Australia.

Takuro is a process development scientist for the downstream process based in Japan. He provides technical trials, process development consultation, and troubleshooting in clarification and TFF. Before joining Merck, he worked as an R&D researcher developing hollow fiber membranes for medical equipment. He also worked in production management. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Yung-Eun Sung got a Ph.D. in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and investigated electrochemistry at University of Texas at Austin and Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology(GIST). He joined Seoul National University as professor since 2004. Now, he is also an Associate Director in the Center for Nanoparticle Research at Institute of Basic Science and serves as President of the Korean Electrochemical Society for year 2022-23. His research focuses on electrochemistry in the area of fuel cells, battery, and other energy conversion and storage. He has published more than 500 technical papers.                 

Sunil P Badal, Ph.D., is a senior scientist for our Reference Materials & Workflows R&D team. He has 9 years of experience in analytical chemistry and is responsible for the development of cannabis workflows based on HPLC and mass spectrometry.

Nathan Gay works as an applications engineer at Merck, specializing in bioprocesses. He works on the implementation of Raman technology, developing proofs of concept and researching new applications. Nathan has an engineer’s degree in biotechnology from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Technologie des Biomolécules de Bordeaux (ENSTBB), obtained in a work-study program with our company as an Industrialization Expert for the technology transfer between development and production in USP and DSP.

Erik is a strategic marketing manager for our portfolio of functional excipients. He has more than 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical excipients industry with a focus on the formulation of solid dosage forms. He holds a B.Sc. degree in biology from Heidelberg University as well as a B.A. begree in business administration from Cooperative State University Mannheim.

Professor Valerie Speirs holds a BSc (Hons) Zoology degree from the University of Aberdeen and carried out her PhD at the University of Glasgow under the tutelage of Ian Freshney, widely known as a doyenne in cell culture. This helped spark her interest in developing improved cell culture systems to model human disease, which she has maintained throughout a career which has taken her to Toronto, Liverpool, Hull and Leeds where she is currently Professor of Experimental Pathology & Oncology.

Antonio Bertoletti, MD is an expert in the field of viral hepatitis. He has been working on viral hepatitis since his medical student days at the University of Parma, Italy. During his MD specialization (1991) in Infectious Diseases, he spent two years at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla characterizing the inaugural Hepatitis B virus (HBV) specific cytotoxic T cells in human. Upon returning to the University of Parma, he worked in the Department of Infectious Diseases as a Clinical Scientist to continue his study on human HBV specific T cells (1991-1997) before joining The Institute of Hepatology at University College of London, UK (1997). In 2006, he relocated to Singapore where he was appointed as the Director of Infection and Immunity Program at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (A*STAR) until 2013 before joining the Emerging Infectious Disease Program at Duke-NUS Medical School. In 2015, he co-founded Lion TCR Pte. Ltd. with Dr Li Lietao, a biotech company developing new immune based treatment for virus-related cancers (HBV-HCC and EBV related malignancies) and chronic viral infections. His research interest is in immunopathogenesis of HBV infection. Currently, he is focusing on understanding the impact of age in HBV infection/pathology and the development of new immunological based therapies (TCR-redirected T cells) for the treatment of HBV and Hepatocellular carcinoma.

Application Specialist at METTLER TOLEDO-Chemistry Industrial with experience in the development of processes in the areas of Production, Quality and Products. 10 years experience in training, technical presentations, workshops and development of new applications in various industry segments.

Analytical Workflow Product Specialist - Spectroscopy and Titration, working at Merck since 2018.

Dr. Yury Gogotsi is Distinguished University Professor and Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. He also serves as Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute.

Mathias works as senior scientist in the BioMonitoring R&D in the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, specializing in certified reference materials and proficiency testing. 2016, after he completed his Ph.D. at the University Medical Centre in Freiburg, Germany, he joined the R&D Scientist team at the facility in Buchs, Switzerland.

Dr. Melanie Broszat has been working at CAMAG as Scientific Business Development Manager since April 2014. In this position, she is responsible for the scientific evaluation of the different HPTLC markets, gives trainings and seminars, and builds-up an HPTLC-expert-network. Dr. Melanie Broszat did her Ph.D. in molecular biology and environmental microbiology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Grohmann at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany, from 2010/07-2013/12. Her research interests focused on the development of new analytical tools for detection and identification of microorganisms. From 2010/03-2010/06, she has worked in Research as Laboratory engineer in the University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg, Germany. From 2009/09-2010/02, she has worked in QA of a Food company and from 2008/08-2009/08 in Research as Laboratory engineer on the development of HPTLC methods in the food and environmental application fields together with Prof. Dr. Bernd Spangenberg in the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany. From 2004/10-2008/08 she has studied Process Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg, Germany.

Michaela Oberle started her career at Merck in 1992. She took over responsibilities in various departments of Merck and became specialist for analytical, preparative, flash chromatography.

In 2000 she joined the Pigments and Cosmetics Research team in Darmstadt, Germany and held an R&D specialist position, where she was responsible for the extraction and analysis of natural compounds as well as for cosmetic efficacy screenings including skin and hair applications.

Since 2012 Michaela Oberle acts as a R&D specialist in the Advanced analytics “Thin layer chromatography” department and took over responsibility for product development, customer requests and international trainings for TLC issues. She holds a degree of Bachelor of science in Business Chemistry.

Ken Schwieter is a Global Product Manager, Emerging Chemical Synthesis at Merck.

Dr. Thompson is Sr. R&D Manager of the In Vitro Safety Systems group for Merck in St. Louis, MO. He received his PhD in biochemical toxicology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, followed by post-doctoral work at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, NC. His research interests primarily focus on the role of bioactivation in toxicology and on the use of in vitro models to explore mechanisms of toxicity. He was a faculty member at Texas A&M University College of Medicine prior to moving to the pharmaceutical industry, where he spent 12 years working in a discovery Drug Safety group as a project team representative and manager of an investigative toxicology laboratory. Dr. Thompson joined Sigma-Aldrich in 2010. His current work focuses on the development of ADME/Tox cell-based bioassays utilizing highly specific genome editing tools such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and CRISPR.

Founder of SEPMAG, Lluis holds a Ph.D. in Magnetic Materials by the UAB. He has conducted research in German and Spanish academic institutions. Having worked in companies in Ireland, USA, and Spain, he cumulates more than 20 years of experience, applying magnetic materials and sensors to industrial products and processes. He has filed several international patents on the field and co-authored more than 30 scientific papers, most of them related to the movement of magnetic particles.

Dr. Regan is an Assistant Professor at Colorado State Veterinary School. The focus of his research is to increase our understanding of the interplay between the immune system and (non-immune) tumor stroma, and how these compartments of the tumor microenvironment promote metastasis as well as respond to and mediate extrinsic mechanisms of resistance to anti-cancer therapy. To investigate this area of cancer biology, his laboratory utilizes a combination of in vitro 3-dimensional tumor co-culture models and animal models, focusing on breast and bone cancer (osteosarcoma).

Sandeep Narpala is a Scientific Project Manager at the Vaccine Immunology Program (VIP), part of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Sandeep manages the procurement of reagents, development, optimization, and qualification of novel clinical immunoassays and schedules the testing of pre-clinical and clinical trial samples conducted at VRC. Mr. Narpala has been affiliated with the VRC/NIH since 2011 and has extensive knowledge in assay development for vaccine research on various platforms such as Meso Scale Discovery (MSD), Single Molecule Counting (SMC^®) technology, and other ELISA-based platforms. Sandeep has successfully developed and qualified immunogenicity assays to assess secondary objectives in HIV and influenza vaccine clinical trials and has expertise in the development of pharmacokinetic and anti-drug antibodies assays for passive monoclonal antibody trials conducted at VRC. Before working at NIH, Mr. Narpala honed his skills working as a biologist at International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) in New York City. With his bioinformatics background, Sandeep was involved in the in-silico design of HIV immunogens using Molecular Dynamics simulations at IAVI. Sandeep has a Masters in Bioinformatics and graduated from Northeastern University, Boston in 2009. Sandeep plans to grow as a Project Manager at VIP and is currently involved in managing and overseeing the development of immunoassays to screen new COVID-19 spike-specific antibodies and multiplexed assays to detect binding COVID-19 antibodies in sero surveillance studies.

Angela is a chemical laboratory engineer in the Life Science R&D department at Merck. She has more than 15 years’ experience in modern volumetric titration and Karl Fischer titration and is responsible for new development of reagents and standards in the field of volumetric titration and Karl Fischer titration.

Dr. Haider joined Metrohm AG in 2002 as Application Specialist Titration. He leads the Competence Center Titration that is specialized on all different titration techniques, pH and conductivity measurement, titration automation and software.

Christina is a Senior R&D Manager at Cell Marque Corporation, part of Merck Applied Solutions division. She has more than two decades of experience in the U.S. biotechnology sector (pharma, clinical diagnostics, and industrial enzymes). Her responsibilities include providing R&D expertise and guidance in Design and Development for IVD Clinical diagnostics as well as leading Innovation projects for Diagnostics Solutions.

Christina has a degree in Molecular Biology from U.C. Berkeley, completing her Honors thesis with 2013 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Randy Schekman. She recently received a Masters in Business Administration degree from Sacramento State.

Prof. Nazeeruddin's current research at EPFL focuses on Perovskite Solar Cells and Light-emitting diodes. He has published more than 725 peer-reviewed papers, ten book chapters, and he is the inventor/co-inventor of over 93 patents. His work's high impact has been recognized by invitations to speak at over 250 international conferences. He appeared in the ISI listing of most cited chemists and has more than 106'900citations with an h-index of 147. According to the Web of Science in 2016, he is the 5th most cited chemist in the world and is one of the 19 scientists identified by Thomson Reuters as the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2015. He has been named Thomson Reuters "Highly Cited Researcher" from 2014 to 2020 and listed among the Top 10 researchers in the perovskite solar cell research field by the Times Higher Education. He has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, and Fellow of Telangana Academy of Sciences and selected for the 34th Khwarizmi International Award (KIA) Laureate 2021.

Dr. Gavin E. Reid is the Professor of Bioanalytical Chemistry in the School of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and member of the multidisciplinary Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Over the past 33 years, he has held a variety of technical research positions and academic appointments in Australia and the USA. Driven by a belief that innovations in technology are enabling for biomedical discovery, research in the Reid laboratory is primarily directed toward the development of mass spectrometry based analytical chemistry strategies for quantitative proteome and lipidome analysis, and their application toward identifying the functional role of proteins and lipids in the regulation of cellular function, and in the onset and progression of disease, including cancer. To date, this inter-disciplinary research has resulted in 163 peer-reviewed publications, >160 conference and invited seminar presentations, and 4 patents. Gavin is currently President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry, an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and is on the Editorial Advisory Boards for the Journal of Lipid Research, and the European Journal of Mass Spectrometry. He served from 2012-2014 on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and was Treasurer of the Australasian Proteomics Society from 2015-2017.

Dr. Yanfang Jiang obtained her PhD degree in microbiology from Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the laboratory of Dr. John E. Cronan, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Her thesis work focused on lipid and fatty metabolism and fatty acid-derived cofactors in bacteria. She completed her postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis and worked on glucose sensing and transport in yeast S. cerevisiae with Dr. Mark Johnston in the Department of Genetics and Center for Genome Sciences. She later worked in Dr. David Wang’s laboratory in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University, involved in the discovery and characterization of the first viral infection in nematodes. Dr. Jiang joined our Genome Engineering R&D Group in October 2015 and has been primarily working on developing CRISPR-Cas9 protein products.

John received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Michigan State University where he studied cytochrome c oxidase with Shelagh Ferguson-Miller. Then he worked in drug discovery research at North Carolina State, SmithKline Beecham, and Taxolog. After that, he moved to Sigma-Aldrich, now known as Merck, where he worked on developing assays for pharmaceutical screening. He is currently a product manager in the emerging chemical synthesis where he develops products that use chemical synthesis for life science applications. Much of his focus has been on developing a portfolio of bioconjugation products. He has recently been working on making DNA-encoded libraries more accessible through their availability as off-the-shelf kits.

Angelo Lanzilotto obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Basel in 2017 and has since then worked in therapeutic discovery of biologics and medicinal chemistry. He joined Merck in 2021 as a Scientific Specialist for Chemistry and later moved to the Technology Management team, where he focuses on the introduction of new products, from reagents to instrumentation, including software and services.

Claire Fritz Briglia has over 20 years of experience in industrial microbiology. She began her career as an R&D scientist at STERIS Corporation developing low-temperature sterilization systems. She then moved into the field as a specialist for vapor-phase hydrogen peroxide decontamination applications. In 2010, she transitioned into a specialist role at MilliporeSigma supporting microbial monitoring and testing applications. She started her own consulting business in 2019 to help the industry with implementing technologies for both the detection and control of microbial contamination.

Dr. Antônio Augusto - Head researcher at SENAI Institutes for Innovation in Green Chemistry and Inspection & Integrity. Leader of R&D projects focusing on sustainability, green chemistry, chemical technologies, and new materials. Invited Professor at the Graduate Program (FIOCRUZ), Biomedical at UFRJ, and Master in Public Health.

Dra. Karina Cardozo - Researcher at Grupo Fleury leading the development, validation, and automation of new diagnostic tests in the area of ​​chromatography and mass spectrometry. Graduated in Chemistry from the Institute of Chemistry of USP‑SP, and Ph.D. in Sciences (Biochemistry) from the Institute of Chemistry of USP‑SP

Dr. Emerson Rodrigo da Silva - Ph.D. in Physics from USP-SP and adjunct professor at the Department of Biophysics at UNIFESP. He currently coordinates a FAPESP project that seeks to elucidate the structure of new bioactive matrices based on peptides and nucleotides for biomedical applications.

Professor Stephen L. Buchwald is the Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US. Buchwald received his PhD from Harvard University, US, in 1982 before conducting his postdoctoral work at Caltech, US. He joined MIT as an assistant professor in 1984, becoming a full professor in 1993. Buchwald has had a prolific career thus far, authoring over 500 publications and 49 patents. He is best known for his involvement in the development of the Buchwald-Hartwig amination reaction, as well as for the series of biaryl-phosphine ligands used today in almost every synthesis lab on the planet. He is the recipient of a plethora of prizes, including the Linus Pauling Medal Award and the 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

Ali Khademhosseini is a Professor of Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and at the UCLA Radiological Sciences David Geffen School of Medicine. He is the director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) and associate director for the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. He is recognized as a leader in combining micro- and nano-engineering approaches with advanced biomaterials for regenerative medicine applications. In particular, his laboratory has pioneered numerous technologies and materials for controlling the architecture and function of engineered vascularized tissues. He has authored ~500 journal papers (H-index > 95, >33,000 citations) and 60 books/chapters. In addition, he has delivered 300+ invited/keynote lectures. Dr. Khademhosseini’s interdisciplinary research has been recognized by over 40 major national and international awards. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the US government for early career investigators. In 2011, he received the Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) for his contribution to microscale tissue engineering and microfluidics. In 2016, he received the Sr. Scientist Award of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society -Americas Chapter (TERMIS-AM) and in 2017 he received the Clemson Award of the Society for Biomaterials. He is also a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Fellow of the Biomaterials Sciences and Engineering (FBSE) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Currently, he serves on the editorial board of numerous leading journals as well as an Associate Editor for ACS Nano (IF: 13.3) and a member of NIH BTSS study section. He received his PhD in bioengineering from MIT (2005), and MASc (2001) and BASc (1999) degrees from University of Toronto both in chemical engineering.

Anna Lokshin received her B.S. (1973), M.S. (1975), and Ph.D. (1983) from University of Leningrad (Russia). She has been working in the area of cancer research at University of Pittsburgh for 28 years. Her work is focused on discovery of cancer biomarkers for early diagnosis and screening.

Bryan Lowery is a Pharmaceutical Consultant with Quality Systems Consulting, Inc, specializing in Operations and Lean Transformations. He started in the US Navy Nuclear Program before moving into the pharmaceutical industry as an Operations Lead focusing on Lean Transformations manufacturing sterile radiopharmaceuticals. He has held several Site Leadership roles in pharmaceutical and medical device operations and his recent background included serving as the Director of Operations for Thermo Fisher’s Biologics Facility before transitioning to a consulting role. He graduated in Nuclear Engineering Technology from Thomas Edison State College and earned a Master's degree in Quality Assurance (Lean Manufacturing) from California State University as well as an MBA from Webster University. He is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) with several Quality Certifications and was recently selected as the President Elect of the Missouri Valley Chapter of the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA).

Miss Elisa Pesco is currently the Field Sales Specialist for the Lab Water Division in Italy. She graduated from the University of Catania, Italy, in Biology Science in the field of virology and molecular biology, and has more than 3 years of experience in water purification solutions. Previously she worked for other business units related to cell culture and research at another pharmaceuticals company.

Mr Emanuele Pirovano is currently the Sales Manager for Lab Water Division in Italy. He graduated from University of Milan (with a specialization in Food Science and Technology) and has more than 10 years of experience in providing the most innovative water purification solutions to customers in different industrial areas with a specific focus on Pharma, F&B and Cosmetics.

With 20 years of experience developing products for regulated and healthcare industries, Aram has successfully co-founded Novatek International, Novatek Medical Data Systems, Cognistat and Cognistat Sport. Aram plays an active role in the management of the Novatek Engineering Team as well as the R&D activities with a 100 percent success rate over the last 15 years. With a background in Electrical and Computer Engineering and added expertise in regulated (GAMP, GxP, etc) and niche market product development, Aram has successfully managed the development and implementation of over 18 software products ranging from thick client-server to Saas solutions to clients worldwide.

Kubista is one of the pioneers in molecular diagnostics. He invented the light-up probes, which led to the foundation of LightUp Technologies AB as Europe´s first company focusing on qPCR based diagnostics. He co-founded MultiD Analyses AB, which develops the market leading qPCR analysis software GenEx. In 2001 Kubista set up the TATAA Biocenter as center of excellence in qPCR and gene expression analysis. TATAA biocenter was the first laboratory in Europe to obtain flexible ISO 17025 accreditation and was presented the Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Leadership as Best-in-Class Services for Analyzing Genetic Material in 2013. In 2014 TATAA introduced non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Sweden founding Life Genomics AB. Kubista also co-authored the MIQE guidelines and he is member of the CEN/ISO working groups developing guidelines for the pre-analytical process in molecular diagnostics. Most recently Kubista’s team invented Two-tailed PCR, which is currently the most sensitive and specific method for microRNA analysis. Since 2007 Kubista heads the Department of Gene Expression at the institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Originally from the US, Michael is a trained chemist from a family of entrepreneurs. In 2014 he began to lead the team in developing the business concept and securing funding, and has served as CEO since the company’s foundation in 2017. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Michael still leads the computational chemistry and library design teams at DyNAbind.

A biotechnologist from Italy, Francesco is the principle creator of DyNAbind’s Dynamic Library and Binding Profiler technologies. He has been with the team since the very beginning, and has served as Director of Research and Development since company foundation in 2017, where he continues to innovate novel DEL technologies.

Pawel is currently an associate professor at Oxford's department of physiology. His lab has a broad interest in acid-base disorders, and current projects concern acid-driven selection in cancer, the effects of acid-base disturbances in heart disease, inborn errors of metabolism that present with acidosis, and red blood cell physiology.

Garry K. Seward, Ph.D. is a Product Manager for Molecular Workflow Tools at Merck where he is responsible for introducing new protein and nucleic acid sample preparation products to the market. Before transitioning into marketing, Dr. Seward gained experience in biochemistry and cell biology developing biosensors to target integrin receptor biomarkers.

Shalmica Jackson is the Senior Global Product Manager for Microscopy and is responsible for the histology, hematology, cytology, and bacteriology product lines of classical IVD stains, dyes, and auxiliary reagents. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Toxicology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cell Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In her over 15 years in the life science industry, she has served as an R&D scientist developing cell culture bioprocesses, cell-based and bioanalytical assays for antibody therapeutics and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) before transitioning to product management. Her roles have included cross-functional technical team lead, marketing, and new product and process development. She has given over 100 workshops and webinars at a local, state, national, and international level.

Prashant V. Kamat is Professor of Science in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Radiation Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a Concurrent Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Prashant has worked for more than three decades to build bridges between physical chemistry and materials science to develop advanced nanomaterials for cleaner and more efficient light-energy conversion. Throughout his career, he has directed DOE-funded solar photochemistry research, published more than 450 well-recognized scientific papers, and received numerous fellowships and awards. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACS Energy Letters.

Prof. Vincenzo Palermo is the leader of the research unit “Functional Organic Materials” of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). In his work, he uses nanotechnology and supramolecular chemistry to create materials based on organic semiconductors and graphene for electronics and energy applications. He is one of the founders of the GRAPHENE FLAGSHIP European initiative, and the leader of the flagship work package on nanocomposites. He has authored more than 100 papers on ISI journals and has given more than 50 invited talks at international conferences in the past 5 years. He has been the project leader of two large European research projects: GOSPEL (Graphene-Organic SuPramolEcular functionaL composites) and the International Training Network GENIUS (GraphenE-orgaNIc hybrid architectures for organic electronics: a mUltiSite training action). Prof. Palermo is the recipient of several awards including the Lecturer Award for Excellence of the Federation of European Materials Societies in 2012 and the Research Award of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI) in 2013.

Hugues joined Merck Chimie Fr as Sales Manager Northern Europe in 2008 for the Estapor^® Microsphere franchise. As an Application Specialist he works with Account Managers to develop product application solutions in support of numerous IVD partners in their use of Estapor^® beads as raw materials.

Prior to joining Merck Hugues was International Business Manager for 3 years at a French IVD company, growing the distribution channels in the IVD field. His focus areas included infectious diseases and autoimmunity. Prior to that Hugues was inside Sales Engineer at Oxford Instruments (UK) in the field of Superconducting magnets for 3 years.

Hugues’ years of IVD development experience is supported by his strong chemistry background, having achieved a Bachelor of Science from Newcastle (UK) and a Ph.D. from Edinburgh (UK). He has published several papers in peer reviewed journals and presented at various international conferences.

Brett Merritt has been a Technical Consultant with Cell Marque-Merck for a little over a year. His territory includes PA, NJ, and DE. He was born and raised in the central valley of California where he received his B.S. in Biology. He currently lives in Antelope, CA, near Cell Marque’s headquarters. In his spare time, he is likely to be found with his wife and two kids going on adventures.

Dennis Binder is head of quality control for cell culture media at Merck.

He holds a master's degree in biochemistry from Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. His early research was mainly conducted at the Research Center Jülich and focused on biotechnological expression systems.

In 2017, after receiving his Ph.D., Dennis joined Merck, working in cell culture media R&D on new cell culture media materials and formulation technologies. Since 2019, he has been heading the quality control for cell culture media with a key focus on testing cell culture media for release and different upstream chemicals for applicability in cell culture.

Marie Cecille has a master’s degree in biotechnology and bioengineering. After spending a few years as a consultant on the management of products and processes within the pharmaceutical industry, she joined Merck in 2021 and became the head of CMC leaders in 2023. Since then, she has actively helped CDMO customers to succeed in the technical and CMC strategy of their clinical and commercial projects.

Thierry Ziegler joined Igyxos in February 2021 as Chief Operating Officer. He is in charge of the coordination of the company’s IGX12 mAb CMC development from cell line generation to IMP manufacturing.

During his career at Serono Healthcare, Sanofi, and Cellectis, Thierry was responsible for managing the development and production of multiple monoclonal antibodies as well as many other types of biologics modalities ranging from recombinant proteins to CAR-T cells. He is familiar with the CMC and regulatory aspects of Biologics from clinical development to life cycle management.

Thierry is a bioprocess engineer and obtained his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Na Li gained her PhD from Nankai University, China. After, she joined the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas for postdoc research, and later became a research scientist at the NanoTech Institute. While there, she developed artificial muscles based on twisted and coiled carbon nanotube yarns, and later used the principles learned to turn low cost, high strength polymer fibers into high performance artificial muscles. She has co-developed an electrochemical-capacitance-change based “twistron” energy harvester that converts mechanical deformations directly into electricity, without requiring an externally applied bias voltage. Her work in polymer artificial muscles was recognized by the R&D 100 magazine as the gold award winner for “Market Disruptor Product” in 2015, and was recognized as the “top breakthrough story of the year 2014” by KERA, NPR. Her work on the twistron energy harvester was recognized as the “top 100 science spinoffs” by spinoff.com in 2017. Na Li joined MilliporeSigma in 2018, and her product line includes carbon nanomaterials, organic electronics and printable electronics.

Emanuela Gionfriddo is currently a Research Associate in Prof. Pawliszyn’s research group and manager of the Gas-Chromatography section of the Industrially Focused Analytical Research Laboratory (InFAReL) at University of Waterloo (ON, Canada). She received her B.Sc. (2008) and M.Sc. (2010) in Chemistry and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry (2013) at University of Calabria (Italy). Since 2014, she has been working in Prof. Pawliszyn’s research group: her research focuses on the development and testing of new matrix compatible SPME coatings, compatible with both gas- and liquid- chromatography applications and suitable for direct immersion in complex matrices such as biological fluids and foodstuffs: potential application of these coatings involves the coupling of complementary chromatography platforms for both targeted multiresidue analysis and metabolomics studies. She is also active in the development of new SPME methods for determination of contaminants at trace level in various food, environmental matrices and pharmaceutical supplements by GC-MS, GC x GC-MS and direct coupling with MS.

Experienced Medical Science Liaison with demonstrated ability to build and manage productive relationships with key opinion leaders (KOLs), healthcare professionals (HCPs), and principal investigators (PIs) across multiple therapeutic areas. Proven strategic thinker with a history of understanding customer needs and implementing unique solutions.

Dr John Dangerfield was appointed Chief Operating Officer of SG Austria in 2010, having previously been Head of Laboratory (2007-2010). John began his career in 1996 undertaking toxicology studies for the service provider Hammilton-Garrod in Bedfordshire, England. Following this he worked in Quality Control of injectable products for GE Healthcare (formerly Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) in Gloucester. He moved to Austria in 1997 and completed his PhD in molecular virology in 2001 from the University of Vienna. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna from 2001-2007 he worked with bionanotech approaches for cancer therapy. An active Council Member for the bio-industry alliance organisation BioSingapore from 2011-2014 and a committee member for the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium’s yearly international symposium in 2015, John has co-authored 16 peer-reviewed journal articles, 3 book chapters, and edited two books.

Mary Young has her Bachelors of Science in Biology from Elon University. She joined the Petri Lab 3 years ago as a research technician helping with several projects, mainly focusing on human immune response to Clostridioides difficile infection. When the pandemic hit Virginia in March, Mary helped establish a biorepository of plasma collected from patients tested for COVID-19 infection at UVA and has been focusing on human immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Holger Becker is the co-founder and CSO of microfluidic ChipShop GmbH. He obtained physics degrees from the University of Western Australia/Perth (1990) and the University of Heidelberg (1991). He started to work on miniaturized systems for chemical analysis during his Ph.D. thesis at Heidelberg University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Applied Physics in 1995. Between 1995 and 1997 he was a Research Associate at Imperial College with Prof. Andreas Manz. In 1998 he joined Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH. Since then, he founded and led several companies in the field of microsystem technologies in medicine and the life sciences, for which he received various awards, most notably a nomination for the “Deutscher Gründerpreis” in 2004. He led the Industry Group of the German Physical Society between 2004 and 2009 and is the current chair of the SPIE ‘‘Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems’’ conference, co-chair of MicroTAS 2013 and in the Industry Committee for MicroTAS since 2016. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the “Next Generation Diagnostics” and “Molecular Diagnostics Europe” conferences from Cambridge Healthtech, and of “Lab-on-a-Chip”, the Editorial Boards of “Microelectronic Engineering” and “Micro and Nanosystems” as well as on the Board of Trustees of the “Physik Journal”. In 2014, he was appointed a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (London) and in 2017 has been awarded the “Ehrennadel” of the German Physical Society. He has published more than 160 journal and conference papers with currently >6,000 citations.

Following her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Biochemistry in Frankfurt, Dr. Cornelia Roessler started her professional experience at Chemicon International. After several acquisitions and now more than 20 years of experience in the cell culture area she is working as a Technology Manager at Merck managing the entire cell culture portfolio for Western Europe.

Dr. Adelina Braun completed her doctorate thesis in Materials Science at Saarland University, Germany. She then gained professional experience at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre working on nanomaterials research projects. Adelina joined the Life Science Business at Merck 8 years ago and manages the Materials Science portfolio for all of Western Europe.

El presentador, Dr. Gustavo Serrano, obtuvo su Ph.D. en Ciencias de la Salud Ambiental en la Universidad de Michigan, además posee una Maestría en Higiene Industrial también de la Universidad de Michigan, y la Licenciatura en Quimica de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Expert auprès de l’ISO dans les domaines « Microbiologie des salles propres » et « Stérilisation par irradiation ». Expert auprès de l’AFNOR pour les commissions "Technologie des salles propres" et “Stérilisation”, ancien expert pour la commission "Antiseptiques et désinfectants". Ancien président de la commission SFSTP (Société Française des Sciences et Techniques Pharmaceutiques) “Validation des systèmes de traitement et de distribution de l’eau à usage pharmaceutique et médical” Ancien Chargé de cours pour la préparation du Diplôme d’Ingénierie Pharmaceutique de la Faculté de Pharmacie de Clermont Ferrand. Depuis 1996 Président Directeur Général et Directeur Scientifique ICARE Laboratoire prestataire de service en maitrise de la contamination.

Chef de produits et Manager marketing dans l’industrie de la santé depuis plus de 20 ans (transfusion sanguine, diagnostic médical et méthodes alternatives de tests microbiologiques utilisés en industries Pharmaceutique, hôpital et dispositifs médicaux) Au Field Marketing BioM W EU Merck, responsable du Monitoring Environnemental pour le segment Pharmaceutique et les marchés adjacents. Veille réglementaire et conseil. Expert membre de la commission AFNOR “Technologies des salles propre, expert auprès de l’ISO et du CEN travaillant sur le projet “Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments Biocontamination”.

Taylor Reynolds is the Program Marketing Manager for Environmental Testing. Taylor has worked in the water and wastewater treatment and testing industry for over 10 years, focusing on products related to biological treatment, nutrient removal, disinfection, and testing. He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.

Since 1995, Dr. Askew has managed two different wastewater laboratories in Iowa and a drinking water/surface water laboratory in New Mexico. In 2008, at the request of engineering consultants and environmental lawyers, Dr. Askew became a consultant focusing on environmental projects in the water and wastewater arena. These projects have included watershed characterization, wastewater plant pollutant limits and regulatory compliance issues. Dr. Askew is a past committee member of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater having served as the Part Coordinator for Part 4000 for 14 years. Part 4000 contains the colorimetric, electrochemical and other analytical techniques for inorganic chemical in water and wastewater. Dr. Askew has received the Archie Greenberg award for service to this organization.

Nicole Lewis began her anatomic pathology career at Cell Marque where she spent seven and a half years developing a solid laboratory and product foundation. As she moved from Biologist to R&D Scientist and finally Technical Supervisor, she gained comprehensive knowledge and experience in various aspects of the industry including: general laboratory practices/techniques, antibody production/development, as well as technical training/support.
In 2013 she decided to use my background in IHC theory, staining techniques, platforms, and reagents to provide troubleshooting and technical assistance as a Field Support Specialist with Leica Biosystems. She later moved into a sales role before heading back to where her career began.
Twelve years later, she once again represents Cell Marque, now a Merck company, as an Account Manager. Nicole uses her technical background, market expertise, competitor knowledge, and general passion for the industry to foster strong customer partnerships. Her customers can expect provision of the highest quality reagents, exceptional customer service, and regular product education. Always forefront is their motto: From Passion to Product to Patient.

Stéphanie Huck is in charge of Application Services within the BioMonitoring marketing department of Merck, KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in Molsheim, France. She joined the company in 1997. Stéphanie holds a degree in Biology of Microorganisms from the University of Strasbourg, France. 

Daniel, an expert in the field of immunoassays, has over 25 years in multiplex business development, instrumentation development, with a strong focus on assay development for immunogenicity research. Daniel has been with Merck for over 6 years, focusing on immunoassay and Single Molecule Counting (SMC™) technology to launch the next generation immunogenicity assay.

Olga Shimelis is a Principal R&D Scientist and a part of the sample preparation group at Supelco working to develop new ex-traction and analysis methodologies using solid phase extraction, liquid and gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. She oversees the work for application of new technologies to areas of food and environmental analysis. In the past years she has been involved in the development of new methods for detection of chemical contaminants and residues in food products and environment as well as the analysis of nutrients and food composition. She made significant contributions to the innovative product lines including molecularly imprinted polymers, Z-Sep sorbents for use in the QuEChERS method and ASSET sampler for measurement of air concentrations of isocyanates. She joined Supelco after completing her post-doctorate work at the Northeastern University’s Barnett Institute of Chemical and Biological Analysis in Boston, USA. Olga got her PhD from the Uni-versity of Oklahoma, USA and Bachelor of Science degree in Analytical Chemistry from the Ural State University, Russia.

Anthony Saporita has over 15 years of experience in protein biochemistry and assay development. He earned his B.S. from University of Missouri and Ph.D. from Northwestern University and received postdoctoral training at Washington University in Saint Louis. As part of the Research & Development team, Dr. Saporita designs new immunoassay kits for protein biomarker detection for several research categories including neuroscience, toxicity, and cell signaling.

Professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, USP and President of the Brazilian Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Full Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, USP and coordinator of the Research Center on Natural and Synthetic Products and the Central Mass Spectrometry of Organic Micromolecules. He also held the position of President of the Brazilian Chemical Society.

Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, USP, where he conducts research in the area of synthesis and innovation in pharmaceuticals.

PhD Professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, USP, where she conducts research in the area of bacterial biofilms.

After earning a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the Universidad de Granada, Juan J. Díaz-Mochón was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Southampton and the University of Edinburgh. He then joined Pfizer-University of Granada-Junta de Andalucia Center for Genomics and Oncological Research. In 2017, he established DESTINA Genomics Ltd., focusing on highly specific nucleic acid detection, and is currently the Executive Director and CEO.

Following her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology in Heidelberg, Dr. Anke Kleiser started her professional experience with us. Now, with more than 14 years of experience in the cell culture area she is working as a Technology Manager managing the entire cell culture portfolio for EMEA.

Following his degree in chemistry at the University Mainz Institute for Organic Chemistry, Uwe Wagner started his first job as a separation specialist in 1994. Now more than 28 years of experience in the separation market he is working as a Technology Manager managing the WEU & EMEA lab separation portfolio.

Douglas Densmore is a Kern Faculty Fellow, a Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering Junior Faculty Fellow, and Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. He is the director of the Cross-disciplinary Integration of Design Automation Research (CIDAR) group at Boston University, where his team of staff and postdoctoral researchers, undergraduate interns, and graduate students develop computational and experimental tools for synthetic biology. His research facilities include both a computational workspace in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as experimental laboratory space in the Boston University Center of Synthetic Biology (CoSBI).

Osman M. Bakr is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at KAUST, Saudi Arabia. He holds a B.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT (2003) as well as a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard (2009). The research group he founded at KAUST studies the design and self-assembly of hybrid organic-inorganic materials and nanomaterials for breakthrough applications optoelectronics. Bakr’s research group has published >120 articles in high impact scientific publications, including Science.

Bakr was selected as a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum (2016) and as an Emerging Investigator by the Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2016). He was awarded the SABIC Endowed Presidential Career Development Chair (2013), the Zasshi-kai Lectureship Award by the University of Tokyo (2016), and the Innovator Under 35 Award in the Arab World by the MIT Technology Review- Arab Edition (2016). In 2018, he was ranked by the Times Higher Education among the top 10 university researchers world-wide in the area of “perovskite solar cells”. He currently serves on the editorial advisory boards of the American Chemical Society (ACS) journals Chemistry of Materials and ACS Energy Letters.

Head of Sales and Marketingat MBV AG, the manufacturer of the renowned MAS-100 air samplers. With his degrees in environmental microbiology and biotechnology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich he supports customers in the planning and implementation of microbiological air monitoring projects. More than twenty years of experience in sales and product management of laboratory equipment allows him to support the in-house development team in product development projects by ensuring the transfer of knowledge from the application to development. He also acts as the Swiss expert delegate in a standardization body for microbiological air monitoring.

Ourhay Shamoon has been working for Cell Marque for 10 years as a Technical Consultant and International Distributor Manager. She has given workshops and webinars on a full range of Immunohistochemistry topics from basics of IHC and troubleshooting, to antibody panels and immunophenotyping tumors. She currently works out of Los Angeles and lives with her dog Kanye downtown.

Carine Krebs is a food engineer with many years of marketing experience who has been at Merck, Molsheim, France, since 2009. She is in charge of the BioMonitoring Services portfolio focusing on expert services (customer training, application services, validation protocols & services).

Dr. Blurton-Jones is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He is also Director of the UCI Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) Core and a member of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. Dr. Blurton-Jones received his B.A. in Biology from UC Santa Barbara and then earned his PhD in Neuroscience from UC San Diego in 2002. He then pursued postdoctoral studies in the labs of Dr. Carl Cotman and Dr. Frank LaFerla before starting his own lab in 2011 at UC Irvine. Dr. Blurton-Jones’ lab uses human induced pluripotent stem cells and transgenic animal models to examine the underlying molecular mechanisms that mediate neurodegenerative disease. His studies have shown that neural stem cells can improve cognitive and motor function in transgenic models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Lewy body dementia (DLB) by elevating levels of critical neurotrophic factors and enhancing endogenous structural plasticity. His group has also provided some of the first evidence that the adaptive immune system may be able to restrain the development of AD pathology by modulating the activation state of brain-resident microglia. Most recently, his lab has developed a fully defined approach to differentiate patient-derived iPSCs into microglia and is using these cells to examine the impact of AD-associated mutations on microglial function.

Felice has extensive experience in metabolomics and life science. She holds post-graduate degrees in Technology Management, Nutritional Biochemistry, and holds a doctorate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. Dr. de Jong was technical manager at Roche and founding president of Sigma-Aldrich Australia. She developed metabolomics business and marketing strategies at Metabolon during her 6 years as senior director before founding IROA.

Justyce received her BS in Chemistry and MBA from the University of Missouri in St. Louis. At Merck she is responsible for engaging with influencers in the food and beverage industry to align initiatives to be in the highest regulatory compliance and promote best practices among testing methods promoting the safest and highest quality food. She currently serves as the Chair of the Food Sciences Section of the American Council of Independent Labs and Board of Directors for the Independent Laboratory Institute. She is a member of IAFP, ISBT, and AOAC.

Lyssa Sakaley is currently the Senior Global Product Manager for Molecular Pathogen Testing at MilliporeSigma. She has worked in the Food and Beverage market for more than 10 years, starting out as a Quality Lab Technician prior to moving into Sales and Marketing roles at 3M, Univar (ChemPoint.com), and BioControl Systems. Lyssa has a MS in Biology from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA and a MBA from City University of Seattle.

Mahesh Karwa leads the process development group for Merck at the Indianapolis site. With an 15 plus years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, he has worked in analytical and process/product development teams previously. He joined the company in 2019, leading the analytical development group. He has contributed to the success of several client projects in the LNP & Liposomal fields for RNA delivery. Mahesh holds a Ph.D. in nanomaterials chemistry from New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Teresa Demuth holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). As a product manager for synthetic lipids at Merck, Teresa gained valuable experiences in the product and process development of synthetic lipids used in lipid-based RNA delivery and vaccines. In her current role, she is responsible for managing the company’s lipids portfolio and custom manufacturing businesses that support top industry players and young start-ups in the field of LNP drug delivery.

Markus is a biomolecular engineer. He is responsible for the strategic development and positioning of an excipient portfolio for oral solid dosage form applications. Thereby, the focus is to enhance solubility and bioavailability of the most challenging APIs with specifically engineered excipients for oral solid application. He holds a Ph.D. in biology/chemistry from the Technical University of Darmstadt and is a biomolecular engineer. 

Hauke Cornils is leading the CRISPR technology platform at Evotec. He has more than 9 years of academic and industrial research experience, including a PhD at the Friedrich-Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland and a Post-Doc at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, US. His interests focus on understanding signal transduction in health and disease using phenotypic and genomic approaches

Lindsay received a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2017 and an MBA certificate in entrepreneurship in 2018 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where her thesis was focused on design and functional analysis of new antimicrobial therapeutics. She is a Senior Scientist in Analytical Sciences, focused on the development of new products in cut disc membranes, filtration hardware, and non-sterile Millex^® syringe filter devices as well as the development of smart lab products and software. She is part of a team that is also responsible for producing customer-facing application content for launched products. 

Andrew Patterson is the Corporate Technical Director for Eurofins Environment Testing America for the Specialty Services division. He brings over 20 years of experience in the environmental laboratory field with a focus on HRGC/HRMS analyses and LC–MS/MS analyses. His use of these approaches has focused on PCBs, dioxins, brominated flame-retardants, PFAS, emerging contaminants, and human biomonitoring. He is among a handful of Eurofins scientists focused on developing spectroscopy methods for microplastic analysis. Prior to Eurofins, Andrew was the Technical Director for an analytical laboratory in Northern California where he developed the capability for the analysis of PFAS and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) within the laboratory and oversaw HRMS operations. Andrew holds a Bachelors of Science in Microbiology with a concentration in Biochemistry from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, USA.

Dr Miguel-Angel Garcia-Martin is currently Field Sales Specialist for Lab Water Division in Spain. He has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Oviedo and has more than 12 years of experience in water purification solutions. Previously, he has worked for 7 years for the pharmaceutical sector in production, quality assurance and regulatory areas.

Mr Jorge Nicolás is currently the Sales Manager for Lab Water Division in Spain, with also 9 years of experience as Application Specialist in Lab Water. He graduated from University of Cantabria as chemical engineer, and has relevant laboratory experiences in water analysis in his stage as a researcher in the University.

Dr. Steve Oldenburg has over 20 years of nanotechnology experience beginning with his graduate work at Rice University where he discovered a method of fabricating gold nanoshells, a nanoscale composite material that consists of a spherical silica core surrounded by an ultra-thin shell of gold. This discovery led to the formation of Nanospectra Biosciences where the gold nanoshells are in clinical trials as a cancer therapy. After Rice, he joined Seashell Technology where he was responsible for identifying and developing commercial applications of nanotechnology, raising capital, and managing the scientific research team. In 2004, he founded nanoComposix to accelerate the commercialization of products based on precisely engineered and highly characterized nanoparticles. He is also a co-founder of Sienna Labs, a company that is developing therapies based on novel medical pigments. Steve has 6 issued patents and has over 30 nanotechnology publications that have received over 5000 citations.

Total 35+ years of experience in strategic, technical, operational areas in Pharma, Food, Beverage industry. 25 years with the Coca-Cola Company (Asia, Europe and USA). Board Member for GFSI (ex), SPRI (ex), SIWW (ex) and ISBT (Reg. Chair). Ph.D. Analytical Chemistry and M.B.A. from Emory University, USA. Currently working as an independent consultant since September of 2018, with an aim of supporting & improving the food safety, quality, processes, sustainability of products and services in FMCG industries. Sr. Advisor FSSC 22000 (SWA) & Support Start-ups.

Patricia Schnulle obtained her M.S. from the University of Illinois with a research focus on reproductive immunology. Before joining Merck, she worked on several research projects learning and teaching various techniques including molecular biology and protein expression analysis. She has been with MilliporeSigma for 14 years and continues with her love of science and quest for more knowledge, including recently completing her MBA from Butler University. She prefers to use her powers for good in her role as the Applied Market Research & Strategic Business Manager for Milli-Q^® Lab Water Solutions in North America where she helps bridge the gap between water purification and the rest of the MilliporeSigma portfolio within the Applied Market.

Henriette Lanz is Director Model development at Mimetas. She has received her PhD in Molecular Biology from Leiden University in 2012, and masters in Life Science Technologies. She worked on cancer-selective target discovery at Leiden University and secondary metabolite production at Explant Technologies and Prisna. In her current role at Mimetas she supervises the biological R&D team of senior and junior scientists and technicians, alongside PhD and MSc students. The specific focus of her research activities at Mimetas are the development of organotypic models for drug screening and toxicity evaluation within the fields of kidney, vasculature and cancer.

Mr. Eddy Tan is currently the Application Scientist for Applied Business Portfolio and works in Applications Laboratory, Singapore, which serves the APAC countries. He graduated from National University of Singapore and has relevant laboratory experiences in Chromatography and Spectroscopy. His core research interests are in analytical techniques and sample preparation for targeted analysis.

Dr. Birgit Stoeffler studied chemistry and graduated with a Ph.D. She then worked as a scientific assistant at Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany. Since qualifying as a safety engineer, she has worked in the occupational safety department at Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany for over 20 years. She became a certified BG RCI trainer in 2010 and has been an expert in the Committee on Hazardous Substances since 2015. Since 2018, she has held a lectureship at Darmstadt Technical University and teaches students how to prepare a risk assessment for activities involving hazardous substances. She passes on her decades of expert knowledge in the form of books, journal articles, oral presentations, podcast episodes, and LinkedIn posts.

Craig was a Field Application Scientist with the Immunoassay Platform Solutions team for almost 15 years. Prior to coming to Merck, he was a scientist with multiple biopharma companies where he participated in every stage of the drug discovery process, including analytical method development and assay validation. Craig is currently Senior Scientific Sales Manager with the Global Strategic Accounts Team at Merck.

Terri Borree has over 30 years of experience in the industry. She began her career at George Washington University facilitating the use of cutting-edge flow cytometry technology in clinical hospital testing for CD4 counts and Leukemia/Lymphoma diagnostic panels. She expanded that experience to support clinical research immunoassay projects at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Those experiences led Terri to work for companies including Beckman Coulter, Affymetrix, and now Merck in various technical roles. She currently works as the Portfolio Manager for select Diagnostic Immunoassay Critical Raw Material Reagents including antibodies, blocking agents, and biocides.

Jay Sterling is the Global Business Lead, Product Characterization. Jay’s main area of expertise is in the development of physiochemical methods designed to measure the critical quality attributes of drug products, including monoclonal antibodies, vaccines, nanoparticles, and gene therapy delivery vectors. Previously. he worked at a variety of small biotechnology, large pharmaceutical, and contract research companies (including Biolex Tx, GSK Vaccines, and Catalent). Jay received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Georgia.

Melissa joined Merck's process and analytical development team in 2018. She started her career as a fellow scientist at ORIS and FDA DPA and was a postdoc fellow at UNC Chapel Hill. With a strong background in protein biochemistry and bioconjungation, she has more than seven years of experience in the industry. Melissa holds a Ph.D. from the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Sowmyan joined Merck's process and analytical development team in 2019. Before his current role, he optimized mAb downstream processes within the MSAT operations and developed novel processes for dairy proteins and lipids. He has eight years of experience in industrial biotech and food science. Sowmyan holds an M.S. from the Ohio State University. 

Haowei has been with Merck for 5 years, first in process & analytical development, then in the novel modalities R&D department. He has more than 20 years of experience in analytical R&D, new product development, project management, technology transfer, and supporting GMP manufacturing cross academic and industry.

Axel Groß serves as Full Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at Ulm University. At the same time, he is PI at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm for Electrochemical Energy Storage. He studied physics at the University of Göttingen and the University of California at Santa Barbara. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at the Technical University of Munich in 1993. After five years as a staff scientist at the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck-Socieity in Berlin, he became Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics/Surface Physics, TU Munich in 1998 and Full Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at Ulm University in 2004. In general, the research of Prof. Groß focuses on the elucidation of atomistic structures and processes at interfaces and in materials based on first-principles electronic structure calculations and dynamical simulations. Originally concentrating on surface science issues, the research interests of Prof Groß have in recent years been extended to topics in electrochemical energy storage and conversion.

Dr. Adam Raw is the Head of Materials Science R&D for the Chemistry business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, leading teams in Nanomaterials, Energy Storage, Bioprinting and Drug Delivery. Since 2012 he has driven innovation in inorganic materials at Merck KGaA in roles including Product Management, Business Development, Technology Development and R&D. Dr. Raw received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University with a focus on solid-state synthesis of mixed anion compounds for energy generation and storage. 

Christian is Senior Manager in the Scientific Affairs Group for the EMEA region, with a focus on Small Molecules, USP’s General Chapters and Biologics. He collaborates with scientific experts and stakeholders and is responsible to protect and grow USP’s scientific reputation in the region and globally. Before joining USP, Christian worked for seventeen years in the field of pharmaceutical reference standards with a focus on impurities, and before that in the IVD (In Vitro Diagnostic) industry. His scientific expertise includes impurity testing, reference standards characterization and adjacent fields. Christian has published several articles and white papers on topics such as impurities, overview about (certified) reference materials, and the use of reference standards in method development and validation.

Rick Wiese holds a PhD from FDA NCTR and has over 22 years of experience in immunoassay development and production. In 2007, he became R&D Manager for the MILLIPLEX^® assay group and then moved to Operations as Senior Manager, Upstream Operations in 2013, working extensively on product and process engineering projects for immunoassay products. In 2021, Rick moved back to R&D as Head of Singleplex & Special Protein Platforms R&D.

Lei Liu, MD, PhD, studied the neurochemistry of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at the Shiga University of Medical Science (Otsu, Japan) and completed his Ph.D. thesis in the lab of Dr. Masaki Nishimura. Following his research interest in dementia, he joined the lab of Dr. Dennis Selkoe at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital in late 2016, where he currently works as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He has published many significant peer-reviewed research articles on the enzymology involved in AD pathogenesis in prestigious journals, such as Journal of Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Neuron, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. In addition to basic molecular biology research, he is also an expert in antibody biology and immunoassay development.

Kevin Lee recently joined Merck with the acquisition of Erbi Biosystems. Kevin was a co-founder at Erbi and developed the core microfluidic technology platform as part of his doctoral research at MIT, including the design of microfluidic continuous culture systems and plastics consumable manufacturing.

He is also an expert in embedded systems, cell culture, and bioengineering, and holds a BSEE from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kevin is an inventor on 6 patents and has led programs with industry and academia across multiple cell types including E. coli, Pichia, CHO, and CAR-T.

Dr. Quang Long Pham, a senior scientist in the innovation cell culture media development group, has focused on delivering perfusion products and process development. He is currently leading a high-throughput microfluidic platform technology, a scale-down model for perfusion processes that significantly enhances the capacity of perfusion medium development.

Before joining Merck, Dr. Pham earned his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology and received postdoctoral training in biomedical engineering at Tufts University.

Erik Amundrud is the senior manager, manufacturing, with the viral vector CDMO team in Carlsbad, California. Erik has been in the biopharma industry for over 20 years and is accomplished in optimizing, scaling up, and manufacturing cell and gene therapies in a GMP environment. He is passionate about building high-performance production teams and improving process efficiency to support growing production capabilities.

Nadine is a principal scientist within our process and formulation materials area. She is a pharmacist by training and has a strong background in solid dispersion technology and additive manufacturing. As part of the solid formulation R&D team, she is a technical project lead for excipient development. Her focus areas are solubility enhancement and advanced manufacturing technologies.

Alice Antonello is senior scientist in the bioprocess chemistry team in process and formulation materials - technology and innovation at Merck. She is mainly focused on the development and application of surfactants for bioprocessing, from cell cultivation to harvest and first treatments of the product. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.

Eike is principal scientist for innovations and technologies in mRNA service offering. He was responsible for the development of the upscaled mRNA manufacturing process and implementation of AmpTec technologies in R&D. Eike holds an M.Sc. with distinction in biochemistry from Wuerzburg University and a summa cum laude Ph.D. in cellular Biochemistry from Frankfurt University.

Amy is a global business lead, NGS and novel modalities, at Merck. In this position, Amy drives the growth of testing business using exciting, novel methods. With over 15 years' experience working on various viral vector, mRNA and CRISPR projects, she provides technical and consultative support to organizations working with RNA vaccines and therapeutics. Amy holds a B.S. in genetics from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

KMP studied organic chemistry at the University of Copenhagen where he obtained the Cand. Scient. (2003) and Ph.D. (2007) degrees. After the Ph.D. degree, he worked as a postdoc. in the Bjørnholm lab. In 2009, he continued his career at the College of Chemistry at U.C. Berkeley, where he worked with professors Rachel Segalman and Peter Vollhardt. In 2011 KMP was recruited to Chalmers University of Technology, as an assistant professor. In 2014 he was promoted to associate professor in 2017 to professor (bitr. prof.) and in 2019 full professor. Since 2020 KMP is the head of the division of applied chemistry at Chalmers. Since October 2021 KMP is awarded a professor position at the Catalan Institute of Advanced Studies (ICREA) and joins the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) as a professor.

Chang Ge is Merck's product manager of logistical services. She is responsible for leading the development of new digital logistics-related solutions that help biopharma customers improve their ability to efficiently use raw materials and other consumable products within their drug manufacturing process. Chang is experienced in launching and commercializing new technology and products for the life science and biopharma industries. She has a background in neurobiology from UC Davis and a master's degree in innovation and management from Tufts University.

Prithwiraj Das is a customer success manager at Merck. He oversees digital solutions with data-as-a-service, helping customers to connect with key analytical and logistical data to improve their overall commercial manufacturing processes. Prith joined Merck in December 2021, specifically to enhance customer engagement and the commercial growth of eMERGE as a service for critical capabilities. He has extensive research expertise in neurophysiology. Prior to joining our company, he ran his digital marketing business and served customers in growing their businesses in various sectors. He has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Auburn University, and he pursued his postdoctoral research at Washington University in St Louis, and the University of California, Riverside.

Esther Welterlin is a Validation Expert within the Life Science’s BioMonitoring Research and Development Department. She graduated from the University of Strasbourg, France, with a Master’s degree in biochemistry. Esther has worked in validation for over 20 years, gaining experience in the qualification of consumables, processes, laboratory equipment and alternative methods for the detection of microorganisms in the pharmaceutical industry. She also designs validation protocols for the end users to perform IQ and OQ of the laboratory instruments developed in the BioMonitoring business.

Aditya Vaidya is a senior scientist in the Chemical Biology Innovation Team at SLS Chemistry. His work focuses on creating innovative solutions for the chemical biology and drug discovery community, including novel tools for targeted protein degradation, which is considered the next gold rush in drug discovery. He is dedicated to providing cutting-edge products that can revolutionize drug discovery and lead to improvements in human health. Aditya holds a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has over 10 years of experience in the field of drug discovery. 

Hugo Matos Viana is a life science professional with extensive technical and business expertise in Chemistry. In his current role, he is responsible for overseeing the Chemical Biology portfolio strategy at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Hugo holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry and is attending an Executive MBA program. 

Jason Modest has been in the pharmaceutical industry for 25 years and is the director of the manufacturing, science, and technology department at the Madison/Verona, WI site. He leads the technical transfer and validation teams and provides life cycle management for commercial programs. Transitioning into technical operations positions in brand, generic, and the CDMO space has allowed for a comprehensive understanding of what is required to successfully move early-phase development programs to commercial launch. Jason holds a B.S. in biochemistry from Fort Lewis College.

Jacqueline Ruff is a strategic marketing manager leading marketing initiatives for the growing small molecule CTDMO landscape at Merck. Prior to joining the marketing franchise, she gained experience in small molecule CDMO operations through her roles in project management and quality management. Jackie received bachelor's degrees in both genetics and life science communication at the University of Wisconsin, and her Master's in biotechnology enterprise and entrepreneurship from Johns Hopkins University.

Bradley Hasson is the director of lab operations for next-generation sequencing services. Brad leads a team of scientists, laboratory technicians, and bioinformaticians that perform NGS-based biosafety testing services in support of product characterization and release worldwide.

Brad has 15 years of experience developing and implementing molecular-based methods for the purposes of lot release and characterization testing in a variety of biologically derived products.

Anand Alembath is a development engineer and the applications technical lead for tangential flow filtration (TFF) product development projects with a focus on downstream purification of viral vectors. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla.

Rosario Cervellere is an applications engineer in filtration R&D. Since joining in June 2021, he has supported technology and product development projects including Pelicon^® Capsule with 100 and 300 kDa Ultracel^® membrane and Pellicon^® XL 50 cassettes. His recent focus applies modeling and simulation to increase the efficiency of product and technology development. Rosario holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Arkansas with a focus on computational materials science and global change.

Leila has a PhD in inorganic chemistry and ten years research and development experience in bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Zurich University (UZH) and Zurich University Hospital (USZ). As an Applications Specialist, she works in application development, customer support and sales, as well as internal and external trainings. With her expertise in electrochemistry, she focuses on method development and optimization in KF titration and its automation in the Lithium Ion Battery field.

Dr. Shailly Krishna Rajusth is the Global Product Manager for Physical & Chemical Property Standards including water testing standards. She is part of our Advanced Analytical Reference Materials team, located in Bangalore/India. In her current role she works closely with QC, R&D & respective application areas of these products to improve & develop this portfolio. She has nearly 10 years of experience in Digital Marketing, Scientific Content Writing, Quality & Regulatory Department. Dr. Shailly has completed PhD in Analytical chemistry & holds a Masters degree in Analytical Chemistry from the Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

Michael Margreth studied chemistry at the University of Applied Science in Muttenz, Switzerland. He joined Metrohm in 2005 as an application specialist and gained titration experience in the application laboratory. Since 2008 he mainly focuses on Karl Fischer titration and the determination of water.

Sarah is a global strategic marketing manager for Merck, specializing in manufacturing enzymes and downstream chemicals. She uses her expertise serving novel modalities markets (VGT, mRNA, …) and bringing to life new innovative solutions to meet their manufacturing needs. She has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years and has held a number of roles in this capacity worldwide, including bioproduct development & regulatory consultancy for exporting biotech companies.

Sarah holds a master's degree in molecular & cell biology (specializing in cell & gene therapy) from the UPMC and Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. She also holds a master's degree in health marketing & market access from the Sorbonne University.

At Merck, Markus is responsible for a broad portfolio of pharmaceutical excipients with a focus on regulatory topics. Prior to coming to Merck, he worked in product development at RP Scherer/Catalent Pharma Solutions where he was responsible for formulation development and project management. Markus holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Angela has had various roles in her 22 years with Merck, from associate scientist to department manager, and she is currently the Global Scientific Lead for the Manufacturing Value Stream. In this role, she supports the global manufacturing teams, and clients and has a strong focus on regulatory compliance. Angela spent time building clinical trial experiences during which she developed a strong knowledge of GMP requirements. She holds a degree in applied biosciences from Glasgow Caledonian University.

Mee Chee Lee has more than 10 years of experience at Merck, where she is currently the upstream services sales development manager for Asia Pacific.

Dr. Solares first began immunoassay work in 2006 by mastering western blot techniques as an undergrad and continued developing techniques during his MSc at California State University Northridge in 2011. Dr. Solares received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019, where he used MILLIPLEX^® kits to help answer his dissertation questions. He has been a Field Application Scientist since 2020.                 

Brittany leads global marketing activities for specialty chemicals used in upstream cell culture media at Merck. She has been with Merck for 13 years. Prior to joining the marketing franchise, Brittany worked in technical service, helping customers better understand how to use our products, and in the production lab as a chemist, manufacturing enzymes and proteins. Brittany holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Florida State University.

Meghan is a technical application expert for biopharm materials in Merck's process solutions division, supporting customers in Southeast Asia, Singapore, and Australia. She graduated with a degree in bioengineering from the National University of Singapore. For the past 7 years, she held various commercial and technology manager roles in various life sciences companies, with a customer focus on viral vaccines, gene therapy, and cell therapies.

Katharina Christlieb is a senior marketing operation manager at Merck, responsible for single-use, filtration, and chromatography product change communication and strategy. She has worked in life sciences for more than 16 years, having a broad experience in quality management systems including GMP, ISO 9001:2015, risk analysis, and continuous process improvements, as well as quality control and API/Excipient Production.

Katharina has a degree in chemistry from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and a Ph.D. in biochemistry with a focus on protein characterization using Aptamer technology from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.

Hiral Gami is an upstream scientist in Merck's viral vector technology and innovation team based in Bedford, MA. She joined our company in January 2018 and has contributed to the development of cell retention devices (CRD) for perfusion bioreactors, along with generating application data to support the launch of the cell retention device and system. Since June 2019, she has been a part of the viral gene therapy - upstream group, where she is actively involved in developing and optimizing processes for viral vector production & scale-up. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in microbiology from Gujarat University, India, and an M.S. in biological sciences, biotechnology from UMASS, Lowell.

John Mumira is an application scientist with our viral vector technology and innovation team in Bedford, MA. He is currently working on viral vector production & scale-up process development and optimization as part of the upstream bioprocessing team. John has been in the life science industry for more than 18 years, focused on product development and process optimization. He holds a B.S. in biomedical laboratory and clinical sciences from Boston University.

Akshat Gupta is the associate director of applications engineering, Global Biopharma Center of Excellence. Akshat has more than 10 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, focused on process development and manufacturing sciences. His areas of specialization include cell culture clarification and tangential flow filtration. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where is also an adjunct faculty member in the chemical engineering department.