Wendy Russell
Prof Jeroen Raes
Prof. Jeroen Raes (m) is associate professor at KU Leuven since 2013 and VIB group leader since 2009. His group currently consists of 16 scientists, with expertise in bioinformatics, systems biology, clinical research and microbiology. He has a substantial track record in microbiome research and has been pioneering the analysis and integration of meta-omics datasets (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, meta-metabolomics) with environmental, clinical, host omics and dietary data.
He was involved in the FP7 MetaHIT and NIH Human Microbiome Project (the latter as only European partner), which laid the foundations for the human microbiome field as it is today. Finally, his lab is performing a wide range of disease-related projects in a.o. IDB, diabetes, cancer, IBS and antibiotics resistance on national (FWO/IWT) funding and develops novel approaches and tools for microbiome research.
Jeroen Raes coordinates the Flemish Gut Flora project, a large scale microbiome- focused population cohort in Belgium, and is bioinformatics coordinator in the Tara Oceans project performing large-scale meta-omics analysis of plankton communities.
Eran Segal
Ariel Cohen
Dr. Ariel Cohen is Director of Business Development and Alliances at BiomX, a microbiome drug discovery company. Prior to his role in BiomX, Dr. Cohen co-founded two biotech companies: OnTimeBio (Diagnostics) and Ensof Biosystems (Target discovery) and managed development of three academic discoveries to drug development companies. Dr. Cohen held business development roles at Integra Holdings, Yissum (Hebrew University’s Tech Transfer Office), and Aurum Ventures MKI. Prior to that Dr. Cohen served as Senior Project Manager at Evogene (NYSE:EVGN) an agriculture biotechnology company. Dr. Cohen holds a Ph.D. in Systems Biology and an M.Sc. in Computational Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and has published in top peer-reviewed journals, including; Science, Nature and Cell.
Tony Liu
Dr. Liu is the Chief Scientific Officer and a Co-Founder of Boragen Inc., a startup that leverages a novel boron chemistry platform to address important crop and animal health problems. Dr. Liu obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2011 from Queen’s University in Canada. Subsequently, he joined Dr. Benkovic’s research group at Pennsylvania State University as a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral research fellow. It is out of this postdoctoral work that Boragen Inc. took shape; now based in North Carolina, Dr. Liu leads Boragen's world-class science and research team in the development of next-generation technologies that will uphold stewardship practices. Over the years Dr. Liu has generated over 30 peer reviewed articles and 9 patents/applications.
Richard LaDuca
Currently Rich is part of the technology leadership team within DuPont’s Industrial Biosciences (IB) Business. He works within a portfolio management team and has direct responsibilities for resource allocation for projects within IB as well as with our cross pillar partner programs. He has 34 years of experience in the development of bio-based products and new business initiatives.
Rich started his career in industrial biotechnology in 1984 as a research scientist when he joined Kodak’s Research Labs working with an interdisciplinary team to develop microbial cell factories to produce biochemicals. He has worked on programs to produce lysine, threonine, biotin, tryptophan, indigo and ascorbic acid. He was part of the Kodak team that helped form Genencor International where his efforts transitioned from research to business development. He has had an active role in establishing partnering relationships in the biochemicals and biomaterials science areas with companies such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Eastman Chemical Co. (Ascorbic Acid) , Dow Corning (Silicon Biotechnology Platform) and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (BioIsoprene).
Rich holds a Ph.D. in Microbial Cell Physiology from The University of Buffalo (Roswell Park Mem. Inst.) and completed a Post doctoral Fellowship Program in Biochemistry at the University of Rochester.