About

Eric de Groot, MindMeeting BV, is one of the first Meeting Designers. His pioneering work started in 1992; now he caters to the national (Dutch) market in his company De Wet van Thomas and internationally in MindMeeting BV. Thanks to his background in drama he takes a broad, human perspective to meetings and meeting processes. He sees meetings as potentially strong catalysts of success if action is involved in them. “Listening to presentations is only the beginning of learning and change“: he says. His meeting designs involve tailor-made interactions, crowdsourcing and group-work. He calls his live presentations Keyshops. Online he involves participants as good as possible.

Eric regularly conducts workshops and learning sessions for professionals all around the globe. He wrote ‘Into the Heart of Meetings’ referred to as the bible of the changing meeting industry. In 2023 ‘Meetings, by Default or by Design’ was released. A book offering design solutions in 40 different aspects of meetings.

Cecilia Domínguez Conde is a Group Leader at the Population & Medical Genomics programme of the Genomics Centre at Human Technopole (HT) in Milan. After training as a pharmacist in the University of Seville, Cecilia went on to do a PhD in Immunology at the Research Centre for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) in Vienna where her work focused on dissecting the genetic cause of molecularly undiagnosed primary immunodeficiencies using exome sequencing. In 2019 Cecilia joined the Teichmann lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where her focus has been to dissect the diversity of human immune cell types across lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues as part of the Human Cell Atlas initiative. Her research group at HT, established in 2022, uses cutting-edge genomic technologies to study developmental immunology in health and disease.

Susan Gasser studied at the University of Chicago (biophysics) and then completed her PhD at the University of Basel (biochemistry; with G Schatz) before a postdoc at the University of Geneva, where she studied human chromosome structure. She was group leader at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne from 1986 – 2001, then professor at the University of Geneva, before leading from 2004 – 2019, the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. Under her direction the institute became one of the leading biomedical research institutes in Europe, excelling on topics of neuronal circuitry, epigenetics, cell fate decisions and quantitative biology. Her own research team contributed insights into heterochromatin and genome stability in C. elegans and yeast, until 2021. She is now professor invité at the University of Lausanne and Director of the ISREC Foundation (www.isrec.ch), where she helps foster translational cancer research at the Agora Cancer Research Institute. She participates in numerous review boards and advisory committees in Switzerland, across Europe and in Japan, and actively promotes programs to advance the careers of women scientists.

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Susan Howlett is Professor of Pharmacology and Geriatric Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax where she has taught for more than 30 years. Her laboratory is recognized for work on cardiac excitation-contraction coupling. She has discovered profound differences in male and female heart cell function, how these change with age and how sex hormones regulate these processes. Her lab has pioneered the measurement of frailty in naturally aging animals with a novel "frailty index" (FI) tool based on deficit accumulation.  Her work shows that maladaptive, age-dependent changes in heart structure and function are better graded by the level of frailty than by age itself. Critically, cardiac aging and frailty are linked to inflammation in a highly sex-specific fashion.  Her work shows polypharmacy exacerbates mouse frailty, while deprescribing, exercise or geroprotector drugs attenuate frailty.  A translational scientist, she has used results from animal studies to develop a new tool based on lab results (the FI-Lab) to measure frailty in people.  As a frequent contributor to prominent journals (H-index 55), editor, reviewer and editorialist, Susan has a wide view of research across the life course in both sexes. Her personal and collaborative experience allows insight into the needs of researchers across the career span. Her mentorship of now generations of young scientists, the great bulk of whom have pursued academic careers, speaks to her ability to inspire young researchers.

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Sebastian Leidel is Full Professor of Cellular RNA Biochemistry at the University of Bern. He studied Protestant Theology in Siegen, Marburg, Jerusalem and Heidelberg and Cell and Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University. After completing his master’s thesis at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the laboratory of Pierre Gönczy at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research for his Ph.D, where he studied the role of SAS proteins in centrosome duplication in C. elegans. More and more attracted by biochemistry, he did postdoctoral work at the Institute of Biochemistry at ETH Zurich, where he discovered that ubiquitin-related modifier 1 (Urm1) acts as a sulfur carrier during the modification of cytoplasmic tRNA in eukaryotes. In 2008, he became a lecturer at the Institute of Biochemistry at the ETH Zurich before starting a Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster in 2009. There he continued his work on tRNA modifications and cellular quality control. He received an ERC Starting Grant in 2012 and was appointed full professor at the University of Bern in 2018. In 2019 he became an elected member of the Academia Europaea.

Nataliia Maronchuk, MSc.

University assistant

Clinical Psychologist in specialist training

PhD Student in Medical Psychology

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EDUCATION

10.2022 – ongoing – PhD Program in Medical Psychology/ Medical University Innsbruck (MUI), Austria

10.2021 – ongoing – Clinical Psychology postgraduate course/ Austrian Academy of Psychology (AAP), Austria

10.2016 – 07.2021 – Master of sciences in Psychology/ UMIT Hall in Tirol, The Tyrolean Private University, Austria

09.1998 – 07.2004 – Master of sciences in economics/ Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine

MAIN RESEARCH AREAS AND INTERESTS

Resilience, Coping with stress, Interventions for stress management, effects of electroconvulsive therapy on cognitive function, Affective Disorders, Schizophrenia

Andy Martin did his undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2003, focusing on protein folding and directed evolution. From 2003 to 2008 he pursued postdoctoral studies in the Biology Department at MIT, where he investigated the mechanisms of ATP hydrolysis, substrate recognition, and degradation by the bacterial AAA+ protease ClpXP. In 2008 Dr. Martin became a faculty member in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, and since 2015 he has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on the structure and function of AAA+ proteases and protein translocases, with a main emphasis on the ubiquitin-proteasome system.

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Carol Munro has a personal chair in Microbiology at the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen and is leader of the Microbiology & Immunity Research Theme. Carol is part of the Aberdeen Fungal Group and has over 25 years research experience investigating human fungal pathogens. Her research focusses on how fungal cell surface components contribute to virulence, host interactions, antifungal drug tolerance and resistance. Prof Munro has published 140 scientific publications, book chapters and reviews. She is Deputy Editor-in-Chief for FEMS Yeast Research, and is on the Microbiology Society’s Impact and Influence Committee.

Over the years Prof Munro’s group have worked with a number of anti-infectives companies through industrial-funded studentships, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and fees-for-service contracts. Carol, with partners at the Scottish Biologics Facility, has developed a proprietary drug development pipeline and exploited this to discover novel biologics-based antifungal immunotherapeutics that target the fungal cell wall. The team has received funding from Scottish Enterprise, BBSRC iCure Explore programme and Innovate UK for pre-clinical development of their antifungal antibodies with plans to spin-out a company Brigid Biologics.

Pavel was born in Kerch, Ukraine. In 2009 he received PhD in biochemistry from Technical University of Karlsruhe (KIT, Germany) with Prof. Anne Ulrich; and PhD in organic Chemistry from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University (Ukraine) with Prof. Igor Komarov.

In 2009, Pavel returned to Ukraine and joined “Enamine” company, where he is currently involved into discovery of novel building blocks for drug design.

Pavel´s research interests include fluoroorganic chemistry, chemistry of diazo compounds, photochemistry and saturated bioisosteres of the benzene. He is co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed research manuscripts. In 2017, he received Dr.Sci. in organic chemistry from the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University.

Wilfried Posch is Associate Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Head of the Department of Hygiene, Microbiology and Virology at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria. Wilfried studied Molecular Biology and the focus of his PhD was the characterization of host-pathogen interactions. During his research stays at the University College London, London, UK and at the INSERM UMR-S945 in Paris, France, he could further develop his knowledge in infection biology, inflammation and immune regulation. In 2018, he received his Habilitation in Immunology and established a research group at the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology. He and his team have been working on developing novel strategies for investigating microbial infections using human 3D cell culture models. Due to his ample expertise in T cell immunity, the group is currently also interested in studying adaptive immune responses within 3D cell culture systems.

Florian is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).

His lab aims to integrate cell and structural biology approaches to understand how higher-order protein assemblies are defined by the interplay between inter-molecular interactions and the geometrical/architectural boundary conditions of the biological system. Specifically, the lab studies the molecular organization of mechanisms that control cell migration and viral infection. To this end, the Schur lab develops new approaches in cellular cryo-electron microscopy, including specimen preparation, data analysis and high-resolution structure determination.

The research of Florian’s lab is supported by different national and international grants, including a ChanZuckerberg Initiative grant, an ERC Starting grant and an FWF Emerging Fields grant.

Florian is an EMBO Young Investigator and a recipient of the FEBS Excellence Award.

Nektarios Tavernarakis is Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at the Medical School of the University of Crete. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), and Research Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), where he is heading the Neurogenetics & Ageing laboratory. He has served as Chairman of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Governing Board, as Vice President of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC), and Director of IMBB. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), among others. His work focuses on the molecular mechanisms of necrotic cell death and neurodegeneration, the interplay between cellular metabolism and ageing, the mechanisms of sensory transduction and integration by the nervous system, and the development of novel genetic tools for biomedical research. He has received several notable scientific prizes, including two ERC Advanced Investigator Grants, and an innovation-supporting ERC Proof of Concept Grant. He is the recipient of the EMBO Young Investigator award, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel research award, the Scientific Prize for Medicine and Biology, the Excellence in Biomedical Sciences Award, of the Bodossaki Foundation, and many more.

My research broadly focuses on virus evolution, genome evolution, and phylogenetics. I pay special attention to virus-host co-evolution, the evolution and origin of specific genes, and the phenotypic consequences of genotypic novelty. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites infecting organisms across the three domains of life (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya). New viruses are continuously being discovered, and it has become apparent that they are virtually everywhere. Viruses are important drivers of ecosystem functioning, as viral infection can influence the evolution of their hosts and other organisms (including other viruses) interacting with these hosts.

Dr. Juliane Winkler is a Group Leader at the Center for Cancer Research of the Medical University of Vienna. She is a trained Pharmacist and received her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg (jointly EMBL, German Cancer Research Center, and Institute of Pathology), where she studied how nuclear transport alterations promote aggressive hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In her postdoc at the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Winkler worked with the late Zena Werb and Andrei Goga on the impact of tumor heterogeneity on breast cancer metastasis and developed and applied novel single-cell omics technologies. The Winkler lab is using single-cell omics and spatial technologies to understand the implications of tumor heterogeneity on the formation and progression of metastasis and metastatic niches. 

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