Prof. Maja Rupnik is microbiologist with research focus on anaerobic bacterium Clostridioides difficile, human microbiota and One Health aspects of microbiology. Her group is affiliated with two institutions: National laboratory for Health, environment and food and University of Maribor, Faculty of Medicine.

She was the president of Slovenian microbiological Society from 2016 to 2020. Since 2023 she is Editor-in-Chief of Anaerobe journal. She is also the president of International C. difficile symposium (ICDS) which since 2004 brings together large community of researchers, clinicians and industry partners.

Dijana Škorić (ORCID 0000-0002-1625-1598) obtained BSc in Molecular Biology from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb in 1992, MSc in 1996 and a PhD in 2000. She is a full professor at the Dept. of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, where she teaches at all study levels. Her scientific interests are: molecular diversity and epidemiology of viruses and subviral pathogens, especially plant viruses and viroids. She was a visiting researcher at the Dipartimento di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bari, Fulbright scholar at the Dept. of Plant Pathology, Univ. of California-Riverside, EMBO short-term fellow, and later a TEMPUS scholar, at the Dpt. di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bologna. She was a PI of a project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, participated in EU projects (FP6 SEE-ERA.NET, Horizon 2020, four COST Actions). She led a Croatian Microbiological Society (CMS) service learning project financed by the European Social Fund and introduced “Service learning in biology” course to the Dept. of Biology study curriculum. D. Škorić was the president of the scientific and/or organization committees of several international conferences (European Meeting on Plum Pox 2007, 5th Congress of the CMS with International Participation 2012, Power of Viruses 2018). She represented CMS at FEMS, IUMS, and still does at the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). She is a current CMS president. Her papers and book chapters are listed at: https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/searchByContext/2/6096 and https://scholar.google.hr/citations?user=FffIRPwAAAAJ&hl=en

Professor Marina Santic is Head of the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, and Vice Rector for Science and Arts at the University of Rijeka, Croatia.

Her research focuses on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, host–pathogen interactions, microbiota dynamics, and microbiome-based therapies, with particular expertise in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Her work aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying disease development and the role of the microbiota in health, immunity, and disease.

Professor Santic has mentored more than ten PhD students and numerous early-career researchers. She has served as Principal Investigator and collaborator on multiple national and international research projects, establishing extensive scientific collaborations worldwide.

She has published extensively in high-impact international journals and has received numerous awards and recognitions for her scientific achievements and contributions to research and higher education. Through her research, mentorship, and academic leadership, she continues to advance the fields of microbiology, infectious diseases, and microbiome science.

At the OGMBT meeting, she brings expertise in disease pathogenesis, microbiota research, and fecal microbiota transplantation, contributing to discussions on innovative microbiome-based therapeutic approaches.

I am a virologist at the National Institute of Biology (NIB), Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology, where I lead the Microbiology group and work across organismal and environmental virology. My scientific path began with studies in biology in Ljubljana and research training in Innsbruck, where I first explored evolutionary and ecological questions through plant phylogenetics. During my PhD, I shifted toward high‑throughput sequencing and the discovery and diversity of plant viruses, a direction that later expanded into broader virome ecology.
Today, my research focuses on understanding viral diversity in plants, invertebrates, and freshwater environments using metagenomics and bioinformatics. I am particularly interested in virus ecology and how sequencing‑based approaches can improve virus detection and environmental surveillance. Beyond fundamental research, I have helped implement modern diagnostics for plant viruses and contributed to wastewater‑based monitoring of SARS‑CoV‑2. I enjoy mentoring young researchers, fostering collaborative and inclusive science, and connecting molecular virology with ecology to better understand viruses as integral components of ecosystems.

Dr. Patrick Mikuni-Mester ist seit 2025 Assistenzprofessor für innovative Lebensmittelhygienesysteme an der Klinischen Abteilung für Nutztier- und Lebensmittelsystemwissenschaften der Veterinärmedizinischen Universität Wien. Der Mikrobiologe (Universität Bremen) verfügt über mehr als zehn Jahre Erfahrung in mikrobiologischem Nachweis, Lebensmittelsicherheit und anwendungsnahen Hygienelösungen, erworben u. a. in Kooperationen zwischen Wissenschaft und Industrie sowie in zwei Christian-Doppler-Laboratorien zu Kontaminationsüberwachung und molekularbiologischer Lebensmittelanalytik.  

Seit Mai 2025 leitet er das Christian Doppler Labors „DeReD“ zur Detektion und Reduktion ruhender Bakterien mit dem Ziel die Lebensmittelsicherheit und öffentliche Gesundheit zu verbessern.  

Weitere Schwerpunkte der Arbeitsgruppe sind antimikrobielle ionische Flüssigkeiten, molekulare Lebensmitteldiagnostik sowie Mikroplastik im Lebensmittelumfeld.

Prof. Maja Rupnik is microbiologist with research focus on anaerobic bacterium Clostridioides difficile, human microbiota and One Health aspects of microbiology. Her group is affiliated with two institutions: National laboratory for Health, environment and food and University of Maribor, Faculty of Medicine.

She was the president of Slovenian microbiological Society from 2016 to 2020. Since 2023 she is Editor-in-Chief of Anaerobe journal. She is also the president of International C. difficile symposium (ICDS) which since 2004 brings together large community of researchers, clinicians and industry partners.

Professor Marina Santic is Head of the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, and Vice Rector for Science and Arts at the University of Rijeka, Croatia.

Her research focuses on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, host–pathogen interactions, microbiota dynamics, and microbiome-based therapies, with particular expertise in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Her work aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying disease development and the role of the microbiota in health, immunity, and disease.

Professor Santic has mentored more than ten PhD students and numerous early-career researchers. She has served as Principal Investigator and collaborator on multiple national and international research projects, establishing extensive scientific collaborations worldwide.

She has published extensively in high-impact international journals and has received numerous awards and recognitions for her scientific achievements and contributions to research and higher education. Through her research, mentorship, and academic leadership, she continues to advance the fields of microbiology, infectious diseases, and microbiome science.

At the OGMBT meeting, she brings expertise in disease pathogenesis, microbiota research, and fecal microbiota transplantation, contributing to discussions on innovative microbiome-based therapeutic approaches.

Dijana Škorić (ORCID 0000-0002-1625-1598) obtained BSc in Molecular Biology from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb in 1992, MSc in 1996 and a PhD in 2000. She is a full professor at the Dept. of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, where she teaches at all study levels. Her scientific interests are: molecular diversity and epidemiology of viruses and subviral pathogens, especially plant viruses and viroids. She was a visiting researcher at the Dipartimento di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bari, Fulbright scholar at the Dept. of Plant Pathology, Univ. of California-Riverside, EMBO short-term fellow, and later a TEMPUS scholar, at the Dpt. di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bologna. She was a PI of a project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, participated in EU projects (FP6 SEE-ERA.NET, Horizon 2020, four COST Actions). She led a Croatian Microbiological Society (CMS) service learning project financed by the European Social Fund and introduced “Service learning in biology” course to the Dept. of Biology study curriculum. D. Škorić was the president of the scientific and/or organization committees of several international conferences (European Meeting on Plum Pox 2007, 5th Congress of the CMS with International Participation 2012, Power of Viruses 2018). She represented CMS at FEMS, IUMS, and still does at the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). She is a current CMS president. Her papers and book chapters are listed at: https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/searchByContext/2/6096 and https://scholar.google.hr/citations?user=FffIRPwAAAAJ&hl=en

Ana Bielen is an associate professor at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology. Her research focuses on the disease ecology of freshwater pathogenic oomycetes and on how environmental factors shape pathogen performance, host susceptibility, and disease occurrence. Her group uses the Aphanomyces astaci–crayfish and Saprolegnia parasitica–fish systems to study the effects of temperature and host-associated microbiota on disease dynamics. The research combines cultivation-based microbiology with eDNA monitoring, qPCR and ddPCR, metabarcoding, genome and transcriptome sequencing, phenotypic characterization, controlled infection experiments, and modelling.

Prof. Maja Rupnik is microbiologist with research focus on anaerobic bacterium Clostridioides difficile, human microbiota and One Health aspects of microbiology. Her group is affiliated with two institutions: National laboratory for Health, environment and food and University of Maribor, Faculty of Medicine.

She was the president of Slovenian microbiological Society from 2016 to 2020. Since 2023 she is Editor-in-Chief of Anaerobe journal. She is also the president of International C. difficile symposium (ICDS) which since 2004 brings together large community of researchers, clinicians and industry partners.

Dijana Škorić (ORCID 0000-0002-1625-1598) obtained BSc in Molecular Biology from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb in 1992, MSc in 1996 and a PhD in 2000. She is a full professor at the Dept. of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, where she teaches at all study levels. Her scientific interests are: molecular diversity and epidemiology of viruses and subviral pathogens, especially plant viruses and viroids. She was a visiting researcher at the Dipartimento di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bari, Fulbright scholar at the Dept. of Plant Pathology, Univ. of California-Riverside, EMBO short-term fellow, and later a TEMPUS scholar, at the Dpt. di Patologia Vegetale, Univ. di Bologna. She was a PI of a project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, participated in EU projects (FP6 SEE-ERA.NET, Horizon 2020, four COST Actions). She led a Croatian Microbiological Society (CMS) service learning project financed by the European Social Fund and introduced “Service learning in biology” course to the Dept. of Biology study curriculum. D. Škorić was the president of the scientific and/or organization committees of several international conferences (European Meeting on Plum Pox 2007, 5th Congress of the CMS with International Participation 2012, Power of Viruses 2018). She represented CMS at FEMS, IUMS, and still does at the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). She is a current CMS president. Her papers and book chapters are listed at: https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/searchByContext/2/6096 and https://scholar.google.hr/citations?user=FffIRPwAAAAJ&hl=en

Professor Marina Santic is Head of the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, and Vice Rector for Science and Arts at the University of Rijeka, Croatia.

Her research focuses on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, host–pathogen interactions, microbiota dynamics, and microbiome-based therapies, with particular expertise in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Her work aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying disease development and the role of the microbiota in health, immunity, and disease.

Professor Santic has mentored more than ten PhD students and numerous early-career researchers. She has served as Principal Investigator and collaborator on multiple national and international research projects, establishing extensive scientific collaborations worldwide.

She has published extensively in high-impact international journals and has received numerous awards and recognitions for her scientific achievements and contributions to research and higher education. Through her research, mentorship, and academic leadership, she continues to advance the fields of microbiology, infectious diseases, and microbiome science.

At the OGMBT meeting, she brings expertise in disease pathogenesis, microbiota research, and fecal microbiota transplantation, contributing to discussions on innovative microbiome-based therapeutic approaches.

Nina Čuljak studied Biotechnology and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, where she obtained her master’s degree in 2019. In 2020, she joined the Laboratory for Antibiotic, Enzyme, Probiotic and Starter Cultures Technology as a research assistant and enrolled in the doctoral programme in Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering, Food Technology and Nutrition. She completed her PhD with a thesis entitled Potential Therapeutic Biomolecules of Probiotics as Living Drugs within the Croatian Science Foundation project Potential Therapeutic Biomolecules of Next-Generation Probiotics. Since 2024, she has been working as a Senior Assistant at the Laboratory for General Microbiology and Food Microbiology at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology.

Her research interests focus on probiotics, microbial biotechnology, food microbiology, and the characterization of microorganisms and their bioactive compounds for applications in food, biomedicine, and sustainable biotechnology. In 2022, she was awarded a FEMS Research and Training Grant, which enabled a three-month research stay at the Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy. She has co-authored 16 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has presented her research at numerous national and international conferences. In addition to her research, she is actively involved in teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and participates in science outreach activities.

Christa Schleper is professor of Microbiology and Genetics at the University of Vienna since 2007. She has studied Biology in Germany, was postdoc in California, assistant professor in Darmstadt, Germany, and full professor at the University of Bergen, Norway, before she came to Vienna. Her research interests focus on the ecology and evolution of different groups of archaea, in particular she studies currently the role of the widespread group of amonia oxidizing archaea in the global nitrogen cycle and the biology of the recently discovered Asgard archaea from shallow marine sediments. Schleper is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, the EMBO society and the Austrian and European Academies of Sciences. She received the Austrian Wittgenstein price for her research in 2022.

David trained in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and Computational Biology at ETH Zurich before beginning his work on machine learning methods for omics data in Nir Yosef's lab at UC Berkeley. He continued this research during his PhD with Fabian Theis at TU Munich, where he developed machine learning models for single-cell and spatial omics data. In 2022, he joined the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center and the lab of Alex Shalek as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, focusing on incorporating prior knowledge into machine learning models of omics data. Since 2024, David has been an Assistant Professor at the Institute of AI of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, where he works at the intersection of AI and systems biology.

Heike Rampelt is a group leader at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Her group investigates the functional organization of the mitochondrial inner membrane, in particular the functions and crosstalk of proteins and phospholipids that give rise to the complex architecture, functional asymmetry and dynamics of the mitochondrial inner membrane.

Dr. Carlos J. Peniche Silva is a postdoctoral researcher at the MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine, Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He obtained a Licentiate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Havana, Cuba, in 2014 and subsequently worked on in situ drug delivery systems at the Center of Biomaterials of the same university. In 2017, he received a DAAD scholarship to conduct research on dendriplex-based therapeutics for bone tissue engineering at the Technical University of Munich, Germany.

He joined Maastricht University in 2019 as a PhD candidate and obtained his PhD in 2024 with the Thesis work “Advancing tendon-to-bone enthesis tissue engineering, from biomimetic constructs to microRNA modulation”.  As a recipient of the Kootstra Talent Fellowship for Postdocs, his current research investigates the role of microRNAs in tendon mechanobiology and regeneration.

Dr. Peniche Silva has received several competitive awards and grants, including the ON Kick Starter Grant 2020, the ESCI Mobility Grant 2022, the ON/EORS Education Grant 2023, the TENET COST Action Short-Term Scientific Mission Grant 2024, the ON/TERMIS Education Grant 2026, and the TERMIS EU PhD Award 2026.

Biosketch: Judith Frydman grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she majored in Chemistry and received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires.  The central theme of Dr. Frydman’s research is to understand how cells maintain a healthy and functional proteome by focusing on biological mechanisms controlling cellular protein folding, aggregation and quality control. Major contributions to the field of cellular protein folding include the discovery and characterization of ring-shaped chaperonin  TRiC/CCT and establishing that protein folding in in eukaryotic cells occurs cotranslationally as polypeptides emerge from ribosomes during their biosynthesis. IFrydman's work showed distinct molecular chaperones are specifically recruited to bind ribosome-nascent chain complexes to assist cotranslational folding. These fundamental discoveries have shaped current thinking of protein folding in vivo. She is currently the Donald Kennedy Chair in Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and a professor in the Departments of Biology and Genetics. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Cleo received her PhD in Biological Sciences from University College London. She was then awarded a MRC Career Development Fellow at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College London. During this time, she developed a keen interest in senescence. 

In 2006, she moved to the Blizard Institute at Queen Mary University of London to pursue her interest in senescence, spending four years in the laboratory of Prof. David Beach (FRS). Cleo established her own independent lab in 2010 and her team explore the role of senescence in ageing and cancer.

Senescence is one of the nine hallmarks of ageing and targeting cellular senescence represents an exciting strategy for promoting healthy ageing. Our ageing team are interested in:

- understanding the fundamental mechanisms that underpin this complex and often context dependent cellular programme;

- finding novel routes to cellular rejuvenation;

- exploring how senescence underpins ageing phenotypes; and

- discovering novel senostatic and senolytic approaches for healthy ageing.

Beyond the lab, Cleo is the Academic lead for our MB PhD programme which helps train future leaders in clinical research, and she chairs the Institute's working group on Bullying and Harassment. She is President of the International Cell Senescence Association, a global community of researchers united in advancing our understanding of the roles that senescence plays in health, ageing and disease. She is also the Scientific Co-ordinator for the EU COST Action Senescence2030, a network of experts to advance our understanding of senescence.

Dr. Ajasja Ljubetič is a Research Assistant Professor and group leader at the Department of Synthetic Biology and Immunology at the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia.

His research focuses on designing dynamic proteins and molecular machines by combining the Rosetta platform with state-of-the-art deep learning approaches. His team is developing a pipeline for de novo protein design (https://github.com/ajasja/prosculpt) with the aim to make protein design easier for noncomputational scientists. Dr. Ljubetič was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to train in protein design in the laboratory of Nobel laureate prof. David Baker. He is currently the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project PROPEL, which aims to engineer protein-based molecular machines. More information about his research is available at  https://ljubetic-lab.si/.

Dr. Ajasja Ljubetič is a Research Assistant Professor and group leader at the Department of Synthetic Biology and Immunology at the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia.

His research focuses on designing dynamic proteins and molecular machines by combining the Rosetta platform with state-of-the-art deep learning approaches. His team is developing a pipeline for de novo protein design (https://github.com/ajasja/prosculpt) with the aim to make protein design easier for noncomputational scientists. Dr. Ljubetič was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to train in protein design in the laboratory of Nobel laureate prof. David Baker. He is currently the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project PROPEL, which aims to engineer protein-based molecular machines. More information about his research is available at  https://ljubetic-lab.si/.

Nico Lachmann is Professor at Hannover Medical School and leads a translational research group focused on human stem cell technologies, macrophage biology and immune-cell manufacturing. He is also affiliated with the Fraunhofer ITEM, where his work connects advanced cell-production technologies with biomedical research, safety assessment and therapeutic development. His scientific training included research experience at Yale University, followed by postdoctoral work at Hannover Medical School and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He subsequently established an interdisciplinary research programme at the interface of pluripotent stem cells, hematopoiesis, innate immunity and regenerative medicine. A major focus of his work is the development of scalable and standardized processes for generating human immune cells from induced pluripotent stem cells. His group has established hematopoietic organoid systems that function as renewable production units for macrophages and other immune-cell populations, enabling continuous cell harvesting and providing a basis for decentralized and potentially off-the-shelf manufacturing. His research spans immune-cell therapies, disease modelling, organoid technologies, inhalation toxicology and the engineering of immune cells with defined therapeutic functions. Particular emphasis is placed on translating fundamental knowledge of human hematopoietic development into robust biotechnological manufacturing platforms and clinically relevant cell products. His work has been supported by national and European funding programmes, including three ERC grants.

Florian Grebien is the Professor of Medical Biochemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of leukemia development and progression to identify novel entry points for targeted treatments. Using novel tools and approaches, including transcriptomics, proteomics, functional genomics, and high-resolution imaging, his team studies the cellular and molecular effects of cancer-associated oncoproteins as well as molecular mechanisms that modulate the susceptibility of leukemia cells to anticancer drugs. Florian obtained his PhD from the Medical University of Vienna under the joint supervision of Ernst Müllner (Medical University of Vienna) and Hartmut Beug (Research Institute for Molecular Pathology). During his PhD work, he studied the role of signaling pathways on erythrocyte differentiation. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the team of Giulio Superti-Furga at CeMM. Using a combination of cell biology, protein biochemistry, and chemical biology, he identified molecular mechanisms that underlie oncoprotein-driven leukemia. From 2014 to 2018, Florian Grebien was principal investigator and group leader at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research (LBI-CR) in Vienna, supported by an ERC Starting Grant. In January 2018, he was appointed professor and head of the Institute for Medical Biochemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. In February 2023, Florian Grebien joined the St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI) as principal investigator and CeMM in October 2023 as adjunct PI.

Daniel Volke is a Senior Researcher and Co-PI at the Center for Biosustainability since 2023. From 2021 to 2023, he completed a tenure-track at the Technical University of Denmark. His work focuses on genome and metabolic engineering tool development in environmental bacteria as well as on enzymatic activity screening through growth-coupled assays and prototyping in cell free transcription and translation reaction. He uses these tools to develop efficient cell factories and to analyze the native metabolism in soil bacteria. He has authored more than 45 publications (H-index: 22). He worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, where he investigated terpenoid synthesis in E. coli for industrial applications in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for chemical ecology (ICE). He received his PhD from RWTH Aachen University in 2017. The main topic of the thesis was isotopic non-stationary flux analysis of a secondary metabolic pathway.

Gregory Vladimer, PhD, is Co-Founder and CEO of Graph Therapeutics, a Vienna-based techbio company applying multimodal perturbation modeling to inflammation and immunology drug discovery and development.

He earned his PhD in innate immunity from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and was a senior postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Giulio Superti-Furga at CeMM, the Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He was Scientific Co-Founder and CSO of Allcyte, a CeMM spin-off, and subsequently VP of Translational Research at Exscientia. He co-founded Graph Therapeutics in 2024.

Prof. Omry Koren is a Full Professor at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University. A leading expert in the human microbiome, his research focuses on the complex interactions between microbiota and the host endocrine system, behavior, and development in both health and disease. He earned his PhD and MSc in Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology from Tel-Aviv University and completed postdoctoral training at Cornell University. Prof. Koren is a highly influential figure in his field, having been recognized as one of the world's most highly cited researchers (top 1%) annually since 2018. He has secured prestigious funding, including an ERC Consolidator Grant for his work on the microbiome and aggression, and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes.

Guido Kroemer is currently Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris-Cité, Director of the research team "Metabolism, Cancer and Immunity" of the French Medical Research Council (INSERM), Director of the Metabolomics and Cell Biology platforms of the Gustave Roussy Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Hospital Practitioner at the Hôpital Européen George Pompidou, Paris, France.

Dr. Kroemer’s work focuses on the pathophysiological implications of cell stress and death in the context of aging, cancer and inflammation. He discovered the ignition of regulated cell death pathways by mitochondrial membrane permeabilization, the decisive role of immunogenic cell death in anticancer treatments, as well as the cytoprotective and antiaging effects of macroautophagy. 

Dr. Kroemer’s contributions have been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the European Union–sponsored Descartes Prize and two European Research Council Advanced Investigator Awards. He has also received the most prestigious cancer research honors from Belgium (Baillet-Latour Health Prize), France (Prix Duquesne, Prix Léopold Griffuel, Grand Prix Ruban Rose) and Switzerland (Brupbacher Prize), as well as most generously endowed national science awards from Italy (Lombardia è Ricerca Prize) and Portugal (BIAL Biomedical Research Award).

Alexander K. H. Weiss heads the Mitochondrial Metabolism and Cellular Senescence group at the Institute for Biomedical Aging Research, University of Innsbruck. His research examines how mitochondrial metabolism influences cellular senescence, stress responses, aging and cancer. A major focus is FAHD1, a mitochondrial enzyme involved in oxaloacetate metabolism and mitochondrial homeostasis. His group uses biochemical, molecular, cellular, structural and computational approaches to investigate the consequences of altered mitochondrial metabolism for cellular function and disease-associated phenotypes. Experimental models include human cell systems and Caenorhabditis elegans, with current work addressing mitochondrial quality control, redox regulation and metabolic dependencies in cancer cells.

Dr Stärkel is full professor of hepato-gastroenterology at the Université Catholique de Louvain.  He co-founded and is currently the head of the alcohol withdrawal unit at Saint Luc University hospital in Brussels which is a multidisciplinary clinical and research entity. He is also head of the hepato-gastroenterology research laboratory and vice-president of the clinical and experimental research institute of the university. His main clinical focus lies in hepatology and in particular in alcohol-associated liver disease. His principal research aims are to establish a bridge between preclinical animal models and translational/clinical research in human subjects suffering from alcohol-associated liver disease and alcohol dependence. Dr Stärkel is leading several research projects with particular focus on the gut-liver and the gut-brain axis in alcohol dependent patients. He established several national and international collaborations in the field of hepatology and alcohol research. As an active clinical and basic science researcher, he published more than 150 papers in high ranked peer-reviewed journals and contributed several chapters to books in the field of hepatology and alcohol research. He is a member of several national and international scientific societies and acts as an associate editor for international journals.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Schillberg is Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME and heads the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at RWTH Aachen University. He has more than 30 years of experience in biotechnology, with a focus on the production of recombinant proteins in various expression systems, the development of metabolic pathways, strategies for scaling biological processes, and contained environment agriculture. He is the author of more than 200 publications and patents. A key goal of his work is the translation of research and development into industrial applications. Several processes developed at his institute are already being used in industry, including plant stem cells for the cosmetics industry, a cell-free expression system based on tobacco cells, and a new concept for vertical farming for the cultivation of crops.

Dr. Bernd Boidol is CEO of Proxygen, a biotech company pioneering induced proximity therapeutics, advancing the field beyond first-generation molecular glue degraders to target previously undruggable proteins. He holds a PhD in Oncology and a background spanning Molecular Biology and Business Administration. Before joining Proxygen he worked as a management consultant helping life science companies scale new business models around emerging modalities.

As CEO of Proxygen, Dr. Boidol has secured multiple large-scale pharma partnerships with a cumulative deal value of more than $5B, most recently with Merck US. He has built the team behind Proxygen's proprietary discovery engine and advanced a pipeline targeting historically difficult-to-drug targets, including p300 in prostate and lung cancer and CDK12 in HER2+ brain metastases. Proxygen was named to Fierce Biotech's "Fierce 15" and is targeting clinical entry for its lead programs in the next 18 months.

Dr. Bernd Boidol is CEO of Proxygen, a biotech company pioneering induced proximity therapeutics, advancing the field beyond first-generation molecular glue degraders to target previously undruggable proteins. He holds a PhD in Oncology and a background spanning Molecular Biology and Business Administration. Before joining Proxygen he worked as a management consultant helping life science companies scale new business models around emerging modalities.

As CEO of Proxygen, Dr. Boidol has secured multiple large-scale pharma partnerships with a cumulative deal value of more than $5B, most recently with Merck US. He has built the team behind Proxygen's proprietary discovery engine and advanced a pipeline targeting historically difficult-to-drug targets, including p300 in prostate and lung cancer and CDK12 in HER2+ brain metastases. Proxygen was named to Fierce Biotech's "Fierce 15" and is targeting clinical entry for its lead programs in the next 18 months.