Annual congress on CRISPR-Cas9 Technology and Genetic Engineering October 24-25, 2018 Dallas, USA

Hamutal Meiri, PhD, MBA has a BSc degree in Biology from Ben-Gurion University (1973), an MBA degree from the Tel Aviv University School of business management (1995) and a PhD from the Hebrew University in Neurosciences (1980). She was a post-doc fellow of the Weil-Cornell Med. College in Neuroscience, and has been a faculty member of the Dep. of Physiol. & Pharmacol at Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, and of Physiol. & Biophys. at the Technion, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. She was also a Visiting Prof. at Pharmacology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, in the Psychiatric Research at Mount Sinai hospitals and in Pharmacology at New York University School of Medicine. In Telemedicine she established and chaired Israel Telemedicine Forum and served as the first Director of the Israel National Committee of Biotechnology. Dr. Meiri was a Director of a Chief Scientist 's Biotechnology Consortium, the Director of the North Carolina-Israel Science and Technology Fund, and the CEO of Diagnostic Technologies Ltd. in fetal medicine. She is currently the CEO and Chairman of the Board of TeleMarpe Ltd., and a consultant to the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD) in Neurotech. Between 2006-2010 she was the coordinator of FP6 project Pregenesys. In 2012 she joined project NanoAthero (FP7). In 2013 she became the exploitation Director of Project ASPRE (FP7). ASPRE was completed with a major publication in the NEJM published June 28, 2017

Dr. Hamutal Meiri is engaged in Project Obediome (BIRD-F) comparing the microbiome of slim and obese/diabetics and the impact of bariatric surgery. The study has no expanded to compare obese diabetic of China, Israel and the USA via China-Israel MOST project. In fetal medicine she is engaged in in developing DNA/RNA based molecular biomarkers to predict preeclampsia and the design of novel therapies such as Eclampsin to fight preeclampsia

2009-Present Ph.D. Bioengineering, UC San Diego 2004-2009 Staff Biochemical Engineer, Bioprocess R&D, Merck & Co. Inc. 2000-2004 B.S. Chemical Engineering, Rutgers University

research focus is on applying and integrating multi-omic data types to the study of microorganisms.He apply next-generation sequencing technology and bioinformatics predictions to characterize features of the genome, the transcriptome, the proteome, and regulation.

Dr. Lihua Julie Zhu is a research professor and the head of Bioinformatics Core in the department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Prior to joining UMASS, she served as the Director of Bioinformatics Consulting Core and the Director of Clinical Informatics Group of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center (RHLCCC) at Northwestern University. Her work is devoted to the understanding of gene regulation and cancer biology, biomarker discovery, and development and application of genome editing technology. Her expertise is algorithms and computational tool development. Her group is an active contributor to the open-source open-development Bioconductor project. They have developed a dozen packages with various utilities, ranging from gRNA design, machine learning, peak calling, annotation, data integration to visualization. Among them, two packages are for designing and evaluating gRNAs for the genome editing technology using engineered CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases: CRISPRseek is for designing target-specific and efficient gRNAs; and GUIDEseq is for evaluating the specificity of gRNAs using GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq technologies. Among her 76 publications

Bioinformatics

B.S. Field Crops, Cukurova University, 1993 Ph.D. Plant Genetics and Breeding University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2002

Analysis of abiotic (drought and heat) and biotic stress (insects and pathogens) response mechanisms of important genes and manipulation of these genes employing genomics and bioinformatics tools. A better understanding of gene transmission and silencing.

Having had the good fortune to be involved in the development of the mouse genetic engineering field, Dr. Doetschman has used that technology over the past 25 years to discover the in vivo functions of the three TGFb ligands and the high and low molecular weight isoforms of FGF2. The resulting mouse strains have led to a wide-ranging set of investigations from heart, bone and palate development, to adult heart disease, autoimmune disease and colon cancer. Dr. Doetschman's current research program focuses on modeling a human TGFβ3 SNP that leads to connective tissue disorders; and on TGFβ1 and SMAD3 function in T-cell homeostasis and colon cancer. He has established and directed genetically engineered mouse core facilities at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Arizona, was consultant for the establishment of mouse genetic engineering at the Institute of of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore, and was the scientific advisor for development of the NCI-Frederick’s Mouse Models of Human Cancer Repository. Dr. Doetschman has been Co-Director of the Experimental Mouse Shared Resource since 2008.

TGFβ signaling is disrupted in up to a quarter of all human colon cancer, and inflammation often accompanies human colon cancer. We are using next generation sequencing to investigate the changes in colon mucosa/microbiome interactions that occur in a TGFβ-signaling-deficient mouse model of inflammation-associated colon cancer. Another study utilizes a nuclear green fluorescent protein indicator mouse for isolation and whole exome analysis of singe nuclei from cells at the initiating stages of mouse prostate and pancreatic cancer. This indicator mouse has applicability to a wide range of cancer models.

Fuad Fares has completed his D.Sc studies at the Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral studiesat the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis Missouri. He is the director of the Department of Molecular Genetics at Carmel Medical Center and associated professor at the Department of Human Biology, University of Haifa. He has published more than 75 papers in reputed journals and serving as a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education. He is the inventor of designing long-acting recombinant proteins and the initiator of PROLOR Biotech company

Molecular Endocrinology Molecular Genetics Apoptosis cancer

Professor Krams holds a Chair in Molecular Bioengineering at Imperial College, London. Prior to joining Imperial College he worked as Associate Professor in the department Bioengineering, Thoraxcentre Rotterdam, the Netherlands and as associate professor/chair in the department of Medical Physics, Free University in Amsterdam. He received his Medical Degree and Ph.D. from the Free University, Amsterdam in 1989.

His research is focussed on the molecular mechanism underlying biomechanical stimuli. To that end he uses a combination of engineering techniques (imaging, systems biology and synthetic biology) and molecular techniques (high throughput, qPCR, life cell imaging) to study the interaction of gene expression and shear stress and wall stress on cells in culture and in whole animals.

Vakhtang Barbakadze has his expertise in isolation and structure elucidation of a new series of plant polyethers, which are endowed with pharmacological properties as anti-cancer agents. Besides, he interested in enantioselective synthesis and biological activities of basic monomeric moiety of these biopolyethers, synthesis of enantiomerically pure epoxides as chiral building blocks for the production of synthetic analogues of natural polyethers. In 1978 and 1999 he has completed his Ph.D and D.Sci. from Institute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia and Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Tbilisi, Georgia, respectively. 2006 up to date he is the head of laboratory of plant biopolymers at the Tbilisi State Medical University Institute of Pharmacochemistry. 1996 and 2002 he has been a visiting scientist at Utrecht University (faculty of pharmacy), The Netherlands, by University Scholarship and The Netherlands organization for scientific research Scholarship Scientific Program, respectively. He has published more than 81 papers in reputed journals.

Plant biopolymers, Organic Chemistry

Biotechnology at the Institute of Biology, Romanian Academy of Sciences, obtaining her PhD in Biology in 1987. Over the years she worked both as scientific research coordinator and was responsible for professional formation of young specialists as professor of plant biology and biotechnology at the Faculty of Biotechnologies, University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest. She has more than 70 articles published in scientific journals and 25 scientific presentations at national and international scientific events.

Microbial Biotechnology, Cell Biology and Plant Biotechnology

Professor in Department of Biochemistry, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Research Division, National Research Center, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

Biochemistry, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology

Professor S.L. Kothari, Ph.D., FBS, FISPM, FNASc, FNAAS is Director, Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur. Formerly, he held following positions: ï‚· Dean Faculty of Science and Director, Centre for Converging Technologies (CCT), ï‚· Professor and Head of Department of Botany and Director, PG School of Life Sciences and Coordinator, PG Course in Biotechnology, ï‚· Coordinator, UGC-UPE, DST-PURSE, DBT-IPLS Programmes University of Rajasthan. He has done B.Sc., M.Sc. (Botany) from Udaipur University and Ph.D from Rajasthan University. He is fellow, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Indian Botanical Society, International Society of Plant Morphologists

Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology, Biodiversity

Dr. Suja George Principal Scientist at MSSRF holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology. Her work has contributed to better understanding of plant abiotic stress tolerance. She has published several research articles on peer reviewed journals on molecular mechanisms of plant abiotic stress tolerance, and has presented her research finding at various conferences. Her areas of expertise include Biotechnology, molecular biology, tissue culture, biochemistry and bioinformatics. Dr. Suja George is a life member of many scientific bodies in India and abroad. She has been awarded several awards/fellowships including the DBT CREST award and the IUSSTF fellowship.

Senior Research Scientist working in the field of Plant Biotechnology, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics.

Professor of Ocular Biochemistry

Genetics of Ocular diseases Tissue and Cell culture, Stem Cell culture Multidrug resistance Angiogenesis in ARMD and glaucoma