Lingyan Shi

Prof. Lingyan Shi’s research focuses on developing high-resolution, high-speed multimodal microscopy and its applications for studying metabolic dynamics in aging and diseases. She discovered the “Golden Window” for deep tissue imaging and developed the metabolic imaging platforms including “DO-SRS” and “STRIDE”. Shi group at UCSD transformed SRS into a super-resolution multiplex microscopy using A-PoD and PRM algorithms, uncovering lipid metabolic dynamics in the brain and fat tissues during aging processes. Dr. Shi holds 8 awarded patents. She received the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientist in 2018, the Hellman Fellowship Award in 2021-2022, the “Rising Star Award” from Nature Light Science & Applications in 2021, the rising star junior faculty award by BMES-Cell and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) society, the “Advancing Bioimaging Scialog Fellow” by RCSA and CZI, the “David L. William Lecture & Scholarship” Award from the Kern Lipid Conference, and the “Sloan Research Fellow” Award in Chemistry in 2023.

Stephen Wong

With over three decades of research and leadership experience in healthcare, tech industry, and academic medicine, Stephen is the John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair, Founding Chair of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering Department, Director of the T.T. & W.F. Chao Center for BRAIN, Associate Director of Houston Methodist Cancer Center, Houston Methodist Hospital; and Professor of Radiology, Neurosciences, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Cornell University. His research focuses on molecular mechanisms of cancer, neurological disorders and metabolic diseases and translates discoveries to improve diagnosis and treatment. He is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), Optica (formerly Optical Society in America), American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), and Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), as well as a licensed professional engineer (PE).

Nicholas Banovich

Dr. Nicholas Banovich is an Associate Professor at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the Director of TGen’s Center for Single Cell and Spatial Multiomics. Dr. Banovich received his undergraduate degree in Molecular Anthropology from Arizona State University before moving to the University of Chicago to pursue his PhD in Human Genetics jointly supervised by Dr. Yoav Gilad and Dr. Jonathan Pritchard. Dr. Banovich’s research program focuses on understanding how gene regulatory changes alter disease risk, progression, and treatment response. His group employs a combination of experimental and computational approaches, integrating molecular biology, genomics, and computational biology. Dr. Banovich has been an early adopter of both single cell and spatial transcriptomic technologies with the goal of studying gene regulatory changes in relevant tissues, at cell-type resolution, and in the proper disease and treatment context.

Alex Klimowicz

Alex Klimowicz is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Department of Immunology and Respiratory Disease Research at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  In this capacity he leads the Spatial Biology Lab, implementing and applying cutting edge spatial biology platforms and image analysis workflows to build target to disease linkage in human tissue specimens for projects and external collaborations across the Department.  Alex holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and has over 15 years of experience in the fields of digital pathology and quantitative immunohistochemsitry.  Prior to moving to Boehringer Ingelheim, Alex was an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Oncology at the University of Calgary, where he led a core quantitative immunohistochemsitry lab focused on cancer biomarker research.

Sripad Ram

Sripad Ram heads the digital pathology and image analysis group at Pfizer which supports histopathology image analysis for preclinical and early-stage clinical programs across the Pfizer portfolio. His research interests include digital scoring of IHC biomarkers for clinical specimens and AI/ML algorithm development for whole-slide image analysis. He received his PhD in Bioengineering from UT Southwestern Medical Center and continued his postdoctoral research at the same institution as a National Multiple Sclerosis Society Postdoctoral Fellow where he developed novel microscopy tools to image macromolecule transcytosis across the blood-brain barrier at the single molecule level. He continued is postdoctoral work in the field of cancer therapeutics and antibody engineering where he investigated the trafficking mechanisms of trastuzumab in breast cancer cells. Prior to joining Pfizer, he worked at Carl Zeiss Inc as a microscopy systems specialist.

Elizabeth Neumann

Prof. Elizabeth Neumann is a classically trained mass spectrometrist that enjoys learning and applying other analytical approaches to mass spectrometry imaging for understanding the interface between chemistry and biology. She obtained her BS degree from Baylor University in 2015, where she did research under the supervision of Touradj Solouki. That’s where she developed a passion for mass spectrometry analysis. She then went on to do her doctoral work at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the guidance of Jonathan Sweedler and her postdoc at Vanderbilt University with Richard Caprioli as seen below. As an independent faculty, Elizabeth strives for a holistic mentoring approach of each student and strives towards tackling the most complex biological systems using cutting edge imaging approaches. She also is an avid board and video game enthusiast.

Akil Merchant

Akil Merchant, MD is a physician scientist whose lab studies how immune cells in the tumor microenvironment contribute to the development and progression of cancer. He is the founding director of the Spatial Molecular Profiling Shared Resource at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. He uses spatial profiling to develop novel biomarkers for cancer stratification and treatment prediction.

Arvind Rao

Arvind Rao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. His group uses image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e. single cell, tissue and radiology data). Such methods have found application in radiogenomics, drug repurposing based on phenotypic screens and spatial profiling in tissue, as well as in spatial transcriptomics. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics, and was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics.

Florica Constantine

Florica Constantine is currently a third-year PhD student in UC Berkeley’s Statistics department. Her interests are in developing and applying statistical methodology to solve problems in computational biology. Previously, she worked as a biostatistician for Duke University’s Center for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Innovation for several years analyzing ‘omics data. Prior to that, she obtained a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Kyoung Jae Won

Dr. Kyoung-Jae Won received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronics from Chung-Ang University, Korea in 1996, and 1998, respectively. He received his PhD in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Southampton, UK in 2006. He worked at the University of Copenhagen in 2006 and the University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 2007 to 2010 as a postdoctoral researcher. He joined at the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania as a Research Assistant Professor in 2011 and BRIC, University of Copenhagen as an Associate Professor in 2018. He joined Cedars-Sinai in 2022. He has interested in developing computational algorithms for single cell and spatial genomics data.

Maryam Afkarian

I obtained my MD-PhD at Washington University School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill-Cornell Medicine and in nephrology at the joint nephrology program of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Prior to moving to University of California, Davis in late 2016, I was an attending physician at the Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington. Currently, I hold the Harrison Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research and the Depner Endowed Professor of Medicine in Kidney Disease Research and at the University of California at Davis. For the past decade, my group has been using all three modes of translational research (epidemiology, bioinformatics of biofluids and interventional trials) to understand human diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools for it.

Yanxiang Deng

Yanxiang Deng is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and a member of Penn Epigenetics Institute, Institute on Aging, and Abramson Cancer Center. He obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). During his Ph.D., he developed microfluidic platforms for high-throughput single-cell mechanotyping and Intracellular delivery. Yanxiang then pursued his postdoctoral training in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University, during which he worked on developing new technologies for spatially resolved omics profiling. Yanxiang joined the faculty at Penn in 2023, and his lab is developing new tools at the intersection of microchip, microscopy, and genomics to study tissue complexity and reveal the features of tissue architecture in physiology and pathology. Yanxiang has recently been recognized by the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, NIAID New Innovators Award, and Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

Amos Lee

Amos Chungwon Lee, serves as the CEO and Co-founder of Meteor Biotech Co. Ltd., specializing in spatial omics solutions. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Seoul National University, South Korea, where he worked under Prof. Sunghoon Kwon, and holds a B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral research focused on Spatially-resolved Laser Activated Cell Sorting for Genomics and Transcriptomics in Biological Specimens, marking a significant contribution to the field of bioengineering and spatial omics. Postdoctorally, he concentrated on targeted spatial transcriptomics of tissue-infiltrating B cells under Prof. Byung Gee Kim at Seoul National University. Amos has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the KOGO Young Scientists’ Award and the Woongbee Next Generation Research Award, for his exceptional research contributions.

Anjali Rao

Anjali Rao is a Research Scientist in the Research Data Science team at Gilead Sciences. She obtained her Ph.D in Biological Sciences from Northwestern University and completed her postdoctoral training at NYU Langone Medical Center. Her work focuses on utilizing genomic technologies with a special focus on single cell RNAseq and spatial transcriptomics, to drive novel target identification across therapeutic areas in the early drug development pipeline.

Laura Dillon

Laura Dillon, Ph.D., is Vice President of Translational Medicine & Bioinformatics at Incendia Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotech focused on targeting immune excluded tumors. She is responsible for designing and implementing the company’s biomarker strategy across preclinical and clinical activities, including the use of traditional and novel imaging and omics technologies and analysis platforms, as well as novel target discovery and validation through the application of bioinformatics approaches to public and proprietary datasets. Dr. Dillon has over 15 years of experience in industry, academia, and government. Prior to joining Incendia, Laura was Director of Pathology Data Strategy at AstraZeneca where she focused on the development of machine learning-based methods to extract information from imaging datasets and the implementation of non-invasive bioimaging techniques to advance the drug development pipeline. Laura has a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Genomics from the University of Maryland.

Travis Clifton

G. Travis Clifton, MD, FACS translational clinical trialist working at Incendia Therapeutics. Incendia is focused on understanding and targeted immune exclusion in cancer and currently has an investigational therapeutic in Phase 1 clinical trial. His academic research has focused on cancer immunology/immunotherapy, cancer vaccines, and understanding the tumor microenviroment. He is also a practicing surgical oncologist with 18 years of experience.

Leah Schaffer

Leah Schaffer received her Bachelors in Chemistry from Creighton University and PhD in Chemistry from University of Wisconsin-Madison. During her PhD, she developed computational approaches for identifying modified proteins from mass spectrometry-based proteomics data. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Ideker lab at the University of California, San Diego. Her research involves integrating large-scale protein interaction networks and imaging datasets into maps of cell structure.

Sandra Diaz Garcia

Sandra Diaz-Garcia is a distinguished scientist specialized in molecular biology, genetics, and neurosciences. She earned her Bachelor’s degrees in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain, followed by a Ph.D. in Biomedicine in 2013.

In her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), she delved into CRISPR/Cas9 technology and molecular biology. She transitioned to Neuroscience in 2016, where she investigated neurodegenerative diseases, particularly ALS, identifying potential therapeutic targets. Recognized for her contributions, she served as an Assistant Project Scientist at UCSD, focusing on ALS, FTD and LATE research. In 2021, she joined J&J Innovative Medicine, in La Jolla, as a Scientist in Molecular Pathology, in the department of Preclinical Sciences & Translational Safety where she supports the discovery and development of a diverse portfolio of therapeutic solutions for patients.

Anka G. Ehrhardt

Dr. Ehrhardt is a biophysicist with a Ph.D. in human physiology. Throughout her career, she focused on driving biomedical research through efficient application of innovative technology strategies. She built and led successful teams in industry. At Merck, she headed a laboratory providing leading technologies for cell-based research from early discovery through manufacturing. At BMS, Dr. Ehrhardt led and grew an international clinical assay team to robustly cover large scale registrational and translational clinical analysis generating clinical decision-driving data and mechanistic insights for studies across disease areas. Recently, Dr. Ehrhardt fulfilled one of her scientific aspirations at CHDI Foundation, designing and implementing successful clinical biomarker strategies for Huntingtons disease. Currently, at Merck, Dr. Ehrhardt is providing strategic and technical leadership for the development and implementation of industry-leading and QC-friendly cell-based assays and models for potency determination that reflect the unique mechanisms of biologics products in clinical studies and beyond.

Andreas Wiesner

Dr. Andreas Wiesner is Head of Product Management for Lunaphore Technologies, a Bio-Techne brand. He obtained his Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland and conducted research in proteomics of Alzheimer’s Disease at the Brain and Mind Research Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. During his 15 years in Product Management he covered various industries including research, biopharma and CAR-T cell manufacturing and led the commercialization of a multitude of products in cell culture, microfluidics and proteomics. He joined Lunaphore Technologies in 2021 and, together with his team, has built Lunaphore’s product portfolio consisting of the hyperplex, immunofluorescence platform COMET™ for automated staining and imaging, SPYRE™ antibodies and Panel Builder for modular and instant mIF protocols, and HORIZON™, the specialized mIF tissue analysis software making Spatial Biology analysis intuitive even for beginners.

Ahmet Coskun

Eddie Molar

Dr. Edward “Eddie” Moler is an experienced Data Science and R&D Leader with over two decades of experience in the Life Sciences and Healthcare industry. He has a proven track record of delivering innovative R&D, products, and services that improve patient health and wellness. His passion is leveraging data science, AI/ML, and bioinformatics to accelerate the discovery and development of breakthroughs that can significantly improve health and quality of life.
Dr. Moler has held senior leadership positions at leading biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical diagnostics companies, including Juvena Therapeutics, Spatial Genomics, Quest Diagnostics, GE Healthcare, Novartis, and Tethys Bioscience.
Eddie has a PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley and a BS in Chemistry from Texas A&M University. He is a co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications and holds 7 issued patents and multiple pending applications on clinical risk algorithms, biomarkers, automated histopathology image analysis, drug targets, and discovery technology.

Ania Mikucka

Ania is an expert in research applications of traditional IHC and modern multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) biomarkers, having developed functional assays for cancer therapies for the last 13 years.

At Boehringer Ingelheim, she developed assays to evaluate immunotoxicity, including in the Cancer Immunology department where she developed IHC/IF and ISH protocols to quantify subsets of stromal and immune cell co-expression.  She has performed extensive IHC analysis of tumors, including immune cell populations, stromal content, vasculature of characterized model and stromal analysis.  At Ultivue, Ania works in partnership with biotechnology and pharma companies on analyzing tissue samples using image analysis tools to evaluate research hypotheses using advanced quantitative methods, including mIF biomarker assays and AI-driven spatial analysis of the tumor microenvironment.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Haven.

Priyank Patel

Priyank Patel is a Senior Scientist in the Department of Immunology & Respiratory Discovery Research at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  In this capacity he works in the Molecular Histopathology Lab where he implements computational approaches to perform integrative analysis of data generated by High-Plex/-Omics platforms in order to aide drug discovery and identify novel biomarkers.  Priyank holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from State University of New York. Prior to moving to Boehringer Ingelheim, Priyank worked for a biotechnology start-up in Brooklyn, NY developing an immunohistochemistry-based biomarker test for CDK4/6 inhibitors such as Ibrance. He also supported drug discovery efforts for a hormone receptor status agnostic liposomal:peptide based therapeutic for breast cancer treatment.

Dave Hoon

Expertise in the last 30 years has been in molecular translational research in solid tumors. Have published >450 publications in cancer related research. Have expertise in molecular and proteomic diagnosis and prognosis of various solid tumor in multiple clinical studies (Phase/2/3 trials). Experience in spatial molecular and proteomic profiling using various instrumentations in the last several years.

Mario Flores

Amy Jablonski,

Amy is a Technology and Applications Specialist at Miltenyi Biotec, Inc whose primary focus is Spatial Biology and Multiomics applications on the MACSima™ Platform. Prior to joining Miltenyi Biotec Inc., Amy was both a field application and sales specialist at GE Healthcare Life Sciences (now Cytiva) and was responsible for supporting their high and super resolution microscopes and high content platforms. Amy couples this experience with a strong biological imaging background, having received her doctorate degree in Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology studying the use of fluorescent proteins in novel imaging methods.