ANZSEV EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS
MINI SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 5th October 2023
9:45 am AEST – 1:00 pm AEST / 12:45 pm NZDT - 4:00 pm NZDT
Check your time zone carefully!
Virtual and open to all!
Please join us for a virtual symposium focussing on the state-of-the-art developments in EV research showcasing diverse career pathways for early career researchers. This short format 3.15 hr symposium will be held on Thursday 5th October 2023 from 9:45 am (AEST)/ 12.45 pm (NZST) and features presentations from a range of local and international researchers as well as panel discussion on career development.
Register here by EOD Wednesday 4th October to receive a link to the meeting.
Program
Speaker bios
KEYNOTE
Associate Professor Mei He, PhD
Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy,
UF Health Cancer Center, University of Florida.
Dr. He has strong research expertise in extracellular vesicles (EVs) and exosomes -mediated therapeutic delivery and biomarker discovery. She is named as the National Academy of Inventors Senior Member, the Board advisor of Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The Moore Inventor Fellowship review committee, and the Editorial Board Advisor for journal of Lab on Chip (LOC), also the Editorial Board member of Pharmaceutics and AAPS Taxonomy Committee. She received the NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award for Early-Stage Investigators in 2019, and the LOC Emerging Investigator Award in 2019. The multiple publications from her research group on exosome-based cancer research received the Most Downloaded Articles of 2016 (LOC), the Featured Cover Story of 2018 (LOC), Technology Readers Choice Award of 2018 (SLAS), and Top 100 Read Articles of 2019 (Scientific Reports from Nature Publishing Group). Her recent publications on extracellular vesicles and exosomes have appeared in the journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering, the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, and the Nature Communications Biology. Her research brings in novel microfluidic and nanotechnology for differentiating, isolating, and intravesicular loading EVs precisely, which presents a new way for developing precision medicine. Her research innovation leads to more than 20 pending and issued patents, and she is also the founder of Clara Biotech Inc. and ExoDeL Inc.
KEYNOTE
Dr. Charles Lai
Associate Research Fellow,
Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences,
Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Dr. Lai received his BSc and PhD from the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research focuses on developing molecular bioimaging tools to investigate biological phenomena in vivo, including nanosized bioparticles (i.e., extracellular vesicles [EVs]; exosomes) and DNA repairs. His recent research identified dynamic organotropism of cancer EVs, as well as non-invasively tracked DNA repair dynamics under genome-editing and anti-cancer treatments. His work has been published in top tier journals such as ACS Nano, Advanced Sciences, Advanced Materials, Nature Protocols, Nucleic Acids Research, and Nature Communications. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including International Outstanding Young Scholars Research Grant (National Science and Technology Council [NSTC], Taiwan), Excellent Young Scholar Research Grant (NSTC), Career Development Award (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Young Scientist Award (YungShin Tien Te Lee Biomedical Foundation, Taiwan), and Young Scholar Innovation Award (Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship, Taiwan).
SPEAKER
Dr. Joni Renee White
Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Cutaneous Biology Research Centre, Massachusetts General Hospital.
Dr. Joni Renee White did her Honors research at the University of Auckland (UoA), New Zealand in 2018, investigating a novel fluorescence spectroscopy technique alongside flow cytometry for a rapid antimicrobial susceptibility test. She received the Meat Industry Association of New Zealand Postgraduate Scholarship and the Maurice & Phyllis Paykel Trust Research Scholarship in Health Sciences for her Honors research. She also received the Graeme Lewis Prize in Microbiology. She began her PhD in 2019 in the Department of Molecular Medicine & Pathology, UoA, under two main supervisors Simon Swift (PhD) and Anthony Phillips (MD,PhD) and for which she received a UoA Doctoral Scholarship. Here she investigated the response of probiotic and pathogenic Escherichia coli to eukaryotic host extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the colon. She successfully defended my PhD thesis in July 2023. In February 2023, She relocated to Boston, MA, USA, to work in the lab of Paolo Dotto (MD, PhD) at the CBRC, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School for six months. In the Dotto Lab, she utilized an array of molecular techniques to investigate hormone signaling and nuclear stability in the skin where she began her postdoctoral research in October 2023. In 2020, she and several students from around the world set up the Student Network on EVs (SNEV), an international virtual network aiming to connect junior and early career EV researchers together. They have since held virtual annual conferences since 2021, and continue to host a variety of virtual seminars and events from diverse academic and industrial speakers.
SPEAKER
Dr. Antonia Reale
Medical oncology Registrar, Cabrini HEALTH, Malvern, Australia.
Adjunct research fellow, Monash university.
Dr Antonia Reale is an Italian Trained oncologist and is currently working as medical oncology registrar at Cabrini Malvern and as adjunct research fellow at Monash university/the Alfred. Dr Antonia Reale completed her Medical Degree in 2010 and training in Medical Oncology with honors in Bari (Italy) in 2016. During her training she has also gained basic and translational research experience both at Department of Internal Medicine and human Oncology, Bari, Italy and Myeloma Research Group (head Prof Andrew Spencer, Australian Centre for Blood Diseases, Central Clinical School, Monash University/The Alfred, Melbourne, Australia). She then established in Melbourne with her young family and was awarded an RTP (Australian Government Research Training Program) and Monash Departmental Scholarship and started a PhDMed by translational research in 2018 in Melbourne, Australia, under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Spencer. Her project involved the study of extracellular vesicles in Multiple Myeloma as potential drivers of disease progression and liquid biomarkers. She completed her PhD in October 2022. She has then completed 1 year post doc in the same lab, validating data from her PhD work. Dr Antonia Reale has over 30 peer reviewed publications (original and review articles) and 7 book chapters including a protocol chapter. Since 2009 she has presented, also as invited speaker, at over 40 national and international conferences (oral and poster presentations) on angiogenesis, hypoxia, bone disease, neutropenia, microarray-based approaches, mechanisms of progression and resistance to proteasome inhibitors, extracellular vesicles, in Myeloma. She was awarded a prize by research in 2015 (“Premio O.M.C.eO. Bari per la Ricerca 2015”), the Monash Postgraduate Publication Award (March-May 2022), Monash Platform Access Grants - Partial Funding (2022), Monash MNHS Central clinical School “FIND A FRIEND” collaborative seed grants, round 2 (2023, co-PI).
SPEAKER
Dr. Lovelle Poh
Postdoctoral Scientist
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne.
Lovelle is a final year PhD student investigating extracellular vesicles (EVs) and nanovesicles (NVs) in embryo implantation; particularly in mediating embryo-endometrial crosstalk - a significant contributor to successful embryo implantation and human fertility. Her research investigates EVs using a multifaceted approach; (a) employing quantitative proteomics to dissect the composition, function, and cell reprogramming capabilities of human embryo/trophectodermal EVs, and (b) generating and customising EV mimetic NVs to enhance their production and functions.
SPEAKER
Dr. Na’ama Koifman
Cryogenic Electron Microscopy Specialist,
Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis,
University of Queensland
Dr. Na’ama Koifman graduated her B.Sc.(summa cum laude) in chemical engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. She then continued to do her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the multidisciplinary program for nanoscience and nanotechnology at the Technion. Her M.Sc. work focused on the study of non-aqueous complex liquid systems by means of cryogenic-electron microscopy (cryo-TEM and cryo-SEM). During her Ph.D. she studied extracellular vesicles(EVs) and cellular shedding of EVs by means of cryo-EM (SEM and TEM), including development and optimization of specimen preparation methodologies. She then worked for 4 years as the manager of the Technion Center for Electron Microscopy of Soft Matter (TCEMSM), where she worked hands-on with many researchers (in industry and academia) on a wide range of projects. She joined the University of Queensland’s Center of Microscopy and Microanalysis (CMM) in 2022 to share her expertise, provide service and to research and develop advanced workflows in cryo-EM.
SPEAKER
Dr. Dalila Iannotta
Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
School of Chemical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology,
University of Queensland.
Dr. Dalila Iannotta is developing innovative extracellular vesicle-based drug delivery systems to bring the next generation of therapeutics to the clinic. In particular, she uses hybrid strategies that combine synthetic nanoparticles with extracellular vesicles for a best-of-both-worlds approach that enables delivery of protein and RNA therapeutics. She is a postdoctoral fellow in Associate Professor Joy Wolfram’s laboratory in the School of Chemical Engineering at The University of Queensland (36th in Best Global Universities, U.S. News & World Report). In 2019, she graduated with a PhD in cellular and molecular biotechnology from the University of L’Aquila in Italy in collaboration with Mayo Clinic in the United States (ranked best global hospital, Newsweek). Her work has been published in top journals, including the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles and Nature Nanotechnology. She has received research funding as lead investigator from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and the biopharmaceutical industry.
SPEAKER
Dr. Kamil Elkhoury
Postdoctoral Associate,
New York University, Abu Dhabi
Dr. Kamil Elkhoury is a Postdoctoral Associate at NYU with expertise in nanovesicles, biomaterials, bioink formulation, and bioprinting of soft tissues. His current work is focused on the development of soft tissue surrogate biomaterials for 3D-printed tissue engineering scaffolds. Prior to joining NYU, he held a Postdoctoral position at LAAS-CNRS, France, where he contributed to the European project H-2020 'EMAPS-Cardio', that aimed to establish a novel platform for the growth and maturation of cardiac microtissues. He completed his Ph.D. in Biotechnology Engineering at the University of Lorraine, France, with research stays at Harvard University in the United States and the University of Aveiro in Portugal. During that period, he focused on formulating nanocomposite photocrosslinkable polymers embedding hybrid nanovesicles to create sustained delivery systems.
panel discussion
Panel Member
Dr. Clarissa Whitehead
Senior Research Officer, Burnet Institute, Australia
Dr Clarissa Whitehead began working on small EVs during her PhD candidature at The University of Melbourne, during which she investigated the role of small EVs in the progression of glioblastoma and response to treatment. Throughout her ECR journey, she has navigated back and forth between academia and industry. As an R&D scientist at a publicly-traded biotechnology company (Exopharm), Clarissa worked on the development of small EVs as novel therapeutic modalities. She has since transitioned back into academia and is currently working as a senior research officer at The Burnet Institute as part of the Immune Therapies Group.
Panel Member
Dr. Sarah Stewart
ARC DECRA Fellow, La Trobe University, Australia
Dr Sarah Stewart has a PhD from the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University. Following her PhD, Dr Stewart relocated to the UK for a post-doc working on unconventional protein secretion in the department of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was awarded a 3-year BBSRC Future Leader fellowship to focus on the role of extracellular vesicles in the same field. Dr Stewart recently returned to Melbourne to take up an ARC DECRA in the department of Biochemistry and Genetics at La Trobe University. Her current research continues to focus on unconventional protein secretion and extracellular vesicles.
Panel Member
Dr. Richard Lobb
CSIRO Synthetic Biology Fellow, University of Queensland
Dr Richard Lobb is a translational cancer biologist at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), and stream leader in blood-based biomarkers within the centre. Dr Lobb has a strong background in extracellular vesicle (EV) biology, hypoxia research, cancer metastasis and cancer immunology. His research program at the AIBN develops novel technologies to profile circulating EVs in the blood to determine the composition of the tumour microenvironment and predict disease progression. Dr Lobb is also the stream leader for blood-based biomarkers within the Mark Hughes Foundation Centre for Brain Cancer Research, where his cross-disciplinary expertise and in-depth knowledge in liquid biopsies drives translational applications to improve therapeutic monitoring in patients with brain cancer.