ANZSEV MINI-SYMPOSIUM
ECR mini-symposium 2024
Thursday 22 August, 2024, 10 am - 1.15 pm AEST / 12 noon - 3:15 pm NZST
Please join us for a virtual symposium focussing on state-of-the-art techniques in extracellular vesicles research. This short format 3.15 hr symposium will be held on Thursday 22nd August, 2024 from 10.00 am (AEST) / 12.00 pm NZST and features presentations from a range of local and international researchers.
Register here (FREE) by August 21 to receive a link to the meeting.
PROGRAM
Keynote Speakers
Professor Dino Di Carlo
University of California
Dino Di Carlo is the Armond and Elena Hairapetian Professor of Bioengineering at UCLA, serial entrepreneur, and inventor. He serves in academic leadership roles as the Chair of the Bioengineering Department and Deputy Director of a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. He is an author on >190 peer-reviewed articles and an inventor on >70 issued patents in the U.S. and across the world. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed upon young scientists and engineers. He also has served in business leadership roles. He co-founded several companies in life science research tools, diagnostics, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries over the last 10 years and continues to serve on the board of directors of many of these companies.
Professor Minh Le
National University of Singapore
Dr. Minh Le earned a Ph.D. in Computational and Systems Biology from the Singapore-MIT Alliance and completed postdoctoral training at Boston Children’s Hospital. She established her lab at the City University of Hong Kong in 2015, moving to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2019, where she is now an Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director at the NUS Medicine Department of Pharmacology. Her group has developed strategies to harness extracellular vesicles (EVs) from red blood cells and engineer EVs for targeted delivery (Usman et al. Nat Com 2018, Pham et al. JEV 2021, Jayasinghe et al. Theranostics 2022, Peng et al. JEV 2022, Peng et al. Mol Ther 2022, Pham et al. JEV 2023, Jayasinghe et al. ACS Nano 2023). Dr. Le has received numerous awards, including the L’Oréal Singapore for Women in Science Fellowship, the Falling Walls Venture Award, and the NUS Graduate Mentor of the Year Award. Additionally, she is the deputy editor of the Journal of Extracellular Biology, an associate editor of the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, a scientific co-founder of Carmine Therapeutics, and the lead PI of the EVANTICA Industry Alignment Fund Pre-Positioning program.
Professor Thomas Kislinger
University of Toronto, Department of Medical Biophysics
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Thomas Kislinger received his MSc in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Munich, Germany (1998). He completed his PhD in 2001, investigating the role of Advanced Glycation Endproducts in diabetic vascular complications at the University of Erlangen, Germany and Columbia University, New York. Between 2002 and 2006 he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. In 2006 he joined the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre as an independent investigator. Dr. Kislinger is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and a Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Medical Biophysics. Dr. Kislinger serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Proteome Research. The Kislinger lab applies proteomics technologies to translational and basic cancer biology. This includes the development of novel proteomics methodologies, identification of liquid biopsy signatures and the molecular identification of novel cell surface markers.
Invited Speakers
Koki Kunitake
PhD student,
University of Tokyo
Koki Kunitake started his career as a synthetic biologist at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Tokyo under the guidance of Prof, Yasuteru Urano and Dr, Ryosuke Kojima. During his PhD, he has been privileged to receive fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), gotten pharmacist licence and developed EV engineering technology and some bioinformatic skills to establish a novel screening platform to identify genes that regulate the release of EVs. His PhD work is now out in biorxiv as his first first-author manuscript entitled ‘Barcoding of small extracellular vesicles with CRISPR-gRNA enables comprehensive, subpopulation-specific analysis of their biogenesis/release regulators’(about which he will deliver his talk today). After getting PhD last March, he keeps working with Dr Kojima as a postdoc and further expands the application of his technology.
Quan Zhou
PhD student,
University of Queensland
Mr. Quan Zhou is a final-year PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Matt Trau at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ). Quan’s research focuses on utilizing extracellular vesicles for cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring with novel microfluidic devices. Prior to pursuing PhD, Quan received a bachelor's degree in bioinformatics from Southeast University, China, and a master’s degree in molecular biology from UQ.
Lidia Medhin
PhD student,
Edith Cowan University
Lidia is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Elin Gray at the School of Medical and Health Sciences, Centre of Precision Health, Edith Cowan University (ECU). Lidia’s research focuses on using extracellular vesicles (EVs) as predictive biomarkers for melanoma and lung cancer response to immunotherapy. Lidia earned her bachelor’s degree in clinical laboratory sciences from Asmara, Eritrea, and worked at the Eritrean National Health Laboratory, contributing to impactful cancer research publications. She was awarded a World Bank scholarship for her master’s degree studies at the University of Zambia and has been awarded an ECU HDR scholarship for her PhD studies.
Dr Georgia Atkin Smith
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Dr Georgia Atkin-Smith is a Cell Biologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. She completed her PhD in 2019 at La Trobe University, receiving the Nancy Millis Medal for the top 5% of PhD theses. Georgia has secured multiple highly competitive national research grants, including an NHMRC Investigator Grant and a L’Oreal UNESCO For Women In Science Fellowship, to explore the role of dying cells in inflammatory disease. Her research has resulted in 20 scientific publications and over 20 awards including a feature as one of the Herald Sun’s 25 under 25 Young People to Watch, one of La Trobe Universities Top 10 Young Alumni and a Victorian Young Achievers People’s Choice Award. Also known as Some Blonde Scientist, Georgia is a passionate science communicator, Keynote speaker and advocate of women in STEM.
Chantelle Blyth
Monash University
Chantelle Blyth is a 3rd-year PhD student at Monash University under the supervision of Michael Lazarou and Thomas Naderer. Here, Chantelle is investigating the mitochondrial response to bacterial vesicles, with a particular focus on the role of mitochondrial quality control systems. Prior to this, Chantelle completed her Masters degree with a focus on structural T-cell biology before moving into the vesicle world working at a Melbourne based biotech.
Alin Rai
Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute
Dr Rai is a Group Leader at Molecular Proteomics Lab (Baker Institute) and uses multiomics technologies and systems biology to dissect the form and functions of extracellular vesicles (EVs). Dr Rai’s current research focuses on large scale population EV-studies - leveraging ensemble machine learning tools - to identify predictive and mechanistic molecular drivers of cardiovascular disease.
NOTE: This event is FREE of charge to everyone courtesy of ANZSEV.