Dr. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, where she directs the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, and holds appointments at the Department of Surgery and the College of Dental Medicine. She received her B.S., S.M. and Ph.D from the University of Belgrade (all in chemical engineering), and was a Fulbright fellow at MIT in 1986-87. Prior to joining Columbia, Gordana was with the University of Belgrade, MIT and Tufts University. She co-directs the NIH Tissue Engineering Resource Center. Gordana published 235 peer-reviewed articles, two books and 25 patents, and gave 150 invited lectures. She is a frequent advisor to governmental organizations on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and the chair of her NIH study section. In 2002, she was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2007, she gave the Director’ lecture at the NIH, as the first woman engineer to receive this distinction. In 2008, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame "for developing biological substitutes to restore, maintain or improve tissue function".
Dr. Pieter Faber did his undergraduate work at Groningen University in the Netherlands and obtained his PhD in Human Genetics from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, also in the Netherlands. He worked as a post-doc in the USA at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston Massachusetts in the field of Neurogenetic diseases before moving to industry with a biotech start-up in Cleveland Ohio. The management experience obtained in this last position with relation to delivering quality work with fixed deadlines ultimately resulted in the Genomics Core director position at the Cleveland Clinic Health System in Cleveland Ohio.
Dr. Borut Štrukelj was born on 30th September 1961 in Ljubljana. He graduated at the Faculty of Pharmacy, and got his M.Sc and PhD at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology. He started working in 1985 as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, continued as a researcher at the Jožef Štefan Institute, he did his post-doc studies at the University of Wageningen. From 1999 to 2001 he was a deputy dean at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Ljubljana, and in 2003 he became the dean. Currently he is working as the Head of the chair for pharmaceutical biology at the Faculty of Pharmacy and is also a full professor, and he is lecturing on subjects from the field of pharmaceutical biotechnology. He published more than 120 scientific and professional articles, 91 of them in top international scientific magazines. He is also working as an expert for biological medical products at the European Medicines Agency in London. In 1996 he received EMBO post-doctoral award, and in 2007 the Zois national recognition for science.
He is a member of the following international association for biochemistry and molecular biology: FEBS, IUBMB, IUPMB.
Dr. Miomir Kneževič was born 3rd of August 1958 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His career started as a teacher in secondary school and continued as a researcher and CEO in small biotechnology companies in Slovenia and Austria. Miomir is biologist and he got his PhD in biotechnology at the University Ljubljana in the year 1994. On Institute of Applied Microbiology in Vienna he specialised in Biotechnology, especially animal cell technology, cell therapies and tissue engineering. Besides his professional interest he has a lot of practical experience in SME founding and managing. During his more than 20 years professional career he worked on different institutes in Slovenia, Austria and Belgium. Miomir is a cofounder of several biotech companies, with participation of Venture capital. Miomir is habilitated as an Assistant Professor in University of Ljubljana. He worked as a national expert on detachment in the unit for Applied Genomics and Biotechnology for Health in directorate Health, DG Research, European Commission, Brussels. Currently, he has a position on Blood Transfusion Centre in Ljubljana as the Head of the Unit for Collection and Processing of Haematopoietic Stem Cells. With National Institute of Biology he collaborates as Assistant Director for Technology Transfer.
Dr. Matej Breznik was born on 25th April 1972 in Maribor. In 1996 he graduated at the Faculty of Pharmacy, with a thesis on pharmaceutical chemistry, and he continued his studies at the Chair for pharmaceutical chemistry as a fellow of the Ministry of Science and Technology,. In 2000 he finished his post-graduate studies and acquired the title of PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and, thus, became an Assistant professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, where he worked until 2002. From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the administrative board of the European project COST D16 (Combinatorial Chemistry) and coordinator of this project in Slovenia. At the Faculty he was in charge of coordinating with the Center for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and for control of more demanding conformational studies, and he also led the development of analytics with the help of spectroscopic methods at the Faculty of Pharmacy. From 2002-2004 he worked as the central merchandiser at Krka tovarna zdravil, d.d. and he was responsible for facilitating the sale and market share of antimicrobial medical products on the markets of 24 countries with the help of locally organized sale-promotional structures. He continued his carrier in GSK d.o.o. in Ljubljana as the Head of the unit responsible for marketing oncology medical products. Currently, Matej is a procurator and the general manager of Biogen Idec d.o.o. company and is in charge of founding and establishing the company in Slovenia, for managing strategies and business development and charging and pricing and the strategy of marketing medical products.
Dušan Flisar, dr.med. was born in 1961. Graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana in 1986. He has been working at the Department of Neurology of the University Medical Center in Maribor since 1991. He completed his specialist exam in neurology in 1995, which attributes him almost two decades of clinical experience in neurology. Lately he has concentrated in a more narrow specialization in neuro-degenerative diseases and treating patients with Parkinson's disease and other motor control defects. He has introduced modern methods of treatment and diagnostics of extrapyramid patients. He has lectured at professional meetings at home and abroad and published in domestic and foreign literature. He is also the co'author of publications on the use of intelligent systems for medical data database analysis, and has popularized neurology and contributed to its success by writing several articles in popular science. In addition, he has been working for charity organizations for several years.
Dr. Odon Planinšek is an Assistant Professor at the Department for pharmaceutical technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His areas of research are determination of physicochemical properties of drugs and excipients, especially surface properties determination with wettability measurements, inverse gas chromatography and infrared spectroscopy. In addition, he is developing methods for surface modification of drugs, methods for improving drug dissolution, stabilization of drugs in the solid state and design of particles with precipitation method.
He is participating in teaching pharmaceutical technology and physical pharmacy in the undergraduate studies level, and the use of thermal analysis in pharmacy as a postgraduate subject. He worked at the London School of Pharmacy under the supervision of Prof. Graham Buckton for five months in 2002. He is an author of one Slovenian patent and Co-author of two Slovenian patent applications.