DONALD E. INGBER

Keynote Speaker

Founding Director @

Wyss Institute Harvard

Ingber is a pioneer in the field of biologically inspired engineering, and at the Wyss Institute, he leads a multifaceted effort to develop breakthrough bioinspired technologies to advance healthcare and to improve sustainability. His work has led to major advances in mechanobiology, tumor angiogenesis, tissue engineering, systems biology, nanobiotechnology and translational medicine. One example is his development of human ‘Organs-on-Chips’ that recapitulate human organ-level pathophysiology in vitro.

VIKAS TRIVEDI

Group Leader @

EMBL Barcelona

Vikas' research work focuses on understanding the interplay of mechanical forces and chemical signaling that drive the beautiful self-assembly of cells to shape a developing embryo. The long-term goal of the group is to understand how do cells assemble organisms in robust and reproducible manner and how do geometry and external cues, that vary greatly across species, bias the physical events of early development in vivo. The lab uses 3D embryonic cell aggregates, from mouse and zebrafish, as a minimal alternate system, sufficient to generate embryonic axes.

MATTHIAS LUTOLF

Director of the IBI and Head of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering @ EPFL

By interfacing advanced biomaterials engineering, microtechnology and stem cell biology, the overarching goal of the Lutolf Laboratory is to uncover mechanisms of stem cell fate regulation; knowledge that will contribute to better ways to grow stem cells in culture and use them for various applications. A major current focus of the lab is on coaxing stem cells in vitro into miniature, organ-mimicking constructs, termed ‘organoids’, by exposing them to well-controlled artificial signaling microenvironments.

JAMES SHARPE

Head of EMBL Barcelona

The physical complexity of a human being, or even a single organ, is truly astounding. The goal of my lab is to understand how the activities of gene networks controls the millions of cells which make up our organs - allowing them to communicate with each other, to decide what to do at each moment during embryo development: whether to divide, which way to move, and which cells types to become (cartilage, bone, connective tissue, etc.) We believe this will only be achieved by integrating information into a computer model, and to this end we are developing new imaging and computational methods to understand one example of organogenesis - vertebrate limb development.

MIKI EBISUYA

Group Leader @

EMBL Barcelona

Miki's research is filed under synthetic biology—a young field, born in about 2000, that attempts to apply engineering principles to the design and construction of complex biological systems. But while most synthetic biologists use single-cell organisms such as E. coli, her research focuses on multicellular developmental mechanisms and so she calls it synthetic developmental biology. By artificially recreating developmental processes, her team is trying to better understand how our body is built. 

PRISCA LIBERALI

SNSF Professor and Group Leader @

FMI Basel

Our laboratory develops and applies experimental and theoretical frameworks for the study of cellular heterogeneity during collective cell behavior. We use high-content genetic perturbation screens with single-cell resolution combined with advanced quantitative imaging and single-cell modeling of stem cells in 2D culture and 3D self-organizing systems. One of these systems is the development of 3D intestinal organoids from single stem cells.