Dr. Aggarwal is currently a Founding Director of the Inflammation Research Center in San Diego, California. He is also currently serving on the Advisory Board of several Nutraceutical companies. Until December 31st, 2015, Dr. Aggarwal was a Ransom Horne Distinguished Professor of Experimental Therapeutics, Cancer Research, Cancer Medicine, Biochemistry and Immunology; and Chief of the Cytokine Research Section, in the Department of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. He also served as a member of the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, and as an Adjunct Professor at Albert B. Alkek Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M University, Houston, Texas. Dr. Aggarwal arrived in the United States as a National Scholar of the Government of India and earned his Ph. D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He then joined as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Hormone Research Laboratory at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco while being supported by the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Thereafter, Dr. Aggarwal started his career with the then start-up Biotechonolgy company, Genentech Inc in South San Francisco where he worked for almost ten years and his work lead to the discovery of two cytokines, TNF-a and TNF-b, an essential component of the immune system; and identification of their receptors. In 1989, Dr. Aggarwal was recruited as a Professor of Medicine and of Clinical Immunology & Biological Therapy, Chief of the Cytokine Research section at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Since then Dr. Aggarwal has been investigating the “Role of Inflammatory Pathways Mediated through TNF, NF-kappaB, STAT3, and CXCR4 for the Prevention and Therapy of Cancer, Osteoporosis and other Chronic Diseases”. While searching for novel and safe anti-inflammatory agents, his group identified more than fifty novel compounds from mother nature including spices, dietary agents and from Traditional Medicine that interrupt these cell-signaling pathways. These agents have been tested in various animal models and some of them are in Clinical Trials. He has published over 700 publications in peer-reviewed international journals (including Science, Nature, Cancer Cell, PNAS, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Blood, Journal of Bioogical Chenistry, Cancer Research, Journal of Immunology), invited reviews and book chapters. He has also been a co-organizer of two International Conferences on “Translational Cancer Research” since 2004 and “Nutraceuticals and Chronic Diseases” since 2012

Russel Reiter, Ph.D. Professor, Cell Systems and Anatomy Dr. Russel Reiter teaches in the Medical Neuroscience and Dental Microscopic Anatomy courses at the Health Science Center. He also gives lectures in the History of Anatomy, Introduction to Research and in Journal Clubs of several departments. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pineal Research and on the Editorial Board of 7 other journals. He is the recipient of numerous awards including three honorary doctor of medicine degrees and, most recently, the Presidential Distinguished Scholar Award from UT Health San Antonio. Dr. Reiter's research interests relate to free radical aspects of disease processes and aging. Of particular interest is defining the role of oxygen derivatives in neurodegenerative diseases and their function in apoptosis, necrosis and neuronal degeneration. These studies typically involve measurements of oxidatively damaged polyunsaturated fatty acids, proteins, and DNA. Besides investigating the functional relevance of free radicals to age-associated organ deterioration, Dr. Reiter's group is investigating the free radical scavenging and antioxidant properties of pineal indoleamines, most notably melatonin. The investigations include the mechanisms of interaction of melatonin with free radicals and the resulting products. These studies have utilized thermodynamic analyses, electron ionization mass spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, high-performance liquid chromatography, electron spin resonance spectroscopy and biochemical and molecular biological techniques to unravel the processes involved. This research group is also investigating the role of melatonin as an antitoxin against a variety of xenobiotics and environmental pollutants and the functional significance of melatonin and other indoleamines with processes of aging.

M. Maccarrone is Professor and Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Laboratory of Lipid Neurochemistry of the European Center for Brain Research-Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome. His group is made of four units (highly integrated and in collaboration for more than 15 years), located at Tor Vergata Univesity of Rome, University of Teramo, Santa Lucia Foundation, and Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome. The group has 10 permanent positions, which are currently taken by 2 Associate professors and 8 Assistant professors (Ricercatori), as well as 5 Post-docs and 5 Ph.D students. The group leaders (Dr. Monica Bari at Tor Vergata, Dr. Enrico Dainese at Teramo, Dr. Sergio Oddi at Santa Lucia Foundation, and Dr. Tiziana Bisogno at Campus Bio-Medico) have complementary expertises, that altogether span from chemistry, protein science and molecular biology to animal models of disease. Stipend holders and visiting scientists from abroad are frequently visiting the group for training purposes. In the last 5 years, Prof. M. Maccarrone has been the tutor of 6 PhD students and 4 Post-doc fellows at the University of Teramo, and 2 PhD students and 2 Postdoc fellows at Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome. These young researchers were all supported by national and international institutions and companies, like Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, Ministero della Salute, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Fondazione Italiana per la Sclerosi Multipla, HighQ Foundation, Medical Research Council, European Space Agency, Sigma-Tau Industries, L’Oreal Paris, GW Pharmaceuticals, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Angelini, Kayser Italia e Phytecs.

Prof Wanjin HONG graduated from Xiamen University in 1982 and was one of a few hundred Chinese students chosen for further graduate training in the United States via the CUSBEA (China–United States Biochemistry Examination and Application) program. He received his PhD from the State University of New York (SUNY Buffalo), and was a postdoctoral fellow there before he joined the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) in Singapore as a PI in 1989 and he became Singaporean in 1992. He became the Executive Director of IMCB at A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) in 2011. He is also a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and an Honorable Professor at Xiamen University and The University of Queensland in Australia. He was the recipient of Singapore’s National Science Award (now President’s Science Award) in 1999. He also received Singapore’s government Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2014. He serves as the Associate Editor of Cell & Bioscience, and is on the editorial board of TRAFFIC. His publications have over 20,000 citations in total with a H-index of 82.

Pal Maliga is Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers University. He obtained an MS degree at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest and a PhD at József Attila University (JATE) in Szeged, Hungary. Since at Rutgers his research group developed methods for the stable transformation of land plant chloroplast genomes. Chloroplast genome engineering in higher plants has led to an explosion of research concerning the chloroplast genome’s role in photosynthesis, functional analysis of plastid genes by reverse genetics, and mechanisms of plastid gene regulation. His current research interests are development of reproducible protocols for plastid transformation in Arabidopsis thaliana, including Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the chloroplast genome, and expression of recombinant proteins in tobacco chloroplasts.

Scientific Researcher in the of Group of Antioxidants, Free Radicals and Nitric Oxide in Biotechnology, Food and Agriculture and former Head of the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology of Plants at Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Granada, Spain. His research is focused on the metabolism of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS and RNS) under physiology and environmental stress conditions. Special topics are the implications of ROS and RNS in fruit ripening and the nitro-oxidative metabolism of plant peroxisomes

Ed Nice is currently an Adjunct Professor at Monash University where he is Head of Clinical Biomarker Discovery and Validation (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) and a scientific advisor to the Monash Antibody Technologies Facility (MATF), for which he was director from 2009 - 2013. He also holds a Visiting Professorship at Sichuan University/West China Hospital and an Adjunct position at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. His long-term research interests have been in protein and peptide micropurification, biomarker discovery and validation, SPR analysis, high throughput monoclonal antibody production and validation, and clinical biomarker assay development, with a strong translational focus on colorectal cancer, especially the development of faecal proteomics for colorectal cancer detection and surveillance. He is a founder member and past chair of the Australian Peptide Association, a founder member of the Protein and Peptide Society of Singapore and was awarded the 2012 Xiaoyu Hu Memorial Award from the Chinese Peptide Society in recognition of his significant achievements in Peptide Science. He has an active involvement in the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), having been co-chair and treasurer of the successful HUPO 2010 meeting in Sydney, and is currently co-chair of both the Pathology Pillar and the Human Cancer Proteome Project and leader of the HUPO ANZ Chromosome 7 initiative.

Grant Jensen is a Professor of Biochemistry and Dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. He earned his doctorate working on electron microscopy of RNA polymerase and other protein complexes with Dr. Roger Kornberg(who later won the Nobel prize for structural studies of transcription)at Stanford University. Next Grant continued his work in protein electron microscopy as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell post-doctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Kenneth Downing at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. There his interests expanded to include electron tomography of whole cells. Grant began his independent career at the California Institute of Technology(Caltech) in 2002. At Caltech his research has focused on three main areas: the ultrastructure of small cells, the structural biology of HIV, and the further development of cryo-EM technology. Together with his colleagues he has now published nearly 200 papers in these areas (see http://www.jensenlab.caltech.edu/publications.html). His lab has developed a searchable tomography database and populated it with ~50 thousand cryotomograms of over 100 different viral and microbial samples (https://etdb.caltech.edu/). Among his most prominent discoveries has been the structure and function of the bacterial type VI secretion system, a "poison-tipped spring-loaded molecular dagger," and the architecture of the type IV pilus responsible for cell motility. All this work is now summarized in an electronic textbook, the Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure (https://www.cellstructureatlas.org/). Meanwhile Grant’s teaching has centered on biophysical methods, including the creation of the popular online course Getting started in Cryo-EM (http://cryo-em-course.caltech.edu/). In 2020 Grant moved to BYU to become Dean of their College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

Prof Dr Frank J.T. Staal obtained his bachelor and master degrees (both cum laude) in Medical Biology at Utrecht University. He obtained his PhD degree (1993) at the Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine under the supportive guidance of professors Leonard and Leonore Herzenberg where was taught the intricacies of flow cytometry. His thesis dealt with transcriptional regulation of HIV expression in T-lymphocytes and involved many functional flow cytometric assays and cell sorting experiments. In 1993 he became postdoctoral fellow at the Netherlands Cancer Institute for 2 years, after which he moved back to Utrecht University as fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW) in the laboratory of professor Hans Clevers. In 2000 he was recruited to Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) Rotterdam to start his own laboratory on human T cell development and became assistant professor. In 2004 he was appointed associate professor at EMC and expanded his research to Wnt signalling in blood stem cells and T cells, as well as to gene therapy for immune disorders. In 2008 he was recruited to the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and became full professor of Molecular Stem Cell biology. His inaugural speech (Jan 15th, 2010) was entitled “to T or not to T”)Together with Jacques van Dongen he heads the LUMC Flow cytometry Core Facility. Frank Staal was trained in biomedicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He obtained both his Bachelor and Master degrees cum laude from this university and then moved to Stanford University, CA USA, for his PhD degree in Genetics under supervision of the late Leonard Herzenberg and his wife Leonore Herzenberg . His thesis work involved fundamental and translational aspects of HIV disease. His first postdoctoral work focused on human T cell development, which he extended to genetic mouse models in his second postdoctoral period as fellow of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences under guidance of Hans Clevers, where he started to work on Wnt signalling. He was recruited by Erasmus Medical School in 2000 to start his own lab focusing on mouse and human T cell development. During this period at ErasmusMC, Rotterdam, he got interested in gene therapy for SCID, a disease in babies in which T cell development is blocked due to inherited mutations in key developmental genes. In 2007 he was appointed full professor at Leiden University Medical School and moved his lab from Rotterdam to Leiden. He is currently focusing on clinical implementation of gene therapy for RAG-SCID, other gene therapy approaches with blood stem cells and basic stem and T cell biology. Fittingly, his appointment is in the Department of Immunohematology, where the late Jon van Rood performed the first bone marrow transplantation for SCID exactly 50 years ago

Dr Kang gained her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China in 2001 and moved to the US to continue her graduate school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr Kang successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Chronic ethanol consumption disrupts both lipid and glucose homeostasis in rat adipose tissue” under the supervision of Professor Laura Nagy in 2007. Dr Kang had her postdoctoral training with Professor David Wasserman at Vanderbilt University and was appointed as a research faculty member of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in 2012. She was also the Managing Director of the Metabolic Pathophysiology Core of the Vanderbilt Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centre between 2012 and 2014. Dr Kang moved to the UK and joined the faculty of the University of Dundee in April 2014. In this role, Dr Kang is establishing her independent research on understanding the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, focusing on studying the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling.

Igor Garkavtsev is an Assistant Professor of Department of Radiation Oncology, Harvard Medical School in Boston.His key achievements include 1) cloning and characterization of a novel family of tumor suppressor genes (ING1-5 tumor suppressors) and 2) identification of chemical compounds with anti-cancer stem cell and anti-metastatic activities.His work currently focused on the following areas: Investigating the molecular mechanisms responsible for maintaining the cancer stem cells (CSCs) and immune checkpoint molecule PD-L1 through identification of small molecules that abrogate the CSC and immune checkpoint control; identification of the molecular target for selected small molecules; determination of proteins that are essential for the maintenance of a sub-population of cancer cells with CSC properties in vitro and in vivo; identification of anti-medulloblastoma compounds with subsequent detection of molecules and pathways involved in development of medulloblastoma.His research is supported by the NIH and other research awards.

Paola Paci was trained as a theoretical physicist and she worked over 18 years on the field of computer modeling. She holds a degree in Physics from the University of Rome “Sapienza” and a Ph.D in Physics from the University of Pavia “A. Volta”. She holds a master in bioinformatics, named “Master in Bioinformatica: Applicazionibiomediche e farmaceutiche”, cum laude at the University of Rome “Sapienza”, defending a thesis on a software development for functional analysis of gene expression. Since 2011 to 29 February 2020 she was a researcher of Institute for Systems Analysis and Computer Science “A. Ruberti” (IASI) of National Research Council (CNR) in Rome. Since 2March 2020 she is Associate Professor at Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering "A. Ruberti", SapienzaUniversity of Rome. In 2019/2020 she was full professor for the course of Bioengineering for Genomics of 6CFU (SSD ING-INF/06) at MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering at "Sapienza" University of Rome.From 2015 to 2017 she was full professor for the course of Computational Biology atMSc degree inGenetics and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Mathematical Physical and Natural Sciences at"Sapienza" University of Rome. From 2014 to 2017 she was full professor for the course of Bioinformatics of 6CFU (SSD ING-INF/06) at MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering at "Sapienza" University of Rome. From 2012 to 2014 she was tutor of Applied Genomics at MSc degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition, Departmental Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at Campus Biomedico University of Rome. From 2008 to 2012 she was tutor of Mathematical Methods at BSc degree in Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Campus Biomedico University of Rome. From 2007 to 2011she was tutor of Calculus at BSc degree in Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering atCampus Biomedico University of Rome. In 2012-2015 she was co-principalinvestigatorofagovernmentgrantof80.000euros and in 2015-2018 she has become principal investigator of a government grant of 300.000 euros, both grants concern aResearchProjectconducted within the The Epigenomics Flagship Project (www.epigen.it). In 2018 she became Scientific Project Manager of a grant of 80.000 euros for the project MoDiag call LIFE 2020 (POR FESR 2014‐2020). In 2019 she became Scientific Project Manager of a Unit for the project PRIN 2017 of a total grant of 672.500 euros. From 2014 to 2017 she was member of CdA in Clinical and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Civil andIndustrial Engineering at "Sapienza" University of Rome. From June 2018 she is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Reports, a Nature Research journal, within Cell Biology area. From 2018 she is Member of the board of the PhD program (collegiodeidocenti) in InnovativeBiomedical Technologies in Clinical Medicine (cycles XXXIV-) of the "Sapienza" University ofRome. From 2015 to 2017 she wasa member of the board of the PhD program (collegiodeidocenti) in Life Scienceand Biology and Biotechnology (cycles XXXI-XXXII) of the University of Milano-Bicocca In December 2017 she was reviewer of the PhD thesis in Computer Science, Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics, and Statistics at "Sapienza" University of Rome, with title Modelling Ovarian Follicle Dynamics within Assisted Reproductive Technology Treatments.From 23-02-2015 to 24-02-2015 she was reviewer at the Annual Meeting of the European Commission forthe revision of the MD-PAEDIGREE project in metagenomics and genomics, WP7 - VU UniversityAmsterdam. From 2005 she is reviewer of the following international journals: Physical Review Letters, Physical Review B, Viral Immunology, Cellular Physiology, Biochemistry, Oncotarget, Gene Therapy,Molecular Biology, Journal of Medical Genetics, BioEssays, DNA and Cell Biology, Bioinformatics,Biological Chemistry, Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research, Frontiers, Endocrine,BMC Cancer She is leader of a research group is composed of two senior post-docts and 2phD students. She is author of more than seventy international papers, cited about two thousand times and is h-index is 21, according to scopus database. In 2014 she won an award of 10.000 euros for her research on the grapevine genome that had a deep impact in the field of viticulture and wine economy. The results of this research have appeared on the first pages of the main Italian newspapers that deal with food and wine. In the past (from the undergraduate period to PhD. thesis) her research was focus on the field of superconductivity, particularly on the analysis of the specific superconductive properties of materials like copper oxides, fullerene compounds, magnesium diboride, rare earth compounds, etc..., in relation to material optimization and engineering. Her studies have been carried out by using both analytical calculations and numerical simulations (Dynamical Mean Field Theory, Exact Diagonalization, etc...). The main results of her scientific research have been published on several international journals. Then, her scientific interests addressed the field on applied physics to medicine and biology, always from the mathematical and computational point of view. She developed a computer simulator of the human immune system for clinical applications, able to predict the human immune system response to HIV infection. This research was part of a European project, named ImmunoGrid, and the results of this research are published on several international journals. Actually, her research field is mainly the bioinformatics and the systems biology. She also worked on the study of protein structures performed with the instruments of the network analysis. Recently, she developed a network-based tool, SWIM, able to detect master regulators genes in determining an observed phenotype. This tool was applied to the grapevine genome and was suitable for the detection of key regulators of organ development in different fleshy fruit crops. These results could have a deep impact on viticulture because the knowledge of which genes are responsible for the ripening helps to face climate changes and thereby improve the quality of wine. For this result she won an award of 10.000 euros.

Dr Catarina Dias is a post-doctoral scientist in the lab of Dr Jesper Nylandsted at the Danish Cancer Research Center in Copenhagen, which has strong expertise in live-imaging confocal microscopy. Her scientific career has been driven by a key interest in how cellular defense mechanisms become compromised in disease. The project that she now works on bridges what could be at first glance considered largely distinct pathologies: cancer and neurodegeneration. However, the common denominator between the two is altered plasma membrane integrity. She investigates how cancer cells adapt to withstand pronounced membrane stress; and how this can translate into improving membrane integrity in neurons, which is compromised in both physiological ageing and neurodegenerative diseases. Her academic training is in molecular and cellular biology (BSc and MRes from King’s College London). She then went on to focus in neurobiology during her PhD that she completed at the University of Edinburgh in the labs of Prof Kathryn Ball and Dr Tilo Kunath. During her PhD, she investigated the non-canonical roles of an E3 ligase and chaperone in cortical neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells that were reprogrammed from a patient with asynucleinopathy. Together with collaborators, she conducted the mass spectrometry-based proteomics at the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (Brno, Czech Republic). Now, her collaborators have expertise across biochemistry, physics and computational biology, and she is part of a Novo Nordisk Interdisciplinary Synergy Programme. Dr Catarina Dias is interested in science that is multidisciplinary, both in the nature of the pathologies under investigation as well as the scientific fields used to answer biological questions.

I am a neurophysiologist by training, but for the past decade I have been working in the area of neuro-informatics to increase access to and utilization of neuroscience data. Just as science was able to harness the power of the printing press to foster scientific communication and collaboration, we must now establish the means for communicating and utilizing the digital technologies for scientific communication and discovery. For this reason, I have been working in the area of knowledge representation in the neurosciences within the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF). I am the scientific lead of the NIF project, which under my direction has grown into the largest source of neuroscience data and tools on the web. Through NIF and my neuroscience background, I have a unique global perspective on issues in data sharing and utilization in the neurosciences and have gained considerable insight and expertise in working with diverse biomedical data. We have recently extended the NIF framework to develop data portals for NIDDK (dkNET) and the RRID community portal. I serve as the lead for the Resource Identification Initiative, a FORCE11, the Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship, group dedicated to transforming scholarly communication. RRIDs are unique identifiers for Key Biological Resources, aggregated by our group from community databases and requested from authors in participating journals, including Cell, eLife and others.

Luigi Donato, PhD in “Applied Biology and Experimental Medicine”, frequents the Labs of Molecular Genetics of University of Messina, Italy. He is a researcher of the IEMEST institute in Palermo, Italy, too. He published more than 50 papers in reputed journals and participated in more than 30 national and international congresses, also being in the Organizing Committee in several of them. He was a member of ARVO and he is a member of AIBG. He joined the Editorial Board of several journals, such as “Cell Cycle”, “BMC Bioinformatics”, also acting as Guest Editor for “Antioxidants” and “Frontiers in Genetics”. His main research fields are retinal dystrophies and omics approaches.

Dr. Mahdi Mohaqiq holds male fertility research fellowship from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US and PhD of Anatomical Sciences from Medical Sciences Faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. He is Assistant Professor (Adjunct) of Medicine Faculty, Kateb University, Kabul, Afghanistan. Mahdi is currently hired by The Ottawa Hospital as a Healthcare provider at the front line due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Zhiling Yu is currently Professor in the School of Chinese Medicine at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Dr. Yu received his undergraduate education at the Henan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and obtained his PhD degree in biochemistry from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining the Hong Kong Baptist University, he once worked at the China Pharmaceutical University and the University of Macau. Dr. Yu is known for his research in herbal pharmacology, focusing on anticancer, anti-inflammatory and melanogenesis-regulating herbs, and in quality control of Chinese medicinal materials. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed research papers.

Dr. Moshe Biton I'm a senior scientist (equivalent to assistant Prof.) at the Biological Regulation department in the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. My lab aims to decipher the gut gene regulatory networks of immune-epithelial interactions, particularly intestinal stem and immune cells crosstalk. Our group investigates the role of immune regulation of epithelial stem cells and explores the role of epithelial cells in shaping mucosal immunity. We utilize single-cell genomics, genetics, and computational methods to uncover new immune-related mechanisms and their biological function in organoids, mouse, and human samples.