Her talk will be about:

Multiscale Multimodal Characterization of Inorganic Nanotherapeutics

PROF. Dr. Inge Herrmann

Inge Herrmann is a chemical engineer with additional training in (pre)clinical research. After graduating with a PhD from ETH Zurich, she underwent further training at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), the University of Illinois (US) and the Imperial College London (UK). Since 2015, she is heading a research group at Empa specialized on nanoscale materials and devices for healthcare. In 2019, Inge Herrmann joined the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich where she is heading the Nanoparticle Systems Engineering Lab. She is an expert in nanoparticle synthesis and characterization, spectromicroscopy and translational nanomedicine. She has spearheaded several translational nanomedicine projects, and serves as a scientific advisor of the spin-​off companies hemotune, anavo and veltist commercializing technologies emerging from her lab. Inge Herrmann has won various prestigious awards, including the Bayer Healthcare Award and the Johnson & Johnson Award, the Swiss National Science Foundation Eccellenza Grant, the Empa Innovation Award and has been named Emerging Investigator 2021 by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Students under her supervision have won major awards, including the Best Master Thesis awarded by the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, ETH’s best doctoral thesis in the area of materials and processes (MaP) and ETH Pioneer Fellowships. She is principle investigator (PI) of several national and international projects supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Personalized Health and Related Technologies Initiative (PHRT), the Novartis FreeNovation program and several medical foundations (incl. the Swiss Heart Foundation, Krebsliga and many others).

His talk will be about:

Characterization challenges for self assembled hydrophilic nanogels

Dr. OLIvier jordan

Dr. Olivier Jordan is Senior Lecturer at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Geneva. He received his PhD from EPFL, developing biomaterials for cell encapsulation, cartilage and nerve regeneration with Prof Aebischer team.  His current research interests lies in the field of innovative delivery carriers for drugs, peptides and protein based on nano- and microcarriers, with a specific focus on the relationships between particles in vitro physicochemical properties and their fate in vivo. He is the author of 70 peer-reviewed publications, 9 patents, and co-founded two startups in the biomedical field.

His talk will be about:

Nanomedicines: Characterization, caractérisation, die Charakterisierung!

Prof. Dr. SCOTT MCNEIL

Prof. Dr. Scott McNeil is appointed Professor of Nanopharmaceutical and Regulatory Sciences at the Faculty of Science. This is the first of two endowed professorships in nanopharmacy funded by the Vifor Pharma Group. McNeil will take up his post 1 July 2020. Until recently, McNeil has been the Director of the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory in Frederick, Maryland (USA), a joint facility of the National Cancer Institute and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). His research focuses on the development and characterization of new nanopharmaceutical drugs and other non-biotechnologically produced active molecules. McNeil was born in 1964 in Oregon and studied chemistry at Portland State University, followed by graduate studies in cell biology and anatomy at Oregon Health Sciences University, where he received his PhD. He was then Chief of Biochemistry at Tripler Medical Center in Hawaii and was also an adjunct professor at the John Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. For the past 15 years he has been with Leidos Biomedical Research, where he was a Vice President. In addition to his academic career, he served for ten years as an officer in the US Army. McNeil and his wife, Merle, have six children, aged 18 to 26.

Her talk will be about:

Measuring physical properties of nanoparticle enabled medicinal products. A step by step approach combining complementary measurements with increasing complexity

Dr. Fanny Caputo

Dr. Caputo is a Research Scientist at SINTEF (Norway). Her main interests lie in the physical-chemical assessment of nanomaterials, nanoplastic, medical devices and pharmaceutical products containing nanomaterials, including lipid-based nanoparticles for nucleic acid delivery. She focuses on their safety and quality assessment, and on the (pre)standardization of characterization methods for regulatory purposes. She is the Chair of the Safety and Characterization WG of the European Nanomedicine Technology Platform and an active member of ASTM E 56 where she contributes to the first standard test methods on MD-AF4 for testing of liposomal products.

Her talk will be about:

How to give the worse presentation ever

Prof. Dr. Patrycja nowak-Sliwinska

Patrycja Nowak-Sliwinska received her PhD from the Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland) in 2006. She worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV) and VU Medical Center Amsterdam.
Patrycja was awarded with the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Management of Biotech, Medtech and Pharma Ventures. As an ERC Starting Grant laureate, she joined the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2016 she heads  the Molecular Pharmacology group specialized in optimization of multi drug combinations for a treatment of cancer. She was invited to join the board of the Science Innovation Hub, University of Geneva and serves as a member of many scientific advisory boards. She is an author of over 80 peer-reviewed publications and 4 international patents.

His talk will be about:

Determining what really counts: Modeling and measuring nanoparticle number concentrations – Particles Number Concentration

Dr. Matthias Roesslein

Works at Empa since 1996. As a trained chemist with specialization in physical chemistry and statistics he thenceforward became one of the experts worldwide in ‘measurement science in conjunction with qualification, traceability, measurement uncertainty and quality management systems’. The main focus was first on applying the general principle of measurement science in analytical chemistry, where amongst other things he wrote major parts of a number of international guidelines as a member of the CITAC-Eurachem working group on ‘measurement uncertainty and traceability’. In 2006 he obtained a position as ‘Senior Scientist’ and joined the laboratory for ‘Materials-Biology Interaction’ of Empa focusing on different subjects, such as the standardization of in vitro assays elucidating the effect of nanoparticles on different cell types and the quality of next generation sequencing results. For this purpose he established a close collaborations with two groups in the division ‘biosystems and biomaterials’ at NIST and obtained in 2008 the status of a foreign guest researcher. This collaboration led to a number of novel approaches gauging the performance and quality of in vitro assays. Beside that he contributed strongly to the progress of the Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) measurement that are developed by NanoSight by participating in numerous round robins and consulting on the statistical analysis. Currently he is establishing different NGS methods, such as whole transcriptome or target exon sequencing, for answering specific questions related to the interaction of medical nanoparticles with biological system. Beside that he strongly focuses on different aspect of translational science. Matthias Roesslein leads the effort to qualify all from the NCL transferred assays or methods that will be used in the characterisation cascade of the EU-NCL and heads the quality control management system. In this context he coordinates together with Simon Baconnier the scientific discussion of the core expert team (CET) of the EU-NCL.

Her talk will be about:

Pulmonary siRNA delivery against respiratory virus infections

Prof. Dr. Olivia merkel

Olivia Merkel has been a Professor of Drug Delivery in the Department of Pharmacy at LMU Munich in Germany since 2015. From 2011 until 2017 she was an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics and an Associate Faculty Member of Oncology at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA, where she is also a Scientific Member of the Molecular Therapeutics Program and Faculty in the Cancer Biology Graduate Program at Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI. She became a Registered Pharmacist in 2005. In 2006, she received a MS in Pharmaceutical Technology from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, in 2009. She received several awards, including the PHOENIX Pharmacy Award, APV Research Award, Princess-Therese of Bavaria Award, an ERC Starting Grant, the Galenus Foundation Technology Award, the Young Investigator Award from the College of Pharmacy at Wayne State, the Young Pharmaceutical Investigator Award granted by the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Science, an invitation to the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting, the Carl-Wilhelm-Scheele-Award by the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG) and the award for the best PhD thesis at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Prof. Merkel is the author of over 80 peer-reviewed articles, 13 book chapters and the editor of two books. She served as NIH reviewer from 2014-2015, is a standing international member of the Swiss National Science Foundation review board, Editorial Board member for the Journal of Controlled Release, the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Molecular Pharmaceutics, Advanced NanoBiomed Research, Pharmaceutics, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, and an honorary member of the Académie des Alpilles. Since 2020, she has been the President of the Controlled Release Society German Local Chapter as well as the Chair of the CRS Focus Group Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery. From 2015 until 2017, Prof. Merkel headed research labs both in Detroit and Munich. Currently her research centers around targeted siRNA delivery in cancer, inflammatory diseases and viral infections with a focus on pulmonary administration and is funded by the European Research Council, several foundations, Daiichi-Sankyo Europe and AbbVie.

His talk will be about:

From academia to industry: steps for a successful job search

Dimitri Ricardo Ruiz

Holder of a License in Political Sciences (Master degree) from the University of Geneva and a Federal Diploma in Human Resources, I developed the first part of my career in the field of HR. First as a recruitment specialist for the world headquarters of a multinational company in Geneva (5 years), then as an HR Manager for Imad (10 years), a company providing homecare services to Geneva residents. In this position, I was responsible for the HR management of a population of 400+ employees, including recruitment, employee life cycle and management support on performance, health and legal issues. Since 2012, I hold the position of Project Manager for the Geneva University Career center. I develop and implement initiatives aiming at facilitating students’ transition from academia to the labor market. This ranges from individual counseling and conducting job-related workshops to organizing round tables and presentations with industry professionals.