Synthetic and Systems Approaches to Interrogate Spatiotemporal Processes in Cancer (May 15 Speakers)
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Meeting Co-Chair: Lukasz Bugaj
University of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor
Lukasz Bugaj is an Assistant Professor in Bioengineering. He earned his BSE in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He then earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering with David Schaffer at Berkeley, where he pioneered some of the first methods for light-activated 'optogenetic' control of mammalian cell signaling. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Wendell Lim at UCSF, where he applied optogenetic technology to uncover functional signaling defects in cancer cells. The Bugaj Lab at Penn combines optogenetics and synthetic biology to understand and engineer biological control, including within therapeutic cells.
https://www.bugajlab.com/ -
Meeting Co-Chair: Ajit Nirmal
Harvard University
Principal Investigator
Dr. Ajit Johnson Nirmal is a Faculty at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. His research is focused on investigating the role of the tumor microenvironment on tumor progression and drug resistance. Dr. Nirmal utilizes spatial omics techniques and computational analysis to integrate large datasets to decipher the regulatory networks contributing to cancer development and drug resistance. Ultimately, he aims to establish personalized medicine frameworks that can provide clinically relevant therapeutic strategies tailored to individual patients.
https://nirmallab.com/ -
Xiaojing Gao
Stanford University
Assistant Professor
Dr. Xiaojing Gao is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He received a B.S. in Biology from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University. He received his postdoctoral training from Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech. His lab tackles fundamental engineering challenges across different levels of complexity, such as (1) protein components that minimize their crosstalk with human cells and immunogenicity, (2) biomolecular circuits that function robustly in different cells and are easy to deliver, (3) multicellular consortia that communicate through scalable channels, and (4) therapeutic modules that interface with physiological inputs/outputs. Their engineering targets include biomolecules, molecular circuits, viruses, and cells, and their approach combines quantitative experimental analysis with computational simulation.
https://gaolab.blog/ -
Rogelio Hernández-López
Stanford University
Assistant Professor
Dr. Hernandez-Lopez is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and of Genetics at Stanford University, a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and a member researcher of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Rogelio received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at Harvard University where he worked on the mechanisms of the microtubule-based motors dynein and kinesin. During his postdoctoral research at UCSF, Rogelio was a fellow of the Cancer Research Institute and UCMEXUS. His work focuses on engineering novel T cell therapies for cancer treatment.
https://www.hl-lab.org/ -
José Reyes
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Postdoctoral Researcher
José received his undergraduate degree in Genomic Sciences from UNAM, México. He then joined the Systems Biology PhD Program at Harvard University. Under the mentorship of Galit Lahav, he studied how and why individual cells enact distinct cell fate programs when exposed to DNA damage. Jointly advised by Scott Lowe and Dana Pe’er, he aims to understand what makes individual cells special in their ability to develop into a malignant tumor and how do these outlier cells emerge in the course of tumor progression.
https://www.mskcc.org/research/ski/labs/scott-lowe