Synthetic and Systems Approaches to Interrogate Spatiotemporal Processes in Cancer (May 15 Speakers)

May 15 Speaker Bios

  • Meeting Co-Chair: Lukasz  Bugaj

    Meeting Co-Chair: Lukasz Bugaj

    bugaj@seas.upenn.edu

    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

    Meeting Co-Chair: Ajit Nirmal

    ajitj_nirmal@dfci.harvard.edu

    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

    Xiaojing Gao

    xjgao@stanford.edu

    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

    Rogelio Hernández-López

    rogelioh@stanford.edu

    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

    José Reyes

    reyesj3@mskcc.org

    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