Our
Speakers (A-Z)
Benjamin Doranz
President & CEO at Integral Molecular
Ben Doranz is President and CEO of Integral Molecular. Dr. Doranz co-founded the company in 2001 and has led all aspects of the company’s growth since its inception, bringing five different technologies from research to market.
He is an inventor on six of the company’s patents, the principal investigator on over 30 NIH grants, and an author on over 90 publications, including articles published in Cell, Science, and Nature. Dr. Doranz earned a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Wharton.
César de la Fuente
Presidential Assistant Professor at UPenn
Prof. de la Fuente was recognized by MIT Technology Review in 2019 as one of the world’s top innovators for “digitizing evolution to make better antibiotics”. He was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Langer Prize (2019), an ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry (2020), AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award (2020), and received the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award (2020).
Harald Kolmar
Department Head and Professor of Applied Biochemistry at Technical University of Darmstadt
Harald Kolmar is full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany where he heads the Department of Applied Biochemistry. He holds a Ph.D. and habilitation in biochemistry and molecular biology.
His current scientific interests mainly focus on protein engineering and design, nanobiotechnology, antibody engineering, chemical biology and development of tailor-made peptides and proteins for applications in diagnostics and therapy.
Heather Schwoebel
Senior Vice President of BD, Head of Platform Licensing at Alloy Therapeutics, Inc.
Heather Schwoebel leads partnering of platform technologies at Alloy Therapeutics. Heather works to identify opportunities as well as implement and execute strategies to bring Alloy’s suite of platforms and services to all aspects of discovery and translational medicine. Over the past twenty years, Heather has had broad experience, working in roles focused on company formation, operations, alliance management and business development with Verseau Therapeutics, Harbour Antibodies and Atlas Venture.
Ilse Roodink
Chief Scientific Officer at ImmunoPrecise Antibodies
Dr. Ilse Roodink serves as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of ImmunoPrecise Antibodies, supporting the Company’s global research and development teams. Prior to her appointment as CSO, she held different scientific positions at the Company’s Dutch facility in Oss from 2013 until 2021.
Katharina Billian-Frey
Head of Protein Engineering at Apogenix AG
Dr. Katharina Billian-Frey has strong expertise in antibody-based immuno-oncology drugs and protein engineering. She joined the Drug Discovery Unit of Apogenix in 2018, first as senior scientist and is currently heading the Protein Engineering Group. Her main focus at Apogenix lies in the development of biotherapeutic agonistic drugs targeting the TNFR receptor superfamily.
Li Chen
Director of Biologics Discovery at GenScript ProBio
BS of Bioinformatics from Zhejiang University of China; PhD training of immunology from University of Massachusetts Medical School. After joining GenScript, Dr. Chen is in charge of the antibody drug discovery services, and has more than 10 years’ experience in immunology, antibody drug discovery and engineering, managing over 300 antibody drug discovery/engineering projects.
Marc A. van Dijk
Chief Technology Officer at Agenus Inc
Marc van Dijk obtained his Ph.D in Molecular Biology from the University of Utrecht in 1992. He subsequently worked as post-doctoral scientist at the University of California at San Diego and held a tenure track position in the department of immunology at the university medical centre in Utrecht. Marc currently serves as Chief Technology Officer at Agenus and its cell therapy subsidiary AgenTus Therapeutics, as well as as Site Head for their Cambridge UK facilities. Agenus is headquartered in Lexington, USA.
Mattias Levin
Sr Scientist, Antibody Engineering at Alligator Bioscience
Dr. Mattias Levin has a MSc in Biotechnology and obtained his Ph.D. in Immunotechnology from Lund University. He joined Alligator Bioscience 5 years ago, where his work is primarily focused on the discovery of Alligators new antibody-based drug candidates and bringing them from the benchtop into the clinic.
Miriam Bujny
Chief Development Officer (CDO) at Sapreme Technologies BV
Miriam joined Sapreme as CDO in 2020. She is an experienced translational science lead with background in RNA and antibody therapeutics, and uses this background at Sapreme to drive the development of next-generation macromolecules that circumvent endosomal entrapment. Over the last ten years, Miriam has held leadership positions in various drug discovery and clinical development roles.
Monica Berrondo
CEO at Macromoltek
Monica Berrondo, Ph.D., is an entrepreneur, scientist, and software engineer. Her expertise lies in using computational approaches to complex scientific problems, in particular, using algorithms for drug discovery and protein design. She is the founder and CEO of Macromoltek, a biotech company using innovative methods to improve research outcomes and reducing the cost associated with drug discovery through computational modeling.
Nick Hutchinson
Business Steering Group Lead for Mammalian Cell Culture Services at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies
Nick is the Business Steering Group Leader for Mammalian Cell Culture at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB). He has global responsibility for leading the design of new mammalian cell culture services and evaluating investments in new manufacturing capacity. Prior to this role he led FDB's streamlined monoclonal antibody development and manufacturing services, which included process development and process transfer to FDB's GMP manufacturing site for early phase clients.
Nicolas Camper
Group Leader, Bioconjugation Chemistry at Abzena
Dr. Nicolas Camper is Group Leader for Bioconjugation Chemistry at Abzena. His group focuses on the design and synthesis of antibody-drug conjugates with different combinations of conjugation technologies, linker designs and payloads for pre-clinical evaluation, helping Abzena’s clients establish Proof of Concept and select Lead Candidates for further development.
Nishant Saxena
Product Manager, Protein Purification at GenScript USA Inc.
Dr. Nishant Saxena is a product manager for protein and antibody purification products in GenScript USA. He has multiple years of lab experience in protein and antibody purification with a special focus on monoclonal antibody production using hybridoma technology. In this talk, he will present an automated protein purification platform using magnetic bead technology developed by GenScript.
Oren Beske
Amalgamator of Business and Biology at ATUM
Dr. Oren Beske joined ATUM in 2019 and brings nearly 20 years of industry experience to the team. Notably, Dr. Beske was President of Aragen Biosciences, Inc. where he led a multidisciplinary team to bring value added services to the biologics industry.
Most recently, he served as the CEO of Alloy Therapeutics, Inc. a start up antibody discovery platform company. Dr. Beske received a BS in Physiology and Biochemistry from CSULB and his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from UC San Francisco.
Paul W.H.I. Parren
Executive Vice President and Head of R&D at Lava Therapeutics
Dr. Paul W.H.I. Parren is dedicated to translating antibody biology and immunotherapy knowledge into innovative therapeutics and technologies. Dr. Parren studied Biology at the University of Amsterdam where he obtained a M.Sc. in Experimental Oncology (cum laude) in 1987 and a PhD in 1992. Next, he was a Postdoc, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the department of Immunology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, where he interrogated the human antibody response in protection against viral infections.
Philip Leighton
Sr. Director, Molecular Biology at Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated
Dr. Leighton is Senior Director of Molecular Biology at Ligand Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, CA. He received his Ph.D in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, followed by post-doctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. At Ligand, he is responsible for the development and validation of the OmniChicken® portion of the OmniAb® platform for the production of human antibodies in transgenic chickens.
Soraya Hölper
Lab Head Mass Spectrometry at Sanofi
Dr. Soraya Hölper works as a Senior Scientist for Developability and Mass Spectrometry for Sanofi. She is acquainted with developability strategy and analysis of complex therapeutic antibodies within the Biologics Research division. Before joining Sanofi, Soraya has had broad experience with protein analytics and was responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the mass spectrometry platforms.
Stefan Zielonka
Associate Director at Merck KGaA
Stefan received his PhD in 2015 from the Technische Universität of Darmstadt, Germany, where he worked in the Group of Harald Kolmar in the field of protein engineering of non-canonical antibodies. At the moment, he works as Associate Director at Merck Healthcare KGaA (EMD Serono), Germany, in the Department Protein Engineering and Antibody Technologies (PEAT).
Vu Truong
Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Director at Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Dr. Truong is a founder of Aridis and was elected CEO in 2014 after having served as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer since 2005. He has more than 20 years of experience in biopharmaceutical drug development, having held positions of increasing responsibilities in companies which were eventually acquired by larger entities, including Gene Medicine (sold to Megabios), Aviron (sold to MedImmune) and MedImmune (sold to Astra Zeneca).
