Our
Speakers (A-Z)
Badre Hammond
Director, Corporate Business Integration at Aptar Pharma
Badre Hammond’s background is in Biochemistry and drug development with 15 years’ experience in pharmaceutical product development with focus on nasal and pulmonary drug delivery systems. Mr. Hammond has broad experience in managing development of novel drug product programs from formulation development, pre-clinical, CMC, to market launch.
Boris Shekunov
Director / Sr. Principal Scientist at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company
Dr Boris Shekunov’s major scientific interests lie in the areas of particle technology, solid-state chemistry, pharmaceutics of drug delivery and pharmaceutical analysis. His career started in the UK academia.
Since 2002, he directed different research groups in the US pharmaceutical industry. At Takeda, he oversees analytical and materials science aspects of the late development and commercial products. He is an author of over 100 publications and 30 patents.
Donovan B. Yeates
Donovan B. Yeates CEO at KAER Biotherapeutics Corporation
Donovan B. Yeates, Ph.D., CEO, KAER Biotherapeutics Corporation, is an internationally recognized authority in aerosol drug delivery and respiratory function. Has developed technologies to deliver aerosols to the lungs, quantify the dose delivered and evaluate the physiological mechanisms whereby they are cleared from the lungs.
Dries Cardoen
Sr. Study Director at Nelson Labs
Dries Cardoen received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2011. After his academic career as a post-doctoral researcher, he started at Nelson Labs (formerly Toxikon Europe) in 2013 as study director in the Extractables & Leachables Department. He is currently leading the team of study directors that is specialized in E&L testing of inhalation drug products and topical and transdermal drug products.
Guenther Hochhaus
Professor at University of Florida
Dr. Guenther Hochhaus received his Ph.D. in 1984 at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Westf. Wilhems University (Münster, Germany). He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco and subsequently joined the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy.
Jan De Backer
CEO at FLUIDDA
Dr. Jan De Backer graduated from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands as aerospace engineer. He attained an MSc degree in aerodynamics and specialised in applied biomedical computational fluid dynamics leading to a PhD from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is an alumnus of the MBA programs at London Business School, London and Columbia Business School, New York.
John Patton
Chairman & CSO at Dance Biopharm
Dr. John Patton began Dance Biopharm operations in 2010 with a carefully selected core team. Previously, he was the co-founder of Inhale Therapeutics (now Nektar Therapeutics), where he helped lead the development and FDA approval of the first inhaled insulin product. During his 18-year tenure at Inhale, Patton was a key driver for the company’s business development deals and participated in financings totaling more than $700M.
Justin Kalafat
Scientific Business Development Manager at ACG
Justin Kalafat is responsible for collaborating with pharmaceutical industry for capsule business. Prior to joining ACG in 2014, his background includes degrees in chemistry and roles within the generic pharmaceutical industry in quality control and procurement.
His experiences enable key strategies to be developed with customers, R&D focused institutions and universities on the technical aspects of capsules as a dosage form solution.
Kristen Merriman
Director of Respiratory Care Services, Pulmonary Function Laboratory & Interventional Pulmonary Program at Stanford University Medical Center
Kristen Merriman has worked in respiratory therapy for over 25-years specializing in adult and pediatric emergency and critical care. While providing for patients at the bedside, she completed her advanced degrees in astrophysics and spent two years analyzing the chemical composition of star clusters around fossil galaxies to understand their evolutionary history. She has served as an instructor of both respiratory care and physics at the undergraduate level.
Larry Brown
Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at Noveome Biotherapeutics
Larry Brown, Sc.D., serves as the Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer of Noveome Biotherapeutics.
He obtained his doctorate in Biochemistry and Bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Prof. Robert Langer and trained in the late Dr. Judah Folkman’s laboratory in the Surgical Research Department of Childrens Hospital, Boston.
Masahiro Sakagami
Professor of Pharmaceutics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy
Dr. Masahiro Sakagami is a Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Pharmacy in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He received B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Waseda University in Japan (1989 and 1991, respectively); and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at VCU (2000). In 1991-1996, he was an inhalation drug delivery scientist at Teijin Ltd., a pharmaceutical industry in Japan.
Nicolas Buchmann
Programme Manager at Vectura Group plc.
Dr. Nicolas Buchmann is Programme Manager at Vectura Group plc. He has gained extensive experience as Programme and Project Manager and is leading drug-device combination programmes with pMDIs, development projects with connected inhalation devices, smart nebuliser technology developments and was also deeply involved in the development of novel aerosol generation technologies. At his work at Vectura. His educational background is engineering profession with a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering
Roy Barnewall
Manager: Inhalation Technology at Battelle
Dr. Roy Barnewall has 25 years of experience in veterinary medicine and biomedical research experience in Inhalation, bacterial pathogenesis, medical countermeasures, and animal model development. Dr Barnewall has been at Battelle for 19+ years, where he serves as Research Leader and Manager of the Inhalation department, as well as a veterinarian, a scientist, and study director.
Samir Shah
Associate Director, Regulatory Affairs, Combination Products at Teva Pharm
Peter Robbins is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford. He has a strong reputation for developing innovative technologies to address previously intractable questions in human physiology, particularly relating to respiratory and cardiovascular function. His interests include hypoxia biology and iron homeostasis. In these areas, he has had a long-term collaboration with Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe, the 2019 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Wayland Rushing
Director, Scientific Affairs at Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing
Dr. Wayland Rushing has 20 years of CMC analytical testing experience, including over 15 years of experience in testing of inhalation drug products.
As the Director of Scientific Affairs he is responsible for designing and implementing CMC testing programs for Eurofins clients, including programs for pMDI’s, DPI’s, Nebulizers, pre-filled syringes along with a variety of other drug delivery and container/closure systems.
Yvonne Chan
Director, Center for Digital Health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Yvonne Yu-Feng Chan, MD, PhD, is Director of the Digital Health Center at the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai. She is a national leader in mobile health and digital health research, and a board-certified Emergency physician.
