Dr. Sriram Neelamegham is a UB Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine at the State University of New York-Buffalo. His laboratory works at the interface of engineering and medicine, with applications in studies of human disease mechanics. Such work falls under the umbrella of "Systems Glycobiology," where high-throughput experimentation and mathematical modeling are coupled to describe the interplay between the competing glycoEnzymes that regulate cellular glycosylation patterns. Prof. Neelamegham has published over 140 research articles, book chapters, and patents. He receives the NIH Independent Scientist award, the 2015 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the 2018 Schoellkopf medal from the Western New York American Chemical Society. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering (AIMBE) and Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He has served on NIH advisory panels and editorial boards of various journals. He is currently the Discussion Leader developing the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) at the NCBI-glycans resource. Before moving to Buffalo. Prof. Neelamegham received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering/Bioengineering from the Rice University and completed his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine. 

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Dr. Debra Mohnen is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia. She studies pectin synthesis, structure, and function with an emphasis on the role of pectin in wall architecture and plant cell growth. She was awarded the Bruce Stone Award in 2008 for pectin synthesis and elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013. Her research on synthesizing pectin glycan backbones, homogalacturonan, and rhamnogalacturonan, led to the discovery of the GAUT and RGGAT families of glycosyltransferases and the finding that pectin is a family of glycan domains in both cell wall heteroglycans and glycoconjugates. Since 2007 part of her research has been directed at improving plant biomass yield, sustainability, and composition for producing biofuel and biomaterials. As Focus Area Lead of Plant Biomass Formation and Modification in the BioEnergy Science Center, she directed a team of researchers aimed at overcoming biomass recalcitrance to deconstruction, and since 2017 she has served as Research Domain Lead for Integrative Analysis and Understanding in the Center for Bioenergy Innovation. Her current focus is understanding the roles of pectin in cell expansion and wall structure.

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Professor Manfred Wuhrer studied Biochemistry at Regensburg University and obtained his Ph.D. in 1999 at Giessen University, Germany. Subsequently, he joined the Leiden University Medical Center, where he was appointed assistant professor in 2005 and associate professor in 2008. In 2013, he was appointed full professor of Analytics for Biomolecular Interactions at VU University Amsterdam. In 2015 he continued his career as Head of the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at LUMC, Leiden. He focuses on the development of mass spectrometric methods for glycomics and glycoproteomics and their application in clinical research and biotechnology. Clinical applications cover the fields of rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, longevity, as well as various infectious diseases. 

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Celso A Reis is the Head of the Glycobiology in Cancer group at i3S-Institute for Research and Innovation in Health, University of Porto, Portugal. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of i3S and on the Board of IGO. He is a Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Porto, and an invited Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. Celso A Reis has published 227 peer-reviewed papers with over 15400 citations and with an H-index of 56 (Scopus). He is the author of several book chapters and patents. Currently, he leads an international multidisciplinary team working on glycobiology in human diseases focusing on cancer. His lab investigates the molecular mechanisms controlling glycosylation in cancer and the role of glycans during carcinogenesis and tumor progression. He has made several contributions to the development of novel strategies to improve cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and patient stratification. These include the studies on the role of glycosyltransferases regulating the biosynthesis of several glycans involved in cancer, such as those controlling critical steps on mucin-type O-glycosylation and N-glycosylation, with impact in cancer invasion and metastasis, as well as the tumor microenvironment.

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Professor Ludger Johannes is Research Director (DRE) at INSERM. He is a member of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German organization of the academically gifted), Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and German Academy of Science — Leopoldina. At Institut Curie, he has been heading since 2001 the Traffic, Signaling, and Delivery Team, member of the excellence initiative Cell(n)Scale. Since January 2014, he has directed the Cellular and Chemical Biology unit. His research aims at establishing fundamental concepts of endocytosis and intracellular trafficking. The Johannes team has discovered the membrane trafficking interface between early endosomes and the Golgi apparatus, and demonstrated that lectin-induced glycolipid reorganization acts as a driving force in clathrin-independent endocytosis (termed the GlycoLipid-Lectin / GL-Lect hypothesis). The studies of the Johannes team have been published in highly visible international journals, including Cell and Nature. Between 2014-2020, he was the holder of an ERC advanced grant. He also aims at exploiting the discoveries of his team for the development of innovative cancer therapy strategies using the B-subunit of Shiga toxin (STxB) as a "pilot" for the delivery of therapeutic compounds to precise intracellular locations of dendritic cells for immunotherapy, and to tumors for targeted therapy.

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Professor Matthew P. DeLisa is the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. His research focuses on understanding and controlling the molecular mechanisms underlying protein biogenesis--folding and assembly, membrane translocation, and post-translational modifications--in the complex environment of a living cell. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1996; a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2001; and postdoctoral work at the University of Texas-Austin, Department of Chemical Engineering. DeLisa joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University in 2003. He has also served as a Gastprofessur at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the Institut für Mikrobiologie. He has garnered a number of honors and awards, including most recently the Biotechnology Progress Award for Excellence in Biological Engineering Publication, and was named the to the inaugural “Life Sciences Power 50” by City & State New York. He is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recent years, he has served on the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group and the National Academies Committee on Innovative Technologies to Advance Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.

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Professor Yasuhiko Kizuka has been a researcher at Disease Glycomics Team, RIKEN, led by Dr. Naoyuki Taniguchi (2009-2017). He has joined Gifu University (Japan) as an Associate Professor since 2017, and is currently the Director and Professor of Integrated Glyco-Molecular Science Center, Institute for Glyco-core Research (iGCORE) at Gifu University.
Professor Kizuka’s glyco-related contributions include discovery of novel mode of catalytic action of glycosyltransferases, elucidation of glycosyltransferase structures and development of glycosyltransferase inhibitors. His Research Interests are (1) Regulation of glycosyltransferase activity; (2) Substrate protein selectivity of glycosyltransferases; (3) Physiological functions of N-glycan branches.

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Dr. Avery Posey is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He received Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2011) and his postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a classically trained molecular and developmental geneticist and an expert in the development and pre-clinical characterization of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and other engineered T cell strategies for cancer immunotherapy. His current research is focused on the redirection of T cells to target cancer-specific epitopes, especially glycan haptens and O-glycopeptide epitopes formed through altered glycosylation in cancer cells, investigation of optimal CAR-T signaling for effective anti-tumor responses and durable persistence in solid tumors, and CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene-editing strategies for improved engineered T cells (knockout of checkpoint molecules - PD-1, CTLA-4, etc.; HDR knock-in of combination therapies). The major objective of his research is to increase the efficacy of engineered T cells in solid tumors.

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James C. Paulson obtained his Ph.D. (Biochemistry) in 1974 from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and did post-doctoral work at Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, North Carolina, from 1974-78. From 1978-1990 he rose from Assistant Professor to full Professor and vice-chair in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he developed an interest in analyzing receptor specificity of influenza viruses from different host species. From 1990-1999 he served as Vice President and Member Board of Directors of Cytel Corporation, La Jolla, CA. From 1999-present, he has been Professor, in the Departments of Cell and Molecular Biology, Chemical Physiology, and Immunology and Microbial Sciences at The Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California. He served as acting President & CEO from 2014-2015 and is currently Cecil and Ida Green Professor and Chair of Molecular Medicine. His current research interests include the roles of glycan-binding proteins in the modulation of immune cell signaling and the receptor specificity of mammalian and animal influenza viruses.

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Dr. Drickamer began working in the field of glycan-binding receptors as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University. These receptors have been the focus of his subsequent research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Oxford University, and currently at Imperial College London. His work on identifying a common carbohydrate recognition led to the definition of C-type lectins as one of the major groups of glycan-binding receptors. His ongoing research is a joint project with Dr. Maureen Taylor. The aim is to develop a broad understanding of the biological roles of sugar recognition. They have used a combination of biochemical, biophysical, and molecular biological approaches to understand how carbohydrate-recognition domains provide selective recognition of glycoproteins and cell surfaces. In addition, they seek to determine how such recognition leads to the targeting of biological functions, such as innate immunity to pathogens, clearance of serum glycoproteins, cell adhesion, and cell signaling, and how genetic variation in sugar-binding receptors causes changes in their molecular properties and hence contributes to human disease. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Drickamer co-authored the textbook Introduction to Glycobiology, designed to introduce the field to students and researchers from other disciplines.

 

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Associate Professor Morten Thaysen-Andersen heads the Analytical Glycoimmunology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Additionally, he was recently recruited as Visiting Professor at Nagoya University, Japan, to set up a Glycoproteomics lab at the prestigious Institute for Glyco-core Research (iGCORE). Across the two laboratories, his glycobiology-focused research program aims to advance our understanding of the human innate immune system and immune-related diseases, including microbial infections, inflammation, and cancer. His team develops and applies novel glycomics and glycoproteomics technologies using advanced mass spectrometry while drawing on analytical tools in protein and carbohydrate chemistry and methods in immunology, structural biology, microbiology, and molecular and cell biology to unravel fundamental glycobiological processes within the innate immune system.
 

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