(Northwestern University, Harvard Medical School, USA; Central European University, Hungary)
Dr. Albert-László Barabási is a network scientist, fascinated with a wide range of topics, from unveiling the structure of the brain to treating diseases using network medicine, from the emergence of success in art to how does science really works. His work has helped unveil the hidden order behind various complex systems using the quantitative tools of network science, a research field that he pioneered, and lead to the discovery of scale-free networks, helping explain the emergence of many natural, technological and social networks. Barabási has been a major contributor to the development of network biology and the statistical physics of complex systems.
(EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany)
The Gibson team investigates protein sequences and motifs and interaction networks, undertakes computational analyses of macromolecules, and hosts the Eukaryotic Linear Motif Resource (ELM). His lab plays an instrumental role to assess experimentally verified protein-protein interactions, and provide adequate data through ELM for the community. His recent research projects on how microbes are hijacking host signaling pathways pointed out key evolutionary strategies and conserved processes.
(University of California, USA)
Dr. Morris’ main interests are in the visualization of diverse biological data in ways that can communicate important properties about underlying biological processes and relationships.
Dr. Morris has been a major contributor to the development of Cytoscape, an open source platform for integration and visualization of biological data, particularly biological data that can be mapped onto networks of various different kinds. He currently participates in the ongoing development of Cytoscape as a member of the core development team, contributing a number of plugins and extensions to Cytoscape to improve the general functionality as well as usability.
(Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
Dr. Yosef Yarden’s main interest is signal transduction mediated by growth factor receptors, especially receptors from the ErbB family, on mechanisms of EGF-induced cancer metastasis, and on regulation of signal transduction by non-coding RNAs. His research aims to establish proof-of-concept experimental therapies of cancer and exploration of resistance mechanisms to anti-cancer drugs.
(Institut Curie, France)
The Schauer group focuses on structure-function relationship of cell architecture. The group aims to understand how cellular organization is controlled and connected to cellular functions. The group studies molecular mechanisms that regulate global cell organization and the role of cell architecture in health and disease, using bioengineering and biophysical methods such as micropatterning.
(Institut Curie, France)
Dr. Stefan Bonn is the director of the Institute of Medical Systems Biology and full professor at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Germany. He is also senior researcher at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
Dr. Bonn specializes in the analysis of biomedical data using computational methods, such as
machine learning, statistics, and graph theory. The group uses integrated proteomics and transcriptomics data with clinical patient data to build holistic models of disease.
(University of Luxemburg, Luxemburg)
Dr. Wilmes’ main primary research focus is on using systems biology approaches to identify key functionalities of microbial communities including human associated microbiota. His group has pioneered appropriate methodologies for carrying out systematic molecular measurements of microbial consortia over space and time. This allows for example to define lifestyle strategies of distinct populations and link these to genetic and functional traits. The same approaches allow the study of microbiome-host molecular interactions. In this context, his group has pioneered the development of a microfluidics-based in vitro model of the human-microbial gastrointestinal interface called HuMiX.
(University College Dublin, Ireland)
Dr. Joyce’s group focuses on the genetic and biochemical basis of host-microbe interactions, their regulation and outcomes. Their main interest is in dissecting how combined factors can impact health, disease and longevity. The group has focused on microbial host-metabolite and dietary modification impacting the host (including drug uptake, adiposity, circadian rhythm, immune functions) and signalling processes to identity key areas for therapeutic approaches. They apply targeted and untargeted metabolomic approaches, animal models, cell systems and bacterial molecular and cellular biology to address their scientific questions.
(SensyneHealth, UK)
Dr. Khan is working on how biological big data and clinical information can be used to develop precision medicine approaches. Her main focus is on how machine learning technologies can be applied on these integrated data sets, and then to define disease endotypes that are better for drug targeting than classical disease definitions. At SensyneHealth, they use ethically sourced anonymised electronic patient record (EPR) data to create large longitudinal datasets, then develop clinically driven AI technology that analyses and contextualizes that information identifying previously unseen patterns and insights that can be used to undertake advanced medical research, improve pharmaceutical development and deliver better patient care.
(Pasteur Institute, France)
The unit “Dynamics of host pathogen-interactions”, to which Dr. Eninga’s group belongs, develops novel approaches to investigate the interactions between pathogens and their hosts in single cells in real time. In particular, they are interested in deciphering the molecular and cellular basis of how a number of bacterial pathogens, such as Shigella or Salmonella enter host cells during the infection process. To achieve this, they film these invasion events using innovative fluorescence microscopy. More specifically, they focus on the establishment of novel assays that allow us to monitor pathogen invasion; simultaneously tracking a large number of parameters involved in the invasion processes. In doing this we are able to correlate the pathogen behavior, its intracellular localization and the host responses it induces in single cells in real time.