GenScript 4^th Annual
Gene & Cell Engineering Virtual Summit

Bio:

Dr. Moriarity is a Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology/Oncology. He graduated from Saint Olaf College in 2007 with a BA in Biology, Chemistry, and Biomolecular sciences. He received his PhD in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology & Genetics at the University of Minnesota in 2012. From 2012-2014 he was a post-doctoral fellow in David Largaespda's lab, where he worked on cancer gene discovery. He joined the Department of Pediatrics Faculty in 2014. Over the last decade, he developed a productive translation genome engineering program focused on the development and translation of engineered immune cells for cancer and gene therapy.

Bio:

Dr. Dong Geng joined Legend Biotech in 2018. Since then, Dr. Geng has taken increasing responsibilities primarily in Legend’s R&D portfolio development. She is responsible for non-clinical safety, pre-clinical and clinical pharmacology, and translational sciences. Dr. Geng has 26 years of drug development experience in the biopharma industry.

Bio:

Bio:

Dr. Michelle Hung is a synthetic biologist with 12 years of experience in mammalian synthetic biology and engineering next-generation cell and protein-based cancer therapeutics. She is currently a principal scientist at GeneFab, where she leads GeneFab’s research collaboration with Senti Biosciences and BlueRock Therapeutics building next-generation cell therapies for regenerative medicine. Before GeneFab, Michelle led the development of small molecule and environmentally regulated switches for control of cytokine production in CAR-NK and CAR-T cell therapies at Senti Biosciences. Michelle also previously worked at AbbVie, where she focused on the design of bispecific antibodies with increased tumor-targeting specificity. She received an undergraduate degree in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Biology from Northwestern University.

Bio:

SAMUEL STERNBERG, PhD, runs a research laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University, where he is an Associate Professor. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Columbia University in 2007, graduating summa cum laude, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014, where he worked with Nobel Laureate Dr. Jennifer Doudna. Sam's research focuses on CRISPR-Cas systems, RNA-guided enzymes, and genome engineering technologies. He is the recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and the NSF CAREER Award. In addition to publishing and speaking internationally, Sam remains involved in public outreach and discussions on the ethical issues surrounding genome editing. Together with Jennifer Doudna, he co-authored a popular science book about the discovery of CRISPR technology, titled A Crack in Creation, which The New York Review of Books called “required reading for every concerned citizen."

Bio:

Dr. Sandeep Kumar is a Senior Director of Platform Development at Tome Biosciences. His work focuses on innovating new technologies for genome editing, protein engineering, mRNA PD, and DNA Assembly. Previously he worked at Tessera Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics, B-MoGen Biotechnologies (Bio-Techne), etc.

Bio:

Sergej Kudruk is an IIN Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and the International Institute for Nanotechnology. He obtained his MS degree and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Münster. Dr. Kudruk's research interests span chemistry, biology, and the interdisciplinary field of biomaterials, with a focus on developing therapeutics for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. During his doctoral studies, he explored and established methods for precision delivery of hydrophilic and amphiphilic cargo into mammalian cells. Additionally, he devised a novel synthetic chemistry route to create a crosslinker capable of characterizing the interactions between a peripheral membrane-binding protein and various phospholipids. Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher in the Mirkin lab, Dr. Kudruk is advancing his expertise in fundamental nanocarrier development by investigating the interactions between nanotherapeutics and physiological microenvironments.