Associate Professor, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University

My research training and diverse scientific background in musculoskeletal pathophysiology has provided me with a unique experimental skill set – combining cell, molecular and immune biology with biomedical engineering that enables me to investigate highly translational questions and mechanisms while grounded in fundamental basic science. I am currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedics at the Ohio State University. My current interests lie in developing novel non-addictive biological strategies that directly target the underlying mechanism of discogenic back pain including suitable in vitro and in vivo animal models for clinical translation. My PhD/industry studentship training at the University of Manchester and and Pfizer, provided me with a solid training in IVD pathophysiology and neuronal mechanisms underlying degeneration and pain. My postdoctoral training in the Bioengineering Iatridis labs in the US utilized structure and symptom-modifying developmental based strategies for regeneration of the IVD and in vivo rat pain models to study disease mechanisms, assess mechanics and screen therapeutics.

Founder and President, OralBiolife

Chief Executive Officer, Founder, Board Member, C-suite Advisor with 25 years’ experience driving transformational change for global clinical development portfolios from early-stage R&D to commercialization. She has an extensive background in building and managing successful start up ventures, commercial scale up, strategy/ execution to support brand launch, research & development acceleration, IP strategy, Corporate Board selection/ formation, business development/ investment strategy and venture capital initiatives, as well as managed markets and healthcare economics. I am passionate about transformation of pharmaceutical industry to an innovative, outcome driven industry. As a scientist and business partner, I work extensively with Business Development and R&D to transform patient care and bring new medicine and health technology to market.

Chief Business Officer at Artios

Healthcare business development professional with extensive investing, corporate development and capital markets experience and a passion for strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. Skilled at negotiations, business assessments, deal structuring, team and transaction management. Dedicated to effective partnering of innovative science start-ups with large cap pharma and efficient deal execution. Recipient of two transactionalist excellence awards at Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb.

Blue & Gold Distinguished Professor, Founding Chair, Biomedical Engineering, University of Delaware

Dawn M. Elliott is an American biomedical engineer whose research concerns the biomechanics of connective tissue including the tendons, menisci, and intervertebral discs. She is Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware,[1] adjunct professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,[2] and the former president of the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Dr. Elliott ‘s research program investigates structure-function relationships in load-bearing fiber-reinforced tissues and joints, and the associated changes that occur during development, with degeneration and injury, and following therapeutic intervention.  Dr. Elliott focuses on determining mechanical factors that contribute to the pathogenesis and progression of intervertebral disc degeneration, tendinopathy, and meniscus injury and repair.  Throughout, her approach is to develop and apply innovative technologies, including novel mechanical tests, rigorous mathematical models, and state-of-the-art imaging and analyses.

Head of External Innovation in Genomic Medicine, Danaher Corporation

Jennifer is an industry veteran in enabling cell and gene therapies. Her experience has spanned the value chain from reagent development and raw material sourcing through therapeutic product development. Her expertise includes cell and gene therapy, business operations, technical diligence, alliances and partnerships. She is currently at Head of External Innovation, Genomic Medicine at Danaher Corporation, and is based in Toronto, Canada.  Previous roles include Gene Therapy Market Development at Pall Corporation, key operational positions at iPSC derived-cell therapy therapeutic startups, Morphocell Technologies and Bluerock Therapeutics, Business Development and technology diligence leadership at the Centre for the Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine and R&D at STEMCELL Technologies.   She is a stem cell scientist by training, having completed a PhD in Genetics from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a postdoc studying hematopoietic stem cells at the Lund Stem Cell Center in Lund, Sweden. Selected for the Pfizer-sponsored AdMare Executive Leadership training program (2019 cohort), Jennifer also serves as a Board member for The Metabolomics Innovation Center, on the Manufacturing, Clinical Translation, and Industry Committee of ISSCR, and as a Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Advisor.

Practicing Clinician at Fred Hutch, Founder and CSO at Deverra Therapeutics

Dr. Colleen Delaney is pioneering methods to make umbilical cord blood transplants more available and successful worldwide. Because it does not need to be as closely matched to the patient as bone marrow, cord blood offers an option to those thousands of blood cancer patients every year who can’t find a matched adult donor. Dr. Delaney developed a breakthrough method for multiplying the small number of stem and progenitor cells in each cord blood unit hundreds of times over in the lab. Her primary research focus is on developing these multiplied cells for use in the clinic. Her goal is to develop therapies that protect patients from severe side effects after cord blood transplant or intensive chemotherapy.

Chief Operating Officer, Gencure

Becky Cap, a 25-year veteran of the life sciences industry, was named chief operating officer of San Antonio-based GenCure in February 2016. GenCure, a subsidiary of BioBridge Global, is focused on providing process development and cGMP manufacturing services. Cap drove the intra-preneurial development and integration of these new service lines for BioBridge Global and supported the extension of other business unit offerings into the cell therapy and regenerative medicine space. GenCure’s mission is to realize the potential of donated human cells and tissue to save and enhance lives.

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Utah

Dr. Kramer joined the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Utah in January, 2017. Dr. Kramer obtained an Honors B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Utah, where she performed undergraduate research in the lab of Prof. C. Dale Poulter. She then worked in industry for Echelon Biosciences Inc. synthesizing phosphoinositide and isoprenoid compounds and related assay products. Dr. Kramer began graduate studies in the lab of Prof. Tim Deming in UCLA's Chemistry Department and obtained her Ph.D. in 2012. In 2013, Dr. Kramer joined the lab of Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi at UC Berkeley and Stanford as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow and a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Kramer's research efforts have been recognized with numerous awards and honors.

Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Clinically Media

Sometimes your true calling in life isn’t entirely apparent until an opportunity appears right in front of you. For Victoria, this is partly how she founded Clinically Media in 2017. What started as freelance marketing jobs for pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms, turned into a network of companies needing assistance with larger projects, including the formidable task of recruiting patients for clinical trials. Clinically Media’s purpose is to make the lives of everyone involved in clinical research easier — the pharmaceutical companies, the research sites, the patients, and everyone in between.

Founding Partner and Head of Regulatory & Quality Assurance at BioTechLogic

Tracy TreDenick is a founding partner of BioTechLogic, which was formed in 2004.  She is the Head of Regulatory and Quality, and has 28 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry including roles in manufacturing, quality, and regulatory.  She has supported the development of 19 breakthrough therapy products including 15 gene and 4 cell therapies. This includes two gene therapy products that have been approved by FDA and other regions of the world. Previously, Ms. TreDenick worked at Pfizer and Baxter. Ms. TreDenick received her B.A. in Biology/Pre-Med from Indiana Wesleyan University. 

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Known Medicine

Andrea Mazzocchi, PhD completed her PhD in biomedical engineering from Wake Forest School of Medicine and received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has spent the past several years focused on cancer biology, tissue engineering, and biomaterials. Her research has focused on the intersection of these fields to generate a cancer precision medicine platform. Known Medicine marries this patient-specific wetlab approach with data science to generate biological, computational, and clinical insights to improve cancer patient lives.

Chief Science Officer, ElevateBio

For the last 20 years, Dr. Carpenter has worked on the development of cell therapies using human adult and embryonic stem cells, in academia and industry, in the United States and Canada. She has been involved with human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research since the field was established. Her work involves discovery research and the translation of this research into therapeutics, including developing strategies for preclinical development and navigating the regulatory issues surrounding stem cell therapies.

Associate Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

Grace O’Connell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the co-director of the Berkeley Biomechanics Laboratory, and her research interests are in soft tissue mechanobiology and tissue engineering. O’Connell received PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. O’Connell’s research group employs computational modeling and experimental approaches to study the effect of aging and disease on tissue- and joint-level mechanobiology. She has received many awards including the 2019 YC Fung Young Investigator Award and NSF CAREER Award, and was inducted into the AIMBE College of Fellows in 2021. She is also the Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence for the College of Engineering.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Director of Sarcio

Beth Lindborg has a unique business/technical background and leadership experience. She previously served as vice president of strategy and, before that, vice president of operations at SynerFuse, Inc., where the company raised more than $7 million in angel funding and received IDE approval from the FDA for its first-in-human clinical trial. She also served as director of research and marketing at BRTI Life Sciences, where the company launched two products in the life science market.

Program Director, Center for Regenerative Sports MedicineProgram Director, Center for Regenerative Sports Medicine, Steadman Philippon Research Institute

My research focuses on developing novel stem cell based therapies for the treatment of musculoskeletal diseases and injuries. Specifically, I believe we can drive improved tissue regeneration by recapitulating the developmental and repair sequences stem cells follow. I utilize a cross-disciplinary approach that combines engineering training in biologically modified synthetic polymers, cell and developmental biology, and pre-clinical models of orthopaedic injuries. In previous studies, I used mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to promote regeneration of both articular cartilage and bone. Recently we have validated a paradigm-shifting approach to bone regeneration through a cartilage intermediate using a murine model of a segmental defect. With this application we hope to test strategies for clinical translation of our preclinical data and receive mentorship associated with the bench-to-bedside development.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Propel Biosciences

Strategic, visionary, mission driven leader in cell & gene therapy and life sciences. Director, Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. Chairman of the Board for Rare Disease Innovations Institute enabling rapid growth of this high profile grassroots organization focused on market and patient access, rare diseases stakeholder education and enablement of state wide rare disease councils.

SVP Business Development and Strategy at Center for Breakthrough Medicines

Sybil Danby is currently the SVP of Business Development at a cell and gene therapy CDMO. Sybil has a Bachelors and Masters in Biology, the latter she decided to get while working full time and having a baby! After spending almost a decade in technical roles in manufacturing and process development for biologics she decided to try her hand in the commercial world. Over the last 8 years she has held a variety of roles in technical sales and business development across equipment and services providers and has had the opportunity to experience both small and large companies, start up through investment, and high growth to acquisition.

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Orthopedic Surgery at Columbia University

I’m an Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, and have faculty affiliations with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cellular and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics program and the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative at Columbia University.  I direct a multidisciplinary research lab, and serve as the Associate Director of the Carroll Laboratories for Orthopedic Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. I also teach and mentor students at all levels, from undergraduate to post graduate levels in orthopedic research.

Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska

I am an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Biological Systems Engineering Department. Our lab focuses on establishing translatable models of orthopedic pain and engineering biomaterial-based approaches to treat pain. In addition to research, I also love to advise and teach undergraduate and graduate students. Prior to becoming a professor, I worked in the microscopy and biotechnology industries.

Founder and Principal Consultant, SymplexBio and Assistant Adjunct Professor, UCSF

Suzanne is a passionate and insightful engineer with scientific expertise and business development experience in the field of orthopaedics and regenerative medicine. In industry, she successfully drove market development strategy, commercial launches, and new business opportunities. She has led research & development and clinical strategy projects. Her understanding of the market landscape, science, healthcare, and technical aspects of commercialization provide her a unique ability to work effectively across functions and solve a diverse set of problems. Suzanne is also an adjunct Professor in the UC San Francisco Orthopaedic Department, holds leadership positions in international academic societies and has numerous publications, abstracts, and issued patents in the field of regenerative medicine and cartilage restoration.