Prof. Xiaoyuan (Shawn) Chen is Nasrat Muzayyin Chair Professor in Medicine and Technology, National University of Singapore. He is the founding editor of journal Theranostics (current IF 12.4). He is also the inaugural editor-in-chief of ACS Nano Medicine. He was elected as AIMBE Fellow (2017), SNMMI Fellow (2020), Member of European Academy of Sciences (EurASc, 2024), Member of Academia Europaea (MAE, 2024), and Member of Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS, 2024), received NUS School of Medicine Best Researcher of the Year (2025), JBN Trailblazer Award (2023), SNMMI Michael J. Welch Award (2019), ACS Bioconjugate Chemistry Lecturer Award (2016), NIH Director’s Award (2014), and NIBIB Mentor Award (2012). He became a member of the Advanced Materials Hall of Fame (2023). He is also the Past President of the Radiopharmaceutical Science Council (RPSC), Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). His research is largely focused on the development of various forms of theranostics (combination of diagnostics and therapeutics, e.g. radiotheranostics, nanotheranostics, immunotheranostics, magnetotheranostics, phototheranostics, etc.) that can be clinically translatable.

Dr. Christman is a Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering, the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Welfare, and holds the Pierre Galletti Endowed Chair for Bioengineering Innovation in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.  She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2000 and her Ph.D. from the University of California San Francisco and Berkeley Joint Bioengineering Graduate Group in 2003, where she examined in situ approaches to myocardial tissue engineering.  She was also a NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles in the fields of polymer chemistry and nanotechnology.  Dr. Christman joined the Department of Bioengineering in 2007 and is Co-Director of the Sanford Advanced Therapy Center in the Sanford Stem Cell Institute at the UC San Diego.  Her lab, which is housed in the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, focuses on developing novel biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications, and has a strong translational focus with the main goal of developing minimally invasive therapies for cardiovascular disease and women’s health.  Dr. Christman is a fellow of the American Heart Association, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received several awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator and Transformative Research Awards, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Translational Research Award, the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society’s Young Investigator and Senior Scientist Awards, the Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award for Applied Research, and the AIMBE Professional Impact Award.  Dr. Christman is also a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors and a co-founder of Ventrix, Inc. and Karios Technologies, Inc.

Gabe Kwong is the Robert A. Milton Endowed Chair & Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory School of Medicine. His research program sits at the intersection of synthetic immunity and medicine, with a particular emphasis on developing biosensors and cell therapies for cancer. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Dr. Kwong received his B.S. from UC Berkeley, Ph.D. from Caltech, and completed postdoctoral studies at MIT. He has been recognized with selective distinctions, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator and Pioneer Awards, and currently leads the $49.5 million Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas (CODA) project – a multi-institutional initiative supported by ARPA-H that aims to transform early cancer detection. Dr. Kwong co-founded 3 biotech companies and holds 40 issued or pending patents.

Twan Lammers obtained a D.Sc. in Radiation Oncology from Heidelberg University in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology from Utrecht University in 2009. In the same year, he started the Nanomedicine and Theranostics group at the RWTH Aachen University and the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering. In 2014, he was promoted to full professor of medicine at RWTH Aachen University Clinic. His group aims to individualize and improve disease treatment by combining drug targeting with imaging. To this end, image-guided (theranostic) drug delivery systems are being developed, as well as materials and methods to monitor tumor growth, angiogenesis, inflammation, fibrosis and metastasis. Lammers has received multiple scholarships and awards, including ERC starting, consolidator and proof-of-concept grants, the CRS Young Investigator Award, the Adritelf International Award, the Belgian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences International Award, the JNB Trailblazer Award, and the CRS Exceptional Leadership Award. He has been on the board of directors of CRS for 7 years and served as president in 2023-2024. In addition, has been on the council of ESMI for 10 years and currently serves as secretary. Lammers has published over 300 papers, with over 35000 citations and an h-index of 96. He is a member of the editorial board of 10 journals, and acts as associate editor for JCR, DDTR and MIB. Since 2019, he has been included in the Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers.

Riccardo Levato is Associate Professor at Utrecht University and at the University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands), where he is principal investigator at the Living Matter Engineering and Biofabrication laboratory. His research focuses on developing lab-made tissues and designer organoids for personalized therapies and regenerative medicine, and as advanced in vitro models for drug discovery. To achieve this goal, with his team he develops novel additive manufacturing and bioprinting technologies, particularly light-based printing techniques, in combination with smart cell-instructive biomaterials, and synthetic biology and cell engineering strategies. Key applications include pancreas bioprinting for diabetes research, liver biofabrication and vascular tissue engineering. He pioneered volumetric bioprinting, a technique capable to pattern cells and material into centimeter-scale constructs within seconds. To date, he co-authored >90 papers and several patents in the fields of biomaterials and additive manufacturing, and supervised 22 PhD students and 6 postdocs. He is a European Research Council laureate, and received several awards, including the Mid Career award from the International Society for Biofabrication, the Jean Leray and Robert Brown awards from the European Society for Biomaterials and from the Tissue Engineering an Regenerative Medicine International Society. Riccardo is also member of the Young Academy of Europe, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Biofabrication.

Roy van der Meel is a biomedical engineer specialized in nanomedicine and RNA therapeutics. After obtaining a PhD from Utrecht University, he moved to Pieter Cullis’ lab at the University of British Columbia where he gained extensive experience with lipid nanoparticle technology. In 2019, Roy was recruited to Eindhoven University of Technology by Willem Mulder, where he is currently appointed Associate Professor in the Precision Medicine group.
Roy’s research is supported by a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Vidi Grant and focuses on engineering RNA-based nanomedicines to precisely regulate immune cell function, aiming to treat diseases like cancer and autoimmune disorders. He has co-authored over 60 publications in journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Journal of Controlled Release, and ACS Nano, and he was awarded the Controlled Release Society Young Investigator Award in 2024. 

Suzie H. Pun is the Washington Research Foundation Professor of Bioengineering, Director for the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, and Associate Director of the Resuscitation Engineering Science Unit (RESCU) at University of Washington. She is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and has been recognized with MIT Technology Review’s “Top 100 Young Innovators” designation, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and as an AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador. She was also recognized with the University of Washington’s Marsha Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award for her dedicated mentoring of students. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering and on the Science Board of Reviewing Editors.
Suzie Pun received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. She also worked as a senior scientist at Insert Therapeutics/Calando Pharmaceuticals developing polymeric drug delivery systems before joining the Department of Bioengineering at University of Washington. Her current work focuses on biomaterial applications in drug delivery, trauma medicine and cell therapy.

Prof. Kanyi Pu is a President’s Chair Professor at the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB) and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He also serves as Associate Dean for Research at the College of Engineering and is an Executive Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. With a h-index of 125 and over 40,000 citations, he has been acknowledged as one of the world's most influential researchers by Web of Science, and received esteemed awards, including the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigatorship and the Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award. He also acts as an editorial advisory board member for over 18 renowned journals, including Advanced Materials, Chemical Society Reviews, Advanced Functional Materials, Biomaterials, Small, and Bioconjugate Chemistry.

Francesca Santoro, born in Naples in 1986, is a biomedical engineer specialed in neuroelectronics. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II, followed by a PhD from RWTH Aachen and Forschungszentrum Juelich in 2014. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, she founded the Tissue Electronics Lab at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Currently, she is Full Professor and Head of the Neuroelectronic Interfaces Lab at RWTH Aachen and Forschungszentrum Juelich.
Her awards include the MIT Technology Review Under 35 Europe and Italy, an ERC Starting Grant, the Falling Walls Breakthrough Award, and early career recognition from the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and delivered more than 60 talks at major international conferences.

Sihong Wang is an Associate Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014, and his Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in 2009. From 2015 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. He has published over 80 papers in numerous high-impact journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Electronics, Nature Sustainability, Matter, Nature Communications, Science Advances, etc. His research group currently focuses on soft polymeric bioelectronic materials and devices as the new generation of technology for biomedical studies and therapeutics. As of July 2025, his research has been cited more than 30,600 times and he has an H-index of 668. He was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics from 2020 to 2024, and was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35 Global List), Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award, Advanced Materials Rising Star Award, ACS PMSE Early-Stage Investigator Award, iCANX Young Scientist Award, MRS Graduate Student Award, Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad, Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2012 by Physics World, etc.

Kathryn (Katie) Whitehead is a Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon University. Her lab develops drug delivery systems for RNA, proteins, and applications in maternal and infant health. She obtained bachelor and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering (Univ. of Delaware; Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) before an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT. Prof. Whitehead is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the DARPA Director’s Fellowship, and the ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. She has also received the Controlled Release Society’s Young Investigator Award and served on its Board of Directors. Prof. Whitehead is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Controlled Release Society. In 2021, she gave a TED talk on the lipid nanoparticles (i.e., “fat balls”) used in the in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Her publications have been cited ~15,000 times, and her patents have been licensed and sublicensed for reagent and therapeutic use.

Associate Professor Joy Wolfram leads an extracellular vesicle research program (A$260M as chief investigator), which has amassed over 19 500 citations. Her team’s mission is to translate next-generation nanomedicine directly to the clinic, transforming the treatment of life-threatening diseases, improving patient outcomes, and extending healthy lifespans. She holds joint appointments in the School of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at The University of Queensland (ranked 41st globally by U.S. News & World Report) and cofounded the UQ Centre for Extracellular Vesicle Nanomedicine, the largest centre of its kind in Australia. In the past five years, Wolfram has ranked in the top 1 percent of researchers in several distinct fields: cancer, extracellular vesicles, drug delivery, biology/biochemistry, and pharmacology/toxicology (Essential Science Indicators SciVal and ScholarGPS). Wolfram’s interdisciplinary team includes clinicians, and she holds an affiliate position at Houston Methodist Hospital (ranked top 20 in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report). Wolfram is a passionate science communicator who formerly chaired an education and outreach working group at the National Institutes of Health (U.S.), served as associate program director of the PhD Program in Regenerative Sciences at Mayo Clinic (ranked 1^st globally by Newsweek), and shares her work with broader audiences as a TED speaker.

Professor of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He served as the Director of National Center for Nanosciences and Technology, China (2008-2023), the Academic Director of Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, CAS (2009-2023). He graduated from Sichuan Univ. in 1985, and received PhD at Tokyo Metropolitan Univ. in 1999. He moved to Chinese Academy of Sciences from RIKEN in 2001. He and colleagues in Japan discovered the Element 113 (Nh) which is first element that has been discovered in Asia and filled in the Element Periodic Table.
Dr Zhao is a pioneer for initiating the study on biological/toxicological effects of nanomaterials in 2001 and a trailblazing pioneer on the research of in vivo drug delivery using nanorobots. He is an international leader who has made pioneering and seminal contributions to the field of nanotoxicology by developing innovative techniques, tools, methodologies, standards, regulations to discover toxicological effects of nanomaterials and biomedical activities of nanoparticles for drug delivery, understanding their mechanisms of nanotoxicity in clinical applications. Dr Zhao`s basic research work has published ~660 peer-review scientific papers with citations ~90,000 times (H-index ~150); edited and published 13 books (3 books in English and 10 in Chinese), with his earliest efforts on systematizing the knowledge for nano-toxicology in category of nanomaterials, making significant contribution to building the knowledge framework of nano-safety.
In applications, Dr Zhao has been authorized 131 patents by China, USA, EU and Japan, and more than 20 patents have been translated to industries. The work of his team has led to an ISO standard being adapted by ISO/IEC 168 countries. etc. He is also worldwide leader in forging a comprehensive knowledge framework in nanotoxicology, enabling the scientific and regulatory landscape for nanotechnology products of biomedical uses in clinics. These greatly promoted the clinical translations of new bio-nanomaterials and later became the key of establishing the regulatory guidelines of nano-drug administration, for example, supporting the fast approval of Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine for clinical uses worldwide.