Jonathan Himmelfarb, Mount Sinai Hospital

Monday, June 10 | 6:00pm PT

Jonathan Himmelfarb, M.D., is a board certified physician, director of UW Medicine’s Kidney Research Institute, the UW’s Joseph W. Eschbach Endowed Chair in Kidney Research, president-elect of the American Society of Nephrology and a UW professor of Medicine and Nephrology and adjunct professor of Medical Bioengineering.

Dr. Himmelfarb’s research interests involve metabolic complications of kidney disease. He has also been involved in creating statewide, community-based research into healthcare disparities related to chronic kidney disease. The total patient experience is his primary concern and he provides care that is personal and friendly.

Dr. Himmelfarb earned his M.D. at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is board certified in both General Internal Medicine and Nephrology.

Ellen Fritsche, SCAHT/DNTOX GmbH

Tuesday, June 11 | 9:00am PT

Ellen Fritsche, MD, is a medical doctor by training and habilitated in environmental toxicology. Currently, she is the Director of the Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT) in Basel, Switzerland, and Scientific Managing Director of the start-up company DNTOX GmbH. For the last >10 years she was a full University Professor at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany and working group leader of the group ‘Alternative method development for environmental toxicity testing’ at the IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine. She is one of the test method developers of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)/Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) in vitro testing battery. In an international collaborative effort she facilitated the transition of DNT NAMs from the bench into regulatory application. Bridging academic science and regulation is her passion.

Zhongze Gu, Southeast University

Wednesday, June 12 | 9:00am PT

Prof. Zhongze Gu, who has published 300+ papers – over 100 papers in Organs-on-a-Chip research field – and has the number of citation for over 15000 times, is the University Professor and the Dean of School of Biological Science & Medical Engineering in Southeast University, Nanjing and the Chair of “Organoid and Organ-on-Chip Society” in China. He has been working on Organs-on-a-Chip research and industrialization for over ten years, and is the current chair of the Organoid and Organs-on-a-Chip Association in China, which now has more than 400 delegates from over 100 different institutes and companies. He, together with his team and colleagues, and the entire association will try our best to support the iMPSS, and hopefully to make the world MPS ISO standard happen in the near future.

Milica Radisic, University of Toronto

Thursday, June 13 | 9:00am PT

The Radisic lab is a dynamic and friendly group of graduate students, post-docs and research associates who are working together to create transformative technologies at the interface of engineering, stem cell biology and chemistry.

• Organ-on-a-chip engineering
• Bioinspired and electroactive polymers
• Peptide modified materials for regenerative medicine

Kim Homan, Genentech, Inc.

Friday, June 14 | 2:00pm PT

Kim directs the Complex in vitro Systems lab at Genentech, a core group focused on employing new predictive tools to enhance clinical translational outcomes. She has prior experience holding key leadership positions in two biotech startups, one of which she co-founded while in graduate school at UT Austin. Prior to that, as a co-appointed postdoc at Roche and at the Wyss Institute in Harvard, Kim invented methods to bioprint human tissues and use them to model drug disposition, mode of action, and safety. Kim holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering; she is also a former United States Marine Corps officer and veteran.