David Schaffer

Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California at Berkeley

David Schaffer is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, and Neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998. He then conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA before becoming a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. At Berkeley, Dr. Schaffer applies engineering principles to enhance stem cell and gene therapy approaches for neuroregeneration, work that includes novel approaches for molecular engineering and evolution of new viral vectors as well as new technologies to investigate and control stem cell fate decisions. David Schaffer has received an NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Whitaker Foundation Young Investigator Award, and was named a Technology Review Top 100 Innovator. He was also awarded the American Chemical Society Marvin Johnson Award in 2016, the American Chemical Society BIOT Division Young Investigator Award in 2006, the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Shaffer Young Investigator Award in 2000, and was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2010.

Dr. Aby J. Mathew

Sr. Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, BioLife Solutions

Dr. Mathew was part of the founding team of BioLife Solutions, Inc., and is a co-developer of BioLife’s biopreservation media solutions. Dr. Mathew has been researching low temperature biopreservation since 1994, and his studies contributed to the development of BioLife’s current commercial HypoThermosol® and CryoStor® product platforms and intellectual property foundation. Dr. Mathew was BioLife’s first Director of Manufacturing, established BioLife’s initial Quality system, and is currently Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Mathew is a member of: AABB, BEST Collaborative, ISCT, ARM, TERMIS, and the Society for Cryobiology. Dr. Mathew is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood Foundation, the Scientific Advisory Board of HemaCare Corporation, the founding Board of Directors of the Cord Blood Association, the NIST-AMTech National Cell Manufacturing Consortium, and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Clinical Advisory Panel. 

Dr. Adam Elhofy

Chief Scientific Officer, Essential Pharmaceuticals LLC.

Dr. Elhofy developed the core technology for the Ess line of products and aided in creating patents around novel uses of materials.  He has over 14 years of scientific research experience in the areas of immunology, neuroscience, and oncology.  He was funded by both the National Institutes of Health and the Multiple Sclerosis society as an investigator at Northwestern University Medical School. His doctoral research won him the award of the Top 5 trainee scientists by the American Association of Immunologists. Dr. Elhofy has 14 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals. He has played a variety of roles with start-up biotech companies ranging from Principal Investigator to Director of Corporate Development. 

Dr. Andrew D Fesnak

Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Andrew Fesnak, MD is the Director of Cell Manufacturing and Development in the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at the University of Pennsylvania and an attending physician in Transfusion Medicine in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Fesnak shares medical oversight for a large and complex academic transfusion service, including apheresis collection for cell therapy.  He is responsible for translation and early phase development of cell therapy protocols for use in human clinical trials.  His research interests include the optimization of apheresis collection specifically for advance cell therapy applications.

Dr. Benjamin Fryer

Team Leader, CMC, Cardiomyocyte Cell Manufacturing, University of Washington

Ben Fryer is the team leader for Cell Manufacturing and Processing at the University of Washington’s Heart Regeneration Program (HRP).  The HRP is led by Professor Chuck Murry and is currently in pre-clinical development of a cell therapy to treat heart disease. Ben earned a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a postdoc in Celeste Simon’s Howard Hughes Laboratory.   He has worked for several small biotech / pharmaceutical firms supporting discovery research and pre-clinical & clinical development of small and large molecule therapies for cancer. Prior to joining HRP Ben worked at Janssen R&D’s internal diabetes venture (BetaLogics) from 2006 to 2014 on a defined and scalable method to manufacture pancreatic beta islets from stem cells for the treatment and cure of diabetes. Ben is an inventor on several pending patents for Janssen/Johnson&Johnson, including stirred tank bioreactor based suspension expansion and differentiation processes and a product currently marketed by Thermo-Fisher(TM) as Nunclon-Vita.

Dr. Biju Parekkadan

Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Medicine

Dr. Chris Albanese

Director, Preclinical Imaging Research Laboratory (PIRL), Georgetown University Medical Center

Dr. Albanese is a tenured Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Pathology. Dr. Albanese has over 155 peer reviewed publications in the fields of cancer biology, including the development and use of CRCs, animal modeling and imaging.  As both the founder and director of the Georgetown Preclinical Imaging Research Laboratory, he has developed a comprehensive, translational preclinical imaging program based on MRI, as well as luminescence/fluorescence IVIS imaging, X-ray and ultrasound. In addition, Dr. Albanese has been directly involved in establishing the groundbreaking technology referred to as conditionally reprogram cells (CRC’s), which allows for the continuous growth of all epithelial cell types, both normal and cancerous, including, pancreas and prostate, while also maintaining the genomic information of the primary sample. As the co-founder of the Georgetown Center for Cell Reprogramming, has built "living biobanks" of CRCs from a variety of human epithelial tissues

Dr. Dawn Maier

Associate Director-Cellular Process Development, Bluebird Bio