Miami Engineering Career Development Associate Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
University of Miami, USA

Dr. Tomei is the Miami Engineering Career Development Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Miami. She obtained her M.S. in Materials Engineering from the Politecnico of Milan (Italy) in 2004, and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Biotechnology from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in 2008. Dr. Tomei currently directs the Islet Immunoengineering Lab at the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) where she is applying her unique background in bioengineering and immunology to develop novel immunoengineering platforms to prevent rejection after islet transplantation and to promote antigen-specific tolerance for a cure of type-1 diabetes.

Head of the Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration
University of Geneva Technical Director of the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center
University of Geneva Hospitals, Switzerland

Dr. Ekaterine Berishvili is the Technical Director at the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center, Department of Surgery, University of Geneva Hospitals. She also leads the Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration at the University of Geneva. Her expertise is focused on cell-based therapies for type 1 diabetes, immune tolerance induction, and the bioengineering of the endocrine pancreas. She holds positions on the board of the ESOT and CTRMS. Dr. Berishvili is an active member of several scientific committees, including Breakthrough T1D beta cell replacement consortium, and serves on the editorial board of Transplant International as an associate editor. At the national level, Dr. Berishvili is a member of the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study’s scientific committee. She represents Geneva in the Swisstransplant working group specializing in pancreas, islet, and small bowel transplantation.

Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Lois Pope LIFE Center
Miami, USA

Dr. Stephen Shelby Burks is a physician-scientist who completed training at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Neurological Surgery. He graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine with honors distinction in 2014. Since undergraduate studies, he has contributed to the field of neurotrauma. In 2008, he began work in traumatic brain injury under Dr. Linda Papa, in emergency medicine leading to several highly cited publications on biomarkers for the early detection of injury. Dr. Burks begun investigating peripheral nerve injury under the guidance of Dr. Allan Levi at the University of Miami. He has contributed to multiple clinical reports specifically on sciatic nerve injury. Working in collaboration with The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, he has been heavily involved in transplantation of Schwann cells into human peripheral nerve injury; the first reported. In parallel to clinical research Dr. Burks has led a laboratory effort investigating supplementation of large peripheral nerve injuries. He has received funding from the American Association of Neurological Surgery and the National Institute of Health to study variable repair strategies in sciatic nerve injury and this work is underway.

Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer
Aspen Neuroscience, Inc.
San Diego, USA

Dr. Xiaokui Zhang has 20 years of progressive biopharmaceutical industry experience in research, discovery and development to advance several research stage programs through IND into clinical development. She joined Aspen Neuroscience, Inc. as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer in 2021 to lead the development of the first autologous neuron replacement therapies to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), as well as future platform and pipeline development combining stem cell biology with the latest machine learning and genomic approaches for the autologous iPSC platform company. Before joining Aspen, Dr. Zhang served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Celularity Inc., overseeing development of placenta-derived allogeneic, off-the-shelf cell therapy product candidates for immuno-oncology and functional regeneration applications. Dr. Zhang has also held various positions of increasing scope and responsibility at Celgene Cellular Therapeutics, including Director of Discovery Research and Senior Director of Research & Development. Before Celgene, Dr. Zhang led a gene discovery team at Helicon Therapeutics and conducted target identification studies in cognitive disorders. Dr. Zhang received her undergraduate degree in Physiology from Nanjing University, Jingasu, China and her doctorate in Molecular Cell Biology from the Rockefeller University, New York, New York, with further post-doctoral training in the Functional Genomics at Novartis Pharmaceuticals.