Keynote Speakers

Dan Barouch, Ph.D.

Harvard Medical School, USA

Dan Barouch received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and virology of HIV-1 infection and developing novel vaccine strategies. His laboratory has explored a series of novel vaccine technologies, including adjuvanted DNA vaccines, poxvirus vectors, and alternative serotype adenovirus vectors in both preclinical and clinical studies. In particular, he has advanced a series of novel adenovirus vector-based HIV-1 vaccine candidates from concept and design to preclinical testing to phase 1 clinical trials that are currently underway in both the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Barouch is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease, and he is highly committed to teaching students, clinical fellows, research fellows, and junior faculty and to providing clinical care to patients with infectious diseases.

Christopher R. Jacobs, Ph.D.

Columbia University, USA

Dr. Jacobs received in PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1994 from Stanford University. His first faculty position was in Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn State. In 2001 he returned to Stanford as an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In 2008 he joined the Biomedical Engineering Department at Columbia University, where he is pursuing a vision of the future of biomechanics and mechanobiology at the cell and molecular levels. The goal of his lab, the Cell and Molecular Biomechanics Lab, is to investigate cellular mechanosensing, particularly in the skeleton, with tightly coupled integration of advanced theoretical mechanics and modern molecular biology. He has made discoveries in terms of the mechanical signals that bone cells sense and respond to and how these responses are communicated and integrated between cells. This has directly brought them to their current research question, understanding novel mechanisms for how these signals are transduced at a cellular level. Most recently his lab has identified primary cilia, enigmatic structure found in virtually all cell type, as a mechanosensor both in vitro and in vivo. They are currently investigating the mechanisms of intracellular signaling initiated by primary cilia with novel molecular biology strategies and relating those events to primary cilia biomechanical behavior and properties. They have unique evidence that cells may adapt their mechanosensitivity by modulating cilium mechanics. To date he has been awarded over $7.5 million from federal and state agencies including for individual investigator projects, $9.5 million in center grants. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, 2 books, and 9 book chapters. He has received research awards from the American and European Societies of Biomechanics, and the Yasuda Award from the Society for Physical Regulation in Medicine and Biology. He is the 2014 recipient of the Van C. Mow medal for bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Edward J. Ciaccio , Ph.D.

Columbia University, USA

Edward J. Ciaccio Ph.D. is a computational biologist and biomedical engineer. Since 2010 he has been a faculty member in the Department of Medicine - Division of Cardiology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, and since 2014 he holds the top-level rank of senior research scientist.

Dr. Ciaccio's main areas of research focus are biosignal analysis (cardiac electrophysiology), and bioimage analysis (videocapsule studies for celiac disease). Dr. Ciaccio has received an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association (1998) and a Paper of the Year Award from Heart Rhythm Journal (2008). He became editor-in-chief of Computers in Biology and Medicine, published by Elsevier, in January 2013. He is also an editorial board member for BioMedical Engineering OnLine, Heart Rhythm, Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, World Journal of Gastroenterology, and World Journal of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. Dr. Ciaccio reviews for over 30 scientific journals and has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles in his field. His current research focus includes the development of a electrical activation wavefront curvature model of reentrant ventricular tachycardia. This work may also be applicable to the mechanism of induction and maintenance of other heart arrhythmias. He is also working on a book entitled 'Handbook of Intelligent Bioengineering Systems' which will include methods and results for fast analysis of biomedical data.

Ng Yin Kwee, Ph.D.

Nanyang Technological University, SG

Dr. E. Y. K. Ng, received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, UK and is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He serves as editor for eight international journals and as Editor-in Chief for two SCIE indexed Journals. His research interests are in thermal imaging, biomedical engineering, breast cancer detection, and computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer. Ng has had more than 250 ISI journal articles and 80 conference papers and 11 books published including “Compressor Instability with Integral Methods” by Springer (2007); “Cardiac Pumping and Perfusion Engineering” by WSPC Press (2007); “Imaging and Modelling of Human Eye” by Artech House (2008); “Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare, D2H2 v.1 & 3” by ASP (2009, 2012); “Performance Evaluation in Breast Imaging, Tumor Detection & Analysis” by ASP (2010); “Computational Analysis of Human eye with Applications” by WSPC (2011); “Multimodality Breast Cancer Imaging” by SPIE (2013); “Human eye imaging and modeling”, “Image Analysis and Modeling in Ophthalmology” & “Ophthalmology Imaging and Applications” by CRC (2013, 2014). He has supervised more than 6 researchers as well as over 25 Master and PhD ‘s students. He has amassed over SGD$5M worth of research funding from various organizations in the capacity of the principal investigator.

Daniel Elson, Ph.D.

Imperial College London, UK

Dr. Elson is a Reader (associate professor) in the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Department of Surgery and Cancer and the Institute of Global Health Innovation. Research interests are based around the development and application of photonics technology with endoscopy for surgical imaging applications, including multispectral imaging, polarization-resolved imaging, fluorescence, and laser speckle contrast imaging. Further projects include work on the development of illumination and vision systems for endoscopy combining miniature light sources such as LEDs and laser diodes with computer vision techniques for structured lighting and tissue surface reconstruction. These devices are finding application in minimally invasive and in the development of new flexible robotic assisted surgery systems. This research has been funded by the national and European funding bodies and charities, as well as collaborations with industrial partners such as Karl Storz, Covidien, Cymtec and Intuitive Surgical. Dr. Elson has published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles, nine book chapters and has contributed to more than 200 conferences.