Editors

Mujib Ullah

Life Science Research Professional
Stanford University
California, USA

Biography:
Dr. Mujib Ullah has completed his PhD from Humboldt University and postdoctoral studies from Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Ullah is the medical investigator in the department of regenerative medicine Stanford University.
He is editor in chief for Artificial Intelligence in Cancer Journal. He has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member for many journals such as American Journal of Bio science and Bio-engineering.
Dr. Ullah designed many labs, protocols and study sections. He mentored many undergraduate, graduate and post graduate students. He supervised and managed many projects and the advisor for Bio Thinking and Bio Aims Society. He received fellowship award for kidney regeneration and CPRIT award for Cancer therapies. He established cells banks for worldwide distribution under NIH guidelines.

Research Interest:
Stem cell, Regenerative medicine, Bio-engineering, Cancer therapy

Gerald F Watts

Winthrop Professor
Cardiometabolic Medicine
University of Western Australia
Perth, Australia

Biography:

Gerald Watts trained at Imperial and King’s Colleges, London University, and was a scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University. He is at present a senior consultant physician, specializing in the rapidly developing field of cardiometabolic medicine, and is the current chair of the Familial Hypercholesterolaemia-Australasia Network and Executive Board Member of the International Atherosclerosis Society. He leads the Cardiometabolic Services in the Department of Cardiology at Royal Perth Hospital and is Winthrop Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine in the University of Western Australia. Research interests include fundamental and applied aspects of lipid disorders and cardiovascular prevention, and improving service delivery and healthcare for high risk dyslipidemias, particularly familial hypercholesterolaemia. He has supervised several master’s and PhD students and post-doctoral research fellows, and holds several research grants and has multiple international collaborations. Professor Watts has authored over 600 published works, with an h-Index of 70 in Web of Science; he is on the editorial board of several journals, including Atherosclerosis, Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Lipidology, International Journal of Clinical Cardiology and Current Opinion in Lipidology.

Research Interests:
Lipidology, Familial hypercholesterolaemia, Lipoprotein(a), Lipid metabolism

Ravindran Ankathil

Director and Professor of Cytogenetics
Cytogenetics laboratory
Human Genome Centre
School of Medical Sciences, Health Campus
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia

Biography:

Professor (Dr). Ravindran Ankathil, obtained his PhD degree in the field of Cancer Cytogenetics from University of Kerala, Kerala, INDIA in 1992. He was working in Regional Cancer Center, Trivandrum, Kerala, India, from 1985 until 2006 January, in various capacities as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Additional Professor.

In 2006, January, Prof Ravi joined Human Genome Center, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia,(USM), as Professor and Consultant Cytogeneticist. Prof Ravi is also the Director and Consultant Cytogeneticist of ISO 15189 certified and Australasian Society of Diagnostic Genomics (ASDG) accredited Cytogenetics Laboratory of Human Genome Centre. He is mainly a Cancer Research Scientist and his main area of research is on Cytogenetics, Genetics and Moleculalr Genetics of Human Cancer.

Prof Ravi has supervised and successfully completed 42 research projects. Until now he has 237 research publications in peer reviewed international scientific journals. He has presented research papers in numerous scientific conferences, and has also given invited lectures in seveal conferences and workshops.

Prof. Ravi has also received several awards - Three awards from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), One award from Indian Association of Biomedical Scientists, Two awards from Kerala State Dept of Science and Technology, for his significant contributions in the field of Cancer Research, and also from University Sains Malaysia for excellence in teaching, service and research. He has received few Travel grant awards from Scientific conference organizers. Also, he has received the VIFRA 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award for the contribution and achievement in the field of Genetics from Venus International Foundation, India, (Research Awards – VIFRA 2015).
He has received several prestigous International felllowships such as UICC- Yamagiwa Yoshida fellowship, UICC- ICRETT fellowship, World Health organization (WHO) fellowship, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) fellowship, National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) USA fellowship etc. He holds memberships in several professional organizations.
He is a Peer reviewer of research manuscripts for several International Scientific journals and Editorial board member of few International Scientific Journals.
Prof. Ravi has trained and produced 21 Ph.D students so far, and is currently supervising 2 Ph.D students. He has also supervised several M.Sc (by research) students.

Research Interests:

Genetics, Molecular Genetics, Cytogenetics and epigenetics of human cancer
Cytogenetics and Molecular Cytogenetics of genetic disorders

Gabriel Santpere

Assistant Research Scientist
Department of Neuroscience
School of Medicine
Yale University
CT, US

Biography:

Gabriel Santpere is Assistant Research Scientist at the department of Neuroscience, at Yale University, US. His research interests combine human evolution, neuroscience, genomics and bioinformatics. He has extensive experience in a wide range of experimental and computational technics. He also has published in a wide range of journals including Nature, Cell, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Genome Biology and Evolution, BMC genomics and Acta Neuropathologica.

Research Interests:

Neuroscience, Evolution, Virus, Genomics, Bioinformatics

Andreas Ferbert

Professor
Head of the Department of Neurology
Klinikum Kassel
Kassel, Germany

Biography:
born in Worms, Germany
1958 - 1970 Schools attended: Altsprachliches Gymnasium Worms (Grammar School)
1970 - 1971 Military Service
1971 - 1972 School of Music Detmold (violoncello, Prof. Güdel)
1972 - 1974 Study of Medicine, University of Duesseldorf
1974 - 1979 Study of Medicine and Psychology, University Bonn
1979 Doctor's Degree (Electron microscopic investigation in progressive muscular dystrophy)
1979 - 1980 Residency in Psychiatry (Bonn)
1980 - 1981 Residency in Neurosurgery (University of Cologne)
1982 Residency in Neuroradiology (University of Bonn)
1983 - 1985 Residency in Neurology (Technical University Aachen, Prof. Poeck)
1986 Residency in Psychiatry (Technical University, Aachen)
September 1986 Training in the laboratories of posturography and oculomotor disturbances, University Tübingen (Prof. Dichgans, Prof. Diener)
Oct. 86-Jun 92 Senior clinical resident Department of Neurology, Technical University Aachen (Prof.Poeck) Head of the electrophysiological laboratories
June 1988 Assistant Professor. Friedrich Wilhelm Award of the President of the Technical University Aachen
Nov 89-Aug 90 Research at the Human Movement and Balance Unit of The National Hospital Queen Square London, U.K. (Prof. Marsden, Dr. Rothwell)
since Aug. 1992 Head of the Department of Neurology Klinikum Kassel
since June 1993 Associate Professor at Technical Univ. Aachen
since 1996 Regionalbeauftragter d. Stiftung Dt. Schlaganfallhilfe für Nordhessen.
1997-2004 Member of the Board "German Society of Neurology".
1997-2001 Member of the Board "German Society of Clinical Neurophysiology"
since 1998 Member of the Board "German Society for Neurological Intensive Care Medicine (DGNI)
2001-2003 Ärztlicher Geschäftsführer Klinikum Kassel
2013-2015 President of the German Society for Neurointensive Care
Since 2017 President of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für neurowissenschaftliche Begutachtung

Research Interests:
Clinical neurogenetics, Neuromuscular disorders, Charcot Marie-Tooth disease, Clinical neurophysiology

Satish Kumar

Assistant Professor/Research
Department of Human Genetics &
South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
School of Medicine
Edinburg, TX, USA

Biography:

Dr. Satish Kumar is an Indian-born molecular geneticist. He earned his Master of Science degree in Biological Anthropology in 1996 and Ph.D. in Human Population Genetics in 2003 from University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Over the two decades of his research carrier, he has worked in various capacities both in India and in the United States.

His research interests includes genetics of human common complex diseases, human phylogenetics and induced pluripotent stem cell based modeling of human disorders. He has published more than 40 research articles and book chapters and his work has been cited in more than 1000 research publications.

Currently, he is working as Assistant Professor of Research at the Department of Human Genetics and South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute, University of Texas Rio-Grande Valley, School of Medicine. His laboratory specializes in the development and utilization of the iPSC based methods for human disease modeling and disease gene identification.

Research Interests:

Dr. Kumar is a molecular geneticist with specific training and experience in molecular and functional aspects of gene identification for complex diseases. His current research focuses on the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) based modeling of human complex disorders to identify and better understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved, and the underlying genetic component influencing, the disease phenotype. The breakthrough development of iPSC technology represents a quantum leap in experimental modeling of human diseases, providing investigators with a self-renewing and, thus, unlimited, source of pluripotent cells for targeted differentiation into disease specific cell/tissue types, which are often difficult to obtain, sometimes requiring invasive surgery or only becoming available post-mortem. Dr. Kumar optimized an efficient method to reprogram lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) into iPSCs. The LCLs established from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of the participants of numerous genetic and epidemiological studies represents one of the largest, well-characterized, existing bio-resources available for iPSC reprogramming, because a multitude of data already exists on sample donors. Using this methodology and a rich resource of LCLs established from a large family study cohort at his Institute, Dr. Kumar has been successfully generating functionally relevant target cell types (e.g. neural stem cells, neurons, functional cardiomyocytes, functionally mature hepatocytes etc.) and tissue organoids (cerebral organoid, 3D cardiac tissue organoid etc.) for a variety of research applications. He has also been using the iPSC-generated neurons to develop a “population based in-vitro stroke model to identify genes influencing neural death and neuroprotection following an ischaemic stroke event”. In another project “Novel approaches to understanding the role of genetics in Parkinson’s disease (PD)”, he has used iPSC-based methods to generate neural stem cells (NSCs) and dopaminergic neurons from existing PD specific blood cell lines.

Apart from his current endeavor in developing iPSC methodologies, Dr. Kumar also has a strong interest in mitochondrial DNA variation and retrograde regulation, telomere length variations, its genetic regulation and maintenance mechanisms and human phylogenetics.

Minh Tuan HUYNH

Medical lecturer and practitioner
Department of Histology-Embryology-Human Genetics
Medical Genetics Service
University of Pham Ngoc Thach
School of Medicine
Ho Chi Minh city, Viet Nam

Biography:
Minh-Tuan Huynh, MD, Ph.D. is a medical lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, Pham Ngoc Thach School of Medicine since 2008, medical practitioner in the field of human genetics at Saint-Antoine university hospital and Pham Ngoc Thach medical center. Graduated from Pham Ngoc Thach School of Medicine in Ho Chi Minh city and obtained his PhD in Human Medicine and Pathology at Lorraine University in France. He completed his internal medicine residency training in clinical genetics at the Paris Descartes University Hospital and became clinical laboratory geneticist. His research interests focus on the application of genomic testing to the diagnosis of human genetic diseases, the identification of novel genes involved in human genetic disorders. He acted as a reviewer for BMC Medical Genetics, Molecular Diagnosis and Therapy, Journal of Pediatric Neurology, Journal of Pediatric Genetics, Journal of International Medical Research…

Research Interests:
Clinical genetics, Human cytogenetics, Diagnosis of monogenic disorders, Neurodevelopmental disorders, Array-CGH, Next-generation sequencing, Intellectual disability, cell-free fetal DNA from maternal circulation

Aneek Das Bhowmik

Senior Analyst
Association for Promoting Innovation & Research by Entrepreneurs (ASPIRE)
CSIR Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB)
Medical Biotechnology Complex
Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Biography:

Dr. Aneek Das Bhowmik had completed his Ph.D. at the Manovikas Kendra Rehabilitation and Research Institute for Handicapped, Kolkata, India and received the degree from University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, in the year of 2011. In his doctoral research he studied genetic factors that can be associated with Intellectual Disability (ID) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He explored functional polymorphisms in dopaminergic, serotonergic and folate metabolism pathway genes for the first time in Indian population, beside performing molecular genetic analysis of Fragile X syndrome. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Diagnostics Division of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India, he was associated with novel disease causing gene identification studies in single gene disorders and ID beside performing molecular genetic analysis of trinucleotide repeat disorders and Hemophilia A. While working in a research team of this laboratory Dr. Das Bhowmik has identified and reported several novel likely pathogenic variants including two novel genes (BHLHA9 and AIMP2). Presently he is working as a Project Investigator in the same laboratory. His research interest includes, identification of novel genes for single gene disorders and next generation sequencing based molecular diagnostics of these disorders including ID.

Research Interests:

Human & Medical Genetics, Genomics

Hongqian Liu

Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics
West China Medical Center of Sichuan University
Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Biography:

Hongqian Liu, MD, Ph.D. is a Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Sichuan University West China Medical Center. She is regarded internationally as an expert in the clinical utility of genomic technologies in reproductive medicine. She has authored multiple publications on molecular genetics, clinical cytogenetics and molecular cytogenetics and lectured internationally about his experience utilizing NGS and other molecular methods both as a clinical and research tool.

Research Interests:

Her research areas of interest include early prenatal screening using fetal cells and cell-free fetal DNA from maternal circulation, diagnosis of single gene diseases and the prenatal diagnosis of genetic variance.

Baoli Zhu

Professor
Institute of Occupational Disease Prevention
Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Prevention and Control
Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

Biography:

Prof. Baoli Zhu is the director of Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Professor of Nanjing Medical University and Southeast University. He received his MD degree and PhD degree at Sichuan University. Prof. Zhu is specialized in molecular epidemiology, occupational health and medical genetics in China.

Research Interests:

Molecular epidemiology, Occupational health and Medical genetics

Ali Reza Khanteymoori

Assistant Professor
Computer Engineering Department
University of Zanjan, Iran

Biography:
Alireza Khanteymoori is an assistant professor in department of computer engineering at university of Zanjan. He is also head of Machine Learning and Bioinformatics Lab (MLBL).

Research Interests:
Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Computational Intelligence, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Biological Networks

Devika Kir

Resident Physician
PGY 3 Internal Medicine
Yale New Haven Hospital
Yale School of Medicine
Connecticut, United States

Biography:
I am a clinician investigator with special research interests in angiogenesis and cardiac ischemia.
After finishing medical school in India, I completed my post-doc at the University of Minnesota working on the role of a form of iron and hypoxia induced signaling. My other research focused on studying the differential migration patterns of venous and arterial smooth muscle cells under hypoxia and the downstream signaling pathways. After my post-doc, I moved to Yale to pursue training in internal medicine and wish to pursue cardiology in the near future.

Research Interests:
Angiogenesis, Micro-RNAs, Hypoxia, Ischemia, Cardiovascular diseases, Atrial fibrillation

Kunio Miyake

Associate Professor
Department of Health Sciences
Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Medicine and Engineering
University of Yamanashi
Yamanashi, Japan

Biography:

Kunio Miyake is an associate professor of Health Sciences at the University of Yamanashi, Japan where he has been a faculty member since 2009. He received a B.S. from Ritsumeikan University in 2004, and an M.S. from the University of Yamanashi in 2006. He completed his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from the University of Yamanashi in 2009.

His research interests are epigenetic understanding of gene-environment interactions in neurodevelopmental disorders such as Rett syndrome, autism and ADHD. In particular, he has been studying on the pathogenesis of Rett syndrome for 10 years. Furthermore, he is currently working on Epigenome-wide study in relation to prenatal environmental factors using birth cohort studies.

Research Interests:

Epigenetic mechanisms in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD
A molecular link between environmental factors and disease risk and health outcomes

Qiying Sun

XiangYa School of Medicine
Central South University
Hunan, P.R. China

Research Interests:
Neurodegeneration, Neurogenetics, Neuroinflammation, Movement Disorders, Dementia

Cristina Martinez

Neuro-Immuno-Gastroenterology Lab
Digestive Diseases Research Unit
Gastroenterology Department
Vall d'Hebron Institut of Research
Passeig Vall d'Hebron, 119-129.
08035 Barcelona, Spain

Biography:

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Neuro-immuno-gastroenterology group at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute. My scientific career is oriented to unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying stress-related intestinal inflammation, in particular in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as a disease model. My specific contribution in this field has involved both, basic and translational research projects aimed to understand how intestinal barrier function is modulated by specific gene/protein expression and miRNAs and how they contribute to major symptoms in IBS.

My thesis project provided the first evidence of structural and functional alterations in tight junction signalling of the small bowel in IBS, its relation to mucosal mast cell activation and association with the clinical outcome. These findings challenge the classical view of IBS as a model functional disorder while reinforcing its organic origin. Major findings produced two original top-quality (D1) and highly cited papers (Am J Gastroenterol and Gut). Following my thesis defence, I accepted a one-year postdoc position in Dr. Ramesh Pillai at EMBL Grenoble Outstation in order to get training in small non-coding RNA biology and basic molecular biology techniques and approaches. After this stage, I moved to the University of Heidelberg to join Dr. Beate Niesler team in the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and the GENIEUR COST Action (https://genieur.eu/). During this time, I gained new competencies in the field of stem cell biology and in the functional analysis of miRNA-mediated gene expression modulation. Major results of my postdoctoral project and of the collaborative projects I participated in, during this stage, have been published in top-quality journals (Gut, Scientific Reports, Neurogastroenterology and Motility and Genetics in Medicine).

In 2017 I returned to Barcelona with the support of a prestigious and highly competitive postdoctoral fellowship, the “Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación” postdoctoral fellowship in Vall d’Hebron Research Institute and in close contact with clinicians at Vall d’Hebron Hospital. The major goal of this stage is to use my expertise and international collaboration network in order to create my own independent research line focused on molecular and functional approaches for the study of epithelial barriers and their association to different pathological contexts. Recently (2018), my work has been internationally recognized as I have received the very prestigious Basic/Translational Science Junior Investigator Research Award from the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. This award recognizes the accomplishments of investigators who are engaged in significant research in the field of functional gastrointestinal diseases and has been only granted to four researchers in 2018 from all around the world from whom only one junior investigator in basic research was awarded.

Research Interests:

Molecular and functional approaches for the study of epithelial barriers and their association to different pathological contexts.