Prof. Shankar Subramaniam is a Professor of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Nano Engineering. He is currently the Chair of the Bioengineering Department at the University of California at San Diego. He holds the inaugural Joan and Irwin Jacobs Endowed Chair in Bioengineering and Systems Biology. He was the Founding Director of the Bioinformatics Graduate Program at the University of California at San Diego. He also has adjunct Professorships at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He is also a Guest Professor at the Center for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience at the University of Oslo in Norway and Professor at the Center for Cardiovascular Bioinformatics and Modeling at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to moving to UC San Diego, Dr. Subramaniam was a Professor of Biophysics, Biochemistry, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Chemical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He was the Director of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Co-Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics at UIUC. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and is a recipient of Smithsonian Foundation and Association of Laboratory Automation Awards and his research work is described below. In 2002 he received the Genome Technology All Star Award. In 2008 he was awarded the Faculty Excellence in Research Award at the University of California at San Diego. His research spans several areas of bioinformatics and systems biology.

Dr. Subramaniam has played a key role in raising national awareness for training and research in bioinformatics. He served as a member of the National Institute for Health (NIH) Director’s Advisory Committee on Bioinformatics, which resulted in the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) report. The report recognized the dire need for trained professionals in Bioinformatics and recommended the launching of a strong NIH funding initiative. Dr. Subramaniam served as the Chair of a NIH BISTI Study Section. Dr. Subramaniam has also served on Bioinformatics and Biotechnology Advisory Councils for Virginia Tech, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of several Biotech and Bioinformatics Companies. Dr. Subramaniam has served as a member of the State of Illinois Governor’s initiative in Biotechnology and an advisor and reviewer of the State of North Carolina initiative in Biotechnology. He is currently an overseas advisor for the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India, and a member of a European Science Foundation Panel.

Prof. David Fenstermacher is currently Executive Director of Research Informatics at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute. He also directed informatics shared resource facilities for more than nine years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. During his tenure in biomedical informatics, Dr. Fenstermacher has designed and directed the implementation of several bioinformatics distributed computing systems to support basic and clinical research, including multiple institution research projects. He has also designed data management systems for more specialized projects including integrating clinical (patient and lab test data), genomics (SNP and microarray) and proteomics (2D-gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry data) data to support multiple projects focused on a single goal, modifier gene discovery. Data management systems designed by Dr. Fenstermacher have included: collection and storage of subject data; tracking and reporting of milestones for multiple studies, development of web-based forms for input, storage and retrieval of all data collected from or about subjects, customized data representations and data sharing using Grid technologies.

Dr. Fenstermacher received his doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the fields of bioinformatics and biomedical informatics, Dr. Fenstermacher spent thirteen years as a molecular biologist/geneticist working on several projects, including phage display technologies, FISH for cytogenetic applications, cDNA cloning and transcriptional analyses. His background as a bench scientist brings a unique perspective to the design of computational tools to support basic and clinical research studies.

Prof. Anjelica Gonzalez’ appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University has provided a supportive and convenient platform for her research, focused on the development of biomaterials for use as investigational tools and therapeutic devices. Anjelica’s group focuses on the investigation of extracellular matrix regulation of vascular immunological processes. Anjelica attended Utah State University, earning a B.S. in Irrigational and Biological Engineering. Attending the Baylor College of Medicine summer training program, Anjelica learned to apply mathematics and physics fundamentals to biological systems. This was an enlightening experience that encouraged Anjelica to continue on to pursue a PhD in Computational Biology.

Gonzalez has a dedicated interest in training the next generation of scientists to think in an interdisciplinary manner and approach problems from a scientifically global perspective. In this spirit, the Gonzalez lab combines organic chemistry, molecular biology, computational modeling and image analysis to develop materials that direct immunological processes. This work has special significance to an array of inflammatory diseases and disorders, including wound healing, tissue fibrosis and cancer.

To date, Anjelica’s research has been acknowledged by national organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, NBC, American Society for Investigative Pathology, the American Physiological Society and The Hartwell Foundation.

Prof. Roberto Guzmán is a Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona. Here, he has initiated a new NanoBiotechnology and Nanomedicine Laboratory dedicated to the development of nano/biomolecular polymeric structures with encapsulated anticancer drugs and gold nanoshells for dual cancer therapy that combines controlled and targeted drug delivery and infrared thermal ablation. He is also working extensively in developing nano/biomolecular multifunctional para-magnetic metal-hybrid nanoparticles for diagnostics and target NIR therapy. His work and contributions in controlled and targeted drug delivery involves both experimental and theoretical work analysis.

Research in his laboratory at the University of Arizona has focused for several years in developing novel biomolecular separation techniques together with Professor Jerker Porath from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. This work in protein separations has been applied in the development of novel specific adsorbents for low molecular weight biomarkers isolation and identification. This technology could be used potentially for a wide number of cancer biomarkers and in principle, for any other disease that produces extraneous small molecular weight biomolecules.

Professor Guzmán, received a PhD in Chemical Engineering with emphasis in Biotechnology from North Carolina State University, a MS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois in Chicago and a BS degree also in Chemical Engineering from the University of Guanajuato , Mexico. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico and a visiting scholar at the University of Uppsala, Sweden and at the University of Technology in Compiegne, France. His laboratory at the University of Arizona has accumulated extensive expertise in the synthesis of polymers and gold surface derivatives and their functionalization with affinity ligands to carry out effective nanostructure synthesis, preparation and characterization. His laboratory has developed in the last few years a comprehensive expertise in ligand and biomolecule modification of different surfaces including different types of polysaccharides, silicon oxide, polymeric organic and inorganic structures and metal surfaces.

Prof. Sergey Shevkoplyas is a biomedical engineer with core expertise in blood microfluidics. His primary research interests are the development and clinical translation of high-throughput microfluidic devices and single-cell analysis tools in the field of blood storage and transfusion medicine. His laboratory is currently developing novel technologies for improving the safety and efficacy of blood transfusions, and making blood products available for life-saving transfusions in resource-limited settings. An additional significant thrust of his research program is the development of enabling technology for low-cost, point-of-care diagnostics in resource-limited settings.

Dr. Shevkoplyas is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and The Ken and Ruth Arnold Early Career Professor at Tulane University. Before joining Tulane, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Dr. Shevkoplyas holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, and a B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Mathematics and Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology (Russia).

Dr. Shevkoplyas has authored 32 peer-reviewed articles, published two book chapters and is an inventor on 13 U.S. patents and patent applications. His research has been funded by the National Blood Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. Army and the recently awarded 2012 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award (T-R01).

Prof. May Dongmei Wang is associate professor, GCC distinguished cancer scholar and Director of Biocomputing and Bioinformatics Core in Emory-Georgia Tech Cancer Nanotechnology Center at the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. Wang’s primary research interest is biomedical and health informatics in systems medicine and healthcare, with the goal to speed up the discovery, development, and translation in modern biology, medicine, and health. She has played an active role in several working groups within National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH) cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) , and FDA-led Microarray Quality Control Consortium (MAQC) on biomarker and nanomedicine for personalized medicine. As the corresponding or co-corresponding author, Prof. Wang has published in journals such as Annals of Biomedical Eng, BMC Bioinformatics, Trends in Biotechnology, Nature Protocols, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Annual Review of Medicine, and The Pharmacogenomics Journal.

Dr. Wang received Distinguished Cancer Scholar Award from Georgia Cancer Coalition in 2004, an Outstanding Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award from Georgia Tech in 2005, and an Outstanding Service Award from IEEE BIBE in 2007. She is appointed as the Chair of Technical Committee on Information Technology for Health in IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) in 2011, and serves as associate editors for a couple of journals. Dr. Wang received Ph.D.EE, multidisciplinary MS degrees (EE, Applied Math, and CS) from Georgia Institute of Technology in USA, and BEng from Tsinghua University in China. In addition, Dr. Wang has several years of industrial R&D experience in the former AT&T Bell Labs, Intel Architecture Labs, Hughes Research Labs, Lucent Technologies Bell Labs, and Agere Systems.