Dr. Suliana Manley graduated with honors from Rice University in 1997 with degrees in physics and mathematics. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University with Dr. David Weitz, then moved down the street to MIT to do postdoctoral work with Dr. Alice Gast. Her expedition into the exciting and complex world of biology and super-resolution microscopy began when she moved to the NIH to work with Dr. Jennifer-Lippincott Schwartz. In 2009, she started her own group as a professor of physics at EPFL, where she was recently tenured. Her group focuses on developing tools such as novel fluorescent probes and high-throughput super-resolution imaging to understand cellular organization and dynamics.

Aurélien Roux studied biology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France (1997-1999), with a minor in Physics. He did a Master of Physics, University Denis Diderot, Paris (1999-2000). As a Ph.D student (Curie Institute, Paris, 2000-2004) he studied how lipids can be sorted by membrane curvature (Roux et al., EMBOj, 2005). He then did his post-doctoral work with Pietro de Camilli (2004-2007, Yale, USA), reconstituting in vitro dynamin mediated membrane fission (Roux et al., Nature 2006). More recently, as CNRS staff scientist (Institut Curie, Paris, 2007-2010) and assistant professor of Biochemistry, Geneva (2010-2015), he continued his work on dynamin (Morlot et al., Cell 2012) expanding it to other fission proteins (Chiaruttini et al., Cell 2015). Since 2016, he is a tenured associate professor at Unige, and started working on epithelium mechanics.

Howard Riezman is professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Chemical Biology. His research focusses on the biogenesis and roles of membranes and lipids in cell biology and physiology using techniques of chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, genetics and mass spectrometry. He has been worked on several commissions of trust including the Swiss National Science Foundation Research Council and Foundation Council and the European Research Council Starting Grants Panel.

Nicole Vouilloz was born and raised in Bulle, Switzerland. She did her studies in molecular biology at the University of Basel, finishing her diploma in 1994. She then worked several years in fundamental research, first at the Biocentre in Basel, then at the University of Cambridge UK, before joining the Zoology Institute of the UNIBAS and the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, and finally the University of Fribourg. In 2003, she switched her focus from research to the interaction between science and society, and worked for the next 3 years in a public office preparing decision-making bases for Parliament and the Federal Council, the Centre for Technology Assessment TA-Swiss in Bern. Since June 2006, she is administrator/chief operating officer of the Centre for Integrative Genomics at the UNIL, taking care with the centre’s director of all matters involving the organization of the department, including finances, human resources, communication, internal services etc.

Dr. Marc Zbinden studied in Berne and obtained his PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Bonn. A postdoc position on host-parasite co-evolution took him to the Universities of Fribourg and Basel. After four postdoc years, Marc changed lanes and got hired at the Swiss National Science Foundation. He started in 2005 in the management of the project funding in Biology & Medicine. In 2008, he became assistant of the Head of division with more policy and management related tasks. In parallel, he followed an MPA programme at the IDHEAP in Lausanne. Since 2014, Marc manages the SNSF team responsible for the National Centres of Competence in Research.

Francesco is a biomedical engineer (University of Rome TorVergata) with a PhD in neural engineering (University Campus Bio-Medico, Rome). During his studies, he has visited for more than two years the most important technological schools of Europe, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) and Imperial College of London, receiving certificates for business and management competencies. Francesco has worked at the business development during the first steps of the start-up SensArs – Neuroprosthetics: IPs preparation and filing, non-dilutive funds raising, business plan preparation. During his entrepreneurial activity he was awarded with several prizes and grants: Brain Forum start-up award (2015), Best 3 IROS start-up award (2015), Innogrant (2014), IMD award (2015), Spin-fund (2015), Venture Kick I, II & III (2016), top 25 Venture (2016), Fet Launchpad (2017), SME-instrument phase I (2017). He has been for 2 years the manager of the SCRIPT European project for San Raffaele Pisana (Rome) and he has worked within several relevant European projects (TIME, EPIONE, NEBIAS). He holds 2 patent applications.

Stephen Helliwell received his BSc Honours in Biochemistry from the University of Kent in 1992. During his PhD in Biochemistry (1996) at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, he identified one of the targets (Tor1p) of the anticancer drug rapamycin (Afinitor). Following a short Post-Doctoral stay at the University of Bern, he moved to the Department of Biology at MIT as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. There he discovered novel ubiquitination factors controlling Golgi-to-endosome sorting of membrane proteins, and continued this research at the Biozentrum, University of Basel from 2002 to 2005. He joined the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research in 2005. After 6 years focusing on small molecule target identification using chemogenomic profiling, he is now leading projects to treat disorders caused by defective mitochondrial metabolism, with a focus on liver dysfunction. He continues to lecture at the Biozentrum, University of Basel.

Vanya Loroch specializes in rapid bio-education of all non-biologists working in life sciences. In the last 20 years, he has participated in a variety of educational projects driven by schools, universities or private initiatives. In the course of this work, he always focused on trying to understand what lies at the heart of effective science education and what bridges must be built between science and business. His students come from 200 companies and organizations and represent every possible function in the life science industry. He is co-author of Biotechnology for Beginners, a textbook aimed at all new students of biotechnology ( Elsevier, 2017) and Professor at Business School Lausanne, Switzerland, where he teaches biology and biotechnology for sustainable business practices. Vanya holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA and has carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Geneva.

Karl-Heinz Krause is Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine & University Hospitals of Geneva, as well as honorary professor at the Bejing Hospital, China. He received his MD from the Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munich) in 1982. From 1982 to 1989, he received clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Universities of Munich, Geneva and Iowa. Starting in 1984, Karl-Heinz Krause has been actively involved in inflammation research. He is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is the founder of several companies, namely Genkyotex, Transcure Bioservices, Neurix, Antion Biosciences and HPlus Therapeutics.

Jeanette Wood is currently a board member and scientific advisor to several academic and biotech organizations. Jeanette holds a PhD in Pharmacology and has more than 30 years of drug discovery experience in senior leadership roles in big Pharma (Ciba Geigy/Novartis in Switzerland and Astra Zeneca in UK) and Biotech (SBIO in Singapore and Genkyotex in Geneva) with a track record of drugs progressed to clinical trials and to the market. She is author of more than 150 peer reviewed publications and numerous patents and has served as a part-time lecturer at Universities in New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore and Korea.

Dr. Monika Clausen, trainer and coach for industrial partners, university clients, and individuals. She offers an own training curriculum covering a broad spectrum of career related topics, bringing in a rich and manifold professional background (head of shared services center, head hunter, postdoc fellow at ETH and University of Zurich, PhD plant science at the Salk Institute in San Diego).

After completing an undergraduate degree in Biology, Marc Sohrmann went on to do a PhD in molecular genetics, followed by 2 postdocs in developmental genetics and bioinformatics. At that time, he decided to reorient his career towards teaching. Starting out as lecturer and student advisor in the Biochemistry curriculum of the ETH Zurich, he then moved to the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of the University of Lausanne, where he works since almost 10 years as teaching advisor, faculty developer and project leader with a particular interest in the integration of new technologies into teaching and learning.

Magdalena Skipper, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief, Nature Communications at Springer Nature. She previously hold the position of Director for Scientific Communications and Publishing at Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle. She also worked as a Senior Editor at Nature responsible for genetics, genomics and biotechnology. Her editorial experience includes seven years as a Senior Editor at Nature and seven years on Nature Reviews Genetics, six of which were spent as the Chief Editor of the journal. During her time at Nature Publishing Group she also held positions of Executive Editor and Associate Publisher. Prior to entering the world of scientific publishing she was a Postdoctoral Research fellow at Imperial Cancer Research UK (now CRUK) in London, where she investigated cell fate determining mechanisms in the developing gut epithelium, in a variety of vertebrate models. She completed her doctoral research work studying sex determination in C. elegans at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, UK. During her time in Cambridge she was a member of Corpus Christi College. She obtained her First Class BSc Hons degree in Genetics from the University of Nottingham.

Dr Rodríguez received a BSc in chemistry from Duke University (US) and a PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry from the University of Cambridge (UK), after which he worked as a postdoc at the Harvard Institutes of Medicine (US). He has obtained research funding from the British Marshall Commission, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the UK Medical Research Council, and the US National Institutes of Health. He works as a scientific communications consultant, helping researchers prepare manuscripts, grant proposals, and oral presentations. He collaborates with the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) to provide communications training to young investigators. Over the years he has worn several professional hats, including researcher, teacher, program manager, start-up founder and restaurant server.

Dr Samuel Lagier teaches presentation skills (SamSpeaksScience.com) and curates, coaches and hosts the TEDxLausanne conference since 2012. He performs and teaches improv to individuals and applied improv to corporate clients with the Renegade Saints and manages the Geneva branch of the science communication association The Catalyst. In his scientific career, Dr Lagier studied sensory perception.

Dr Didier Leroy leads the biology at Medicines for Malaria Venture as well as preclinical pharmacology and drug discovery activities in collaboration with academic centers and pharmaceutical companies. Didier joined MMV in 2009 from Merck-Serono, where he was managing a team of 10 collaborators in the Lead Discovery Department. He has broad knowledge in drug discovery and disease biology (infectious diseases, cancer, inflammation and neurological disorders). He has expertise in target characterization, proteomics, lead identification and optimization, molecular/cellular and in vivo pharmacology, druggability evaluation and cellular biology/biochemistry. Didier has a PhD in Molecular and Structural Biology from the University J. Fourier of Grenoble in France and has more than 50 published scientific papers.

Dr Olivier Menzel graduated from the University of Geneva where he obtained a Master of Medical Genetics in 2001 and a PhD in 2006 from the University of Lausanne and EPFL at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). For seven years he directed the laboratory of pediatric surgery at the University Hospital of Geneva. In parallel he created the BLACKSWAN Foundation, a Swiss foundation to support research on rare and orphan diseases worldwide, organized an international scientific conferences (RE(ACT) Congress)and launched an online platform for sharing scientific knowledge and crowdfunding (RE(ACT) Community). In 2013 he obtained an Executive MBA from the HEC of Lausanne with a specialization in Management Healthcare. He acted as managing director of a company specialized in the identification, acquisition, development, marketing and sale of research programs for rare and orphan diseases and as director of the second largest group of private clinics in Switzerland. Now he is Managing Director at Think Rare Sàrl and fully involved in the BLACKSWAN Foundation activities.

Flavia has a degree in Business Administration from University La Sapienza of Rome, Italy, and an MBA in Marketing. Flavia has 20+ years experience in product development, product evaluation, consumer research, project management and people development. In 2014 – combining her experience in acquiring and managing talents with her passion for understanding people – Flavia founded Interview Lab, where professionals in career transition or starting their career can practice their message and prepare for job interviews. Flavia is also an independent business consultant supporting entrepreneurs in determining the commercial merit of an idea and shaping it into a viable business.

Luc Henry is a Scientific Advisor to Martin Vetterli, the current President of the EPFL. His mission is to elaborate an Open Science policy for the institution. In 2016, he was at the SNSF for a similar mission. While spending ten years doing research in Switzerland, Sweden, England and Germany, he became increasingly interested in science policy and science communication. He has been a regular contributor to The Conversation, and in 2015, became the managing editor of the magazine Technologist. He is the co-founder of Hackuarium, a community laboratory promoting open and citizen science. Luc earned his DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford, UK.

Nolwenn is a science educator. After three years at Exploradôme, a hands-on science museum near Paris, she now runs and develops workshops for the Chimiscope, a discovery and experimentation platform of the University of Geneva, and many public outreach events as the NCCR Chemical Biology’s science communicator. She is also the co-founder of Moulin à étincelles, a science outreach company that imagines and creates inventive tools for science projects in cultural organizations and schools. She has a BSc in molecular and cellular biology from Univ. Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris and a master’s degree in scientific and technical communication from Univ. Grenoble-Alpes.

Dimitra Karatolou holds a BA in Communication and Mass Media by the University of Athens and an MSc in Social and Organizational Psychology by the London School of Economics. She began her career as a journalist, but soon turned to psychology. She has worked in senior human resources roles in multinational companies in Germany and in Greece. In 2007 she created her own company Lifepassport – dream, plan, act! Until today she has designed and delivered more than 700 training hours and 1.000 coaching hours. She is certified as a Professional Coach (PCC) by the International Coach Federation and as an NLP Master Practicioner by the American Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming. Moreover, she regularly writes articles for business magazines about professional and personal development. Apart from Greek she also speaks English and German fluently.