Invited Speakers

Nuno F. Azevedo (LEPABE, University of Porto, Portugal)

Nuno Filipe Azevedo is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) and a researcher at the Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy (LEPABE). During his research career he has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, submitted 7 patents and co-edited two book. He has been invited to more than 30 oral presentations in national and international conferences and is regularly part of the scientific advisory committee of several international conferences. Nuno Azevedo main research interests are to explore the potential of nucleic acid mimics for the rapid diagnosis and treatment of infectious agents, as well as multispecies biofilms. He is currently leading the EU-funded project DelNAM, a project aims to develop a novel therapeutic approach to solve bacterial resistance to antibiotics through the delivery of antibacterial nucleic acid mimics into bacterial biofilms and cells within the human body.

Peter E. Nielsen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Dr Peter E. Nielsen is a full professor at University of Copenhagen since 1995. One of the inventors of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) (1991), and has further studied and developed this DNA mimic during the last 30 years in relation to chemistry, origin of life, molecular biology and drug discovery. Recently the major focus has turned to discovery of novel PNA based antisense antibiotics against multidrug resistant bacterial infections. Co-author of more than 400 scientific papers (H-index 77), reviews and books, co-inventor on more than 20 patents and patent applications, and was Editor-in-Chief on the journal, “Artificial DNA”. Member of EMBO and the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV), and has received several Danish and international scientific prizes including the NovoNordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation and the Institute Curie Jeanne Loubaresse prize. Cofounder of two Danish biotech companies. He has been directing a Grundforskningscenter, an EU framework project and has been PI in 10 other EU framework projects. He is presently Head of “Center of Peptide based Antibiotics” at Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen.

Prof. Dr. Claus-Michael Lehr (Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland)

Claus-Michael Lehr is Professor at Saarland University as well as cofounder and head of the department “Drug Delivery and Biological Barriers” at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). Prof. Lehr has also been cofounder of Across Barriers GmbH and PharmBioTec GmbH. The research theme of Prof. Lehr's team is drug delivery across biological barriers, with major focus on the epithelia of the gastrointestinal tract, the skin and the lungs. This concept has been expanded to microbial barriers, such as the bacterial cellular envelope, biofilms and host cell membranes. A substantial part of the lab’s activities deals with innovative carriers systems capable of safely and efficiently delivering drugs and vaccines across the barriers. A second line of research is dedicated to complex cells and tissue models representing biological barriers also in state of disease. Prof. Lehr is (co)author of more than 400 papers with >20.000 citations (scopus h‐index = 78) and has supervised > 70 PhD students. Recently, the British magazine “The Medicine Maker” rated him three times as one of the top 100 most influencing drug researchers in the world.   

Sebastianus A. J. Zaat (Amsterdam UMC - AMC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Dr. Sebastian A.J. Zaat is Principal Investigator of the research line “Biomaterial-associated infection and novel antimicrobial strategies” at the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention of the Amsterdam UMC - AMC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. One of the subjects of study of his group is the development of novel “Synthetic Antimicrobial and Antibiofilm Peptides” (SAAPs), derived from human antimicrobial proteins. The subject of his lecture is the molecular analysis of the mode of action of such peptides against planktonic bacteria, their activity against biofilms, persister cells, and bacterial spores.

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Conrad Lichtenstein (Nemesis Bioscience, UK)

Conrad Lichtenstein is CSO and co-founder of Nemesis Bioscience, Cambridge, UK, to use CRISPR-Cas for inactivation of antibiotic resistance genes. Previously, Conrad was CSO of Population Genetics Technologies in Cambridge, co-founded by Sydney Brenner and by Sam Eletr, and developed DNA bar-coding for simultaneous analysis of candidate genes in mixed DNA samples of multiple genomes for the identification of rare variants associated with disease predisposition. After a PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and then a post-doctoral position at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, Conrad had a faculty position at Imperial College, London, and was subsequently Professor of Molecular Biology at Queen Mary, University of London. His research has included gene targeting by homologous recombination, RNAi engineering for virus resistance in plants and transposition by DNA elements spreading antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

Tagbo H. R. Niepa (University of Pittsburgh, USA)

Dr. Niepa is an assistant professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. He held a Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity at the University of Pennsylvania to develop new methods to study microbial dynamics in artificial microniches and thin films. He started his academic journey in the Ivory Coast, receiving his Associate Degree in Food Science and work experience at the Pasteur Institute. He then received his BSc in Bioengineering and PhD in Chemical Engineering (2014) with honors from Syracuse University. His doctoral study of the Electrochemical Control of Bacterial Persister Cells focused on developing a technology against drug-resistant and persistent bacteria (US patented). Dr. Niepa also co-founded in 2011 Helios Innovative Technologies Inc. (now PurpleSun Inc.), a medical device company that develops automated sterilization systems to fight bacterial cross-contamination. Since 2017, he leads the microBiointerface Lab (at Pitt) in multidisciplinary approaches to solve problems associated with microorganisms relevant to the environment, healthcare, and food industry.

Luciana Gomes (LEPABE, University of Porto, Portugal)

Luciana Gomes is a Junior Researcher in the Biofilm Engineering Laboratory (BEL) of the Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy (LEPABE) and Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP). She completed her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2016, working on the production of recombinant proteins in biofilms at FEUP under the supervision of Professor Filipe Mergulhão. Her research interests are mainly focused on antibiofilm/antimicrobial surfaces for industrial and biomedical settings. She has published 35 peer-reviewed papers (16 as first author and 2 as corresponding author), 5 book chapters, and participated in numerous international conferences and courses with the financial support of different funding agencies (19 oral communications, 2 conference proceedings, and 18 posters). She was supervisor/co-supervisor of 2 Ph.D. students (ongoing) and 3 Master students. Luciana Gomes works in the areas of Bioproducts, Medical Biotechnology (with an emphasis on Biomaterials), and Industrial Biotechnology (with an emphasis on the Food Industry).

Syma Khalid (University of Southampton, UK)

Syma graduated with a first class degree in Chemistry from the University of Warwick in 2000. She remained at Warwick to read for a PhD under the supervision of Prof. P. Mark Rodger. After obtaining her PhD in 2003, she moved to the University of Oxford as a postdoc in Prof Mark Sansom’s lab, to study the structure-function relationship of bacterial outer membrane proteins. During her postdoctoral work, she became interested in understanding the structure-dynamics-function relationships within bacterial cell envelopes.. In 2007, she was appointed as RCUK fellow in chemical biology at the University of Southampton. In 2010, she was appointed to a full lectureship at Southampton. In 2012 She was promoted to Senior lecturer and  2016 she was promoted to Professor. In August 2021 she moved to the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford.

Stefano Pagliara (University of Exeter, UK)

Dr Stefano Pagliara is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. He performed his PhD in Nanoscience at the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, and he held a Postdoctoral research associate and fellow positions at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. His research focuses on the heterogeneity in cellular responses to environmental cues with an emphasis on antibiotic accumulation in Gram-negative bacteria. Besides standard microbiology techniques and omics approaches, he develops bespoke microfluidic devices. Such devices allow accurately controlling the microenvironment surrounding the cells and perform a series of functional assays on the very same individual cell. 

Hafez El Sayyed (University of Oxford, UK)

Dr Hafez El Sayyed is currently a Postdoctoral research fellow in the Gene Machines lab at the Kavli institute, University of Oxford. His obtained his PhD in molecular microbiology from Paris-Saclay university studying the influence of supercoiling regulation on DNA replication in E. coli upon Topoisomerase IV inhibition by fluoroquinolones. His current work focuses on using single-molecule super-resolution imaging techniques to dissect bacterial transcription regulation at different instances of the transcription lifetime, as well as the regulation of DNA repair onset in response to DNA damaging antibiotics. He is also involved in both the fundamental and applied aspect of tackling antimicrobial resistance. 

Daniel Vasconcelos (INESC TEC, University of Porto, Portugal)

Daniel Vasconcelos is the Head of INESC TEC’s Technology Licensing Office (TLO), boosting the societal impact of the R&D results generated at the institution. Leading a team of three tech managers, Daniel paves the way for the development and commercialization of deep tech solutions, bridging the gap between the Lab and the Market. Daniel manages a patent portfolio of 30 active patent families in ICT and medical technology fields and is also a consultant for the INESC TEC spin-off inSignals Neurotech for IP and regulatory affairs. Additionally, he is a European IP Helpdesk Ambassador for Portugal, a pro-bono first-line IP support service for SMEs and partners of European projects. Daniel is also a member of the renowned association of technology transfer professionals ASTP-Proton and invited speaker for IP and Business Strategy, including software and open-source licensing. Daniel is an invited professor at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto for medical technology development (Biodesign) and Management courses. He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences, an MSc in Bioengineering, and an MSc in Innovation Economics and Management, all from U.Porto.

Pedro Madureira (Immunethep, Portugal)

Pedro Madureira has graduated in Biochemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) and obtained his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS) of the same university. Pedro Madureira is co-founder and CSO of Immunethep, a biotech company focused on the development of antibacterial immunotherapies. Currently, the main research interest is to understand microbial virulence mechanisms that are responsible to avert host immune system and induce disease. This research led to the development of Immunethep’s immunotherapies, that target an immunosuppressive protein excreted by different multi-resistant bacteria.

Mariagrazia Pizza (GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines, Italy)

Mariagrazia Pizza received her degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Naples, Italy. Following a period at the EMBO laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany, Mariagrazia moved to Siena, Italy where she has been ever since, leading many bacterial projects. She has contributed to the discovery of a pertussis vaccine based on a genetically detoxified toxin, able to protect children from disease and to the discovery of new vaccine antigens by genome mining (reverse vaccinology), which are the basis of a new MenB vaccine now licensed in more than 40 countries worldwide. Mariagrazia is currently Senior Scientific Director for Bacterial Vaccines at GSK, and Preclinical Head at GVGH, the GSK Vaccine Institute for Global Health. She has received many scientific awards and is elected member of EMBO, of the European Academy of Microbiology and Academia Euopaea, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and Vice President of IUMS (International Unit of Microbiology Societies). Mariagrazia is also Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester. She has over 200 publications and is co-inventor of many patents.

Stefaan De Smedt (Ghent University, Belgium)

Stefaan De Smedt  studied pharmacy. He joined the Janssen Research Foundation and became Professor at Ghent University in 1999. He served as dean of his Faculty (2010-2014) and is a member of the Board of Directors of Ghent University and the Ghent University Hospital. He has been a Guest Professor at various universities in Belgium and China.  Since 2004 he serves as the European  Editor of the JCR, currently as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. His research is at the interface between drug delivery, biophysics and material sciences. He is the (co-)author of > 350 manuscripts including contributions to Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Nature biotechnology, Nature Drug Discovery Reviews. He has been the (co-) promoter of > 50 doctoral theses; 8 of his fellows are professors at various faculties, 4 of them received most prestigious Grants from the ERC. He filed +20 patents and is a scientific founder of Memobead Technologies. He is a member of EURASC, the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine and the Académie Nationale de Pharmacie of France.

Marcos Garcia-Fuentes (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

Marcos Garcia-Fuentes is a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (1998) and Ph.D. in Pharmacy (2004) from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). His thesis aimed at designing new lipid/polymer nanoparticles for protein delivery and was performed under the supervision of Prof. Maria J. Alonso and Dolores Torres. In this period, Marcos was a visiting researcher at Purdue University, under the supervision of Prof. Nicholar Peppas. From 2005- 2007 he joined the group of Prof. Hans Peter Merkle and Dr. Lorenz Meinel at ETH Zurich, as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral researcher. In 2007, he joined USC with a tenure-track junior PI contract. In 2013, he was promoted to Reader and in 2020 to Associate Professor. Marcos is the team leader of the BiDD (Biomaterials & Drug Delivery) research group at the Center for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases (CiMUS), USC, since 2017. His group focuses on the design of new biotechnology-based nanomaterials for pharmaceutical applications. Marcos has 60 publications, with more than 4000 citations. He is co-inventor of 7 patents, two of them transferred to industry. He is involved in 19 research grants with over 7M€ in funding.

Ling Peng (CINaM, CNRS, France)

Dr. Ling Peng is currently a CNRS research director in the Interdisciplinary Center on Nanoscience in Marseille at Aix-Marseille University in France. She carried her PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and her postdoctoral research at University of Strasbourg in France. Dr. Ling Peng has been working actively at the interface of chemistry and biology, and in particular, developing functional dendrimers for biomedical applications, molecular probes for exploring biological events and nucleoside derivatives for drug discovery. She has established bio-inspired and self-assembling supramolecular dendrimers to deliver various nucleic acids, drugs and imaging agents for cancer treatment and imaging. One of the dendrimer nanosystems has been schedule for clinical studies. Her research team was labelled by La Ligue contre le Cancer in France. She was awarded with the Prize of Dr & Mme Henri Labbé of the French Academy of Sciences, and granted as Distinguished Member of the French Chemical Society in 2020.

Joana Loureiro (University of Porto, Portugal)

Joana A. Loureiro is a researcher at the Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy (LEPABE) since 2010 and Invited Assistant Professor at Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP) since 2018. She received her PhD degree in chemical and biological engineering from FEUP in 2013. She is/was involved in several projects (>13). In 2017, she was awarded by Fulbright which allowed her to start a collaboration at the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHealth) at Houston. She has co-authored over 50 publications. Since 2010, Loureiro has been working in the field of drug delivery nanosystems for brain diseases treatment. She has expertise in protein misfolding, and pathogenic biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease. Her main research areas of interest comprise: i) nanotechnology and interfacial phenomena; ii) effects of fluorinated systems and peptides on the aggregation of amyloid-beta peptide; iii) conformational studies of proteins and peptides self-organized systems and polymer surfaces; and iv) design and production of inorganic and polymeric nano-systems for pharmaceutical application.

Where to Stay

Contact Information

Rita S. Santos (Project Manager)

Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto

PHONE: +351 969 757 873
E-MAIL: ritasantos@fe.up.pt

Nuno F. Azevedo (Project Leader)

Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto

PHONE: +351 969 754 859
E-MAIL: nazevedo@fe.up.pt