Keynote Speakers

Klaus M Hahn

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Dr. Hahn’s laboratory develops new means to visualize and control protein activity in vivo, and uses them to study the role of signaling dynamics in immune cell decision making. His laboratory has produced broadly applicable approaches to fluorescent biosensors that report conformational changes of endogenous proteins, fluorescent dyes to visualize protein activity in vivo, and protein analogs that can be controlled by light or small molecules. Current biological studies focus on phagocytosis, platelet production and metastasis.

Dr. Hahn studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, where he received his Ph.D in Organic Chemistry. He was a postdoc at the Center for Fluorescence Research at Carnegie Mellon University, became an Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute, and then moved to UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is the Thurman Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the UNC-Olympus Imaging Center. Dr. Hahn is a recipient of an NIH Transformative Grant, the NIH’s James Shannon Director’s Award, and is a fellow of the AAAS. His lab’s work on biosensors was named one of the “10 Breakthroughs of the Decade” by Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

http://www.hahnlab.com/

Owen J Sansom

The Beatson Institute, Scotland

Owen Sansom is interim director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, Glasgow. Owen gained his PhD in 2001 working on in vivo models of apoptosis in cancer. Since then, he has been instrumental in determining the molecular hallmarks of colorectal cancer (CRC), including showing the roles of the tumour suppressor protein APC and the WNT signalling pathway and the involvement of intestinal stem cells in tumourigenesis. In 2005, Owen established his own laboratory at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, where he became Deputy Director in 2010. The Sansom laboratory uses in vivo models and 3D in vitro models to recapitulate CRC and pancreatic cancer to investigate the molecular mechanisms underpinning tumourigenesis and to identify novel drug targets. In 2007 Owen won the BACR/AstraZeneca Young Scientist Frank Rose Award and in 2012 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was awarded the Cancer Research UK Future Leaders in Cancer Research prize.

http://www.beatson.gla.ac.uk/invasion-and-metastasis/owen-sansom-colorectal-cancer-and-wnt-signalling.html

International Speakers

Eric O’Neill

Eric O’Neill is a Senior Group Leader and Associate Professor at the CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology. After completing a Ph.D. at the University of Umeå, Sweden he was a post-doc at the University of Oxford. Subsequently, he was awarded a Marie Curie research fellowship and completed a 5-year post-doctoral position investigating oncogenic and tumour suppressor signalling at the CRUK Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow. He is a member of the Association for Radiation Research and an examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists. He has also been on the organising committee for several international conferences.

http://www.radiationoncology.ox.ac.uk/research/eric-oneill

Peter R Shepherd

University of Auckland, New Zealand

Peter Shepherd gained a PhD in Chemistry from Massey University in New Zealand before post doctoral fellowships at Harvard University and  Cambridge University.  Following faculty positions at University College London, he moved back to Auckland University in 2004 where he is currently deputy director at the Maurice Wilkins Centre, a Centre of Research Excellence. His work focusses on understanding how defects in cell signalling pathways contribute to the development of type-2 diabetes and cancer, particularly focussing on the PI 3-kinase and beta-catenin pathways.  His lab also has a strong translational research focus in the form of several ongoing in house drug discovery projects.

https://unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/profile/peter-shepherd

Tilman Brummer

Jen Morton is a joint leader of the pancreatic cancer research team at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute.  Her research focuses mainly on: (a) Investigating the importance of mutations found in human pancreatic tumours using mouse models, (b) Profiling different genetic subsets of pancreatic cancer to better understand the disease and identify specific targets for therapy, and (c) performing preclinical trials of targeted therapies in clinically and genetically relevant pancreatic cancer mouse models.

Patrick is based within the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research at the University of Manchester. Patrick studied Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham, before undertaking a PhD at the University of Leicester and a postdoc in Jim Norman’s lab at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research. Patrick set up his lab in 2010, focussing on how cell-matrix interactions through integrins generate signals that control key cellular processes such as cell migration, differentiation and survival. The lab is specifically interested in vesicular trafficking, and has recently shown that endocytic trafficking of integrins and co-cargo receptors controls the spatial activation of RhoGTPases to modulate the actin cytoskeleton in invasive cancer cells.

http://www.wellcome-matrix.org/research_groups/pat-caswell.html

Vinay Tergaonkar

Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore

 

Vinay Tergaonkar obtained his Ph.D. (2001), from National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. During his graduate studies he was awarded an international cancer society (UICC) fellowship for collaborative research at Tufts University, Boston, USA. He has been a fellow (2001-2004) and a special fellow (2004-present) of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America and conducted his postdoctoral studies at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California. He joined the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) in late 2005 as Principal Investigator and became a Senior Principal Investigator in 2010 and Research Director in 2015. He is also a Professor at School of Medicine at National University of Singapore. He has been invited to speak at various international venues and meetings such as the Barossa and Hunter valley meetings in Australia, Genes and Cancer meeting in UK, The Argentine Pharmacological society meeting in Buenos Aires, Aichi and Japanese Cancer Society meetings in Japan and the Keystone Symposia. He serves on 
Editorial Boards of 1) Molecular and Cellular Biology (American Society for Molecular Biology) 2) Biochemical Journal (Portland Press) 
3) Critical Reviews in Oncology/Hematology (Elsevier Press), 4) BMC Research Notes (Biomed Central) and 5) Telomeres and Telomerase. He has received international recognition for his work including the British council development award (2014) and the 2015 Premiers’ fellowship from Government of South Australia.

Daniel Schramek

Daniel Schramek is a Principal Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He obtained his BSc and MSc in Molecular biology from the University of Vienna and undertook his master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Roger Daly at the Garvan Institute in Sydney. He undertook his PhD work under the supervision of Prof. Josef Penninger at IMBA in Vienna, followed by postdoctoral studies with Prof. Elaine Fuchs at the Rockefeller University in New York. In 2015, Dr. Schramek was recruited to the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, where he holds an endowed ‘Kierans & Janigan’ Cancer Research Chair as well as a tier 2 Canadian Research Chair in Functional Cancer Genomics. Dr. Schramek was awarded a prestigious HFSP Career Development Award, the Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation as well as a CIHR Foundation grant.