Speaker

Welcome Talk

Eva Nourney heads the Unit New Methods and Technologies in the Life Sciences at the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research in Berlin.
Ms Nourney is a lawyer by training, originally specialising in International and EU-Law. She joined the German Federal Civil Service in 2000, starting at the Ministry for Consumer Protection and Agriculture. In 2002, she was appointed to the Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt), specializing in strategic development of education and research policy. In 2008, Ms Nourney transferred to the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, where she has since headed various units in the area of research and innovation policy. Since 2017 her work within the Ministry concentrates on Digitalisation and the Life Sciences.
www.bmbf.de

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Welcome Address, 09:00 - 09:30 am

Welcome Talk

Matthia Karreman heads the subgroup Brain Metastasis in the Winkler/Wick Laboratory (DKFZ Heidelberg, University Hospital Heidelberg). Following obtaining her Master of Science in Biology and her PhD at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, she moved to the EMBL Heidelberg for a post-doc in the lab of Dr. Yannick Schwab. Here she developed novel approaches to correlate fluorescence microscopy to 3D-electron microscopy and started a fruitful collaboration with the DKFZ, which spiked her interest in brain metastasis research. Since 2017, she is works on preventative strategies against brain metastasis development at the DKFZ. Here, she and her team use multiphoton intravital imaging through a chronic cranial window in mice to visualize the dynamic interactions of brain metastatic cells with their unique micro-environment.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Welcome Address, 09:00 - 09:30 am

Keynote Speaker

Peter Krawitz studied medicine and physics in Munich, Germany. After theoretical work on Boolean networks at the institute of Systemsbiology in Seattle, he continued with a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. Also in Berlin, he got board certified for Medical Genetics at Charité University medicine. In 2017 he established the Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics at University Bonn, where he develops phenotype driven approaches for variant interpretation.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Molecular Medicine Board, 03:30 - 04:15 pm

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Kulms studied Biology at the University of Gießen, Germany and became a PhD in the field of protein biochemistry at the Medical University of Lübeck, Germany. Changing subjects as a postdoc she moved to the Laboratory of Cell Biology, Department of Dermatology, University of Münster, Germany, staring to investigate the adverse effects of UVB radiation on human skin. She received the Venia Legendi for „Molecular and Cellular Biology“ in 2003. In 2004 she became an Assistant Professor and Group Leader of „Molecular and Cellular Biology“ at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and continued her work on skin cancer shifting the focus on melanoma. In 2006 she started first collaborations with Systems Biology groups. In 2012 she founded the research group of „Experimental Dermatology“ at the Department of Dermatology, Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and was assigned a Professor of Experimental Dermatology in 2015. Her collaborative work with Systems Biology Groups focusses on the identification of new therapeutic targets and in the development of advanced patients stratification tools.

Talk:Wednesday, November 25, 1:00 - 1:30 pm

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Schultze is Professor for Genomics & Immunoregulation at the Life and Medical Sciences (LIMES)-Institute since 2007 and Founding Director of the PRECISE Platform for Single Cell Genomics and Epigenomics at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the University of Bonn since 2016. He went to Medical School at the University of Tübingen, spent almost 10 years at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, in Boston before he returned to Germany with a Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Humboldt Foundation in 2001. Since 2019, he is the coordinator of the German DFG-funded NGS competence centers in Germany, one of the speakers of the West German Genome Center, and one of the speakers of the only German Excellence Cluster in Immunology: ImmunoSensation2. He contributes his expertise to several EU consortia, amongst them SYSCID. He is a highly cited researcher (2019) and an expert in macrophage biology working at the interphase between immunology, genomics and the computational sciences. With his team he was the first to apply memory driven computing to genomics research. With his own research group and the PRECISE platform, his goal is to bring single cell technologies and machine learning approaches to the clinical arena. He is leading several programs on applying single cell technologies and memory driven computing to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer or HIV. He has established research collaborations with HPE, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Becton Dickinson and other companies.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Keynote Lecture, 9:00 - 9:30 am

Keynote Speaker

Fabian Theis is director of the Institute of Computational Biology at the Helmholtz Center Munich and coordinates the Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Unit (HAICU) which was launched in 2019. He is full professor at the Technical University of Munich, holding the chair ‘Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems’. During his academic career Fabian Theis obtained MSc degrees in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Regensburg in 2000. He received a PhD degree in Physics from the same university in 2002 and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Granada in 2003. He worked as visiting researcher at the department of Architecture and Computer Technology (University of Granada, Spain), at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (Wako, Japan), at FAMU-FSU (Florida State University, USA) and at TUAT’s Laboratory for Signal and Image Processing (Tokyo, Japan), and headed the ‘signal processing & information theory’ group at the Institute of Biophysics (Regensburg, Germany). In 2006, he started working as Bernstein fellow leading a junior research group at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, located at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation at Göttingen. In summer 2007, Fabian Theis became working group head of CMB at the Institute of Bioinformatics at the Helmholtz Center Munich. In spring 2009, he became associate Professor for Mathematics in Systems Biology at the Math Department of the TU Munich. 2009-2014 he was member of the ‘Young Academy’ (founded by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina) and was awarded an ERC starting grant in 2010.
In 2017 he was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger prize together within an interdisciplinary team at the ETH Zürich. Fabian Theis is part of and also coordinates various consortia (i.e. sparse2big involving 8 Helmholtz Centers) and founded the network SingleCellOmics Germany (SCOG). Furthermore he coordinates the recently launched Munich School for Data Science (MUDS). Since 2019 he is associate faculty at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK and member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). His research interests include development of computational methods for analyzing and modelling single cell heterogeneities as well as machine and deep learning for prediction in biology and biomedicine.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Keynote Talk, 9:30 - 10:00 am

Saikat is currently a PostDoc in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, working with Prof. Matthew Stephens. After completing his PhD in statistical physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, he started working on statistical genetics since 2015 at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany with Dr. Johannes Söding. His main focus is to develop novel statistical methodology, often with Bayesian approach, for elucidating and understanding the pathway of complex diseases using data from genetic association studies, RNA-seq and gene expression analyses. Along with his colleagues, he has developed a Bayesian method for finemapping genetic variants from multiple GWAS datasets. He also developed a reverse regression technique for large-scale discovery of trans-eQTLs from the GTEx data, linking several GWAS-associated non-coding variants to known and novel disease mechanisms.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Modeling & Technologies in Systems Medicine, 11:30 - 11:45 am

I am currently a Postdoc in Systems Immunology Group at Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (Kiel) lead by Prof. MD Philip Rosenstiel. My main focus area is in precision therapy in IBD where I use high-throughput technology to predict disease progression and treatment in patients affected by Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. In my daily work I use our longitudinal human cohorts to disentangle disease patterns by comparing the patient’s molecular states before and after treatment with biologic drugs. Our aim is be analyzing and integrating OMIC layers from a variety of tissues (e.g. whole blood and ileum or sigmoid mucosal biopsies) can lead to the identification of a biomarker set that can be use within the clinical context. Our goal is to delineate drug-specific, together with shared mechanisms of mucosal healing in order to identify early signs of disease remission that could potentially be used in determining which treatment path is best suited for each patient.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Systems Medicine of Diseases, 1:30 - 1:45 pm

Sara achieved her degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Malaga (Spain) in 2003.  She then completed her PhD at the University of Southampton in finite element modeling of knee replacement devices. She has conducted post-doctoral research at the Trinity Center for Bioengineering in Ireland, at the Julius Wolff Institute in Germany and at Stanford University in the USA. She is currently Junior Professor and group leader at the Julius Wolff Institute, specializing in computer modeling of mechano-biological processes with a focus on bone regeneration and adaptation at the tissue and cellular scales. She is an author of more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters and more than 70 contributions to International and National Conferences.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Modelling & Technologies in Systems Medicine, 11:45 - 12:00 pm

After finishing his medical studies in Austria, Dr.med. Arkadiusz Komorowski simultaneously engaged in research activities and gained first-hand clinical experiences as a resident doctor. Ever since, he is working at the research team “NeuroImaging Labs (NIL)” at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Medical University of Vienna. In 2018, Dr.med. Komorowski visited the “Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience and Imaging in Psychiatry” at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Medical Center, Göttingen in order to extend his knowledge about neuroimaging research in depressive disorders. As a consequence, Dr.med. Komorowski is currently in the process of authoring a publication of the work that was realized during his research term in Germany to finalize his PhD project. Besides his interest in clinical neurosciences, he recently engaged in preventive human rights monitoring at the Austrian Ombudsman Board.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Translational Systems Medicine, 3:45 - 4:00 pm

Retired Professor, University of Stuttgart. 1976-1987 Professor for Biochemical Engineering and Director of the Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University Stuttgart, 2006-2014 Director of the Centre Systems Biology, University Stuttgart.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Modelling & Technologies in Systems Medicine, 12:00 - 12:15 pm

Second Year PhD student, Molecular Cardiology, Genomics and Systems Medicine at University Clinic, Hamburg under the supervision of Prof Dr Tanja Zeller. She received her Master's degree after studying Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Hamburg University. Her Master thesis focused on establishing a technological pipeline to study the role of microRNAs in atrial
fibrillation. This translational approach was part of the eMed symAtrial consortium and was carried out in the laboratory of Prof Zeller. Her Doctoral research investigates on iron metabolism, in particular, the molecular mechanisms underlying the improvement of symptoms upon iron supplementation in iron-deficient heart failure patients.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Systems Medicine of Diseases, 1:45 - 2:00 pm

Lucia Trastulla is currently a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich enrolled at the TUM (technische universität münchen) Medical Graduate Center in the Experimental Medicine Program. Since September 2016 she is working as a PhD student in the lab for Genomics of Complex Diseases of the research group leader Dr. Michael Ziller.
Her research project mainly focuses on understanding how genetics and epigenetics mechanism contribute to the etiology of complex diseases such as schizophrenia and coronary artery disease using machine learning techniques.
From 2014 to 2016 she pursued her master degree in Applied Mathematics for Data Science at the University of Trento. Her master thesis was conducted during an internship at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento in the research unit "Predictive Models for Biomedicine and Environment” focusing on integration techniques for high-throughput omics data.
From 2011 to 2014 she completed her bachelor degree in Mathematics at the University of Perugia with final dissertation on “Fujita and Louville results for parabolic problems”.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: Modelling & Technologies in Systems Medicine, 11:15 - 11:30 am

Dr. Olga Vvedenskaya, a clinical researcher, focuses her research on translational medicine and multi-omics approaches in disease research. She studied medicine in Moscow, majoring in medical biophysics. As a predoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, she investigated the role of oxidized lipids in the development of traumatic brain injury. During her PhD in Berlin she worked on proteomic, metabolomic, and genomic analysis of human liver cancer, comparing samples of cancer conditions with mult-iomics data integration and visualization. Currently Olga is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology (MPI-CBG), Dresden, and a member of Liver Systems Medicine Network, working on clinical lipidomics of NAFLD and NASH.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Systems Medicine of Diseases, 2:00 - 2:15 pm

Professor and Head
Division Molecular Genome Analysis
Genomics and Proteomics Core Facility
German Cancer Research Center
Heidelberg, Germany

Stefan Wiemann earned his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Kaiserslautern. He was visiting scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, where he contributed to the genome sequencing of the first eukaryote (S.cerevisiae) as well as to the development of automated sequencing technologies. He then joined the DKFZ to set up a pipeline for the systematic identification and analysis of human genes. He coordinated the German cDNA Consortium, the largest initiative in Europe for the cloning of human genes. Since 2008 he has been head of the division Molecular Genome Analysis and as of 2010 also of the Genomics and Proteomics Core Facility of the DKFZ. He has led large research networks in national programs of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and is partner in national and international consortia. He has co-authored more than 170 scientific publications, is section editor for BMC Genomics, and associate editor for Scientific Data.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: Translational Approaches in Systems Medicine, 3:30 - 3:45 pm

Dr. med. Konrad Aden is heading the junior research group “Immunometabolism of intestinal inflammation” at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology and works as a senior clinician scientist at the Department of Gastroenterology at the University Hospital Schleswig Holstein, Campus Kiel. He studies medicine in Kiel, Bern and St. Louis and obtained his MD degree in 2010 (University of Kiel) and his board certificate for “internal medicine and gastroenterology” in 2018. His research focuses on the pathophysiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and combines basic science and translational multi-omics analysis of patient cohorts. He main interest lays in the understanding of therapy response prediction towards multiple targeted therapies in IBD. Within e:MED he contributes to the clinical demonstrator “GUIDE-IBD”, focusing on individualized therapy guidance of IBD patients. He further coordinates the Junior Research Alliance “Try-IBD”, aiming to provide a multi-dimensional resolution on the role of tryptophan metabolism in the pathogenesis of IBD. 

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 9:30 - 9:40 am

Jan Baumbach studied computer science at Bielefeld University in Germany. His research career started at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden (UK) where he worked on computational methods for the integration of molecular biology data. He returned to the Center for Biotechnology in Bielefeld for his PhD studies  where he developed CoryneRegNet. Afterwards, at the University of California at Berkeley, he worked in the Algorithms group of Richard Karp on Transitivity Clustering, a novel clustering framework for large-scale biomedical data sets. From March 2010, Jan was head of the Computational Systems Biology group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany. In October 2012, he moved to the University of Southern Denmark as head of the Computational BioMedicine group. His research concentrated on systems and network biomedicine. He was study program coordinator of the Computational BioMedicine program from 2015 to 2017. In January 2018 he moved to the Technical University of Munich as chair of the Experimental Bioinformatics. In Munich, he develops computational methods for systems medicine and novel federated AI approaches ensuring privacy by design.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:30 - 10:40 am

Trained as a computer scientist, my research is in computational biology. I completed my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken in the group of Thomas Lengauer. In my thesis I used machine learning, statistical, and algorithmic methods to study HIV drug resistance and host adaptation mechanisms. I spent my postdoc time at the MPGCAS Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai in the group of Philipp Khaitovitch where I worked on human evolution. I implemented methods to search for uniquely human molecular features within large and heterogenous biological datasets. Most recently I worked at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan where I became interested in deep learning methods for image analysis. In my future research I aim to adopt this new set of machine learning methods to allow for broader, systems biology use of image data in biomedical research.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 01:50 - 02:00 pm

Ivan G. Costa is Professor for Computational Genomics at the RWTH Aachen Medical Faculty. After graduating in computer science in 2003 at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), he joined the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (Germany) to pursue doctoral studies in bioinformatics. His research interest involves statistical machine learning approaches to dissect transcriptional and regulatory programs controlling cellular changes in cell differentiation and in the onset of diseases as fibrosis and type II diabetes. He currently emphasis on computational methods to understand how cellular microenvironment changes cause or support disease processes by integrative analysis of transcriptional, chromatin and spatial status of single cells.

Talk: Tuesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:50 - 11:00 am

I am currently a resident in pathology and group leader at the Institute of Pathology of Charité University Hospital in Berlin. I studied medicine at the Medical Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck, Austria. My thesis with Peter Valent in the Department of Hematology and Hemostaseology at the Vienna General Hospital (AKH) focused on leukemic stem cells and the biological mechanisms behind the development of mastocytosis. Then, for my PhD, I moved to Germany to join the lab of Thomas U. Mayer at the MPI of Biochemistry, Martinsried, and then University of Konstanz. Here I used small molecules and RNAi to understand how molecular motors and microtubules interact to form the mitotic spindle. During my postdoc in the lab of Tim Mitchison in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, I developed new hypotheses that might explain the mechanism of action microtubule binding drugs like taxol against tumor cells and developed an organoid system that emulates the formation of benign human breast lesions in vitro. Since 2017, I have been a resident in pathology at Charité in Berlin. In my current research, l aim to combine my experience in medicine, systems biology and cell biology to develop new therapeutic strategies in solid tumors.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 1:50 - 2:00 pm

Prof. Dr. Georg Fuellen, Dipl.-Inform., MSc (MIT), is the director of the Institute for Biostatistics and Informatics in Medicine and Aging Research at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2008.
The research group of Fuellen focuses on the bioinformatics analyses of aging processes, based on laboratory and expression data of humans, mice and nematodes. Ongoing EU / DFG projects are concerned with transcriptome and proteomic data of these species, for healthspan and embryonic development. Earlier and recently acquired BMBF projects are concerned with the aging of mitochondria (ROSAge), antifibrotic and antileukemic drugs (Mechanisms of Life, Antifibrotix), biomarkers for senotherapeutics (HeLiXbyS) and the comorbidity of ischemic stroke, pancreatic cancer and cellular senescence (SASKit). In collaboration with the Faculty of Arts we developed a generic definition of health and biological age (Aging & Disease, 2019).

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 2:00 - 2:10 pm

Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine (HI-STEM)
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)

Simon studied Molecular Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biosciences at Heidelberg University, Imperial College London and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He received his PhD from DKFZ and Heidelberg University in 2016. Simon performed research at DKFZ, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. Since 2016, he is heading a research group at HI-STEM focusing on single-cell systems analyses of stem cells at the interface of hematopoiesis, immunology and cancer.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 01:40 - 01:50 pm

Marcus Meinhardt received his Diploma in Biotechnology with a specialization in neuropharmacology from the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim, Germany. He then completed his PhD at the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Germany, focusing on the glutamatergic system in alcohol dependence and its implications in different addiction rat models. For his Post-doc, Marcus gained experience in the pharmaceutical industry at AbbVie, Ludwigshafen, Germany in the neuroscience drug discovery and DMPK department. Marcus recently returned to the Central Institute of Mental Health to investigate the neurobiological basis of alcohol dependence on both a pre-clinical and clinical level within the Department of Molecular Neuroimaging and at the Institute of Psychopharmacology. His main research interests lie in the development of new treatment targets for alcohol use disorder.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:00 - 10:10 am

Dr. Patrina S. P. Poh received her PhD in 2014 from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is a biomedical engineer trained at the intersection of additive biomanufacturing technologies and bone tissue engineering. Between 2015 to 2018, she was a research fellow at the Technical University of Munich, partially funded by the Bavaria Research Foundation. Since 2019, she is an independent principal investigator at the Julius Wolff Institute, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Currently, her research focuses on personalisation of scaffold-aided bone regenerative therapy driven by structural and mechanobiological principals while deciphering the underlying molecular mechanism. Dr Poh has been awarded numerous public funding and leads a global network of universities and industrial partners.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 01:00 - 01:10 pm

I studied Biochemistry at University of Basque Country (1992–1997) and obtained my PhD (1998-2002) in the Spanish National Research Council (IIB-CSIC). I was employed as a Junior Scientist at the Department of R&D at Pharmamar Inc. (2003-2004). During 2004 I worked at the Pharmacy School of the University of Southern California (USC). In 2005 I was invited as scientist to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and during the following years I was a postdoctoral researcher (2005-2007) and later on an associate researcher (2007-2008) at Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2009, I joined to DKFZ in a mixed position of postdoctoral researcher and project manager for LungSys consortium (2009-2015). In 2016-2017 I was employed by German Center for Lung Research (DZL), in the multidisciplinary group of Lung Carcinoma and later on by Institute of Physics of the University of Freiburg (2018-2019). Currently I am employed by DKFZ in a mixed position of postdoctoral researcher and project manager for NephrESA.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 10:20 - 10:30 am

Philip Rosenstiel studied medicine in Kiel and Boston and graduated from Medical School in 2001. During his studies was awarded a research scholarship from the BMEP/Studienstiftung.  He spent this time at the laboratories of Patsy Nishina (Jackson Lab, Maine) and Jeffrey Isner (St. Elisabeth Medical Center, Tufts University) working on mouse genetics and gene therapy. His thesis focused on Angiotensin II as a novel neurotrophic factor in the CNS. After graduating he went to the Dept. of Internal Medicine in Kiel for training in Internal Medicine/Mucosal Immunology with Ulrich Fölsch and Stefan Schreiber. After a postdoc at the MPI of Molecular Genetics in Berlin, he became Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine in Kiel in 2007. Since 2016, he is Full Professor and Chair of Clinical Molecular Biology and Medicine at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein.
His group focuses on mucosal immunology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD with its two subentities Crohn´s disease and Ulcerative colitis). An impaired interaction of the immune system with the resident microbiome at the gut epithelial barrier has emerged as an explanatory model of how the environment shapes detrimental immune responses. Intestinal epithelial cells, which are a pivotal intermediate layer transmitting and licensing luminal information to the underlying migratory immune cells, are in the centre of the research questions. His research uses systems-oriented approaches and a wide range of technologies including single cell-based transcriptomics and epigenomics as well as bacterial functional genomic profiling.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 1:20 - 1:30 pm

Clemens A. Schmitt, M.D., is a hematologist/oncologist (especially a lymphoma specialist) at the Charité – University Medical Center and the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and directs the medical department of hematology/oncology at Kepler University, Linz, Austria. He has a long-standing record as a clinician scientist with a strong translational research background in lymphoma, cellular senescence and stem cell biology, for which he exploits transgenic and patient-derived xenograft mouse lymphoma models as well as multi-organ lymphoma biochips. His work has been published in journals like Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine and Cancer Cell. Moreover, he serves as the principal investigator in numerous clinical trials, including a multi-center 1st-line lymphoma trial that explores four different treatment modalities by obtaining re-biopsies acutely under and in the later course of therapy to determine molecular signatures of response. Clemens Schmitt also coordinates several collaborative research projects and is a member of numerous scientific steering committees and advisory boards.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 10:00 - 10:10 am

Markus Scholz is Professor for Genetical Statistics and Biomathematical Modelling at the Institute of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology of the Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. He is mathematician by training and received his PhD in 2002. Since then he worked in the field of biomathematical modelling of disease and therapy processes in cancer and infectious diseases and is already involved in a number of systems-medical research projects of the e:Med line of funding (HaematoSys, HaematoOPT, CAPSyS). Since 2008, he also works in the field of Genetical Statistics, multi-omics data analysis and causal inference and is responsible for the molecular-genetic research programs of several large epidemiologic and clinical cohorts such as LIFE and PROGRESS with atherosclerosis and infectious diseases as main foci. He is Co-PI of the LIFE-Heart study and responsible for the vascular research program in LIFE-Adult. Website: www.genstat.imise.uni-leipzig.de

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 10:10 - 10:20 am

Emanuel Schwarz is a research group leader for translational bioinformatics in psychiatry at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. His work focusses on the development and application of advanced computational methods for integrative analysis of high-dimensional, multimodal data, in order to identify clinically-relevant biological signatures of mental illness. He has co-coordinated the FP7 project IMAging GEnetics for MENtal Disorders (IMAGEMEND), focused on the application of machine learning for identification of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and ADHD. A particular research focus is the exploration of potentially transdiagnostic markers of patient subgroups, which may aid in predicting response to conventional and novel therapeutic interventions, and give insight into the biology underlying comorbidity. The latter objective is the core aim of the interdisciplinary e:Med project  COMMITMENT (COMorbidity Modeling via Integrative Transfer machine-learning in MENTal illness).

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:10 - 10:20 am

Rainer Spanagel studied biology at the Universities of Tübingen and Munich and pursued his early training in behavioural pharmacology and neurochemistry at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Martinsried. In 1990, he moved to the MPI of Psychiatry in Munich and became head of the addiction research group and was awarded a lectureship in Pharmacology and Toxicology. In 2000, he relocated to the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, a leading European institution for biological psychiatry, to become scientific director of the Institute of Psychopharmacology. Professor Spanagel has been awarded many scientific prizes, most notably the Sir Hans Krebs Award for his seminal gene x environment studies in rodents, the James B. Isaacson Award and the European Alcohol Research Award he received for his continuing achievements in alcohol research, and the Reinhardt Koselleck Award for innovation in neuroscience. He has published more than 315 articles, is Editor-in-Chief of Addiction Biology and coordinated several national and European activities on electronic medicine for addictions.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:40 - 10:50 am

Roman Thomas has received his M.D. degree from the University of Cologne, Germany, in 2000. He has worked as a physician scientist with Jürgen Wolf and Volker Diehl at the University Hospital of Cologne. In 2004, he joined the Cancer Genome Project at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Matthew Meyerson, funded by a fellowship of the Deutsche Krebshilfe. In 2007 Roman Thomas returned to Cologne as a Principal Investigator at the Max-Planck Institute for Neurological Research in Cologne Germany. In 2012 Roman Thomas was appointed Full Professor of Translational Genomics at the University of Cologne. His scientific focus is on the characterization of cancer genome alterations in lung cancer and on the cell biology implications of such alterations. He has furthermore spearheaded efforts aimed at the translation of cancer genome findings into diagnostic as well as therapeutic applications.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 9:40 - 9:50 am

Since 2017, I am working as a physician in the Department for Internal Medicine I and a basic science researcher in the Systems Immunology Group at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB), both at the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Kiel. In 2019, the new Clinician Scientist Program of the DFG Cluster of Excellence “Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation” (PMI) launched and allows me on one side to advance my clinical training; on the other side, I am able to work in depth on wet lab during protected periods, providing the optimal clinical research environment for me. My current research interests are (i) molecular guidance strategies in IBD therapy, (ii) rare and genetic gastrointestinal disorder like veoIBD and immunodeficiency syndromes, (iii) stem cell based IBD models and (iv) autophagy processes in epithelial homeostasis. Within eMed, I am together with Prof. Stefan Schreiber coordinating the demonstrator alliance “GUIDE-IBD”.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 1:30 - 1:40 pm

Julio Vera-González is Professor of Systems Tumor Immunology at the Department of Dermatology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. His background is in Physics and his PhD was in the computational modelling of metabolic networks. He was post-doc in the first EU-funded project on computational systems biology. His expertise is in reconstruction, analysis and modeling of biochemical and cell-to-cell networks in human diseases. He develops methodologies to integrate database knowledge, bioinformatics algorithms and high throughput data into ncRNA enriched regulatory networks. His team is currently developing 2D and 3D hybrid, multi-level (molecular + cell-to-cell) models accounting for the interplay between immune, epithelial and other types of cells. He applies systems approaches to determine mechanisms of therapy in cancer, autoimmunity and neurodegeneration. Webpage: www.jveralab.net

Talk: Tuesday, March 09, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine II, 1:10 - 1:20 pm

Daniel Weindl studied general biology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. After graduating in 2012, he started his doctoral studies at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg. In 2015 he obtained his PhD degree for the development and application of methods for non-targeted analysis of stable isotope labeling metabolomics data in the context of cancer research. After a short post-doc period at the LCSB, he joined the Institute of Computational Biology (ICB) at the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich in 2016. As postdoctoral fellow, he was developing and applying software tools for efficient simulation and parameter estimation of large dynamical models of signalling networks. Since 2019 he is coordinator/contributor of the BMBF-funded Junior Research Alliance PeriNAA, a joint project with clinical and experimental partners, focusing on the integrative analysis of peripheral N-acetylaspartate (NAA) metabolism. Within PeriNAA, he applies dynamical modelling of cellular metabolism to better understand the role of NAA in health and disease.

Talk: Tuesday, November 24, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine I, 10:20 - 10:30 am

Dr. Dana Westphal obtained her diplom (Master’s equivalent) in biology in 2003 at the Technical University Dresden. She continued her studies at the Otago University in New Zealand and received her PhD in Microbiology in 2008. From 2009-2014, she worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne Australia as a postdoc in molecular biology, researching on the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis. She currently holds a postdoctoral/junior group leader position at the experimental dermato-oncology lab of the Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Dresden. Her main research focus is on subgroups of melanoma with medical need such as melanoma brain metastases and BRAF wildtype melanoma.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 9:50 - 10:00 am

Dr. rer. nat. Helena U. Zacharias is heading the junior research group “Computational biomarker discovery” at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald. After finishing her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in physics at the University of Regensburg, she acquired her Ph.D. in biology at the Institute of Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg. She conducted her postdoctoral studies at the chemistry department of the Ohio State University and at the Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Center Munich. Since 2019, she coordinates the e:Med junior research alliance CKDNapp, which develops a clinical decision support software to help the practicing nephrologist in personalized chronic kidney disease patient care. Helena’s research focusses on the improved prediction of adverse events in chronic kidney disease patients, and on obtaining a comprehensive understanding of metabolic pathomechanisms underlying this complex disease.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: New Projects in Systems Medicine III, 10:30 - 10:40 am

Yuanyuan Chen, PhD for Novogen Europe.

Sponsored Talk for Novogen:
Wednesday, November 25, Session: Focus Talks, 11:30 - 11:45 pm

Dr. Carlo Maj studied Bioinformatics (MSc, 2010) and Computer Science (PhD, 2014) at the Bicocca University in Milan (IT). He worked in two clinical research centers: Fatebenefratelli Clinic in Brescia (IT) and IGSB (Institute for Genomics Statistics and Bioinformatics) of the University´s Hospital in Bonn (DE). Object of his work was the analysis of high-throughput molecular data to identify associations between omics data and various phenotypes. From 2020 he is group leader at the IGSB, working on the development of innovative statistical approaches in order to better characterize the genetic contribution to human traits at different genetic levels, such as single variants (genome-wide association studies), gene base-level (burden test) and genome-wide level (polygenic risk score).

Sponsored Talk for Illumina:
Wednesday, November 25, Session: Focus Talks, 11:15 - 11:30 am

Herna Muñoz-Galeano is founder and managing director of HMG Systems Engineering (HMG) in Fuerth, Germany. She has over 25 years of international experience in design, development, management of complex engineering systems and innovations. She holds master’s degrees in Electronics Engineering and in Computer Science. In 2016 Herna Muñoz-Galeano has been awarded the “Engineer PowerWoman 2016” by “Hannover Messe” for her accomplishments as an entrepreneur as well as successful electronics and computer science engineer. In 2018 she has been selected for the “EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™” DACH program and represents Germany in the European program. The IHK Mittelfranken awarded her with the “IHK Gründerpreis 2019” for her outstanding entrepreneurial achievements.

Sponsored Talk for HMG-Systems-Engineering:
Wednesday, November 25, Session: Focus Talks, 11:00 - 11:15 am

Maria Fedorova studied Biochemistry at Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia and obtained her PhD at Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Leipzig University, Germany. Now she is a group leader at the Institute of Bioanalytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, at the University of Leipzig. Her research is focused on development and optimization of chromatography and mass spectrometry methods for analysis of lipids and their modified forms. Dr Fedorova group works on implementation of high throughput LC-MS methods in discovery lipidomics targeting in-depth identification and quantification of human lipidome in variety of tissues. By combining lipidomics data with investigation of related proteins and protein post-translational modifications via systems medicine approach, Dr Fedorova aims for a deeper understanding of pathophysiology of obesity, insulin resistance, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disorders.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: e:Med Project Groups, 11:55 - 12:05 pm

After obtaining her Diploma in Biology, Dr. Karin Greulich-Bode was part of the Human Genome Project at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories Berkeley, USA for two years part. Upon return to Germany, she obtained her doctor’s degree for translational cancer research in dermatology. During her first postdoc she worked on radiation biology in normal and tumor tissue. Therefore, she is also trained in medical physics. After moving to the German Cancer Reasearch Center (DKFZ), she in depth investigated tumorigenesis and ageing of the skin, searching for an entity-free mechanism to counteract immortality and therefore tumorigenesis in general. She is a professional human geneticist and her publication record spans cancer research from thyroid-, prostate-, pancreatic- and NSCLC to leukemia.
Karin Greulich-Bode is also a certified scientific project manager, as which she is part of the e:Med management office. Among other tasks, she supports the e:Med project group Data Security and Ethics.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: e:Med Project Groups, 11:45 - 11:55 am

Dr. phil. Christoph Schickhardt is a philosopher and post-doc researcher in biomedical ethics with a focus on genomics, data sharing and privacy in data driven biomedical research. Christoph is senior scientist at the Translational Medical Ethics Section at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He was/is leader/coordinator of a number of bioethical research projects focusing on ELSA (ethical, legal and social) aspects of genomics, systems medicine and digitalization in the clinical and research sector. Christoph studied philosophy at the universities of Pavia, Italy, and Lausanne, Switzerland, and was awarded a PhD degree in Philosophy (Ethics) with a thesis on Child Ethics by the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, in 2011. Christoph teaches ethics and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.

Talk: Wednesday, November 25, Session: e:Med Project Groups, 12:05 - 12:15 pm