Sara Naseri
Dirk Gevers
Dirk Gevers, Ph.D., is Global Head of the Microbiome Solutions team. As a team, we combine our pioneering expertise in the microbiome with the drug discovery, product development, and commercialization know-how of a leading global healthcare company. Together with our colleagues across Janssen and Johnson & Johnson, we have the knowledge and resources to identify the most promising innovations taking place across the microbiome ecosystem and help our partners translate early-stage innovations into product concepts and, ultimately, new solutions with the power to impact human health. Dirk joined from his previous role as Senior Group Leader of Microbial Systems and Communities at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In this position, Dirk served as a scientific liaison between different organizational components, including the Broad Institute’s data generation platforms and both clinical and analytical collaborators on a number of microbiome-related projects. Dirk’s research efforts at the Broad Institute included the characterization of the microbial imbalance associated with diseases such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes and colorectal cancer. He was also involved with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Project (HMP), holding a leading role in the Data Analysis Working Group, consisting of over 50 investigators focused on human microbiome research. Dirk received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ghent University (UGent), Belgium, and completed postdoctoral training at UGent and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in bioinformatics, comparative and evolutionary genome analysis and microbial ecolog
Ru-fong Joanne Cheng
Christopher Missling
Christopher U Missling, PhD is President and CEO of Anavex Life Sciences, has over 20 years of healthcare industry experience within large pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to joining Anavex, he served as Officer at Curis and ImmunoGen and previously at Aventis (now Sanofi). Christopher’s work is dedicated to finding potential cures for rare neurodevelopmental diseases, like Rett syndrome, autism spectrum disorder as well as degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease by utilizing precision medicine. Dr. Missling is working with his team to advance new potential treatments through clinical trials involving the respective patient’s advocacy groups. Dr. Missling has an MS and PhD from the University of Munich in Chemistry and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and WHU.
Priyanka Jain
Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown
Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown is the director of the Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes and a Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment, at Arizona State University. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech. She was awarded an NSF CAREER award, was selected Fulton Engineering Exemplar Faculty, and was recently awarded Arizona Researcher of the year by AZBio highly cited researcher in her field by Web of Science. She has funding for her research from many federal agencies including NIH, DoE, DoD, and NSF. She is a pioneer in research on gut microbiome and autism. She is author of 4 patents and more than 115 peer-reviewed publications. She specializes on molecular microbial ecology for bioremediation, the use of microbial systems for bioenergy production, and the human intestinal microbial ecology and its relationship to obesity, bariatric surgery, metabolism, and autism.
Magali Cordaillat
Dr. Magali Cordaillat-Simmons earned her PhD in 2005 at the Université Paris V René Descartes, France, in Pharmacology, and her second Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs at the Strasbourg Pharmacy School in 2014. Following her doctoral work with Pr. Ariel Gomez in pediatric nephrology at the University of Virginia from 2006 to 2009, Magali joined the newly-created Pharmabiotic Research Institute (PRI), which is an industrial-scientific Association dedicated to supporting the field in the development and registration of microbiome-based medicinal products for the European market. As Scientific and Regulatory Affairs Director, and in close collaboration with the PRI’s more than 80 industry members and academic partners, she oversees the organization’s EU-wide initiatives, which include EU-funded R&I projects, national and EU-level scientific advice request dossiers, and collaborative Task Group work on shared challenges for the field (CMC, standardization efforts, clinical design).
Madeleine Livingston
Federico Bolognani
Dr. Bolognani joined Axial Therapeutics in Nov. 2020 bringing with him over 20 years of experience in translational neuroscience research in academia, pharmaceutical and the biotechnology industries. Most recently, Federico served as the Vice President and Head of Clinical Science at VectivBio in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to VectivBio AG, Dr. Bolognani was VP and Head of Clinical Science at Therachon AG, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2019. Prior to Therachon, Dr. Bolognani held various senior-level positions at Roche. As Translation Medicine Leader, Dr. Bolognani led several of Roche’s programs in neuroscience, including the successful Phase 2 balovaptan program in autism spectrum disorder, which was granted Breakthrough Designation in 2018. Dr. Bolognani received his Ph.D. and M.D. from Universidad Nacional de La Pata, Argentina and has an extensive scientific publication record in translational neuroscience research.
