Joachim LingnerPhD at the Biocenter, University of Basel 1989-1992 (Supervisor: Walter Keller). Postdoc at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder 1993-1997 (Supervisor: Thomas Cech). Junior group leader at ISREC 1997-2001. Senior group leader at ISREC since 2002. Associate Professor at EPFL 2005-2008. Full Professor at EPFL since 2009. Honors: START-fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation in 1997; Friedrich Miescher Prize from the Swiss Society of Biochemistry in 2002; EMBO member in 2005; ERC advanced investigator grant in 2008.
Florian Maria WurmFlorian Wurm received his academic training as a Biologist and Molecular Geneticist at the University of Giessen. He joined the Hoechst AG (Behringwerke) in Marburg as head of a laboratory in Virology. Working with immortalized mammalian cells for the establishment of production processes for alpha-interferons provided the first opportunity to combine basic research with medical application. In 1984 he joined Harvard Medical School in Boston as a Research Fellow in Molecular Biology. 1986 he took an offer from Genentech Inc. in San Francisco to work in Process Sciences on the development of large scale manufacturing processes for recombinant proteins. There he has held a number of leading positions and has acquired intimate knowledge in the generation of protein pharmaceuticals in mammalian cells in bioreactors (a number of which are now marketed products). In 1995 he joined the EPFL as a Professor for Biotechnology. Wurm has published more than 250 scientific papers and holds more than 20 patents/patent-applications. His H-index stands at 60 in 2021. He was Chairman (2005-2009) and is member of the Executive Board of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology (ESACT). He serves as a consultant to the pharmaceutical Biotech Industry, mainly in the fields of animal cell technology for recombinant protein production and in regulatory affairs. He works as a scientific reviewer and editior/asscciate editor for a number of international journals in the Biotech field. F.M. Wurm teaches classes to pre- and postgraduate students in the fields of Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology.
He was founder and Chief Scientific Officer of ExcellGene SA, a 2001 established company in Monthey, Switzerland. He took the position of President and CEO of ExcellGene in 2015. He retired from the CEO position in 2017 and continues to be President and Chief Scientific Officer of ExcellGene.
In 2008 Dr. Wurm was appointed Visiting Professor for Biotechnology at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. He retired from his position at the EPFL in 2015. His laboratory is closed. With his team at ExcellGene and in collaboration with Dr. Paco Pino, Director of R&D, he continues to explore manufacturing sciences with animal cells in bioreactors.
Vassily HatzimanikatisDr. Vassily Hatzimanikatis is currently Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Lausanne, Switzerland. Vassily received a PhD and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and his Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the University of Patras, in Greece. After the completion of his doctoral studies, he held a research group leader position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland. Prior to joining EPFL, Vassily worked for three years in DuPont, Cargill, and Cargill Dow, and he has been assistant professor at Northwestern University, at Illinois, USA.
Vassilys research interests are in the areas of computational systems biology, biotechnology, and complexity. He is associate editor of the journals Biotechnology & Bioengineering, Metabolic Engineering and Integrative Biology, and he serves on the editorial advisory board of the journals Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, and Industrial Biotechnology. He has written over 70 technical publications and he is co-inventor in three patents and patent applications.
Vassily is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2010), he was a DuPont Young Professor (2001-2004), and he has also received the Jay Bailey Young Investigator Award in Metabolic Engineering (2000), and the ACS Elmar Gaden Award (2011).