International keynote speakers:
Professor Iain Greenwood (UK) – Ion Channels and vascular tone
Professor Iain Greenwood is a Professor of Vascular Pharmacology at St George’s, University of London and an adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences (Heart and Circulatory Research Section) at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Prof Greenwood obtained a First class Honours Degree in Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Hertfordshire in 1990, and then his PhD at the Univeristy of Manchester in the Smooth Muscle Research Group, under the supervision of Professor AH Weston. His research interests include: understanding the cellular and molecular regulation of vascular and visceral smooth muscle activity by ion channels and membrane receptors.
Dr Styliani (Stella) Goulopoulou (USA) – Pregnancy and the vasculature
DDr. Stella Goulopoulou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Anatomy at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) at Fort Worth, Texas, USA. Dr. Goulopoulou did her MSc and PhD in exercise physiology at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA, and her postdoctoral training in vascular physiology at Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia, USA. Dr. Goulopoulou’s research program focuses on women’s cardiovascular health with particular emphasis on maternal vascular physiology in healthy pregnancy and preeclampsia. Research at the Goulopoulou Lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and intramural grants.
Professor Yong Song Gho (South Korea) – EVs and metastasis
Professor Yong Song Gho is a full professor at the Department of Life Sciences, POSTECH, Pohang, South Korea. After his B.S. and M.S. in the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University, South Korea, he got his PhD from Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. In 2000, he began working in the field of ‘Extracellular Vesicles and Exosomes’ and has 98 exosome-related publications and more than 56 registered patents. Inpressively, his group ran EVpedia database: more than 40 million accesses from worldwide ~ 8,500 members. Recently, he founded ‘Rosetta Exosome Co. Inc’ to develop bacterial extracellular vesicles as the next-generation cancer immunotherapy.
Dr Joanna Kalucka (Denmark) – Endothelial cell transcriptome
Dr Joanna Kalucka is an Assistant Professor at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark and VIB Center for Cancer Biology, Belgium. She completed her Masters at the University of Life Sciences in Poznan in Poland and her PhD in Molecular Biology at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. Prior to being appointed in Aarhus, Joanna was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders to pursue a project on endothelial cell metabolism in health and disease at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Her involvement in the venture resulted in advancing our understanding of endothelial cell biology. Joanna is currently on an AIAS-COFUND Junior Fellowship studying endothelial cell heterogeneity during obesity.
Professor Don Welsh (Canada) – Ion channels in the vasculature
Don Welsh is a professor in Molecular Neuroscience and Vascular Biology, at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the Robarts Research Institute at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He completed his Bachelors at the University of Calgary, Masters at the University of British Columbia and PhD in Biophysics at the University of Guelph. Following on from this Don completed post-doc fellowships at Yale University and the University of Vermont, USA. Don’s current research focuses primarily on cerebral circulation. His work is characterized by a blend of theoretical approaches, such as computational modelling with experimental techniques, that extend from single proteins, to cells, and then to whole tissues.