João Conde
João Conde is a Group Leader and Professor at NOVA Medical School, ToxOmics, Nova Medical Research, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.
In 2014, João Conde received his PhD in Biology with a specialization in NanoBiotechnology from the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and the Universidad de Zaragoza, as part of the FP7 European Consortium NanoScieE+-NanoTruck for the development of multifunctional gold nanoparticles for gene silencing. Following that, he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Harvard-MIT Division for Health Sciences and Technology, and Queen Mary University of London’s School of Engineering and Materials Science. From 2017 to 2019 he was a Junior Investigator at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular. In 2019, he won an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council to build a genetic biobarcode to profile breast cancer heterogeneity. He is also a co-founder of the biotech company TargTex, Targeted Therapeutics for Glioblastoma Multiforme. Since 2020, he is also part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Consortium from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington.
The main aspects related to the recognition and diffusion of his early contributions are: nearly 100 articles and 8 international patents with relevant developments in nanomaterials-based platforms for cancer therapy and diagnosis. He was also awarded several international awards, including the 2022 World’s Top 2% Scientists list by Stanford University, the Nanomaterials 2020 Young Investigator Award, the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator, the Top2% Most cited in Nanoscience/ Nanotechnology from PLOS Biology, the Wellcome Image Awards 2017, the Nano-Micro Letters Researcher Award, and the National Cancer Institute Image Award.
Giuseppe Battaglia
Prof Beppe Battaglia is an ERC Consolidator grantee, ICREA Research Professor, and the Molecular Bionics Group leader at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia, part of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology.
Beppe is also an honorary Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at University College London (UCL). Before moving to Barcelona, Beppe held the Chair in Molecular Bionics (2013-2022) in the Department of Chemistry, the Institute for Physics of Living Systems, and the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at UCL. Beppe was the Chair of Synthetic Biology (2011-2013) and senior lecturer (associate professor) in Bionanotechnology (2009-2011) at the Krebs Institute and School of Biosciences of the University of Sheffield. Before that, he was a lecturer (assistant professor) (2006-2009) at the Kroto Institute and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, also at the University of Sheffield.
Beppe leads a strong team of chemists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and biologists interested in how molecules, macromolecules, viruses, vesicles and whole cells traffic across our body barriers. The group combines novel microscopic tools with theoretical and computational physics to study biological transport from single molecules, and cell membranes, to the whole organism. The acquired knowledge is translated to bioengineer novel nanomedicines, combining soft matter physics with synthetic chemistry.
Beppe has published over 135 peer-reviewed papers, and he’s named inventor in 13 patent applications. He was the recipient of the 2009 HFSP Young Investigator award, the 2011 APS/IoP Polymer Physics Exchange Award Lecture, the 2011 GSK Emerging Scientist Award, the 2012 Award for special contribution to Polymer Therapeutics, the 2014 RSC Thomas Graham Award Lecture and the 2015 SCI/RSC McBain Medal for Colloid Science. Beppe was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2017 and the UK Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining in 2018.
Ana Beloqui
Dr. Ana Beloqui is an Assistant Professor and Research Associate from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium), and group leader in the Advanced Drug Delivery and Biomaterials lab at the Louvain Drug Research Institute.
