Dr Tom McKeon is a research chemist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service at the Western Regional Research Center in Albany.He received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.He is co-organizer of the 8th ISBAB Symposium to be held October 28-31, 2012, in the Sonoma Valley Wine Country of California.

His research area is the biochemistry of castor oil biosynthesis and involved in aspects of agronomy, toxin detection and chemurgy of castor to promote its reintroduction as a US crop.

Dr. Meghana Joshi is the Program Director for Biocon-KGI certificate programs based at Keck Graduate Institute, California, USA. Dr. Joshi received her PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, followed by post-doctoral experience at M.D.Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas and Columbia University, New York. Thereafter, she completed the KGI PostDoctoral Professional Masters Degree, a program training PhD's to work in the Biotech industry. She teaches a course in Pharmaceutical Drug Development and works as a consultant to Life Science companies to help them conduct market research and to help in licensing products and forming collaborations, particularly in the area of Biosimilars.

Licensing Products and Biosimilars

Dr. Xiaohua He is a Research Molecular Biologist at the Western Regional Research Center, USDA-ARS. She completed her Ph.D. from UC Riverside, and had Post-doc experiences at Purdue and Cornell Universities. Dr. He received the 2015 USDA Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, Far West Region, Outstanding Technology Development Award for her contribution to the development of novel monoclonal antibodies against a broad range of Shiga toxins. She has served as academic editor and editorial board member of several leading journals and is an author/inventor of over 70 publications and patents, with 14 technologies licensed to industry.

Food Safety,Molecular Tools,Toxin Synthesis.

Dr. Leburton joined the University of Illinois in 1981 from Germany, where he worked as a research scientist with the Siemens A.G. Research Laboratory in Munich. In 1992, he held the Hitachi LTD Chair on Quantum Materials at the University of Tokyo, and was a Visiting Professor in the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2000. He is involved with research in nanostructures modeling and in quantum device simulation. His present research interest encompasses non-linear transport in quantum wires and carbon nanotubes, and molecular and bio-nanoelectronics He is author and co-author of more than 300 technical papers in international journals and books.

Carbon Nano tubes,Bio Nanotechnology

Dr. Yinghua Huang is a Research Geneticist for U.S. Department of Agriculture and serves as the Lead Scientist for the Plant Genetics Program. Before that, he served as faculty member for Oklahoma State University for ten years and now remains an Adj. Professor at the university. He is a member of editorial boards for several scientific journals. He earned a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Michigan Technological University. His scientific background is in plant genetics and molecular biology, and he has considerable research experience in plant biotechnology, genomics and crop improvement. During his early career, Dr. Huang made a breakthrough in developing a reliable system for producing transgenic larch plant, which represents the first record of genetically engineered conifer tree, carrying the important traits such as resistance to insects and herbicide. Another example of his recent research accomplishments is the systematic evaluation of the US sorghum germplasm collection (> 42,000 accessions), leading to the discovery of important new sources of resistance to greenbug and sugarcane aphids, the most important insects of field crops, including barley, sorghum and wheat, then incorporation of the new resistance into crop breeding programs. Furthermore, using the cutting-edge microarray, RNA-seq and the next-generation sequencing technologies, his lab has generated the differential expression profiles which resulted in the identification of the key genes and the networks that regulate the host defense against insect pests, crop yield traits, and bioenergy quality in sorghum. In summary, the overall goals of his research are to conduct basic studies to enhance our understanding of biological processes in plants, to apply newly developing genomics and biotechnologies to facilitate genetic improvement of crop plants, and finally to improve the production system for a better utilization of agricultural and natural resources.

Plant Genetics, Molecular biology and Microbiology

Liliana Rubio Chemical Engineer, Master in Project Management, MBA in Business Administration, MBA in Innovation Management, Specialist in polymer; over 18 years’ experience working on new business, R&D and marketing. Lecturer on innovation & sustainability at universities and the main trade fairs of polymer & Fashion Industry in Latin America, EUA and Asia. Author of several articles that have been publish in technology and business magazines.Founder of PMO Polymer Business Intelligence is a Project Management Office, located in Sao Paulo-Brazil, dedicated to project management consulting, mentoring, covering project planning, implementation and execution through a front-to-end creative quantification approach. Founder of SmartTex Hub ecosystem for the value chain of textile Industry and final applications.

Bio Composites,Nano Biotechnology

Dr. NSc. Eng. Luciano Pighinelli is currently associate professor of toxicology and genetics research program. Lutheran University of Brazil and Assistant Professor of research program in materials engineering at the same university. Doctorate in biomaterials area for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering at the University of Innsbruck -Austria, in cooperation with the institute of biopolymers and chemical fibers in Lodz, Poland, by Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions - Research Fellowship Programme. Has several papers and patents in the field of regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and radiotherapy. Currently developing research in biomaterials area and biodegradation of polymers used in regenerative medicine and drug-delivery.

Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering,Bioactive ceramics,ceramics for orthopedics.

Vlasta Pilizota is a Professor at Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Food Technology Osijek, Croatia, since 1979. She teaches number of courses at undegraduate study, Master, Ph. D. and Professional studies, such as Fruits and vegetable processing and preservation, Food Chemistry, Minimally processed fruits and vegetables, and others. She was a lead scientist of many national and international scientific projects. Also, she has worked many times as a visiting scientist at USDA/ERRC/ARS.She is a member of many Croatian and international organizations (IFT - Certified Food Scientist since 2013).

Food Chemistry,Food Processing & Technology.

Fuad Fares has completed his D.Sc studies at the Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral studiesat the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis Missouri. He is the director of the Department of Molecular Genetics at Carmel Medical Center and associated professor at the Department of Human Biology, University of Haifa. He has published more than 75 papers in reputed journals and serving as a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education. He is the inventor of designing long-acting recombinant proteins and the initiator of PROLOR Biotech company

Molecular Endocrinology,Molecular Genetics Apoptosis cancer

Satyawada Rama Rao has obtained his M.Sc and Ph.D. degree from University of Jodhpur and taught at the same institution for more than 20 years before joining North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong as Professor of Plant Biotechnology. He has published more than 55 papers in journals of International repute, and is presently a member of Research Policy Council of Indian Council of Forest Research and Education (ICFRE), Dehradun, India.

Plant Biotechnology,Cellular and Molecular Cytogenetics,Conservation Biology.

Dr. Dev Mani Pandey is working as Associate Professor at the Department of Bio-Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. He has completed his Ph. D. (Plant Physiology) from Chaudhary Charan Singh, Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India. He was Consultant to Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biotechnology, IRRI, Los Banos, Philippines. He has received Young Scientist Award in Indian Genetics Congress-2015.He has published several research papers in peer reviewed journals.

His research intrest mainly focuses on Molecular Plant Physiology, Plant Biotechnology, Functional Genomics, Bioinformatics.