Joseph M. DeSimone is the Sanjiv Sam Gambhir Professor of Translational Medicine and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. He is also Co-founder, Board Chair, and former CEO of the additive manufacturing company, Carbon. DeSimone has published over 350 scientific articles and holds over 200 patents. He has mentored 80 students through Ph.D. completion, half of whom are women and members of underrepresented groups in STEM.

In 2016 DeSimone was recognized by President Obama with the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation. He is also a member of all three branches of the U.S. National Academies (Sciences, Medicine, Engineering). DeSimone received his B.S. in Chemistry from Ursinus College and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Virginia Tech.

Nikoletta Fotaki’s research and activities are focused on the prediction of drug absorption through the oral and non oral (i.e.inhalation, subcutaneous) route. She is working on the development of in vitro screening tools and associated software for predicting absorption and in vivo performance (in normal populations and in special populations; i.e. paediatrics), on in vitro dissolution/ biorelevant dissolution methods, on dissolution imaging, on formulation development, design and interpretation of bioavailability and bioequivalency studies, on safety of drugs (pharmacokinetics and toxicokinetics), on the appropriate use of animal models for the prediction of absorption, on the reduction/ refinement/ replacement of animal experimentation and on the development of in vitro-in vivo correlations and relations and on Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) Modeling.

Dr Fang Liu is the Founder & Director of Fluid Pharma Ltd, a UK bio-tech company specialised in age-appropriate medicines for children and older patients.  She is also an Associate Professor at University of Hertfordshire. Fang is a co-chair of the Age-Related Medicines Focus Group in Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Great Britain (APSGB) and is involved in the work of European Paediatric Formulation Initiative (EuPFI) and the Patient Centric Medicine (PaCeMe) initiative.

She is the inventor of three patents and author of over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications and book chapters in oral drug delivery, patient-centric medicines and biopharmaceutical analysis.   

Maxim Puchkov became the CEO of the Center for Innovation in Computer-Aided Pharmaceutics (CINCAP GmbH) in 2007 and in 2010 he joined the group of Prof. Dr. Jörg Huwyler as scientific collaborator.

His scientific interests are focused on massively-parallel computational models for a design of pharmaceutical formulations; discrete element models for design, understanding, and optimization of pharmaceutical processes and unit operations; interactive and process-oriented computer tools and simulators for advanced teaching and training of industrial unit operations.

Christian Lübbert studied chemical engineering at TU Dortmund University and finished his PhD in 2018. During his PhD, he successfully predicted the long-term stability of hundreds of pharmaceutical formulations via thermodynamic modeling. He developed methods to measure and to predict unwanted changes in ASDs during long-term storage, e.g. amorphous phase separation and crystallization. 

His work was awarded as the best German PhD thesis in thermodynamics in 2018. Moreover, he received the TU Dortmund PhD award.

Christine Madla is a final year PhD Researcher supervised by Professor Abdul Basit at the UCL School of Pharmacy, University College London, and Nicola Clear and Dr Mark McAllister from Pfizer under the Centre of Doctoral Training Programme, funded by the EPSRC UK. Her work focuses on why males and females respond differently to excipients which can alter drug behaviour. Christine obtained her MSc in Pharmaceutical Formulation and Entrepreneurship from the same institution and actively supports students at the UCL School of Pharmacy and UCL School of Management.

Christine has spearheaded a portfolio of research publications and book chapters spanning personalised medicines, modern pharmaceutical manufacturing and gastrointestinal drug delivery. Christine founded Sex in Science, a campaign to address the sex and gender research gap in science, healthcare and wellbeing.

Sharareh Salar-Behzadi is key researcher at Research Center Pharmaceutical Engineering (RCPE) GmbH, Graz and Assoc. Professor at the department of pharmaceutical technology and biopharmacy, University of Graz, Austria. She studied pharmacy and received her PhD from University of Vienna in pharmaceutical formulation and process development.

Her interest is in pharmaceutical material science, solid state, structure-function analysis of pharmaceutical excipients, with a focus on lipid-based drug delivery systems, particle engineering for different routes of administration and patient-centric product development.

Prof. Ouyang is associate professor at University of Macau. He has a multidisciplinary background in pharmaceutics & computer modelling, with experience in academia and industry. He obtained his bachelor (2000) and master (2005) in pharmaceutics from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, China. He completed his PhD in pharmacy at The University of Queensland, Australia, in 2010 and progressed directly to his faculty position (Lecturer in Pharmaceutics, PI) at Aston University (UK). From the end of 2014, he moved to the University of Macau. 

Since 2011, he has pioneered the integration of multi-scale modeling, artificial intelligence and big data techniques in the field of drug delivery – “computational pharmaceutics“. He has published 2 books, 5 book chapters and over 70 refereed SCI journal papers.

Avi Schroeder received all three degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Ben-Gurion University. His postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012). At MIT, Avi and colleagues developed nanoparticles that are capable of autonomously synthesizing proteins upon signal, thereby being a platform for on-site delivery of drugs and preventing damage to healthy organs.

In his lab at Technion, Avi is building an expert team to work towards improved personalized and targeted medicine.

Dr. Philipp Werner is a food chemist and obtained his doctorate at the University of Hamburg. He gained professional experience as an independent consultant for food analytics and being part of the quality control of a renowned company in the pharmaceutical industry. For more than four years he is focussed on the manufacturing of high quality pharm-a-spheres™ sugar spheres, globuli sacchari and nutritional supplements in his position as senior quality manager in the company Hanns G. Werner GmbH + Co. KG.

Dr. Philipp Werner is laureate of the “competence in food award” of the University of Hamburg and the “phoenix pharmacy research award”.

Sonja Bauhuber is an Application Manager at MEGGLE Excipients & Technology where she is consulting pharma companies in tableting challenges. She has nine years experience in technical support at JRS Pharma serving customers all over the world in their drug development projects.

She holds a degree in chemistry and obtained a PhD from the University of Regensburg for her thesis in pharmaceutical technology. She has an extensive background in pharmacy and chemistry and due to her long experience in the formulation of oral drugs she is a very sought-after technical contact.

Gudrun Birk is heading a research and development laboratory within MilliporeSigma and focuses on the development of innovative new excipients and functional excipient systems for solid oral dosage forms. Continuous manufacturing and solubility enhancement are two of her main areas of expertise, spanning from scientific basic research to industrial product development.

She has a background in pharmaceutical sciences and completed her PhD in the field of parenteral applications at EMD Serono Biopharma in cooperation with the University of Munich.

MilliporeSigma is the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Paola Luciani is Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Bern since 2019 and Director of Study of the Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences since 2020. Before relocating to Switzerland, she was Associate Professor for Phospholipids in Drug Development at the Institute of Pharmacy of the University of Jena, Germany (endowed professorship supported by Lipoid GmbH).

Paola has been recently nominated Specialist for Pharmaceutical Quality in the Human Medicines Expert Committee (HMEC) by the Agency Council of Swissmedic, the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products. She is part of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Phospholipid Research Center, Heidelberg, and member of the CRS, APV and the Swiss Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Her research focuses on the design and characterization of lipid-based delivery systems for drug delivery and diagnosis, with a focus on treatments for fibrotic diseases.

Kyle Smith was named President and Chief Operating Officer in October 2021. Mr. Smith is a 10-year veteran with Aprecia and most recently served as Vice President of Operations. Mr. Smith is responsible for leading day-to-day business activities. Mr. Smith holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Miami University, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Jonas H. Fagerberg defended his doctoral thesis, titled: Experimental and Computational Predictions of Drug Solubility in Human Gastrointestinal Fluids, at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden in 2014 After 2 years of postdoctoral engagements he left academia and has since continued to work with solubility, solubilization and absorption enhancement of poorly soluble drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. Jonas has a strong focus on innovative drug formulation and product development. In 2018 he joined Disruptive Material as a Senior Formulation Scientist and later Pharmaceutical Development manager and Head of Pharma R&D.  

Currently, he leads the in-house development activities related to Pharma grade Mesoporous Magnesium Carbonate as Head of Pharma R&D at Disruptive Pharma.

Dr. Dan Dumitrescu obtained his chemical engineering diploma in 2009 and his PhD in chemistry 2012, both at “Politehnica” University of Bucharest. He then focused his research efforts in the field of supramolecular chemistry during a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dr. Mihail Barboiu, and later applied the knowledge gained in the field of crystal engineering to pharmaceutical crystallization. Before joining Technobis Crystallization Systems, he spent 3 years as a postdoc in X-ray method and equipment development at the XRD2 beamline, Sincrotrone Elettra Trieste.

With over 45 papers published in fields ranging from organic synthesis, crystal engineering, crystallography, and materials science, Dr. Dan Dumitrescu’s research interests are centred around understanding the chemistry of crystallization from a molecular level up to an industrially applicable scale. The current presentation briefly touches on some of the recent advances describing the interplay between amorphous polymers and crystalline small-molecules, and how to perform some of the experiments required for understanding complex systems such as amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs).