Speakers
ExciPerience 2022 is over!
Confirmed speakers 2022
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.
David R. Schoneker is currently an independent consultant and the President and Owner of Black Diamond Regulatory Consulting, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in providing regulatory and quality consulting for the pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, food and related industries.
With over 43 years of experience working in these areas, he has developed strong networks with regulatory agencies and pharmacopeias around the world.
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.
Simon Gaisford has a Chair in Pharmaceutics. He joined the UCL School of Pharmacy in 2003, having previously been a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Huddersfield. He undertook his PhD at the University of Kent at Canterbury, under Professor AE Beezer and then held Postdoctoral Research Assistant posts at the School with Profs DQM Craig and G Buckton.
He has published 175 papers, 8 book chapters and 4 books, made the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher list in 2019 and 2020, is Co-founder of FabRx Ltd and the Presenter of the YouTube Channel Pharma Drama.
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.
Walkiria has over 25 years of experience in academia and is currently Professor of Pharmaceutics at the Leicester School of Pharmacy. Her research interests are in continuous pharmaceutical product development and manufacture. She is course director of the MSc in Quality by Design for the Pharmaceutical Industry and a key member of the academic teaching staff. She has a strong research interest in the science underpinning QbD and has developed collaborations with numerous organisations that are active in this field.
She is a member of the advisory committee of the Continuous Manufacturing and Advanced Crystallisation (CMAC) at the University of Strathclyde.
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.
Dr. Maj-Britt Cepok graduated as a food chemist from the Technical University of Berlin in 2001. She subsequently joined the Suedzucker AG Germany for her PhD thesis in analytical chemistry. Following this, she was Technical Services Manager at PALATINIT GmbH for food and confectionery customers.
Since 2007, she has been developing the pharmaceutical business at BENEO in different positions and is today Head of Business Development Pharma.
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”.
Olivia Merkel has been a Professor of Drug Delivery in the Department of Pharmacy at LMU Munich in Germany since 2015. From 2011 until 2017 she was an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics and an Associate Faculty Member of Oncology at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA, where she is also a Scientific Member of the Molecular Therapeutics Program and Faculty in the Cancer Biology Graduate Program at Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI. She received several awards and is the author of over 90 peer-reviewed articles, 15 book chapters and the editor of two books.
Currently her research centers around targeted RNA delivery in cancer, inflammatory diseases and viral infections with a focus on pulmonary administration.
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.
Dr. Mahmud Yunis has been working for 16 years at BIOGRUND in several positions. In his current function as Technical Director, he is responsible for preparing and implementing global strategic regulatory plan for BIOGRUND products and the strategic development of the Quality, Production and R&D department. He has a PhD degree in Analytical Chemistry from University of Muenster, Germany. Before joining BIOGRUND he worked for a consulting company on the area of GxP procedures and processes for five years.
In addition, he is Board Member at International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council – Europe (IPEC-EU) and APV Task Force Leader “Titanium Dioxide” .
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. Anat Raz Holds a post doctorate in biology from Weizmann Institute of Science. She is an experienced pharmaceutical scientist with strong background in drug delivery platforms and is an expert in GI tract physiology and biopharmaceutics.
Prior to joining Alma, she worked for 18 Years as a senior Scientist at Teva Pharmaceuticals generic R&D.
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).
More interesting speakers will be announced soon!
Check back again!
These were the speakers 2021
Sandra Klein is currently professor of biopharmaceutics and pharmaceutical technology. Prof. Klein is a board member of APV, an EuPFI associate and a member of AAPS, CRS, DPhG. Moreover, she is a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals.
Her current research is focused on developing predictive dissolution methods and dosage forms for special patient groups, particularly the paediatric and geriatric population.
David R. Schoneker is currently an independent consultant and the President and Owner of Black Diamond Regulatory Consulting, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in providing regulatory and quality consulting for the pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, food and related industries.
With over 42 years of experience working in these areas, he has developed strong networks with regulatory agencies and pharmacopeias around the world.
Jennifer Cain Birkmose is Vice President, Global Head of Patient Access and Community Engagement of sobi – Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (publ). Moreover, she is Member of the Board of Directors at Medicines for Malaria Venture.
Her professional experience and personal motivations are driven by an interest in advancing the health of populations globally. She sees the advancement of public health and improving the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of health care systems as intertwined.
Bahijja Raimi-Abraham is a pharmacist, Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at King’s College London, Founder and Academic Lead of King’s College London Fight the Fakes. She leads her research group “The Raimi-Abraham Group” and is a board member for the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS).
Her research to date has been in pharmaceutical materials and innovative manufacture. More recently she has focused her research efforts within the therapeutic and drug development aspects of malaria.
Alvaro Goyanes is the Development Director and lead project researcher at FabRx. Moreover, he is lecturer at USC and UCL and a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Web of Science for the 2nd year in a row!
Alvaro holds a PhD in pharmaceutical technology and was one of the first researchers assessing opportunities of 3D printing using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) to manufacture oral dosage forms and medical devices.
Chris Moreton is Vice President of FinnBrit Consulting and currently a member of the Excipient Monographs 2 Expert committee of the United States’ Pharmacopeia and also on the Board of the IPEC Foundation.
He has more than 30 years experience in the development of new drug candidates and generic drugs, in many therapeutic areas, using different dosage forms and routes of administration. But also in QA/QC and Technical Support in excipients and drug delivery.
Hans Platteeuw started in 2005 Avivia BV, an independent company specialized in pharmaceutical product development with a specific expertise in the development and intellectual property protection of specialty generics products and in guiding the initial finished product development from phase I all the way up to phase III and commercial production.
His specialty is translating lead compounds into pharmaceutical products that can be made cost effectively and put on a shelf in a pharmacy.
Allison Labriola is a Senior Technical Sales Representative for JRS, specializing in Vivacoat. She supports film coatings from a sales and technical perspective throughout North America.
Allison has an extensive background in pharmaceutical coating and tablet formulation thanks to over 15 years of experience working in sales, technical, and manufacturing roles.
Raphael Janousek works as a project manager at BIOGRUND GmbH. In his role as a project manager he is part of the global sales team and responsible for the DACH and Scandinavian market.
He holds a master’s degree in Bio- and Pharmaceutical Analysis and a Dr. in Chemistry. With his strong scientific background he consults pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies in customized film coating, tableting and coloring formulation.
Ajaz Hussain is the President of The National Institute for Pharmaecuetical Technology & Education. His background includes decades of experience in industry, US FDA, and in academic research and teaching to include a number of high-level corporate leadership positions.
His career at US FDA spanned 10 years, where he served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Pharmaceutical Science (OPS) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and a “peer reviewed” Senior Biomedical Research position in the US Government Service.
Dario Dornbierer studied pharmaceutical sciences at the ETH Zurich and holds a PhD in the field of sleep pharmacology. During his current bio-entrepreneurial PostDoc position at the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Zurich, he investigates the clinical potential of illicit drugs for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, such as GHB and Ayahuasca.
Moreover, he is continuously driving the research on how to optimize psychiatric drug therapies applying cutting-edge pharmaceutical technologies. Dario acts as Co-founder and CSO of Galventa.
Sascha Fritsche, CFA, has an MA in banking and finance from the University of St. Gallen (HSG). During several years he gathered insights into strategy consulting and banking while working for Helbling Management Consulting, Credit Suisse and Nomura.
In the past eight years, he acted as the CFO in an ETH-spin-off, which he accompanied on the journey from very few to over 200 employees. Sascha acts as Co-founder and CEO of Galventa.
Ana Gutierrez has a pharmaceutical engineering degree from the National Polytechnic Institute and a Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Metropolitan Autonomous University. She gained considerable industrial experience through positions as manufacturing technology scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb in Mexico, where she also held an Assistant Professor position at the Pharmacy School at the Metropolitan Autonomous University.
At Gattefossé Ana is responsible for providing formulation and process development technical support and delivering internal and external training programs for customers and European universities.
Tomas Skrinskas has been at the leading edge of transformative health care technologies including computer assisted surgery, surgical robotics and genetic nanomedicines for over 15 years,
His career began with research and engineering which provided a strong foundation for the business development and operations roles that followed. Tomas founded Ascension Sciences, a R&D laboratory focused on nanoparticle development for cannabinoid products and therapeutics, in January 2019.
With nearly 30 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical and Nutritional industries, Larry currently is the Pharmaceutical / Nutraceutical Sales Manager at BENEO, Inc. in North America.
Larry started his career in the laboratory specializing in the development of aqueous and enteric film coating systems along with direct compression calcium and oyster shell products for solid dosage (tablet) applications at CHR Hansen formerly Crompton & Knowles ITC.
In his near 30 year career; Larry has worked not only for manufacturers of high quality excipients i.e.: Sensient Pharmaceuticals formerly Warner Jenkinson and JM Huber Corporation, he also worked for over 6 years at IMCD US LLC formerly Mutchler, Inc. whom distributed a large portfolio of excipients from manufacturers around the world.
Cross-functional team lead covering aspects of novel product and process development, regulatory strategy, intellectual property, and market assessment.
Member of the innovation teams responsible for development and regulatory entrée of 3D printed products in multiple medical fields. Over twenty years of experience applying 3D printing technology to pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Familiar with startup to commercial stage corporate environment, ranging from a few people to over 100. Significant interaction with legal counsel across specialties, including FDA law, patent & trademark law, and contract law.
Pavel Abdulkin is the Chief Commercial Officer at Microcaps AG. He has over 10 years experience in development of nano- and microencapsulation techniques to enable controlled release and targeted delivery applications across pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries.
At Microcaps Pavel is responsible for development and implementation of the commercial strategy as well as customer outreach and strategic partnerships.
Dominik Witzigmann is an award-winning investigator working at the forefront of lipid nanoparticle research, the fastest growing RNA delivery technology. Within the NanoMedicines Innovation Network (NMIN), he leads the NanoCore legacy initative to facilitate the development, characterization and formulation of translational nanomedicines.
Dominik obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences, and he has a proven track record in nanomedicine technologies enabling tissue and cell specific drug and gene delivery. He serves as a board member of the Gene Delivery and Genome Editing focus group of the Controlled Release Society.
Dr. Tomaž Einfalt is a project leader at the University of Basel. During the last 4 years he has been working on translating exosomal and lipid nanoparticle technologies from bench to bedside.
His work was featured at the Swiss Innovation Challenge and lead to key industry collaborations looking into translation of inventions into clinical products.
Krizia holds a PhD in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA and more than 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Her technical approaches include formulation optimization, continuous manufacturing processes for solid oral dosage products, Process Analytical Technology (PAT) and spectroscopy for real-time measurements of critical quality attributes.
Her work extends to global companies including Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca and Eli-Lilly. Krizia has published articles and chapters on innovative formulations, new drug delivery methods, process engineering and controls, and the implementation and validation of PAT tools.
Nina Hauschildt is a Principal Scientist in the Formulation & Application Services at Evonik Operations GmbH. In this role she gives technical support to customers in North and Western Europe with a focus on excipients for oral drug delivery.
She holds a bachelor degree in pharmaceutical engineering and a green belt certificate. Based on her long experience in formulating complex oral dosage forms using functional excipients she is a frequently used source for formulation and process challenges in all application areas.
Lise Vandevivere is a pharmacist and currently a PhD researcher at Ghent University. She is a member of the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology supervised by Prof. Dr. Chris Vervaet.
Her research is focussing on formulation development using the fully continuous ConsiGma-25 production line.
Be assured: We will find very interesting topics and speakers to present each field at ExciPerience 2022!
Ready for a different event experience?