Committee Members

Makoto Senoo is a pioneer in the stem cell biology of epithelia. His discovery of the master regulator p63, as a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, marked a significant advancement in the field. He then continued to lead the field of epithelial stem cell biology in his own laboratory as the Principal Investigator and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and the Boston University School of Dental Medicine. After 20 years in the US, Dr. Senoo returned to Japan in 2022, where he now focuses on the development and manufacturing of stem cell-associated wellness products.

Maha Alattar completed her Doctor of Medicine (MD) training at the University of Tennessee, College of Medicine in 1997. She completed her neurology residency training at Georgetown University Medical Center in 1998. She then completed fellowship training in Neurophysiology and Sleep Medicine from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in 2002. She is currently in a Master’s Program in Clinical and Translational Sciences with anticipated completion in 2025. Dr Alattar currently serves as an associate professor of neurology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She is the interim medical director of the VCU center for Sleep Medicine. She is also part of the stroke/cerebrovascular department and is a stroke specialist. She has published articles on sleep disorders in patients with strokes as well as sleep in primary care and gastroesophageal disease. She has also written book chapters in sleep medicine textbooks.

Ramasamy earned her PhD in Clinical Medicine Research Programme (specialization: human embryonic stem cell research) from Imperial College London, UK. She is heading the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Unraveling the role of stem cells in the development of therapy for aging-associated degenerative diseases and targeting cancer resistance is the primary focus of her research team. Her research work has an excellent scientific merit and she has been proactively working with various research teams at national and international institutions and industry to develop theraputics to treat degenerative conditions and cancer.

Elizabeth Wright-Jin, MD, PhD is a Pediatric Neurologist at Nemours Children’s Health – Delaware. She completed her MD and PhD in Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in 2015. She completed her Pediatric Neurology residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 2020. Dr. Wright-Jin is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. She is also an affiliated Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. Dr. Wright-Jin runs a basic science research lab focusing on the neuroimmune mechanisms underlying neonatal brain injury.

Maheswara Reddy Emani is a Staff Scientist, Cited by 689 of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, MA

Vikas Srivastava is a Senior Scientist at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, India. His lab is working on identifying epigenetic mechanisms and markers of developmental xenobiotic exposure and adult-onset disease. They particularly focus on metabolic disorders and chronic kidney diseases.

Mohd Hasmizam Razali has a PhD degree in Materials Engineering (Nanomaterials) from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), MSc. in chemistry (Catalyst) and B.Sc (Hons) in Chemical Industry from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Currently he is a Senior Lecturer at School of Fundamental Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Malaysia. He has published more than 50 technical papers in journals and conference proceedings locally and internationally related to the nanomaterials and functional materials research. Owing to their significant impacts to the science, economy and society, his innovative research and inventions have attracted global and national interests, enabling him to secure financial support from both private and government agencies. He has been awarded Who’s Who in the World for 3 years in a row 2013, 2014 and 2015 by The Marquis Who’s Who Publications Board. In 2014, the Cambridge Biographical Centre listed him as one of 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century, due its ability to produce nanomaterials with tremendous improvement compared to conventional commercial materials. On top of that, he is also the recipient of the MAWHIBA Award and GENEVA Gold Medal Award in 1999.

Hannele Ruohola-Baker is a Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her research focuses on the molecular biology of stem cells and on the use of Drosophila as model organisms for human diseases.

Finosh G Thankam, PhD., is presently a faculty of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine in the department of Translational Research at Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California. His research interest is mainly based on the investigations of the molecular pathology and translational approaches in musculoskeletal and cardiovascular biology. His research and publications contribute to upgrade the understanding of interdisciplinary approaches of basic biology and tissue engineering for the management of CVDs and musculoskeletal diseases. His findings have led to unveil the underlying pathological mechanisms of rotator cuff tendinopathies which includes ECM pathology, mitochondrial pathology, immunology and sterile inflammation. His idea of the combination of pathological mechanisms as therapeutic interventions with biomaterials science and tissue engineering to basic medical research is promising and offers immense clinical significance. He has significant experience in the design and fabrication of biocompatible hydrogel scaffolds for tissue engineering and as delivery vehicles for cells and signaling mediators. These hydrogels have been hailed for their superior features to be applicable for musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems. Some of these hydrogels were designed with exceptional free radical scavenging effects, 3D architecture, biocompatibility and tissue-mimetics. Also, he is working on therapeutic vesicles including exosomes and multi-functional hydrogel systems for exosome delivery and tissue engineering for the regeneration of tendon-to-bone interface and cardiovascular system. Apart from CVDs and musculoskeletal research, he has experience in neurobiology, oro-dental biology, microbiology and phytochemistry. He continues to pursue additional translational lines of research to utilize his research experiences for the contribution to the field of translational medicine.

Ahmed Elserafy, a medical doctor who was attracted by the glory of cells and molecules believed that the future of science starting from molecular biology and the next era of medicine would be based on stem cells. In addition to research in both fields, his most important role is to convince future doctors about the clinical application of molecular medicine and set up their basic knowledge to understand the recent advances in the field. His research goal is to bridge the gap between the lab and the clinic, especially in the field of skin wounds.

Rajita Papu joined Genentech in 2007 as a scientist in Immunology Discovery after finishing her postdoctoral training at UCSF where she studied the role of Sphingosine-1-phosphate in immunity and vascular development. She was drawn to Genentech because of the high caliber of science and the collaborative environment. These qualities foster creativity and teamwork that is integral to drug discovery.

Keiichi Fukuda is a pioneer of the cardiac regeneration field and has been at its cutting edge for the past 20 years. He has made several contributions to the regenerative medicine of the failing heart using iPS cells. He developed a novel method to purify the cardiomyocytes by metabolic selection. He became Chief Professor of the Department of Cardiology at Keio University and published more than 800 top-ranked papers. He established the bio-venture company “Heartseed Inc.” in 2015 and became CEO. He is now examining the clinical trial for transplanting human iPS-derived regenerated cardiomyocytes to patients with congestive heart failure.

Maria Talmon graduated in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Torino (Italy) and obtained their Ph.D. in 2016 in Biotechnology for Human Health at the University of Piemonte Oriental (UNIUPO, Novara, Italy) with a thesis entitled “Cell and gene therapy of Hemophilia A”. From 2016 to 2022 she worked as a senior postdoc in the lab of pharmacology of the Department of Health Sciences UNIUPO. In particular, she studied the calcium homeostasis downstream of bitter taste receptors located in extra-oral tissues, highlighting their bronchodilation and anti-inflammatory effect in the respiratory system. Since June 2023 she has been an RT at the Department of Pharmaceutical Science, UNIUPO. During her career she published 22 peer-reviewed publications (H-index: 9, citations: 223, source Scopus) and received several awards: ● Best Oral Presentation Award at the VIII SYRP: S.I.Fit. Young Researchers Project meeting, 2019, Imola, Italy ●Young Investigator Award at the XXIII International Society of Thrombosis and hemostasis (ISTH) Congress, 2015, Toronto, Canada ●Young Investigator Award at the XXII International Society of Thrombosis and haemostasis (ISTH) congress, 2013, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2020 she received a grant from “The Roche per la Ricerca Indipendente” foundation for a project entitled “SNPs of bitter taste receptors as a predictive marker of asthma in children”

Giulia Gaggi obtained a Ph.D. in Translational Medicine at the University of G.D’Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara in 2021. She is currently Assistant Professor in Human Anatomy in the same university. In her research work, she is also investigating the effects of environmental endocrine disruptors on human pluripotent stem cells and brain organoids, to dissect their effect on the development of the nervous system.