It’s always an event when we spend time together

Anne van der Does, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pulmonology at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Her work is focused on (dysfunctional) lung epithelial biology in chronic lung diseases, with specific focus on developing advanced lung epithelial cell cultures to support that research. Related to this focus, dr. van der Does was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship twice, of which the second included a one-year visit at Emulate Inc. to use their Lung-on-Chip platform. Dr. van der Does has published in peer-review journals including the European Respiratory Journal.   

Dr. van der Does received her Ph.D. from the Department of Infectious Diseases at the LUMC before completing a 4-year postdoc at the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden after which she continued her career in the PulmoScience Lab of the LUMC (www.pulmosciencelableiden.com). 

Lena Schorr is a PhD student in the Epithelium Microenvironment Interaction Laboratory (EMIL) led by Dr. Jens Puschhof in the Microbiome & Cancer Division of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. She is investigating microbe-host interactions using organoid and organ-on-chip models to further elucidate the role of intracellular bacteria in colorectal cancer progression and metastasis.  

Fusobacterium nucleatum, a prominent bacterium that is enriched in colorectal cancer, is her target bacterium of interest. She studied biology and immunology at the FAU in Erlangen, Germany, did research stays at the Rockefeller University and Roche and is now in the DKFZ International PhD Program. She has been awarded several stipends such as the DAAD scholarship and was a participant and team leader in iGEM, the world’s largest synthetic biology competition. 

Joram Mooiweer is a PhD-student in the immunogenetics group led by Prof. Sebo Withoff and Prof. Iris Jonkers at the department of Genetics of the University Medical Center Groningen.  

After finishing technician school, Joram got his master degree in ‘Medical and Pharmaceutical Drug Innovation’ at the University of Groningen and worked for 6 months at the Brain cancer metabolism group at the DKFZ in Heidelberg, Germany as a student. Later he was awarded a PhD scholarship by the UMCG on his proposal entitled ‘Modelling the intestinal mucosal barrier on-a-chip to study causes for intestinal epithelial dysfunction in celiac disease’.  

Within the immunogenetics group, the focus lies on making patient-derived model systems of the small intestine to investigate the immunopathology and genetic causes of Celiac Disease (i.e. Gluten intolerance). For his PhD, Joram focusses on the intestinal epithelial barrier and the interaction with the immune system and set-up instrumentation and techniques involving patient-based iPSCs, organoids, tissue derived T cells and organs-on-chips.  

Jeffrey Kroon is a Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor at the department of Experimental Vascular Medicine, Amsterdam UMC in the Netherlands. He is currently cross-appointed at the laboratory of Angiogenesis and Vascular Metabolism, VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium. His research line vascular metabolism and inflammation focuses on elucidating the role of the metabolic-inflammatory axis in driving cardiovascular disease. Currently, he and his team are working on mapping endothelial cell metabolic changes in response to atherogenic stimuli in both 3D organ-on-chip as well as and human settings. He obtained his PhD from Sanquin Research and Landsteiner Laboratory, University of Amsterdam, where he researched the molecular mechanisms behind leukocyte transendothelial migration. One of his ambitions is to selectively target intracellular metabolism in order to combat cardiovascular disease.  

Dr Berdichevski has over 15 years of experience in pharmaceutical, clinical, and academic environments. She has worked with micro-physiological systems, hydrogels, and porous scaffolds to evaluate the performance of multiple tissues in different in vitro and in vivo settings. She obtained a PhD at the Technion, Israel, where she developed a novel imaging methodology to identify host response to biodegradable implants and designed an injectable micro-carrier delivery system for cardiac muscle regeneration. She conducted her first postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, UK, where her research interests concerned with designing scaffolds for bone and capillary tissue engineering, with specific focus on the effect of biomaterial 3D microstructure on cell performance. For her second post-doctorate, she joined the Drug Safety and Metabolism team at AstraZeneca, UK, where she worked on evaluating hepatic sinusoidal zonation using Emulate Liver-on-Chip models. Sasha is leading the UK and European Field Science team at Emulate, and she is a strong advocate of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) in scientific practices, driving innovation and advancing human health through cutting-edge research.