It’s always an event when we spend time together

Passley Hargrove-Grimes, PhD, is a program officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences Office of Special Initiatives. She oversees a dynamic portfolio within the NIH Tissue Chips for Drug Screening Program and manages the “Clinical Trials on-a-Chip” and “Translational Centers for Microphysiological Systems Initiatives.”

Gautam Mahajan, PhD, is principal scientific lead at Emulate driving adoption of organ-on-a-chip technology and leading external research and innovation projects with regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration. He has authored peer-reviewed publications in complex in vitro technologies. Mahajan earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from Cleveland State University and Cleveland Clinic. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in The lab of Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Mahajan’s research led to the development of clinically relevant organ-on-a-chip models of the human vagina and lymph node to evaluate efficacy and toxicity of drug candidates, probiotics and adjuvants.

Dmitriy Krepkiy, PhD, is a program officer in the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences Office of Special Initiatives. He oversees the NIH-wide Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program, where he serves as a liaison between funded investigators, NIH administrative and program management staff, and external collaborators. Krepkiy earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Marc Ferrer, PhD is the acting branch chief of the Early Translational Branch and Director of the 3D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH. Over the last seven years, he has led the implementation of the 3D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory, a multidisciplinary group with the goal of creating, validating and using 3D bioengineered tissues for disease modeling and as predictive assay platforms for drug discovery and development. Ferrer graduated with a BSc in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, Spain and received his PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Minnesota.