The organization of the International MicroNanoConference is proud to announce the first three keynote speakers of the iMNC 2017: Lorna Ewart (AstraZeneca), Juergen Brugger (EPFL) and Holger Becker (Microfluidic ChipShop).
Lorna Ewart – Head of Microphysiological Systems Centre of Excellence, Innovative Medicines at AstraZeneca
Lorna Ewart obtained an honours degree in Pharmacology from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Sir John Vane’s William Harvey Research Institute, University of London. She joined the Respiratory and Inflammation research area within AstraZeneca as a lead biologist bringing forward projects to candidate drug nomination before moving into pre-clinical drug safety to lead a safety pharmacology team delivering across multiple therapeutic areas. Lorna Ewart spent two years in Gothenburg, Sweden as the therapy area lead toxicologist for Respiratory and Inflammation therapy area before returning to Cambridge, UK where she heads the Centre of Excellence for Microphyisological Systems within AstraZeneca’s Innovative Medicines Unit. Here she has established strategic collaborations with leading external academics as well as ensured technology transfer into AstraZeneca. Scientifically, Lorna Ewart is passionate about the translation of preclinical science to patient outcome. She has over 25 peer reviewed publications and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the British Pharmacological Society.
Juergen Brugger – Professor in Micro Engineering and Material Science at EPFL
Before joining the Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland Juergen Brugger was connected to the MESA+ Research Institute of Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, and at the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory, in Tokyo, Japan. He received his Master in Physical-Electronics and his PhD degree from Neuchatel University, Switzerland.
Research in Juergen Brugger’s laboratory focuses on various aspects of MEMS and Nanotechnology. Over the past 15 years the group has made several important contributions to the field, at the fundamental level as well as in technological development, as demonstrated by the start-ups that spun off from the lab. In his research, key competences are in micro/nanofabrication, additive micro-manufacturing, new materials for MEMS for biomedical applications. Over the past 10 years, he published over 200 peer-refereed papers, supervised 20 PhD students. Former students and postdocs have been successful in receiving awards and starting their own scientific careers (6 professors so far). Juergen Brugger has been appointed in 2016 Fellow of the IEEE “For contributions to micro and nano manufacturing technology”.
Holger Becker – Co-Founder and CSO of Microfluidic ChipShop GmbH
Dr Holger Becker obtained his physics degrees from the University of Western Australia/Perth and the University of Heidelberg. He started to work on miniaturized systems for chemical analysis during his PhD thesis at Heidelberg University, where he obtained his PhD in Applied Physics in 1995. Between 1995 and 1997 he was a Research Associate at Imperial College with Prof. Andreas Manz. In 1998 he joined Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH. Since then, he founded and led several companies in the field of microsystem technologies in medicine and the life sciences, for which he received various awards, most notably a nomination for the “Deutscher Gründerpreis” in 2004. He led the Industry Group of the German Physical Society between 2004 and 2009, and is the current chair of the SPIE ‘‘Microfluidics, BioMEMS and Medical Microsystems’’ conference, co-chair of MicroTAS 2013 and in the Industrial Committee for MicroTAS 2016 and 2017. He serves on the Advisory Board of “Lab-on-a-Chip”, the Editorial Boards of “Microelectronic Engineering” and “Micro and Nanosytems” as well as on the Board of Trustees of the “Physik Journal”. In 2014, he was appointed a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (London). He has published more than 160 journal and conference paper with currently >5.000 citations.