Dr. Claudia Gärtner studied chemistry and biology and has earned her diploma and PhD in chemistry at the University of Düsseldorf in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999, she worked as an assistant to the Director at the Institute for Microtechnology in Mainz (IMM), where she coordinated large scale international projects (e.g. TMR-project MICROSYNC, LSF-project). In 1999 she was appointed Director of the Application Centre for Microtechnology in Jena, a daughter institution of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering. In 2002 she founded MFCS together with Dr. Holger Becker. Since April 2006 she is CEO of microfluidic ChipShop. She has been coordinator of numerous R&D projects on national and international level, including the FP 7 IP Multisense Chip. In 2017 she was decorated with the 3rd prize as Women Innovator competition by the European Commission. She is in the board of trustees of the German Museum in Munich and the advisory board of the Trade Fair in Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany. Lab-on-a-Chip system as bleed-to-read-systems including their manufacturing and commercialization are in her focus.

Lorena Diéguez joined INL in 2014 as a Staff Researcher and is, since 2018, the leader of the Medical Devices research group. Her research is mainly devoted to Translational Medical Research in close collaboration with hospitals and focuses on the development of tools and solutions based on microfluidics, biosensors and nanotechnology towards early diagnosis and better understanding of diseases. She is also very interested in translating her technology from the lab to the clinic and is co-founder and CEO of the spin-off company RUBYnanomed in the field of liquid biopsy. Currently, she is also the Chair of the Working Group in Medical Devices at the ETPN (European Technology Platform in Nanomedicine). She obtained her Bachelors in Physics with a Major in Optoelectronics at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2005, then completed her Masters in Nanotechnology at the University of Barcelona (UB) in 2007 and her PhD in Biosensors at the UB, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and the ETH Zürich. Her postdoc at the University of South Australia (2010-2013) was devoted to the study of rare cells from biological samples using microfluidics.

Professor Soper (since 2016) is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kansas. At KUMC, Prof. Soper holds an adjunct appointment in the Cancer Biology Department and is a member of the KU Cancer Center. He also holds an appointment at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea, where he is a World Class University Professor.

As a result of his efforts, Prof. Soper has secured extramural funding totaling >$125M, has published over 245 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 70; >17,000 citations); 31 book chapters and 71 peer-reviewed conference proceeding papers, and is the author of 12 patents. He is also the founder of a startup company, BioFluidica, which is marketing devices for the isolation and enumeration of liquid biopsy markers. Soper recently founded a second company, Sunflower Genomics, which is seeking to market a new DNA/RNA single-molecule sequencing platform. His list of awards includes Ralph Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry, Chemical Instrumentation by the American Chemical Society, the Benedetti-Pichler Award for Microchemistry, Fellow of the AAAS, Fellow of Applied Spectroscopy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, R&D 100 Award, Distinguished Masters Award at LSU and Outstanding Scientist/Engineer in the state of Louisiana in 2001. Finally, Prof. Soper has granted 50 PhDs and 7 MS degrees to students under his mentorship. He currently heads a group of 15 researchers.

His major discoveries include: (1) Technology for the detection of liquid biopsy markers that can manage a variety of diseases using a simple blood test (test has been demonstrated in multiple myeloma, pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, pancreatic, breast, colorectal, prostate, and ovarian cancers); (2) new hardware and assay for the point-of-care diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke; (3) single-molecule DNA and RNA sequencing nanotechnology; and (4) currently working on a home-test for COVID-19 infections (handheld instrument and the associated assay.

Sven Kreutel studied biology at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. After his graduation in biology, he received his PhD in microbiology and protein biochemistry at the University of Hohenheim under Prof. Dr. Andreas Kuhn and Dr. Dorothee Kiefer working on the light sensing and signal transduction in photosynthetic bacteria. Since then, he worked in different sales and sales manager positions within the life science industry from clinical research over biology to nanoparticle sciences.

V. Taly is a CNRS research director and group leader of the Translational Research And Microfluidics team within the clinical oncology research unit MEPPOT (personalized medicine pharmacogenomics and therapeutic optimization) in the Cordeliers Research Center (university Paris Cité). Her team performs interdisciplinary researches aiming at developing and validating microfluidic tools for cancer research in close collaboration with clinicians and researchers in oncology and toxicology. Since 2008, she developed droplet-based digital procedures for Cancer diagnosis. Recently, her research has been dedicated to the clinical validation of droplet-based microfluidics for the non-invasive detection of Cancer biomarkers, the highlighting of new Cancer Biomarkers and the development of original tools and procedures for their detection with applications in personalized medicine, cancer recurrence detection and cancer diagnostics. She is co-founder of EMULSEO (2018) and METHYS Dx (2021) start up companies. She is now president and CSO of METHYS Dx.