Professor Cunningham has been a faculty member in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the department Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2004, following a 15-year career in Industry. Prof. Cunningham’s technical focus is the utilization of photonics for biosensing in applications that include life science research, diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and pharmaceutical screening. He has over 90 issued US patents and over 200 peer reviewed journal publications. He is a Fellow of NAI, IEEE, Optica, RSC, AAAS, and AIMBE. He serves as the Director of the Center for Genomic Diagnostics at the Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and as a Program Leader for the Cancer Center at Illinois on the topic of Cancer Measurement Technology and Data Science. In 2023, his technical contributions were recognized by Optica by the Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award.

Daniel Citterio received his Doctoral degree in Natural Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich (Switzerland) in 1998. From 1998-2002, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Keio University with Prof. Koji Suzuki. Upon return to Switzerland, he worked as a researcher at ETH, before joining Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc.. In 2006, he moved back to Keio University, where he became a tenured Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2014. In 2016, he has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He serves as a co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, as well as on the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Sensors. In 2022, he has been awarded the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Creative Work. His research is focusing on the development of chemical sensors and biosensors. More recently, his research team is strongly engaged in the development of microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) for low-cost point-of-need applications.

Martyn Boutelle is Professor of Biomedical Sensors Engineering in the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, and Associate Provost for Estates Planning for Imperial College. His research group is multidisciplinary comprising bioengineers, scientists, and clinicians. He develops novel analytical science methods using microfluidics, electrochemical sensors / biosensors, and wireless electronics to make portable (sometimes wearable) monitoring devices for use as point of care devices – typically giving continuous real -time displays. He then uses these in a program of clinical science research focusing on the neonatal monitoring, acute traumatic brain injury, pesticide exposure monitoring. Martyn is past president of the International Society for Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience, and a founder of the COSBID organization for studying acute human brain injury. He published > 200 papers, chapters and patents. He obtained a BSc and PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College and worked as an EP Abraham Research Fellow in the University of Oxford.

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.