Dr. Aijun Wang is a Chancellor's Fellow Professor of Surgery and of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). He serves as Vice Chair for Translational Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Department of Surgery, Co-Director of the Center for Surgical Bioengineering, and inaugural Dean's Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Additionally, he is a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine (IPRM) / Shriners Children's Pediatric Research Center, Northern California.

Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. in biology from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and underwent postdoctoral training at the UC Berkeley Department of Bioengineering and Berkeley Stem Cell Center, with a postdoctoral fellowship from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). He has been a faculty member of UC Davis since 2012.

Dr. Wang's research focuses on developing tools and technologies, and therapeutics that integrate molecular, cellular, tissue and biomaterial engineering to promote regeneration and restore function. The Wang Group integrates single cell spatial multi-omics (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) to study disease mechanisms and developmental process, and engineers and develops stem cell/gene therapy, extracellular vesicles/nanomedicine, and extracellular matrix/biomaterial scaffolds to treat a wide spectrum of congenital conditions and acquired diseases. Dr. Wang specializes in bringing therapeutics from bench to bedside, through innovative discovery, translational and investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies, current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) manufacturing, and ultimately clinical trials in both human and companion animal patients.

Dr. Wang has been serving as PI on numerous major research grants supported by NIH/NIBIB, NIH/NICHD, NIH/NINDS, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the University of California Center for Accelerated Innovation (UC-CAI), the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of California (TRDRP), Shriners Hospital for Children and other foundations. Dr. Wang holds more than 20 US and international patents and patent applications, and has published over 190 peer-reviewed papers in top-tier journals, such as Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, ACS Nano, Advanced Functional Materials, Bioactive Materials, Biomaterials, Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, Stem Cells, Stem Cells Translational Medicine, and Theranostics. Dr. Wang has received numerous awards, such as the Deloitte QB3 Award for Innovation (2012), the Tony Phillips Research Award (2014) from the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN), the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award (2016) from the March of Dimes Foundation, the Technology Development Award (2017) from the NIH/NHLBI through University of California Center for Accelerated Innovation (UC CAI), the UC Davis Health Deans’ Fellowship (2018), UC Davis Health Dean's Team Award for Excellence in Research (2020), UC Davis Chancellor's Fellowship (2020), UC Davis School of Medicine Cultivating Team Science Award (2022), University of California Davis School of Medicine Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (2025), the KidneyX: Redesign Dialysis Phase 2 Innovation award (2020) from the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Sacramento Region Innovation Award (2021). Dr. Wang was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows in 2024.

Dr. He is an associate professor from the Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida. She obtained her PhD degree from the University of Alberta and postdoc training from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. He is the Editorial Board member of Pharmaceutics and AAPS Scientific Programming Committee Track Leader, as well as the Advisory Board Member of journal Lab on Chip (LOC). Her journal review efforts have been recognized as the Outstanding Reviewers in 2018, 2020, and 2021 from the LOC Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr. He Received NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award for Early Stage Investigators in 2019, and she also received the LOC Emerging Investigator Award in 2019. Her multiple publications received the Most Download Articles of 2016 (LOC), the Featured Cover Story of 2018 (LOC), Technology Readers Choice Award of 2018 (SLAS), and Top 100 Read Articles of 2019 (Scientific Reports from Nature Publishing Group). Her recent publication is appeared in the journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering and highlighted as the Editorial Story. Dr. He research brings in novel technology platforms for differentiating, isolating, and intravesicular loading exosomes precisely, which presents a new way for developing precision medicine Dr. He’s innovation leads to 17 pending and issued patents and have been licensed by multiple companies and commercialized on the market. Particularly, she founded a few startup companies for advancing the innovative exosome research.

Noah Malmstadt is Professor at the University of Southern California. He received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Following postdoctoral work at UCLA, he joined the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC in 2007. Malmstadt is the recipient of a 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award. His research focuses on microfluidic strategies to facilitate material fabrication and biophysical analysis. He has pioneered the integration of ionic liquids as solvents in droplet microreactors and the application of microfluidic systems to synthesizing biomimetic cell membranes. Microfluidic analytical techniques he has developed include methods for measuring the permeability of cell membranes to druglike molecules and techniques for measuring ionic currents through membrane proteins.

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. In 2021 he was appointed as CEO of the American subsidiary of Particle Metrix.