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.

Erik specializes in EU and national legal and regulatory issues relating to medical devices, including eHealth, mHealth, software and protection of personal data. He is an expert in life sciences regulation at EU and Dutch level, with a focus on contracts, regulatory litigation against competent authorities and M&A. Erik was initially trained as intellectual property and competition lawyer, starting his career at the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission. He subsequently gained experience in contentious matters, commercial contracts, and transactional work at three large international law firms. He actively contributes to law and policy development at national and EU level via membership of specialized committees at branch associations and the European Commission. Erik also works as arbitrator in medical devices related disputes and is regularly retained as expert witness in foreign litigation.

Dr. Francesco Dal Dosso obtained a MSc. in Biomedical Engineering (Polytechnic of Milan, IT – 2013) and a PhD in Bioscience Engineering (KU Leuven, BE – 2018). Currently, he works as Innovation Manager at the KU Leuven, the most innovative university in Europe (and 7th in the world). As Innovation Manager, FDD is responsible for the exploitation/commercialization of the research done in the IDiaLiST (Integrated Diagnostic and Life Science Research Tools) consortium. In this context, FDD scouts for new exploitation opportunities such as spin-off creation, industrial collaborations, patent applications and licensing. His main research interests involve novel concepts for point-of-care in vitro diagnostics and microsampling exploiting microfluidics technologies. He has been involved in writing and management of >10 (inter)national project funding proposals (KU Leuven, FWO, VLAIO, H2020, H Europe, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) as well as bilateral agreement with world-leading diagnostics and pharma companies. He is (co-)author of > 35 peer reviewed research papers and conference contributions (Biosensors, MicroTAS) and inventor of 5 patents.

Mark received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1989, followed by post-doctoral studies at Harvard and returning to the UK as a Royal Society University Research Fellow (University of Southampton). In 1997 he was made a Professor of Combinatorial Chemistry setting up the UK’s Centre for Combinatorial Chemistry. In 2005 he moved to the University of Edinburgh, where he is now Director of a £15M Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in the area of Optical Molecular Imaging (Proteus 2014-2023). He is also PI on a Doctorial Training Centre (60PhD) in Optical Imaging with Entrepreneurship and holds an ERC advanced grant on “SmartMaterials” for cellular control. He has been elected to fellowships of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2011 he was awarded the Chancellors Award – the highest research award of the University of Edinburgh. In 2012 he was awarded an honoree Professorship by Changzhou University, China. He is a co-founder of Ilika Technologies (2004) (which floated on AIMS in 2010), DestiNA Technologies (2010) and Edinburgh Molecular Imaging (2014).

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 acute traumatic brain injury, kidney transplantation as well as neonatal and athlete 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 > 190 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.

Menno Prins studied Applied Physics at Université Paris XI and Delft University of Technology where he obtained his MSc degree cum laude. He received his PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1995. He then moved to Philips Research where he worked on microfluidics and point-of-care biosensing. In 2005, he was appointed as part-time professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the department of Applied Physics. In 2014, he was appointed full Professor in Molecular Biosensing for Medical Diagnostics in the departments of BioMedical Engineering and Applied Physics.

PD Dr Nils Paust has a background in energy and process engineering. He received his PhD on the topic of micro fuel cells at the University of Freiburg in 2010. In February 2010, he joined the lab-on-chip research activities at Hahn-Schickard in Freiburg, first as a group leader, then as head of division microfluidic platforms and nowadays as an executive board member of Hahn-Schickard. In 2020, he completed his habilitation and co-founded the Dermagnostix GmbH in 2021. Main research interest of Nils Paust is the centrifugal microfluidic system integration. This comprises new microfluidic functionalities, cost-efficient mass fabrication of microfluidic chips and the implementation of complete laboratory workflows on centrifugal microfluidic platforms.

Salvatore Petralia, received his PhD in Chemistry from University of Catania (Italy), in 2003. In 2020 he joined University of Catania as Researcher of Chemistry. From 2004-2020 he was Technology Development sect. Manager at STMicroelectronics, covering several R&D positions and leading multidisciplinary teams focused on the development of silicon Lab-on-Chip for nucleic acids detection. The research activity over the years has covered multidisciplinary aspects of chemistry, photochemistry, nanostructured materials, biosensing and bioMEMS silicon technology. In this field he is co-author of 128 peer reviewed scientific publications, 1 chapter of book and co-inventor of 12 patent applications.