Wei-Shou Hu, Organizer
Distinguished McKnight University Professor,
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science University of Minnesota.

Dr. Hu's research in cell culture technology deals with conventional and macroporous microcarriers, suspension culture, and cell-recycling systems. His recent work in cell culture involves the metabolic control of cell's physiological state and genome wide gene expression analysis of their regulation. He co-authored the textbook Bioseparations. He initiated the Engineering Foundation Conferences on Cell Culture Engineering more than a decade ago which has been among the most important forum of cell culture processing. Current research efforts emphasize employing genomic and proteomic tools in his research projects.

David Y.H. Chang
Senior Director, Global Manufacturing Science and Technologies
Genentech Inc.

Dr. Chang’s cell culture work started from his Ph.D. thesis research at MIT on gel-entrapped cell culture and medium design.  After successive career advances in Schering-Plough Research Institute, BASF Bioresearch Co, and Biogen IDEC Inc, he joined Genentech Inc in 2006, where he has been shouldering increasing responsibilities in Process Development and Manufacturing Sciences and Technologies (MSAT). Following two years of heading the early-stage Process Development Department at Oceanside, Dr. Chang now leads overseeing  the Global MSAT organization and technical operations of Genentech global commercial network.  Over the years Dr. Chang’s expertise in mammalian cell culture and microbial fermentation spans from process development, scale-up and technology transfers to process analytical technologies (PAT).  Additionally he has been responsible for development and launching of numerous mammalian cell-based clinical and commercial biologics especially with therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.

Gargi Seth
Engineer II
Early Stage Cell Culture Department
Genentech, Inc.

Dr. Gargi Seth graduated from the University of Minnesota’s Chemical Engineering program with a Ph.D. in 2006. She has previously received a Masters degree from the Chemical Engineering program at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.

She is currently working in the Early Stage Cell Culture Department at Genentech. At Genentech, Dr. Seth is involved in efforts to better understand cellular pathways involved in protein production processes.

Dr. Seth was among the first to engineer mammalian cells from a global perspective by exploring physiological landscapes. Her work led to the elucidation of the role of epigenetic gene silencing in cholesterol dependence of NS0 cells and many other cell adaptation events. She was also among the first to integrate transcriptome and proteome analyses to comprehend the genetic regulation of hyperproductivity traits of recombinant mammalian cells. She has co-authored 8 scientific papers and has presented at various conferences. As a young bioprocess engineer, she has been actively involved in advocating the applications of genomic and proteomic tools in cell culture bioprocess research. The tutorial that she presented on the transcriptome analysis in Cell Culture Engineering X conference held in Whistler, Canada in April 2006 was very well appreciated. In 2005, Dr. Seth received the W.H. Peterson award for best oral presentation by a student at the ACS-BIOT (American Chemical Society, Division of Biochemical Technology) annual meeting.

Weichang Zhou
Senior Director
Process Sciences and Engineering
Genzyme

Dr. Zhou received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from University of Hannover, Germany in 1989. He conducted postdoctoral research in several biochemical engineering areas at German DECHEMA-Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zurich) and University of Minnesota. Between 1994 and 2002, Dr. Zhou worked at Merck Research Laboratories in its Bioprocess R&D department, lastly as Associate Director, and served as a key technical and managerial leader for Merck's several critical biologics development programs. His groups developed a Nunc Cell Factory based large-scale manufacturing process for a multivalent bovine-human reassortant Rotavirus vaccine, from cell culture to sterile bulk, and a large-scale PER.C6 TM cell growth, adenovirus propagation and recovery process for manufacturing a multivalent adenovirus vectored HIV-1 vaccine. Dr. Zhou is currently serving as Senior Director of Process Sciences and Engineering at Protein Design Labs, Inc., responsible for development, scale-up, validation and transfer of manufacturing processes for monoclonal antibodies and other biologics.

Dr. Zhou has published over 35 scientific papers, presented papers, organized and chaired symposia in international conferences on topics related to bioprocess monitoring and control, bioreactor engineering, cell culture engineering, viral vaccines and vectors, monoclonal antibodies and other biologics. He served as one of two chairs for the highly successful Biochemical Engineering (XIII) 2003 conference (BioChE-03) and 2004 program of the Division of Biochemical Technology, American Chemical Society (ACS) in the 227 th ACS Spring National Meeting. He was elected as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2002.

E. Manolis Tzanakis
Assistant Professor
Chemical and Biological Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo

Dr. Tzanakakis' research in cell culture engineering concentrates on the development of scalable systems for the expansion and directed differentiation of stem cells, primarily towards pancreatic endocrine and cardiomyocyte lineages. To this end, his team utilizes stirred-suspension bioreactors in aggregate and microcarrier modes and studies the effects of culture variables on stem cell self-renewal and commitment. For his research, Dr. Tzanakakis has received support from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (Post-doctoral Fellowship), the New York State Foundation of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR; J.D. Watson Award), New York Stem Cell Initiative (NYSTEM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Adrian Hegeman
Assistant Professor
Plant Metabolomics
University of Minnesota

Adrian Hegeman obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001.  After a period of post-doctoral research working with Prof. Perry Fry he joined the University of Minnesota in 2007. His primary research entails metabolomics, a young and emerging field that strives to develop high through analytical and informatics tools for simultaneous and unbiased measurements of hundreds to thousands of compounds in biological systems.  He is particularly interested in isotope-assisted metabolomics.  Although only at the beginning of his academic career, he has already co-authored a textbook on enzyme reaction mechanisms.