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.

Michael Betenbaugh
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Johns Hopkins University. 

Dr. Betenbaugh received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 1988. That same year he joined Johns Hopkins University as an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering. He rose through the ranks to Full Professor in 1997 and served as Chair of the Department, recently renamed Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, from 2002 through July 2005. 

Dr Betenbaugh is a researcher in the area of cell engineering for mammalian and insect cell cultures specializing in apoptosis, glycosylation, and cell cycle issues for biotechnology. He has published widely in both biology and bioengineering journals and received a number of patents for his work in these fields. He has received a Young Investigator Award from NSF, the James VanLanen Award from the American Chemical Society, the AIChE Award for Biochemical Engineering, and the Bayer Award Lecture on Biochemical Engineering. He has been inducted into the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, serves as an Associate Editor for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, and is a member of the Advisory Board for the AIChE’s Society of Biological Engineering. He has also chaired numerous meetings including Cell Culture Engineering and is chairing Biochemical Engineering this year.

Alois Jungbauer
Professor
Department of Biotechnology
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Austria

Professor Jungbauer is a University Lecturer for Protein technology and Downstream processing. His teaching activities at the University, as well as in numerous workshops around the world focus in the area of protein production, isolation and the development for separation of biomolecules. He is currently working in the field of bioengineering of proteins, plasmids and viruses with special focus on expression, downstream processing and characterization of large biomolecules.  Professor Jungbauer has extensive experience on the expression of proteins in yeast, E.coli and mammalian cells. He has developed a multi protein expression/purification system for expression of unknown gene products and subsequent purification in a high throughput mode.  As a proliferate researcher he has more than 140 publications on protein expression and bioseparation, 15 patents and 12 book contributions. He is senior editor of Journal of Biotechnology, and Journal of Biochemical and Biophysical Methods and member of editorial boards from numerous journals in the area of biochemical engineering. 

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
Protein Design Labs, Inc.

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.