David Bick
UK
David Bick
David Bick MD is the Principal Clinician for the Newborn Genomes Programme at Genomics England. Prior to his work in England, he was the Chief Medical Officer and a faculty investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. Dr. Bick also served as the Medical Director of the Smith Family Clinic for Genomic Medicine at HudsonAlpha and the Laboratory Director of the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Laboratory.
He came to HudsonAlpha from the Medical College of Wisconsin where he was Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Director of the Clinical Sequencing Laboratory, Director of the Advanced Genomics Laboratory, Medical Director of the Genetics Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and Chief of the Division of Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics at Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Bick is board certified in Pediatrics, Clinical Genetics, and Clinical Molecular Genetics.
Dr. Bick has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and reviews. His laboratories at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin were the first in the world to offer whole genome sequencing as a clinical test. He also developed the first Genomic Medicine Clinic in the United States.
Hagit Daum
Israel
Hagit Daum
Tony Gordon
UK
Tony Gordon
Yaqub Hanna
Israel
Yaqub Hanna
Born in Rama, an Arab Palestinian village in the Galilee region of Israel, Prof. Jacob (Yaqub) Hanna earned his BSc in medical science (2001), PhD in immunology (2007), and MD in clinical medicine summa cum laude (2007) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. He joined the department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute in 2011.
Prof. Hanna is pioneering techniques in induced naïve pluripotency from adult cell and synthetic whole embryo models made solely from stem cells ex utero. Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have regenerative properties almost identical to those of embryonic stem cells, but can be created from adult cells without using an egg or fetal material. Prof. Hanna was the lead researcher in a study that showed how further-modified iPS cells could be used to treat sickle-cell anemia in mice, the first proof of concept of the therapeutic application of iPS cells. Prof. Hanna has uncovered novel pathways regulating the reprogramming process and was the first to derive pristine “naïve” human pluripotent cells equivalent to those derived from mice and (i) can generate “cross-species humanized chimeric” mouse models that have human derived tissues (ii) can give rise to human primordial germ cell (progenitors of egg or sperm) or (iii) to all extra-embryonic compartments (placenta and yolk-sac). He was the first to expand prolonged periods of advanced and normal mammalian embryo development from pre-gastrulation until late organogenesis in an “artificial uterus” environment outside the maternal womb. The latter platform enabled him to demonstrate the ability to be the first to generate advanced stage whole synthetic embryos made entirely from naïve pluripotent stem cells in the petri dish, that can complete gastrulation and demonstrate organ formation within adequate extra-embryonic compartments. In addition to demonstrating the power of cell reprogramming and ex utero synthetic advanced embryogenesis, his work offers the promise of powerful new research models for degenerative diseases, infertility, and modeling human early development.
During his postdoctoral work, Prof. Hanna received a prestigious Novartis Fellowship from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. In 2010, he was awarded the Sir Charles Clore Prize for Outstanding Appointment in the Weizmann Institute. He received an EMBO young investigator award (2012), a Rappaport Prize in biomedical research (2013), a Krill Prize by the Wolf Foundation (2013), and the Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation (2014). In 2014, he was featured among “40 under 40” innovative scientists by the prestigious journal Cell and was elected as a member of EMBO in 2018. In 2021, he ranked at the top of the list of 50 leading world thinkers by Prospect magazine.
Avner Hershlag
Israel
Avner Hershlag
Dr. Hershlag is a Reproductive Endocrinologist and Professor of Obsterics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine at Stony Brook University Rennaisance School of Medicine as well as at the Hofstra University Zucker School of Medicine, New York.
Dr. Hershlag served as the Chief of Northwell Fertility between 2011-2018. He was also the Program Director of the Fellowship Program in Reproductive Endocrinology, which he had established.
He also served as the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Modern Fertility between 2018-2022.
Dr. Hershlag is double board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and in Reproductive Endocrinology.
He has cared for patients for more than 30 years and established successful programs at Northwell Health, including: Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT), Egg Freezing, Fertility Preservation for cancer patients and Donor Eggs (“Third Party Reproduction).
Dr. Hershlag completed his undergraduate and graduate education training in his native country, Israel, and graduated from the Hadassah Medical School – Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Following three years of a General Surgery residency at Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, Jerusalem, Dr. Hershlag moved to the United States in 1984. Here, he completed his Ob-Gyn residency at the George Washington University Medical Center and a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at Yale University School of Medicine.
His research has recently focused on the impact of genetics on infertility, as well as fertility preservation and prevention of cancer through genetic screening and PGT. He is also invested in access to fertility care and the ethics of reproductive technologies.
Dr. Hershlag frequently participates in international conferences. Most recently he has organized and co-chaired the SARG meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel (virtual in 2020) and chaired a course in preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) at the CoGen meeting Paris, France (virtual in 2020-2022).
He is a past member of the board of directors of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. Dr. Hershlag is the author of over 75 peer-reviewed papers, over 30 book chapters, and a novel entitled, Misconception. He is the recipient of several awards including Castle Connolly’s Top Doctors over the past several years and the ASRM 2019, 2021,2022 Star Awards.
Mark Kilby
UK
Mark Kilby
Professor Mark Kilby MB BS, DSc, MD, FRCOG, FRCPI
- Honorary Consultant in Fetal Medicine, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK.
- Dame Hilda Lloyd Professor Emeritus of Fetal Medicine, University of Birmingham, UK (from 1st September 2022).
- Senior Principal Clinical Scientist, Medical Genomics Research Group, Illumina, Cambridge, UK (from August 2022)
Professor Kilby has practiced Fetal Medicine and therapy in the United Kingdom for 28 years. In the last 15 years, one of his ‘pillars’ of research was to investigate the application and clinical utility of new genomic technologies in prenatal diagnosis. Initially, he was involved in the clinical application of Chromosome Microarray platforms in the investigation of the fetal with congenital malformations. He was a Principal investigator on the Wellcome Trust-funded Prenatal Assessment of Genomes and Exomes (PAGE) study which involved the feasibility, diagnostic accuracy and utility, patient acceptability, and health economics of the prenatal application of exome sequencing in the fetal with congenital malformations.
He is Chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) Genomic Taskforce, a member of the Joint Colleges Committee of Genomic Medicine, and a member of the Genomics England, Newborn Screening group for a ‘pilot study’ investigating the use of whole Genomic sequencing.
He is also the RCOG Representative at the Joint Colleges Committee on Genomic Medicine.
Since August 2022, he has been a Medical Genomics Research Group member at Illumina, Cambridge, UK. He continues to work as a clinician in the Joint Fetal Medicine /Genetics Clinic, in Birmingham, UK.
He was Clinical Lead in Fetal Medicine and Therapy at the Birmingham and West Midlands Fetal Medicine Centre, at Birmingham Women’s & Children’s Foundation Trust from 1995 – 2022, and Dame Hilda Lloyd Chair of Fetal Medicine for the same period.
Brynn Levy
USA
Brynn Levy
Brynn Levy, M.Sc. (Med), Ph.D. is a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Medical Center. He is also the Medical Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory of the New York Presbyterian Hospital and a Co-Director of the Laboratory of Personalized Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pathology & Cell Biology. Dr. Levy is regarded internationally as an expert in the clinical utility of genomic technologies in reproductive medicine. He has authored multiple book chapters and publications on molecular genetics, clinical cytogenetics and molecular cytogenetics and lectured internationally about his experience utilizing novel cytogenomics technologies both as a clinical and research tool. His research areas of interest include early prenatal screening using fetal cells and cell-free fetal DNA from maternal circulation, PGD and the etiology of recurrent miscarriage. Dr. Levy was a Co-Investigator of the Multicenter NICHD study that investigated the use of microarrays for prenatal diagnosis and was the Columbia University site Principal Investigator of a NIH-funded study from the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network (SCRN) that assessed CNVs in stillbirths. Dr. Levy is a past President of the Cancer Genomics Consortium (GCC) and was the PI at Columbia University Medical Center for the GCG Multi-center Quality Control trial that performed cross-platform validation of cytogenomic arrays for cancer diagnostics. Dr. Levy currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) Foundation as well as the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis (ISPD). He is also the Genetics and Genomics Section Editor for the journal Prenatal Diagnosis.
Rajiv McCoy
USA
Rajiv McCoy
Rajiv McCoy is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and completed his postdoctoral work at Princeton University and the University of Washington. His lab develops computational and statistical genomic methods to better understand human evolution and reproduction. Rajiv is a co-organizer of the Origins of Aneuploidy Research Consortium, as well as a member of the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium, contributing to analysis of the first gapless assembly of a complete human genome.
Santiago Munne
Spain
Santiago Munne
Ph.D. in Genetics from Pittsburgh University. In 1993 he developed the first Preimplantation Genetic Test for Aneuploidy (PGT-A) (1994, 1995 SART prizes) and PGT for translocations (1996, SART prize), and demonstrated that PGT-A reduces miscarriages and increases implantation rates (1998 SART prize). Santi has published >260 scientific publications, received SART and ASRM prize papers in 1994, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2015, 2016, 2020, SRBT in 2022 and the ASRM Star Award consecutively for 2011-2022.
In 2001 founded Reprogenetics with Jacques Cohen and David Sable, and as its CEO Reprogenetics became the first commercial US PGT laboratory, performing over 100K procedures. Reprogenetics was sold in 2016 to Cooper Companies (NYSE: COO).
In 2011 he co-founded with Alex Bisignano Recombine, which offered genetic carrier screening and was bought by Cooper Companies in 2016. These companies became CooperGenomics and Dr. Munné became its CSO. In 2017 he co-founded MedAnswers with CEO Alice Crisci, an infertility telehealth platform.
In 2014 he co-founded MedAnswers with CEO Alice Crisci, an infertility telehealth platform.
In 2017 he joined Martin Varsavsky and Joson Horcajadas to co-found Overture Life, a company focused on automating the IVF Laboratory and to which day he is its Chief Innovation Officer. Overture published in 2023 the first babies conceived with automated ICSI and is working on automated vitrification. Santi also is a co-founder of HoMu invest, an accelerator for early-stage biomedical research specialized in reproductive medicine, such as SAMA, Butterfly Bio and GenEmbryomics. He serves in several Advisory Boards of companies in reproductive medicine.
Ripudaman Singh
Denmark
Ripudaman Singh
Ripudaman Singh is the Chief Technology Officer at ARCEDI Biotech, which has commercialized its ‘cell-based noninvasive test’ called EVITA TEST COMPLETE in Denmark. Ripudaman Singh is one of the inventors of ARCEDI’s fetal cell isolation technology and has worked on its development for 16 years. He is an author on around 20 peer-reviewed publications on the subject of ‘fetal cells in maternal blood’. Ripudaman Singh is a PhD in Human Genetics and an MBA.
Erik Sistermans
The Netherlands
Erik Sistermans
Erik Sistermans is full professor of Human Genetics and head of the Genome Diagnostics laboratory of Amsterdam UMC. His main research interest is in improving prenatal diagnostics and screening. He studied chemistry in Leiden and obtained his PhD degree in Nijmegen. He is a registered clinical laboratory geneticist since 1994. Erik Sistermans is project leader of the TRIDENT studies which resulted in the implementation of Non Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) in the Netherlands. He is (co)author of more than 140 papers in peer reviewed journals, of international Best Practice Guidelines, editorials and book chapters. He is chair of the scientific advisory board f GenQA and associate editor of the journal “Extracellular Vesicles and Circulating Nucleic Acids”.
Joris Vermeesch
Belgium
Joris Vermeesch
Ida Vogel
Denmark
Ida Vogel
Prof. Ida Vogel is a clinical professor at Aarhus University Hospital/ Aarhus University, Denmark. Prof. Ida Vogel does translational research with the purpose of developing and validating new genetic screening and diagnostic tools in pregnancy and implementing these together with adequate counseling. Prof. Ida Vogel also aims to improve our counseling of couples: when choosing between testing strategies, when giving a couple a diagnosis during pregnancy or when telling parents that their newborn has chromosomal anomaly. Prof. Ida Vogel leads the Center for Fetal Diagnostics, Department of clinical Medicine, Arhus University.
Neeta Vora
USA
Neeta Vora
Dr. Vora is triple-boarded in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Maternal Fetal Medicine, and Clinical Genetics. She completed her residency and fellowship at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, MA and moved to UNC-Chapel Hill in 2012. She is now Professor of Ob/Gyn and Director of Reproductive Genetics at UNC-CH. Dr. Vora has an R01 from NICHD to study novel genes critical to human brain development with functional modeling in a zebrafish model. She is a co-investigator on a multicenter prenatal whole genome sequencing grant and co-investigator on a grant regarding how patients prepare for a prenatal diagnosis of a genetic condition.
She has authored more than 75 articles on prenatal genetics, ranging from cell free DNA to whole exome and genome sequencing.
