ICBL 2025
Confirmed Speakers
Nancy Braverman
Dr. Nancy Braverman is a clinician-scientist who has been studying Peroxisome Biogenesis Disorders (PBDs) for almost three decades. She participated in the identification of several PEX genes, and in describing genotype-phenotype correlations. Her laboratory generated novel mouse models to study disease pathophysiology and test targeted therapies. She engineered a successful high-content drug screen for Zellweger Spectrum Disorder (ZSD), completed a pilot clinical trial with the candidate drug betaine, and is currently involved in the preclinical development of retinal and CNS directed gene therapies. She is committed to a translational research program for PBD and runs a large North American (retrospective) natural history study and biobank, as well as a prospective vision study to determine clinical endpoints for future therapeutic trials. She is Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Human Genetics at McGill University, attending geneticist at the McGill University Health Center (MUHC), and Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of the MUHC. She is currently Chair of the ClinGen expert panel on gene and variant curation in peroxisome disorders, and previously served several positions including Advisory Board member of the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease, Chair of the Therapeutics Committee of the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG), member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders (SIMD) and the New York Mid-Atlantic Consortium for Genetic and Newborn Screening Services. She serves on the medical and scientific advisory boards for the Global Foundation for Peroxisome Disorders and RhizoKids International. She is a member of the Garrod Association, the ACMG, and the American Society of Human Genetics. She received her MSc in Genetic Counseling at Sarah Lawrence College, her MD from Tulane University School of Medicine, completed her pediatrics residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, pediatrics chief residency at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, and her genetics fellowship at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, where she remained on faculty until moving to McGill in 2008. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters. She has trained numerous graduate students and has been recognized by multiple research and teaching awards.
George M. Carman
Dr. Carman is Board of Governors Professor and Distinguished Professor of Food Science and Director of the Center for Lipid Research at Rutgers University. His laboratory has made significant contributions to the understanding of phospholipid synthesis in yeast through the purification and characterization of several enzymes, and through the isolation and characterization of key genes. The laboratory has played a major role in the discovery that the expression of phospholipid synthesis enzymes is regulated by phospholipid precursors and the mineral zinc; and that key enzymes are regulated by membrane- and cytosolic-associated components, by covalent modifications via protein kinases and protein phosphatases, and by proteasome-mediated degradation. Awards include the Avanti Award in Lipids, Supelco/Nicholas Pelick Research Award, and Faculty Mentor of the Year Award-Compact for Faculty Diversity. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Lipid Research.
Adam Chicco
Dr. Chicco is Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. His laboratory investigates the roles of polyunsaturated fatty acid metabolism and mitochondrial physiology in cardiometabolic health and disease through basic, comparative and translational studies utilizing animal models of human disease and genetic gain/loss-of-function approaches. These studies are complimented by collaborative projects with scientists around the world investigating metabolic responses to physiological and pathological stress in humans, laboratory animals, and non-model organisms. A particular interest has been in understanding the (patho)physiological impacts of mitochondrial membrane phospholipid remodeling in development of heart disease, which will the focus of his ICBL seminar
Scott Dixon
Scott was born in Ottawa, Canada. He completed a Ph.D. in medical genetics with Peter Roy studying worm neuromuscular development (University of Toronto, 2007), a first postdoc with Charlie Boone investigating yeast genetic interaction networks, and a second postdoc with Brent Stockwell studying cell death. Scott opened his lab in the Department of Biology in 2014, and is currently a tenured Associate Professor. Since 2014, the lab has received generous support from the NCI, NIGMS, Damon Runyon Foundation, Terman Fellows program, Hellman Foundation, Grace Science Foundation, and American Cancer Society. Scott is currently teaching an upper year Chemical Biology course (BIO173). Scott is also an advisor and consultant to biotech and pharma companies interested in cell death, and co-founded a company seeking to develop new modulators of ferroptosis.
Lisa Hahnefeld
Lisa Hahnefeld works as a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Goethe University Frankfurt. After obtaining her license as a pharmacist, she completed her doctorate in 2020 at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, where she continued to work as a Research Associate. In 2021, she also joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology. Her research focus is on LC-HRMS-based metabolomics and lipidomics in preclinical and clinical applications in the context of immune mediated and inflammatory diseases, and how to obtain more robust analytical results while considering pre-analytics.
Nils Hoffmann
Nils Hoffmann leads the Datascience and Bioinformatics for Mass Spectrometry group at the Institute of Bio- and Geo-sciences (IBG-5), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Bielefeld, Germany. His research focuses on lipidomics bioinformatics, developing a web-based reference database with a knowledge graph for quantitative lipidomics data. Collaborating with HUPO-PSI, the Metabolomics Society, and international partners, he drives and contributes to standardization efforts for data formats like mzTab-M and mzQC, and enhances interoperability in lipidomics through collaboration with the International Lipidomics Society (ILS). At Bielefeld University, he fosters interdisciplinary collaborations in membrane biology, multi-omics integration, and metagenomics. Through his work for ELIXIR Germany, he advances strategic coordination within de.NBI and ELIXIR, engaging in metabolomics, proteomics, and machine learning communities, and co-leads the federated de.NBI Cloud infrastructure for scientific computing. Prior roles include leading the BMBF-funded LIFS project at ISAS e.V. Germany, contributing to lipidomics tools like LipidCreator and Goslin.
Kevin Huynh
Dr. Huynh is a Group Leader at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, where his research examines the relationship between lipids with ageing, neurodegenerative and cardiometabolic diseases. He is passionate about mass spectrometry-based approaches to study lipids and has focused on the development of high throughput lipidomics profiling approaches, alongside comprehensive lipid characterisation of samples derived from large-scale clinical trials and population studies. Through international collaborations with research groups worldwide, Dr. Huynh has applied his methodology to examine lipid profiles of diverse range of disease cohorts. His research spans from broad population level lipid profiling to granular molecular studies, that uncover the underlying biological mechanisms driving disease progression and protection. His recent work has focused on elucidating the critical role and, potential utility, of lipids in understanding and assessing risk of Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes.
Elina Ikonen
Elina Ikonen, MD PhD, is a Professor of Cell and Tissue Biology at the Faculty of Medicine and Chair of Helsinki BioImaging Platform of Helsinki Institute of Life Science, University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on principles by which key membrane and storage lipids, such as cholesterol and triacylglycerols, are distributed in mammalian cells. These processes are critical for normal cellular functions and disturbances therein associate with major human health threats, such as cardiovascular diseases and metabolic complications of obesity. Her group also develops, in collaboration with physicists, chemists and molecular engineers, novel techniques for detection and analysis of cellular lipids. Prof. Ikonen is a member of EMBO and Academia Europaea and participates actively in advancing European science policies, e.g. as a scientific advisory committee member of EMBL and director of European research consortia.
Yun Pyo Kang
Foudil Lamari
Dr. Foudil Lamari is a specialist in the diagnosis of inborn errors of metabolism and the development of diagnostic markers for neurometabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2017, he has led the Biochemistry Unit focused on neurometabolic and neurodegenerative disorders at Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital. He is also a member of the Alzheimer and Prion’s Diseases research team at Inserm U1127, Brain Institute, Paris.
Dr. Lamari holds a PhD from Paris Cité University and specialized degrees in clinical biology and metabolic diseases. He has extensive experience in hospital clinical biology and metabolic biochemistry, with a focus on applying metabolomics and lipidomics to improve diagnostic methods.
In addition to his research and clinical work, he serves as an Associate Professor at Paris Cité and Paris-Saclay Universities, contributing to pharmaceutical and biological sciences education.
Richard Lehner
Dr. Lehner obtained his undergraduate education in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague and at the University of Toronto and his PhD in lipid biochemistry from the University of Toronto. He then pursued postdoctoral training in lipase biochemistry at CNRS in Marseille and at the University of Alberta. He is currently professor in the Department of Pediatrics, as well as adjunct professor in the Department of Cell Biology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. His main research interests lie in the regulation of fat storage and metabolism and identification of novel therapeutic targets for lowering hepatic and blood lipid levels. He has received several recognitions for his research including Pfizer Cardiovascular Research Award, Harvard Medical School Anna Lee Memorial Lectureship, Canadian Lipoprotein Conference Simon Pierre Noel Lectureship and Alberta Innovates Health Solutions Scientist Award.
Maik Pietzner
Maik is a Professor for Health Data Modelling at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute at Queen Mary University London. He studied Biomathematics and obtained his PhD on metabolomics in thyroid disorders with distinction from the University of Greifswald, Germany. The work of his team is pioneering the integration of population-scale ‘omics data to better understand the pathology underlying diseases across many clinical specialties to guide the development of new or improvement of existing treatment strategies. By triangulating naturally occurring variation in the human genome, plasma protein or metabolite levels in blood, and deep molecular data at the single cell level with disease onset, his work aims to infer molecular insights from humans as model organisms mitigating the translational gap of preclinical research. Tangible examples include the identification of drug repurposing opportunities for common diseases that lack safe and effective treatments, such as Raynaud’s phenomenon, or novel genetic variants that modulate the response to drugs. A specific interest of Maik’s is further to make blood-based ‘omics data explainable since most of the molecules are measured outside of their genuine cellular and functional context.
Frances M. Platt
Frances M. Platt is Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology and Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, UK. Her expertise relates to glycosphingolipids (GSL) and in particular glycosphingolipid (GSL) lysosomal storage diseases. She and her colleagues pioneered a novel approach to treat these inherited diseases that led to the development of an approved drug (miglustat) for type 1 Gaucher disease and Niemann-Pick disease type C disease. She was awarded the Alan Gordon Memorial award from the UK Gaucher Association, the Horst-Bickel Award in recognition of her role in developing substrate reduction therapy for lysosomal disorders.. She was also awarded the Thudichum medal by the Biochemical Society in 2023 for her contribution to sphingolipid research. She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. She is an academic co-founder of the company IntraBio and her translational work has continued as the companies lead drug Aqneursa was FDA approved in 2024 for the treatment of Niemann-Pick disease type C.
Dominik Schwudke
Dr. Dominik Schwudke is a biochemist and expert in bioanalytical chemistry, currently leading a research group at the Research Center Borstel – Leibniz Lung Center in Germany. He studied chemistry at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and earned his PhD in 2003 for his work on the characterization of Bdellovibrionaceae at the Robert Koch Institute. Following postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, he served as Principal Investigator at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. Since 2013, he has led research efforts in lipidomics and mass spectrometry in Borstel, earning his habilitation in biochemistry from the University of Lübeck in 2017.
Dr. Schwudke is actively involved in scientific communities, including the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (DGMS), where he heads the lipid analysis and lipidomics interest group, the International Lipidomics Society (ILS), and the German Society for Metabolome Research (DGMet). He has authored over 100 scientific publications.
Liana C. Silva
Liana C. Silva is an Assistant Professor with Habilitation at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon (Lisboa, Portugal). She holds a degree in Biochemistry (2001) from the Faculty of Sciences (ULisboa) and a PhD in Chemistry (Molecular Biophysics) from the Instituto Superior Técnico (2006). She completed postdoctoral research at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) and Instituto Superior Técnico (2007–2009), where she investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying membrane organization and dynamics. She was awarded an FCT Ciência 2008, followed by an FCT Investigator 2014 grants to establish her research group in Molecular & Cellular Biophysics at Faculty of Pharmacy (ULisboa). Her interdisciplinary research bridges biophysics and cell biology, focusing on how lipids shape membrane organization and function. She investigates the role of membrane biophysical properties in cellular behavior and disease processes, with the aim of uncovering molecular insights that can drive therapeutic innovation.
Bidisha Sinha
Bidisha Sinha is a cell biophysicist with a keen interest in membrane homeostasis and cellular mechanics. She holds a B.Sc. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University (2000) and received her Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (2007). She pursued postdoctoral research at the Institut Curie in Paris (2007–2011), focusing on caveolae-mediated mechano-regulation. Her lab investigates how membrane tension is regulated by and impacts cellular functions by primarily employing Interference Reflection Microscopy to map membrane fluctuations and couple it with various fluorescence techniques. She is a recipient of the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Intermediate Fellowship and the Ramanujan Fellowship (2013) and also has been supported by grants from CEFIPRA and SERB. Her group focusses on understanding how membrane mechanics may control cellular functions.
