Burkhard Ludewig 

Prof. Dr. Burkhard Ludewig
Head, Medical Research Center at the Kantonsspital St. Gallen
Head, Translational Cardioimmunology at the University Hospital Zurich
T +41-71-494 1090
burkhard.ludewig@kssg.ch

Burkhard Ludewig is currently acting as the head of the Medical Research Center at the Kantonsspital St. Gallen, Switzerland, and as head of Translational Cardioimmunology at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are focused on the interaction of viruses with the innate and adaptive immune system.

Furthermore, his laboratory has established preclinical models to study stromal cell function and the pathogenesis of myocarditis. He is affiliated with the Life Science Faculty of the University of Zürich and serves as an affiliated PI of the Zurich Life Science Graduate School. His research is supported by grants from the European Research Council (Advanced Grant), the Human Frontiers Science Program and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The main work on the topic of this presentation includes:

• Microbiota-derived peptide mimics drive lethal inflammatory cardiomyopathy | Science
• Bone morphogenic protein-4 availability in the cardiac microenvironment controls inflammation and fibrosis in autoimmune myocarditis | Nature Cardiovascular Research
• Cardiac Fibroblastic Niches in Homeostasis and Inflammation | Circulation Research (ahajournals.org)

Milica Radisic, PhD

Dr. Milica Radisic is a Professor at the University of Toronto, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and a Senior Scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute. She is also Director of the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering & Entrepreneurship and a co-lead for the Center for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada-Academy of Science, Canadian Academy of Engineering, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine Society as well as Biomedical Engineering Society. She was a recipient of the MIT Technology Review Top 35 Under 35, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, NSERC E.W.R Steacie Fellowship, YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, Killam Fellowship, Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal, and Humboldt Research Award to name a few.
 
Her research focuses on organ-on-a-chip engineering and development of new biomaterials that promote healing and attenuate scarring. She developed new methods to mature iPSC derived cardiac tissues using electrical stimulation. Her work has been presented in over 260 publications, garnering over 23,000 citations with an h-index of 74. Her publications appeared in Cell, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Nature Communications, PNAS etc.
 

Jason Fish, PhD

Dr. Jason Fish completed his PhD at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Dr. Philip Marsden. Here he uncovered a role for epigenetics in gene regulation in blood vessels. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the University of California San Francisco under the supervision of Dr. Deepak Srivastava. Here, Dr. Fish uncovered a role for microRNAs in regulating the development of the cardiovascular system.

Since moving back to Toronto in 2010, Dr. Fish and his team explore the mechanisms of gene regulation in the endothelium in health and disease. His recent work has uncovered how somatic mutations in the endothelium lead to sporadic brain arteriovenous malformations, a leading cause of stroke in young people. His laboratory is uncovering the mechanisms involved and is using this information to design new therapies.

Dr. Fish’s laboratory is also determining how chemotherapy affects the vascular system and how altered endothelial cell identity contributes to atherosclerosis. Dr. Fish is currently the president of the North American Vascular Biology Organization and was recently awarded the CIHR Mid-Career Excellence Award in Blood and Blood Vessel Research.
 

Mamatha Bhat, MD, MSc, PhD, FRCPC

Dr. Mamatha Bhat is a Hepatologist and Clinician-Scientist at the University Health Network's Ajmera Transplant Centre, Scientist at TGHRI and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Bhat completed her medical school and residency training at McGill University. She then completed a Transplant Hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a CIHR Fellowship for Health Professionals, through which she completed a PhD in Medical Biophysics.

The goal of Dr. Bhat’s research program is to improve long-term outcomes of liver transplantation by developing tools of Artificial Intelligence integrating clinical and 'omics data, and has been funded by CIHR, Terry Fox research institute, Canadian Liver Foundation, American society of Transplant among others. She has been the recipient of recognitions such as the 2022 CASL Research Excellence award and the 2021 American Society of Transplantation Basic Science Career Development Award.

Dr. Bhat is also Director of the Clinician-scientist training program in the Dept of Medicine at U of T, Partnership & Engagement Lead for the Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM), and past Chair of the International Liver Transplant Society Basic and Translational Science Research committee.
 

Ben Wang, PhD

Dr. Wang is the Head of the Centre for Integrative Immune Analysis at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Dr. Wang and his team work with clinician investigators, scientists, and research staff to enable in-depth immune analysis for clinical and translational studies using advanced immunological assays and bioinformatics pipelines.
 

Julie Quenneville

Quenneville began her career as a journalist before transitioning to a decorated career in the healthcare sector. She served as Associate Chief of Staff to the Quebec Minister of Health before joining McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), where she worked in a number of roles before becoming CEO of MUHC Foundation in 2015. In 2023, Quenneville became CEO of UHN Foundation, where she joins the #1 hospital in Canada in its mission to change the status quo of healthcare.

Quenneville has been named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, one of Concordia University’s Top 50 under 50, winner of the Women We Admire Award in 2023, and receiving the Medal of the Quebec National Assembly. She has served as Chair of the Banff Forum and is a member of the Executive Committee of the 2024 President’s Cup.
 

Gavin Wilson, PhD

Dr. Wilson is an Assistant Scientist with the Latner Thoracic Research Laboratories at Toronto General Hospital Research Insitute and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center, a PhD at the University of Toronto and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and a MSc and BSc at the University of Western Ontario.

His research is focused on the development of novel bioinformatic and molecular techniques with a specific interest in lung transplantation and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Our group is particularly interested in developing methods to deconvolute clinically and biologically relevant signatures from heterogeneous sequencing datasets. Example datasets include cell-free DNA methylation profiling, single cell RNA sequencing, and spatial RNA sequencing.
 

Arndt Vogel, MD, PhD

Prof. Vogel is a clinician scientist at the rank of a full professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is appointed as the Longo Family Chair in Liver Cancer Research and leads a multi-pronged research program in basic and clinical science at the Toronto General Hospital and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Before joining UHN, he worked as a senior consultant at Hannover Medical School for more than 20 years and still holds a research position there.

Prof. Vogel’s scientific focus is the translational and clinical research in gastrointestinal cancer. Since 2004, he leads a translational research group interested in the pathogenesis of hepatobiliary cancers and in precision medicine. Arndt Vogel is a clinical investigator in oncology since 2006 and has served as principal investigator on numerous clinical trials. He is author or co-author of more than 310 articles published in peer-reviewed journals including Lancet, Lancet Oncology, Cancer Cell, and Gastroenterology among others.

Prof. Vogel is a member of societies including ESMO, ASCO, and EASL. He is a member and chairman of Hepatobiliary Cancer Study Group of the AIO, a collaborative group in clinical oncology in Germany. Within ESMO, he is a member of the ESMO Guidelines Steering Committee. He has responsibilities in the establishment of the national guideline and is the coordinator of the ESMO clinical practice guideline on the management of hepatocellular carcinoma and biliary tract cancer.  

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The first round of poster judging will take place prior to Research Day. TGHRI faculty and leadership team will grade the posters and audio presentations online. The highest ranked presentations will be asked to give a 1-min flash presentation of their work during Research Day, and the winners will be presented with an award. Posters and audio presentations will be available for online viewing starting October 23.

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