Temple Smith graduated with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of Colorado in 1969. Then did a National Institutes of Health (USA) postdoctoral fellowship under the direction of the mathematician, Stanislaw Ulam, and the molecular biologist, John Sadler. There he carried out a detailed analysis of the E. coli Lac operator mutations. In 1979, Dr. Smith was one of the founders of GenBank, initially at Los Alamos National Laboratory. There, he with Walter Goad developed a statistical mechanical model of the Lac operon system similar to those now being developed in system biology. Dr. Smith is a co-developer with Michael Waterman of the Smith-Waterman sequence alignment algorithm, underlying most DNA and protein sequence comparison methods today. Dr. Smith spent a sabbatical year working with Harold Morowitz at Yale resulting in a seminal paper on the relationship between biology, physics and history. In 1988 he moved to the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, there organizing a computational biology research center and initiating a series of international meetings, “Genes and Machines” on the application of computers in modern biology. In 1991 the center moved to Boston University, becoming director of the BioMolecular Engineering Research Center in the College of Engineering. Working there with Richard Lathrop and others, he helped develop new protein threading and Discrete State software. Dr. Smith has continued his research in many areas, including the time calibration of HIV viral evolution, and with Harvard’s Eva Neer the modeling of the WD-repeat protein family. As a member of Fly Base, he helped carry out a full-genome comparative evolutionary analysis of the Drosophila clade. More recently he has investigated the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the evolutionary of the cellular translation system. Dr. Smith was inducted into AIMBE “for extraordinary contributions in defining and advancing the field of bioinformatics, with emphasis on novel engineering methods to predict protein structure and function” and made a follow of the ISCB. He has over 200 reviewed publications and has been the primary advisor for over 20 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. As of 2010 Dr. Smith became Professor Emeritus in BioMedical Engineering at Boston University. Dr. Smith is an avid skier, ice climber, sailor, hockey coach and family man with four sons. He is also the co-founder of a small gene engineering company, Modular Genetics, Inc. in Woburn, Massachusetts.

Dr. Zhongping Chen is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the OCT Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Co-founder and Chairman of OCT Medical Imaging Inc. Dr. Chen received his B.S. degree in Applied Physics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1982, his M. S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987, and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 1993. Dr. Chen’s research group has pioneered the development of functional optical coherence tomography (OCT), including Doppler OCT, phase resolved OCT, and optical coherence elastography. In addition, his group has developed a number of endoscopic and intravascular OCT and MPM imaging and translated these technologies to clinical applications. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds a number of patents in the fields of biomaterials, biosensors, and biomedical imaging. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), a Fellow of SPIE, and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Yong Zhang is a Provost’s Chair Professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS), and a senior faculty member of NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering (NGS). His current research interests include nanobiophotonics, nanomedicine, and microfluidic devices. Professor Zhang has made significant achievements in developing new technology based on fluorescent nanomaterials with unique upconversion property. These nanomaterials have demonstrated the potential to fulfill most if not all the qualifications of a perfect fluorescent label or light nanotransducer and are envisaged to be widely applicable to a range of uses that include but not limited to: fluorescence imaging, bioassays, photodynamic therapy, optogenetics and barcoding applications. He has also developed a novel microfluidic device based on deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) for efficient separation of non-spherical bio-particles such as red blood cells and bacteria from blood samples and fluorescent label-free detection of proteins and vesicles, for point-of-care disease diagnostics. Professor Zhang has authored over 200 peer-reviewed research papers in international journals such as Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, PNAS, and Chemical Reviews. He has delivered more than 100 Plenary/keynote/invited talks in prestigious international conferences and has been actively involved in organizing scientific conferences by serving as a conference chair or international scientific/advisory committee member. He is also a Senior Associate Editor and editorial board member of a number of journals. Professor Zhang has won numerous research awards such as IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award, NML Researcher Award, DAAD Scholarship, NUS Engineering Researcher Award and NUS Young Investigator Award. He is interviewed by Thomson Reuters Science Watch for his highly cited and hot research papers and his research achievements have been featured in The Straits Times, Lianhe zaobao, Innovation Magazine, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) Asia Materials and Nanotechweb, etc. Professor Zhang is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a Highly Cited Researcher amongst the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds named by Clarivate Analytics.
Website: www.zhangnuslab.com

Prof. Anderson Ho Cheung Shum received his B.S.E. degree, summa cum laude, in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, S.M. and Ph.D. in applied Physics from Harvard University. He is currently a Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a core member in the Biomedical Engineering Programme at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Previously, he served as an Assistant Dean (2018-2020) in the Faculty of Engineering at HKU. His research interests include emulsions, biomicrofluidics, biomedical engineering and soft matter. Dr. Shum received Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2020, Rising Start Award by Ton Duc Thang University (Vietname), NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Fund (優青 (港澳)/优青(港澳)) in 2019, Young Scientists Award in Microsystems and Nanoengineering Summit 2019, silver medals in the 46th and 47th International Exhibition of Inventions (Geneva, Switzerland) in 2018 and 2019, IEEE Nanomed New Innovator 2018, HKU Outstanding Young Researcher award 2016-17, HKU Research Output Prize 2017, the Early Career Award by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong in 2012, Graduate Student Silver Award from the Materials Research Society in Spring 2010, Robert L. Wallace Prize Fellowship from Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2006-2007, as well as Notable mention in Art of Competition, Award for Overall Excellence in Chemical Engineering, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) Award for Outstanding Design Project, and Ticona Award for Outstanding Student Thesis from Princeton University in 2005. He was nominated by HK for the 2017 APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE Prize). He was selected to join the Young Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong as a founding member in 2018 and the Royal Society of Chemistry as a fellow in 2017. He is a top 1% scholar by Essential Science Indicators in 2018. He serves as an associate editor for Biomicrofluidics (AIP), editorial board member for Scientific Reports (Springer Nature) and an editorial advisory board member for Lab-on-a-Chip (RSC).

Professor (David) Dagan Feng is Director, Biomedical & Multimedia Information Technology (BMIT) Research Group, and also Funding Head, School of Information Technology (renamed as Computer Science recently) and Funding Director, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology Institute, the University of Sydney. He received his ME in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1982, MSc in Biocybernetics and PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1985 and 1988 respectively, where he received the Crump Prize for Excellence in Medical Engineering. In conjunction with his team members and students, he has been responsible for more than 50 key research projects, published over 900 scholarly research papers, pioneered several new research directions, and made a number of landmark contributions in his field. He has served as Chair of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee on Biological and Medical Systems, Special Area Editor / Associate Editor / Editorial Board Member for a dozen of core journals in his area, and Scientific Advisor for a number of prestigious organizations. He has been invited to give over 100 keynote presentations in 23 countries and regions, and has organized / chaired over 100 major international conferences / symposia / workshops. Professor Feng is Fellow of ACS, HKIE, IET, IEEE, and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Dr Liming Luke Chenis Professor of Data Analytics, Research Director for School of Computing at Ulster University, United Kingdom. His current research interests include data analytics, pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, user-centred intelligent systems and their applications in smart healthcare. Dr Chen is an IET Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member, a co-founder and co-director of the IEEE CIS” User-centred Smart Systems” Task Force. He is a grant holder for the BT Irish Innovation Centre, and was the coordinator of the EU Horizon2020 MSCA ITN ACROSSING project and has serves as the principal investigator for the EU AAL PIA project, the MobileSage project and FP7 MICHELANGELO project, and a number of projects funded by industry and third countries. Dr Chen has over 230 publications in internationally recognised journals, book series and conferences. He is the General Chair or Program Chair for IEEE Smart World Congress 2019, IEEE UIC2017, IEEE HealthCom2017, SAI Computing 2017, IEEE UIC2016, IntelliSys2016, MoMM2015, IWAAL2014, UCAMI2013, and an organising chair of many workshops. He is an associate editor of IEEE THMS, assistant EIC for IJPCC and guest editors for IEEE THMS, PMC and IJDSN. Hehas delivered over 20 talks, keynotes and seminars in various forums, conferences, industry and academic events. Dr Chen has served as an expert for research funding assessment for UKRI, EU Horizon2020, Canada, Chile, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Raffaele Pilla, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Doctor Europaeus, received his Master’s degree in Pharmacy at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy in 2005, where he also served internships at the Cell Physiology Laboratory and Molecular Biology Laboratory. Prior, he was an Erasmus Student at Faculté de Pharmacie de Reims in Reims, France. He received his Doctor Europaeus in 2010 from Pitié-Salpétrière Institute in Paris, France. Also in 2010, he received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Physiology, and Pathology of Muscle at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He was hired as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, on two research grants funded by the Office of Naval Research (US Navy) and Divers’ Alert Network. He has written and lectured widely worldwide. He has been involved in ongoing research at the University of South Florida with the use of ketone esters.