Keynote Speaker
Josef Martin Penninger, born in Gurten, Austria, is a world-renowned geneticist and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics. Dr. Penninger is currently the Director of the Life Sciences Institute (LSI) at the University of British Columbia. He studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. From 1990 to 1994 he worked as post-doctoral fellow at the Ontario Cancer Institute, thereafter until 2002 at the Department of Immunology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. As Principal Investigator of Amgen, his independent lab contributed to the development of the antibody Denosumab for bone loss and also found the first connection for RANKL to mammary gland development in pregnancy and breast cancer. In 2002, he moved to Vienna, Austria to start and develop the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), which has become one of the prime research centers in the world. Dr. Penninger envisions to recreate this environment at the LSI to nurture and train the best and brightest young minds of UBC scholars. His major accomplishments include pioneering insights into the molecular basis of osteoporosis and breast cancer, and demonstrating a critical role for ACE2 as the cellular receptor for the SARS Coronavirus infections and linking ACE2 to lung failure in such infections. He has published extensively in several multidisciplinary scientific journals, with over 60 publications in Cell, Nature, and Science. Josef has received numerous awards including the Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian Federal Government, the Descartes Prize for Research, the Ernst Jung Prize for Medical Excellence, the Innovator Award of the US Department of Defense, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art First Class.
Keynote Title: Blood Vessel Engineering
Cornelia Lass-Flörl is the Director of the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology of the Department of Hygiene, Microbiology and Social Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria. She has specialised in the field of medical microbiology since graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck in 1986. She is Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, of the European Confederation of Medical Mycology and of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Professor Lass-Flörl is a member of the Subcommittee on Antifungal Susceptibility Testing of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) and the European Committee for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST). She is Chair of the European Confederation of Medical Mycology (ECMM) Subcommittee for the Evaluation of ECMM Excellence Centers. In the past she was also a Board Member of the ECMM, Head of the Section “Antimykotische Chemotherapie“, Paul Ehrlich Gesellschaft, Chair of the Executive Board of the Fungal Infection Study Group (EFISG) of ESCMID and and a member of the ESCMID Executive Committee.
Professor Lass-Flörl has authored several journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters. In 2020 she was placed on Clarivate Analytics’ list of highly cited researchers worldwide. Her teaching and clinical service responsibilities focus on the diagnosis of fungal infections in severely immunocompromised patients. Her research interests include both clinical investigation and advances in basic medical microbiological science, with special interests in the epidemiology, diagnosis, prevention and therapy of fungal infections and antifungal susceptibility testing.
Keynote Title: Invasive Fungal Infections
