Speaker

Prof. Wong holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Hong Kong. He is currently a principal investigator at the School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, where he leads a multidisciplinary team specializing in biology, neuroscience, and microbiome research.

Collaborating closely with clinicians and bioinformaticians, Prof. Wong’s laboratory has achieved multiple groundbreaking discoveries in drug discovery for metabolic disorders, leading to high-impact publications as first or corresponding author in journals such as Nature Communications, Cell Host & Microbe, Nature Metabolism, and Developmental Cell.

In recognition of research excellence, Prof. Wong has received several prestigious awards, including the School Performance Award as Young Researcher (2021), the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance as an Early Career Researcher (2022), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Excellent Young Scientist Fund (Hong Kong and Macau, 2023). As principal investigator, he has secured over HK$20 million in competitive research funding from Hong Kong, Europe, and Mainland China to support his multidisciplinary translational research program.

Bo Peng is a professor at Fudan University. He has been honored as a Distinguished Professor under the Chang Jiang Scholars Program by the Ministry of Education, a recipient of the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists, an Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher. He has received numerous accolades, including the Zhong Nanshan Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award and the Huaxia Medical Science and Technology Youth Award.

Prof. Peng’s research is centered on microglia in the central nervous system, with a particular focus on elucidating the mechanisms of their aging, death, and regeneration. Based on these insights, he has pioneered a novel therapeutic strategy involving microglia replacement for the treatment of neurological disorders, and in 2020, his team achieved the world’s first efficient microglia replacement. Furthermore, his group conducted the world’s first clinical trial of microglia replacement therapy in 2024, demonstrating its effectiveness and paving a new path for treating neurological diseases. His key research findings have been published as last author in high-impact journals including Science (2025), Nature Neuroscience (2018), Nature Aging (2023), Neuron (2021), Cell Reports (2020), Nature Communications (2022), and eLife (2023).

Professor Chuanbin Mao is a Global STEM Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Director of Jockey Club STEM Lab for Nature-Inspired Precision Medical Engineering. He has been selected as a Global STEM Scholar through the Hong Kong SAR’s competitive Global STEM Professorship Scheme. He is an elected fellow of esteemed professional societies, including American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE), International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and ACS Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE). He has won multiple awards such as the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, CAPA Distinguished Junior Faculty award, and All-China Outstanding Doctoral Dissertations prize. He has served as a member/chair of ACS National Award Selection Committee. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals such as Chemical Reviews, Science, Nature Mater, Nature Nanotechnol, Nature Biomed Eng, Nature Commun, Adv Mater, and Angew Chem Int Ed. His current research focuses on phage-based biomaterials and their applications in biosensing, nanomedicine, regenerative medicine, and antimicrobial therapy.

Dr. Haifeng Chen is a globally recognized leader in gene therapy, with over 30 years of pioneering contributions to adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology. He earned his B.S. in Biology from Sun Yat-sen University (1982), M.S. from Sichuan University (1985), and Ph.D. from the University of Saarland, Germany (1992). That same year, he was awarded the prestigious Marion-Merrell-Dow Post-Doctoral Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Dr. Chen has held senior scientific and leadership positions at leading gene therapy companies, including Cell Genesys, Genovo, Avigen, and Asklepios BioPharmaceutical. In 2006, he co-founded Virovek, where he invented the BAC-to-AAV system—revolutionizing AAV manufacturing by achieving significantly higher yields using baculovirus and Sf9 cells. He later co-founded Avirmax, serving as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer until 2022.

After returning to Virovek as Chief Scientific Officer in 2022, Dr. Chen developed PACE (Precision AAV Capsid Engineering), a groundbreaking platform for cell-specific AAV targeting. This innovation led to the launch of AAVivo, now advancing in vivo CAR-T and solid tumor immunotherapies.

Dr. Chen has served on the ASGCT Viral Vector Committee and the editorial board of Molecular Therapy – Methods & Clinical Development, continuing to shape the future of gene and cell therapy.

Professor Chen Gong is a National Distinguished Expert and serves as the Director of the Center for Brain Repair at the Jinan University Institute of CNS Regeneration for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. He graduated from Fudan University in 1987 and earned his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the Shanghai Institute of Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993. In 1994, he conducted postdoctoral research at Yale University and Stanford University in the United States. From 2002 onward, he served as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor (with tenure), and Full Professor at Penn State University, and was appointed as the Verne M. Willaman Endowed Chair Professor in 2013.

In 2020, he joined Jinan University full-time as the Director of the Center for Brain Repair, driving the translation of in situ brain neuroregeneration technology toward clinical applications. Professor Chen’s team achieved a milestone by reporting for the first time the highly efficient in situ reprogramming of endogenous glia into functional neurons using the neural transcription factor NeuroD1. This groundbreaking work was named the “2014 Best Paper” by the top-tier stem cell journal Cell Stem Cell, pioneering a novel neuroregenerative gene therapy for brain repair. In 2015, he published again in Cell Stem Cell on small-molecule-induced reprogramming of cultured human glial cells into functional neurons, laying the foundation for drug-based neuronal regeneration therapies. In 2020, his team reported another milestone achievement—the first successful in situ neuroregeneration in the primate brain. Professor Chen holds 58 granted patents in China, the U.S., EU, Japan, and other major economies. In 2021, NeuExcell Therapeutics, founded by Professor Chen, entered a collaboration agreement with Spark Therapeutics, a member of the Roche Group. In 2023, NeuExcell received the “Asia-Pacific Gene Therapy Innovation Award” from Frost & Sullivan and won the First Prize in the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Finals. In 2024, NeuExcell’s glioma gene therapy product NXL-004 achieved the world’s first successful NeuroD1 AAV gene therapy administration in a patient with malignant glioma, marking a historic zero-to-one breakthrough from bench to bedside. In March and April 2025, the company further initiated first-in-class clinical trials for in situ neuroregeneration therapy targeting stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, bringing new hope to millions of patients worldwide.

Jerzy Duszynski was the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) from 2015 to 2022. He is a professor at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS (he was the Director of the Institute in years 2002 -2008). Duszynski’s research interests focus on bioenergetics, the role of mitochondria in cell functioning and neurodegenerative diseases. He published numerous scientific papers in prestigious scientific journals: Science, Biochemistry, Nature Prot., J. Biol. Chem., Biochem. Biophys. Acta, FEBS Letter etc. He served as a Deputy Minister responsible for science at the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2008 – 2009).  He is a member of Academia Europaea, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (foreign member), and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (foreign member). He serves as a member of the advisory board of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.  He has received numerous foreign awards: French Officer of Academic Palms, Doctor Honoris Causa from the National Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Japanese Medal of Rising Sun with Ribbons, etc.  He was a Member of the Board of Trustees at the Barcelona Institute for Research in Biomedicine.

Olga N. Tkacheva, MD, PhD, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Russian Clinical Research Center for Gerontology, an independent structural unit of the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University under the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Head of the Department of Age-Associated Diseases at the Faculty of Continuing Professional Education of Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, and Chief Specialist on Gerontology of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
Olga N. Tkacheva is the author of more than 833 published works, including 763 articles in journals indexed in international databases and four patents for inventions. Olga N. Tkacheva is the author of the first National Handbook of Geriatrics and 22 monographs. Under Olga N. Tkacheva’s supervision, 25 candidates of medical sciences (PhD) and seven doctors of medical sciences (DSc) have been trained.
Olga N. Tkacheva is the Chair of the Dissertation Council at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University under the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, specializing in Gerontology and Geriatrics (Medical Sciences).
Olga N. Tkacheva’s recent research interests are devoted to mechanisms and patterns of the heart and blood vessels’ aging processes and their association with cellular replicative aging, problems of age-related metabolic disorders, prevention and treatment of age-associated diseases, and geriatric syndromes.

Uli Stilz is Corporate Vice President, R&ED External Innovation Partners, External & Exploratory Innovation (E2I) at Novo Nordisk.
In this global leadership role anchored in Boston, he leads a cross-functional R&D team developing creative partnership models with biotech, venture capital, academia, and research hospitals to co-create next-generation therapeutics to provide life-changing treatments.
Based on the foundational success of the former Bio Innovation Hub, Uli and the E2I team drive an externally-anchored portfolio of novel partnerships within key therapy areas, including cardiometabolic and rare diseases, stimulating global innovation ecosystems to advance Novo Nordisk’s global pipeline.
Uli Stilz graduated with a Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry from ETH Zurich and received his Ph.D. from the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in 1990. After postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology, he joined Hoechst AG, where he held various positions before he was appointed Associate VP of the newly established Innovation unit within the Diabetes Division at Sanofi in 2010. Over a period of 20 years, he contributed to more than 60 preclinical and clinical drug candidates across cardiometabolic, immunology, and oncology therapy areas. Between 2012 and 2014 he was President of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry.

In 2014, Uli joined Novo Nordisk A/S in Copenhagen and in 2019 relocated to Boston to create the Bio Innovation Hub.

Uli Stilz was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Frankfurt in 2012 and serves on Editorial Boards for international peer-reviewed journals. He is a member of several Scientific Adivisory Boards in North America and Europe, and has represented Novo Nordisk A/S at trade organizations (EFPIA). He is currently a Board member at the Kendall Square Association and Gensaic, and is a Venture Advisor for aMoon Fund.

Dr. Kucherlapati is the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School since 2001. He was the founding Director of the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. He obtained his PhD from the University of illinois, conducted post-doctoral studies at Yale University and held faculty positions at Princeton University. Before moving to Harvard, Dr. Kucherlapati was the University Chairman and the Lola and Saul Kramer Professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Kucherlapati was a part of the Human Genome Project and the Cancer Genome Atlas project. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, USA.

Dr. Wang earned her Master’s degree in Anesthesiology and PhD in Pharmacology from Hebei Medical University. She has held several key academic and administrative positions, including Deputy Director of the Department of Anesthesiology at Hebei University Affiliated Hospital, Director of the Research Office, and Vice Dean of the School of Medicine at Hebei University. Currently, Dr. Wang serves as a member of the Anesthesiology Teaching Subcommittee under the National Teaching Advisory Board for Higher Education Institutions of the Ministry of Education, China. She is also a committee member of the Anesthesiology Branch of the Hebei Medical Association and a corresponding editorial board member of the Chinese Journal of Anesthesiology.