Keynote Speakers

Dr. Andreas Rowald is research group leader of the ProModell Group at the Chair of Digital Health at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany.

His work focuses on prognostic, personalized digital patient models to develop novel and optimize existing neurostimulation strategies. Dr. Rowald completed his doctoral studies in electrical engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

Florian Krammer, PhD, graduated from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (Austria) in 2010. He received his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York working on hemagglutinin stalk-based immunity and universal influenza virus vaccines. In 2014 he became an independent principal investigator and is currently the Mount Sinai Professor of Vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Krammer's work focuses on understanding the mechanisms of interactions between antibodies and viral surface glycoproteins and on translating this work into novel, broadly protective vaccines and therapeutics. The main target is influenza virus but he is also working on coronaviruses, flaviviruses, hantaviruses, filoviruses and arenaviruses. He has published more than 300 papers on these topics. Since 2019, Dr. Krammer has served as principal investigator of the Sinai-Emory Multi-Institutional Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Center (SEM-CIVIC), which develops improved seasonal and universal influenza virus vaccines that induce long-lasting protection against drifted seasonal, zoonotic and future pandemic influenza viruses.

Christoph Hitzenberger studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Vienna and received his PhD in Physics, graduating with honors, in 1983. In 1987, he joined the Department of Medical Physics of the Medical Faculty, University of Vienna, to work in the new established field of Biomedical Optics. Presently, he is Professor of Medical Physics and Vice Chair of the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna.

Prof. Hitzenberger is one of the pioneers of optical coherence tomography. His body of work includes more than 400 national and international conference contributions, about 200 peer-reviewed journal publications, 11 book chapters, as well as more than 80 invited lectures. He is Fellow of both, Optica and SPIE; his pioneering contributions to OCT were awarded with the Award of the Hoechst Foundation for the Advancement of Medical Research in Austria in 1992, the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class, and with the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize of the US National Academy of Engineering, both in 2017.

Anna Obenauf is a group leader at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna. Her laboratory works at the interface between mechanistic biology and clinically relevant problems, with the goal to identify novel therapeutic approaches and rational therapeutic combinations for metastatic cancers.
Work in the Obenauf lab is funded by the WWTF and in 2018, she received an ERC Starting Grant for her research project "Rational combination therapies for metastatic cancer (CombaTCancer)". In 2019, she was elected as a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and in 2021 she was selected as a member of the EMBO YIP Program.

Dr. Mohiuddin is a Professor of Surgery and Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore. Previously served as Chief of Transplantation, Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Program, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH) while holding faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Rush University, Chicago. He has been involved in Xenotransplantation Research since 1992 and started xenotransplantation research programs at the NIH, the University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, and Rush University Chicago.

Dr. Mohiuddin has devoted his entire career to xenotransplantation. His contribution to xenotransplantation includes demonstration of the longest survival heterotopic and orthotopic cardiac xenotransplantation. He is currently President of the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA) after serving as Councilor for 4 years and as liaison to promote productive discord between the IXA and the FDA. His persistence in Xenotransplantation directed him to accomplish the First Human Cardiac Xenotransplantation on January 7, 2022.