Associate Professor of Surgery
Department of Surgery, Section of Transplantation
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Center for Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism
North Carolina Diabetes Research Center

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Transplant surgeon scientist at Wake Forest School of Medicine, specializing in kidney and pancreas transplantation, bioengineering and regeneration. Counselor of CTRMS and IPITA. Past chair of the AST regenerative medicine COPO. Member of the GI committee of ISCT. Member of the advisory board of SERAXIS, INC.

Associate Professor
Diabetes Research Institute and University of Miami, USA

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Dr. Tomei is the Miami Engineering Career Development Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Microbiology and Immunology, and Surgery, and the director of the Islet Immunoengineering Laboratory at the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She holds a MS in Materials Engineering from the Politecnico of Milan (Italy) and a PhD in Bioengineering and Biotechnology from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland).

Dr. Tomei is applying her unique background in bioengineering and immunology to develop novel immunoengineering platforms to prevent rejection after islet transplantation and to promote antigen-specific tolerance for a cure of type-1 diabetes.

Dr. Tomei has secured and successfully administered grants from the NIH, JDRF, Johnson & Johnson, Semma Therapeutics and Sernova Corp. She serves as a standing member for the NIH BMBI study section and as a member of the CIRM grant working group. She is a CTRMS councilor and member of the IPITA education committee. She was awarded the Marc S. Goodman Prize to an Outstanding Young Scientist, the JDRF career development award, the Eliahu I. Jury Early Career Research Award, the Johnson A. Edosomwan Researcher of the Year Award, the CMBE Young Innovator, and the Alexander Orr Excellence in Teaching Award.

Full professor of Cell Biology, Department of Life Sciences,
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

Cell Therapy Program Coordinator, Centre for Regenerative Medicine “Stefano Ferrari”,
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

R&D Director and Founder, Holostem Terapie Avanzate S.r.l.,
Modena, Italy

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Graziella Pellegrini is an Italian Professor of Cell Biology and the Cell Therapy Program Coordinator at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She has developed and championed cell therapy protocols in hospitals across Italy. She is best known for her work in translational medicine, and has developed epithelial stem cell mediated cell and gene therapies. In 1990 Pellegrini established the first urethral stem cell cultures for humans, which could be used to regenerate the urethra in patients with posterior hypospadias. She leads the Center for Regenerative Medicine “Stefano Ferrari”.

In 2008 Pellegrini and De Luca co-founded the Holostem Terapie Avanzate, a biotechnology spin-out that develops advanced therapy producets that use epithelial stem cell cultures. They developed a culture system that creates limbal stem cell for the regeneration of corneas, which can restore vision to patients ocular burns who are deemed incurable. This system, Holoclar, was recognised by the European Medicines Agency in 2008, and received its approval for marketing from the European Commission in 2015. Holoclar is the first stem cell based medicinal product to be approved by the European Commission. In 2020 Graziella Pellegrini and Michele De Luca, shared the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for the development of epithelial stem cell-based regenerative therapy in patients with severe eye and skin disease. Pellegrini provides expert opinion for the World Economic Forum.

Professor, Biomedical Engineering Stern Family Professorship in Engineering, Biomedical Engineering; Distinguished Professor,
Tufts University School of Engineering;

Distinguished Professor, Biology Graduate Biomedical Sciences Member,
Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology

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David Kaplan is the Stern Family Endowed Professor of Engineering at Tufts University, a Distinguished University Professor, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. His research focus is on biopolymer engineering, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and cellular agriculture. He has published over 1,000 peer reviewed papers, he is editor-in-chief of ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering and he serves on many editorial boards and programs for journals and universities. He has received awards for his research and teaching and is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the National Academy of Engineering.