Antonio Cabal is currently a Director, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology, at Eisai Inc., Exton, PA. He took his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanics and Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. Following his undergraduate work, he worked on ocean circulation models at Havana's Institute of Oceanology, in Havana, Cuba before beginning graduate studies in computational fluid dynamics. He completed a Master of Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., and his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, both in Applied Mathematics. He then spent seven years with the Eastman Kodak Research Labs in Rochester, New York, applying mathematical models and computational simulations to multi-physic problems associated with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) design and optimization for inkjet printer. In January 2005 Dr. Cabal took a position as Scientist/Associate Disease Manager at Archimedes, Inc., where he developed mathematical models of human physiology and its interaction with the health care system to guide health care policy. In August 2006 he joined Merck where for 14 years he held various positions of increasing responsibility leading multidisciplinary teams working on the scientific development and implementation of Quantitative System Pharmacology (QSP) models.

Rita Cacace is a postdoctoral researcher in the team of prof. Christine Van Broeckhoven at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Center for Molecular Neurology, University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her work focuses on understanding the functional consequences of rare genetic variants to Alzheimer disease etiopathogenesis. After a master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology (2009, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples Italy). Rita Cacace obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2015 from the University of Antwerp. Her PhD thesis focused on exploring the missing genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. After her PhD, Dr. Cacace was awarded a 3-year personal postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders. Starting from 2017 Dr. Cacace collaborated in a project from the Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship in partnership with Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson), Beerse, Belgium. In 2019 Dr. Cacace received an international mobility grant to join prof. Lennart Mucke’s lab, Gladstone Institute for Neurological Disease, University of California San Francisco, USA. Returned to Belgium, in 2020, Dr. Cacace was funded by the Alzheimer Research Foundation. In the same year she secured a fully funded postdoc from Autifony Therapeutics Limited, UK. Dr. Cacace is currently developing iPSC-derived disease models to identify novel therapeutic targets.

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I am fascinated by the immense diversity of neurons that exist and how they are able to assemble in precise neuronal circuits producing refined neuronal computations essential for memory encoding

Carles Calatayud studied Biotechnology at the Polytechnic University of València (Spain). During his bachelor studies, he got familiarized with the stem cell field and became fascinated by the potential these cells had both in biomedical research and in regenerative medicine. Moved by his interest in stem cells, he joined the laboratories of Antonella Consiglio and Ángel Raya at the University of Barcelona and the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona respectively. During his PhD, he used induced pluripotent stem cells from Parkinson's disease patients to as well as gene editing techniques (CRISPR/Cas9 and TALENs) study the effect of the genetic background on the penetrance of the well-established disease causing mutation LRRK2 G2019S. As a result, he developed valuable in vitro tools (Calatayud et al., 2019; Di Domenico et al., 2019) and made important insights into mechanism contributing to Parkinson's disease (Kim, Calatayud, Guha et al., 2018; Carola, Malagarriga, Calatayud et al., 2021). After completing his PhD studies, Carles joined the Verstreken lab at the VIB-KU Leuven, where he keeps on pursuing his longstanding goal of developing highly reproducible stem cell models to address fundamental questions in Parkinson's disease.

Pharmacist by training, Elena Camporesi recently completed her PhD studies in neuroscience at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry (Sweden). Her PhD work focused on the study of different synaptic proteins as possible biomarkers in neurodegenerative disorders, mainly during Alzheimer’s disease. Being passionate about fluid biomarkers development, Elena is continuing her work on the neuroscience field, expanding her research on other protein, including tau protein, combining immunoassays and mass spectrometric methods.

Center for Reaserch of CHU of Québec - Laval University

Dr. Cano currently holds a postdoctoral researcher position in the clinical research department of Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona. Previously, she was an adjunct professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Barcelona. She graduated from Pharmacy at the University of Salamanca in 2013 and received her master’s degree in 2014 from the University of Barcelona. In 2018, she finished her Ph.D. studies on nanomedicine and neuropharmacology, and obtained the doctoral degree from the University of Barcelona. She carried out several international research stays at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro in Portugal, the University College of London in the United Kingdom, and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. She is a member of the Consolidated Research Group of the Generalitat de Catalunya “Nanostructured systems for the controlled release of drugs” (2017SGR-1477), Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (IN2UB), and Center for Biomedical Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases Network (CIBERNED). She has participated in several competitive European and national projects and published more than 40 scientific papers. She is in charge of the molecular biology unit of her center and her studies are related to the clinical evaluation of early biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease.