Irving L. Weissman, M.D., is the Director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Stanford Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research . Dr. Weissman was a member of the founding Scientific Advisory Boards of Amgen (1981-1989), DNAX (1981-1992), and T-Cell Sciences (1988-1992). He co-founded, was a Director, and chaired the Scientific Advisory Board at SyStemix 1988-1996, StemCells in 1996-present, and Cellerant in 2001-9.
His research encompasses the biology and evolution of stem cells and progenitor cells, mainly blood-forming and brain-forming. He is also engaged in isolating and characterizing the rare cancer and leukemia stem cells as the only dangerous cells in these malignancies, especially with human cancers. He discovered that all cancer stem cells express CD47, the 'don't eat me' signal, to overcome prophagocytic signals that arise during cancer development, and has shown that blocking antibodies to CD47 have therapeutic potential for all tested human cancers. Finally, he has a long-term research interest in the phylogeny and developmental biology of the cells that make up the blood-forming and immune systems. His laboratory was first to identify and isolate the blood-forming stem cell from mice, and has purified each progenitor in the stages of development between the stem cells and mature progeny (granulocytes, macro-phages, etc.). At SyStemix he co-discovered the human hematopoetic stem cell and at StemCells, he co-discovered a human central nervous system stem cell. In addition, the Weissman laboratory has pioneered the study of the genes and proteins involved in cell adhesion events required for lymphocyte homing to lymphoid organs in vivo, either as a normal function or as events involved in malignant leukemic metastases.
Professor Weissman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy, and the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He has received many awards, including the Kaiser Award for Excellence in Preclinical Teaching, the Pasarow Award in Cancer Research, the California Scientist of the Year, the De Villiers International Achievement Award of the Leukemia Society of America, the Robert Koch Award, the Rosenstiel Award, The max Delbruck Medal,and the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Award of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the 2004 New York Academy of Medicine Award for distinguished contributions to biomedical research, and has several honorary doctorates.

Organizer & Chair : G-One Ahn, Ph.D. (Integrative Biosciences and Biotechnology, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea)

Emmanuelle Charpentier studied biochemistry, microbiology and genetics at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France and obtained her PhD in Microbiology for her research performed at the Pasteur Institute. She then continued her work in the United States, at The Rockefeller University, New York University Langone Medical Center and the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (all in New York, NY) and at St Jude Children's Research Hospital (in Memphis, TN). E. Charpentier returned to Europe to establish her own research group as Assistant and Associate Professor at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories of the University of Vienna in Austria where she habilitated in the field of Microbiology. She was then appointed Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS, part of Nordic European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Partnership for Molecular Medicine) at Umea University in Sweden where she habilitated in the field of Medical Microbiology and is still active as a Visiting Professor. Between 2013 and 2015, E. Charpentier was Head of the Department of Regulation in Infection Biology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, and Professor at the Medical School of Hannover in Germany. In 2013, she was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, which she has held since 2014. In 2015, E. Charpentier was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. Since 2016, E. Charpentier is Honorary Professor at Humboldt University.

E. Charpentier is recognized as a world-leading expert in regulatory mechanisms underlying processes of infection and immunity in bacterial pathogens. With her recent groundbreaking findings in the field of RNA-mediated regulation based on the CRISPR-Cas9 system, E. Charpentier has laid the foundation for the development of a novel, highly versatile and specific genome engineering technology that is revolutionizing life sciences research and could open up whole new opportunities in biomedical gene therapies. For this research, E. Charpentier has been awarded a number of prestigious honors.

Organizer & Chair : Jin-Soo Kim, Ph.D. (Center for Genome Engineering, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Korea)

Alexander Rudensky, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Immunology program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) New York. Dr. Rudensky received his Ph.D. in Immunology in 1986 from the Gabrichevsky Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, following which he moved to Yale Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in Charlie Janeway's laboratory. In 1992 he took up his first academic position as an Assistant Professor in University of Washington, Seattle, where he stayed for 16 years before moving to New York in 2008 to be a part of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Dr. Rudensky is currently also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSKCC.
Dr. Rudensky is regarded as one of the most prominent immunologists at current times for his exceptional contributions in characterizing the so called Regulatory T cells (Treg cells), a subtype of CD4+ T cells that are absolutely required to suppress over exuberant immune reactions and autoimmunity. Furthermore, due to their ability to suppress anti-tumor immunity, they are widely pursued as a major cell type target in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Rudensky's lab was one of the foremost in identifying the transcriptional framework and unravel molecular insights underlying the generations, development, maintenance and functions of the Treg cells. Over the years Dr. Rudensky's laboratory has made seminal discoveries starting from the identification of the Treg lineage specific transcription factor, to establishing the role of Treg cells in numerous cellular functions of biomedical importance including maternal fetal tolerance, metabolic inflammation and interaction with commensal and pathogenic microbiota as well was tumor immunology and immunotherapy.
For his seminal contributions in the field Dr. Rudensky received numerous awards including Coley Award in Basic Immunology, Cancer Research Institute, Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate Award, Merit Award NIH, Julius Stone Lectureship Award, AAI Investigator award, Searle Scholar Award and more recently elected as a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Organizer & Chair : Sin-Hyeog Im, Ph.D. (Institute for Basic Science (IBS) & Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea)

Cell biologist Daniel J. Klionsky, Ph.D., is the Alexander G. Ruthven Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Michigan. Klionsky holds joint appointments as a faculty member at the Life Sciences Institute, where his lab is located, and in the Department of Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Working primarily with baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), Klionsky's research focuses on the cellular process known as autophagy, which literally means "self-eating." Autophagy is the process by which cells break down cellular components to survive stress conditions such as starvation. The failure of autophagy plays a role in cancer, neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, and other areas of human health. Using biochemistry, Klionsky's lab has been asking questions about the individual molecules involved in the transport of proteins and cellular signaling related to autophagy. Answering these questions could help guide new therapeutic applications to treat or prevent certain diseases.
A native Californian, Klionsky received an A.B. in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1980. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1986, which was followed by Helen Hay Whitney and American Cancer Society Senior Postdoctoral Fellowships at the California Institute of Technology. In 1990, Klionsky joined the faculty of the University of California, Davis. He moved to U-M in 2000, and in 2003, because one of the founding faculty members of the U-M Life Sciences Institute.
Klionsky's passion extends to the classroom as well as the lab. He received the National Science Foundation Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars in 2003. In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences named him an Education Mentor for developing "active learning" approaches to undergraduate biology courses. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009, was named a Thompson Reuters Citation Laureate in 2013, and received the van Deenen Medal in 2015.
Since the journal's founding in 2005, Klionsky has also served as the editor-in-chief of Autophagy.

Organizer & Chair : Hyun Kyu Song, Ph.D. (Department of Life Sciences, Korea University, Korea)