Professor Masayuki Yamamoto was graduated from Tohoku University School of Medicine in 1979 and Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in 1983. He obtained Doctor of Medical Sciences (PhD) in 1983 for his study on the metabolic regulation of heme biosynthesis. In 1983-1986, Dr. Yamamoto was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University with Professor Doug Engel. During this period, he cloned erythroid-type 5-aminllevulinate synthase cDNA, and conclusively proved the presence of erythroid isozymes in heme biosynthetic enzymes.
In 1989, Dr. Yamamoto revisited the Engel laboratory and in collaboration identified the GATA family of transcription factors, which are now widely studied and one of the prototype transcription factor families regulating lineage commitment and cell differentiation. In 1991, Dr. Yamamoto returned to Japan and starts analyses of the Gata1 and Gata2 genes. He clarified unique structure of Gata1 and Gata2 genes, and identified hematopoietic enhancer of Gata1 (1997), leukemia due to Gata1 knockdown (2000), and developed the notion GATA1-related leukemia (2008). Dr. Yamamoto received the Inoue Science Prize (1996) for his contribution to the study of hematopoietic transcription factors.

In 1995, Dr. Yamamoto started a series of analyses on NF-E2 and Maf family of transcription factors. He identified the Keap1-Nrf2 system regulating the cellular response against electrophilic and oxidative stresses in 1997. Since then, he has been addressing many questions related to this important regulatory pathway. A series of his paper on this topic awarded Thomson Scientific Research Front Award 2004 (Thomson Scientific Co), Tsukuba Prize (2007), Nissan Science Award (2008), Leading Edge in Basic Science Award (SOT, 2011), Toray Science and Technology Prize (The Toray Science Foundation; 2011), Uehara Prize (The Uehara Memorial Foundation; 2012), Medal with Purple Ribbon (The Emperor of Japan; 2012) and the Japan Academy Prize (the Japan Academy, 2014).

Organizer & Chair : Young-Joon Surh, Ph.D.(College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Korea)

James Hurley is the Judy C. Webb Chair and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology, at University of California, Berkeley. He obtained his PhD at University of California, San Francisco and was a post-doctoral fellow at University of Oregon. He was an Investigator at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), NIH, and Chief of the Section on Structural Biology and Cell Signalling at LMB, NIDDK, NIH from 1998-2013. The Hurley lab studies interactions between proteins and membrane lipids, their roles in autophagy, membrane scission, and coated vesicle formation, and how pathogens such as HIV subvert these processes. The Hurley lab uncovers the molecular mechanism behind these interactions using interdisciplinary approaches, including cryoelectron microscopy, x-ray crystallography, biochemical reconstitution, and live-cell imaging. Dr. Hurley received the Hans Neurath Award in 2014 from The Protein Society and the Outstanding Science Award from SER-CAT in 2009.

Organizer & Chair : Sangho Lee, Ph.D. (Department of Biological Sciences, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea)

Bob Sauer grew up in the Hudson-River valley in New York State (U.S.A.), interested in physics and how "things" work. He attended Amherst College, graduating with a degree in biophysics (B.A., 1972), and also worked for several years as research technician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he worked on polypeptide hormones and learned protein biochemistry. He attended graduate school at Harvard University (Ph.D., 1979), where his thesis research focused on the molecular mechanisms by which the modular structure of phage λ repressor allow it to act as a regulator of gene expression. He joined the MIT faculty in 1978 and has been there ever since. Over the years, his lab has worked on protein-DNA interactions, how proteins fold and unfold, and how ATP-dependent molecular machines destroy proteins and resculpt the cellular proteome. His honors include election to the United States National Academy of Sciences (1996), the Hans Neurath Award (2008), and the Stein and Moore Award (2013). Graduate students and postdocs trained in the Sauer lab have gone on to positions at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Massachusetts Medical School (2), University of California Los Angeles, Purdue University, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, University of Maryland, University of Mississippi, Texas A&M University, University of California Berkeley (2), University of California San Francisco, Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University (2), Tel Aviv University, Johns Hopkins University, William Patterson University, University of Arizona, University of Toronto, State University of New York at Stony Brook (2), Durham University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Central Florida, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Seoul National University.

Organizer & Chair : Seokhee Kim, Ph.D.(Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Korea)

Dr. Marianne Bronner is a developmental biologist with a long-standing interest in specification, migration and differentiation of neural crest stem cells. Using a pan-vertebrate approach, her lab has been systematically studying the gene regulatory network responsible for neural crest formation and evolutionary origin. She received her Sc.B. in Biophysics from Brown University and then a PhD in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. She assumed her first faculty position at the University of California, Irvine, before moving to Caltech in 1996. Dr. Bronner received the Conklin Medal from The Society for Developmental Biology in 2013, the Women in Cell Biology Senior Award from the American Society for Cell Biology in 2012, as well as several teaching awards from her institution. She was elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.

Dr. Bronner is employed by the California Institute of Technology and receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is on the board of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and member of several other societies (e.g. Society for Developmental Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, Society for Neuroscience, International Society for Differentiation). She is a Senior Editor for eLife, Editor-in-Chief of Developmental Biology and serves actively as monitoring editor of Journal of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell, PLoS Biology and PNAS. She is presently on the boards of the Sontag Foundation and Curci Foundation as well as the Conference Evaluation Committee of the Gordon Research Conferences.

Organizer & Chair : Yun Kee, Ph.D. (Division of Biomedical Convergence, Kangwon National University, Korea)