Speakers

Speech Title : The power of Decentralized and Comprehensive Site Networks (like Pratia) in Vaccine Trial Delivery

Ute Bertelsmann is entrepreneur by heart. Since December 2022, she is Managing Director and Country Head of Pratia Germany, and in this role she is leading a network of six dedicated research sites – with a strong footprint in vaccination projects. Pratia Germany, blessed with a team with decades of experience, is one out of eight countries in the Pratia Network (BG, CZ, DE, ES, PL, SK, UA, US). Pratia is operating in Europe and in the US. Before Ute joined Pratia she gained experiences in many health related companies. She started as an editor in a medical publishing company, was self employed for years with an agency in the field of auditive pharma marketing as well as a freelance project manager for large Pharma Companies. Ute entered the field of Clinical Research in year 2017 as a Business Developer – and spent the years of COVID with two Start-ups. Her academic degree is a M.A. (Master of Arts) in Literature at Freie Universität in Berlin.

Speech Title : new emerging infectious diseases and biodefense programs in the USA and Euro

Stoffer Stienstra Has a doctorate in both (bio)chemistry and medicine and just finished a 40-year career as officer of the Dutch Armed Forces as SME (Subject Matter Expert) CBRN in the end-rank of Cdr with the Royal Dutch Navy Reserve Special Forces. He is still lecturer at the NATO School in Oberammergau (Germany) and the Joint NATO CBRN-defense Centre of Excellence in Vyskov, Czech Republic on CBRN-related topics. Gives as visiting professor of the University of Rome Tor Vergata lectures for the University of Rome tor Vergata CBRN-MSc curriculum as well. He is also a specialist in Civil-Military Cooperation and has fulfilled several (military) deployments in Asia and Africa. He has a diploma in ‘Organization of IO’s, UN structures and NGO’s at the Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA and many other post-doc courses. For the MoD he completed strategic special projects, like developing ‘mission safety’ and was co-author of the Dutch DefenseIndustry-Strategy. In 2014 he was member of the NKS (Nuclear Knowledge Summit) team at the NSS (Nuclear Security Summit) in The Hague. He continues working with this knowledge (and network) internationally for several medical-, biotech- and high-tech companies as a scientific advisory board member. He is senior advisor on public health and biodefense for the EU-financed ReSEMBiD project executed by Expertise France and other EU and/or UN supported projects including OSCE. He has 41 peer reviewed scientific publications, over 400 publications in professional literature and is the key inventor for three different patents (related to dermatology and blood cells).

Speech Title : New Mixed-Model Methodologies for Genome-Wide Association Studies in the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Era

Yuan-Ming Zhang, a professor of statistical genomics, teaches at Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) in China. His specialty is quantitative genetics. He earned his bachelor's degree from Southwest University in 1986 and his master's and Ph.D. from Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) in 1992 and 2001, respectively. Zhang worked on the Rongchang campus of Southwest University from 1986 to 1999, then moved to NAU, and finally to HZAU in 2014. Zhang was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Riverside, from 2003 to 2005. He became an associate professor in 1995 and a full professor in 2002. Zhang was selected as a Highly Cited Researcher in 2025 by Clarivate and as one of the world's top 2% of scientists in 2022. He is an editorial board member of Heredity, BMC Genomics, Frontiers in Plant Science, and Acta Agronomica Sinica. He is also a council member of the Chinese Society of Agri-Biotechnology and a full member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society and the Genetics Society UK. His team has developed methodologies and software packages to identify QTNs/QTLs, QTN-by-environment interactions, and QTN-by-QTN interactions for complex traits in genome-wide association studies (mrMLM, 3VmrMLM, and Fast3VmrMLM); QTL mapping (GCIM); bulked segregant analysis (dQTG-seq); and mixed inheritance analysis (SEA) (https://github.com/YuanmingZhang65 and https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/). He has published over 190 articles in journals such as Molecular Plant, Plant Cell, Brief Bioinformatics, and Heredity

Speech Title : Will be updated soon...

Professor Kwon Hyung-wook is a distinguished scientist and public health expert, currently serving as CEO of Insensory Inc. and Professor at Incheon National University, where he is affiliated with the Ministry of Life Science and serves as Director of the Capital Region Climate Change Vector Monitoring Base Center under the Insect Resource Convergence Research Center. His research focuses on infectious disease vectors, climate change–related disease surveillance, and real-time monitoring systems for public health protection. In 2023, Professor Kwon was awarded the Minister of Health and Welfare Award by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) in recognition of his outstanding leadership and contributions to nationwide vector and parasite monitoring initiatives. Through his work, he has played a pivotal role in strengthening Korea’s early detection, prediction, and prevention strategies against emerging and imported infectious diseases.

Speech Title : Is Guillain-Barre syndrome related to COVID-19 infection and its vaccination?

Jie Zhu, MD., PhD is a professor in both Departments of Neurology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China and Neurobiology, Care Sciences & Society, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Stockholm, Sweden. She was a head of the neuroimmune laboratory of KI. She is one of the world’s famous experts for the autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, especially for Guillain-Barré syndrome and its animal model experimental autoimmune neuritis. She has published more than 250 articles and has received several awards from USA, Sweden and international neuroimmunological societies. Her research group has been conducting a series of studies on the pathogenesis and treatment of neuroimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, and has made remarkable achievements.