Plenary Speakers | EMIM 2024

SHULAMIT LEVENBERG, Haifa (Israel)

Talk Title: Imaging 3D vascularized engineered tissue constructs

Head of the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg is the former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the Technion. She currently serves as the director of the Technion Center for 3D Bioprinting and The Rina & Avner Schneur Center for Diabetes Research.

Shulamit conducts interdisciplinary research on stem cells and tissue engineering. She has received numerous prizes including the Krill Prize for excellence in scientific research, awarded by the Wolf Foundation, and was named by Scientific American as a “Research Leader” in tissue engineering, for her seminal work on vascularization of engineered tissues. She has also received the Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Sciences and a Medal of Distinction from the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.

Shulamit Levenberg has authored over 150 publications, and presented her work as an invited lecturer in over 150 international conferences.

She is founder and CSO of three start-up companies in the areas of cultured meat, spinal cord regeneration and nanoliter arrays for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

Shulamit earned a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she focused on cell adhesion dynamics and signaling, and pursued her post-doctoral research in tissue engineering at MIT, in the lab of Professor Robert Langer. She spent a year as a visiting professor at the Wyss Institute for Biology Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

Read more about her lab here
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KULLERVO HYNYNEN, Toronto (Canada)

Talk Title: MRI-guided focused ultrasound for targeted drug delivery and gene therapy

Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Director focused ultrasound (FUS) group at Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, Canada

Prof. Kullervo Hynynen’s research has focused on studying the effects of ultrasound beams on tissue and their utilization in therapy. He is investigating the use of focused ultrasound for noninvasive surgery, vascular surgery, targeted drug delivery and gene therapy.

He has developed theoretical models to help understand treatment parameters and to allow optimization of treatment devices. Kullervo has conducted in vivo experiments to investigate the various biological end points that can be induced by controlling the sonication parameters.

His research on ultrasound transducers has been used to design and develop new phased array applicators and better ways to deliver therapy. He is also looking at the use of magnetic resonance imaging to detect and quantify noninvasive ultrasound exposure in vivo.

Kullervo has developed several systems that are being tested clinically. He is currently exploring new ways to utilize ultrasound for imaging with the aim of using the methods for controlling delivery of therapy and aid in tumour diagnosis.

Read more about his lab here
PubMed