Peter Dubruel is a polymer chemist from training. He heads the Polymer Chemistry and Biomaterials Research Group at Ghent University since 2006. The group is currently composed of 25 people.

The main research topics include (1) the synthesis and characterisation of monomers and polymers and (2) surface modification technologies, both for biomedical applications. Since 2008, the group started building up 3D printing facilities for polymers including biodegradable polyesters and biopolymers including gelatin. At present, 5 different 3D printing devices are available.

The group holds over 170 A1 papers and several patents to date. Peter Dubruel was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in 2005 and the ESB Jean Leray Award in 2012.

Professor Zhu Meifang, got her B.S. and M.S., respectively in 1986 and 1989, from department of chemical fibers, China Textile University. In 1999, she got Ph.D degree on Materials Science from Donghua University after jointly studied in Technical University of Dresden in Germany and DHU., She served as the vice president of Donghua University from September 2005 to December 2009. Currently she is the dean of CMSE of DHU, and the director of SKLFPM.

Professor Zhu has long been engaged in the research of fiber materials, organic /inorganic hybrid materials, nano composite hydrogel materials, fiber forming and theoretical research, basic research and application development of biomass fiber and biomedical materials. Over the past five years, she presided over the National Outstanding Youth Fund, the National “863” program, National Natural Science Foundation and other 30 projects, published more than 230 papers in the Adv Mater.,, Chem.Comm and other peer-review journals, 7 books (chapters), as well as authorized more than 100 National Invention Patents. She won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award, the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Shanghai and other 10 scientific awards with first sequence.

Ji Jian is Cheung Kong distinguished professor in Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University. He leads a group work on interfacial phenomena for biomedical implant, tissue engineering and nanomedicine. Several bioinspired strategies have been explored to develop biocompatible and biofunctional surface for biomedical application. Several innovative techniques have been applied to biomedical devices including cardiovascular stent and catheter., etc. He has published more than 200 papers in peer reviewed journal with a mean impact factor above 5. is member of the editorial board of Biointerphases, Biomaterials Science and Journal of Biomaterials Science, Polymer Edition.

Jie Weng is a full professor at the department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University. He Leads a research group in regenerative biomaterials and drug delivery system, working in close collaboration with the Dental Department, Sichuan Province People’s Hospital and the department of orthopedics, Southwest Medical University. His research areas include advanced manufacturing technologies for materials, functional composites, nano-materials and self-assembly, biomedical materials, surface modification for metallic implants and biomineralization, tissue Engineering and interaction between biomaterials and living matters, etc. Jie has an MSc in surface physics and acquired his Ph D at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He co-authored over 300 academic papers, in which about 170 papers were indexed by SCI. The total citation of his papers is more than 4000 in SCI database with H factor of 32 (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-3005-2010). He has received more than 20 authorized national invention patents. He is a member of council of both Chinese Biomaterials Society and Biomaterials Branch of Chinese Biomedical Engineering Society.

Cristina Barrias, Biocarrier Group of i3S/INEB – Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde/Instituto de Engenharia Biomédica, University of Porto, Portugal.

Cristina Barrias is Principal Investigator at i3S/INEB and Affiliated Professor at ICBAS – Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar. She graduated in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (UP), and obtained her PhD in Engineering Sciences in 2005 (UP), having carried our her studies at IBMC, INEB and INSERM U.1026 (University of Bordeaux, France). She was a post-doctoral fellow at INEB, working in collaboration with the University of Nevada-Reno (US). Currently, she leads the research Team Biomatrix within the Biocarrier Group of i3S/INEB. Her research interests lie at the bioengineering/biomedicine interface.  The main focus of her work has been the development of molecularly-designed hydrogels that mimic key features of natural extracellular matrices, and their use as injectable vehicles for cell-based regenerative therapies and as advanced 3D-models for in vitro studies in stem cell and cancer research.

Dr. María J. Vicent received her Ph.D. degree in 2001 in chemistry on solid supports from University Jaume I after several scientific stays in Prof. Fréchet’s lab. at University California, Berkeley (USA). Then, she moved to more biomedically oriented research, initially with a Spanish company Instituto Biomar SA., and subsequently at the Centre for Polymer Therapeutics with Prof. R. Duncan after the award of a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2002. In 2004, María joined Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF) as research associate through a Marie Curie Reintegration contract and was promoted to her current position, head of Polymer Therapeutics Laboratory at CIPF, in 2006. Currently she is also the responsible of the Screening Platform and the Advanced Therapies Program Coordinator at CIPF. She also coordinates the Valencian Community Strategy on Innovative and Precision Medicine.

Her research group focused on the development of novel nanopharmaceuticals, in particular Polymer Therapeutics, for different therapeutic and diagnostic applications and has been funded by national and European grants (several acting as coordinator including a recently awarded ERC Consolidator grant-MyNano). Maria has received several prizes and awards one on her pioneer work on polymer-based combination therapeutics and two of them directly related to the novel platform developed in 2015 capable to cross the blood brain barrier with application in neurodegenerative disorders.

María co-authored >80 peer reviewed papers and 7 patents, 2 of them licensed to the pharmaceutical industry and a third one used as foundation of the spin off company ‘Polypeptide Therapeutic Solutions SL’ in 2012.

Dr. Yufeng Zheng, received his Ph.D in materials science from Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 1998. From 1998 to 2004 he was Assistant Professor (1998-2000), Associate Professor (2000-2003), Full Professor (2003-2004) at Harbin Institute of Technology, China and since 2004 he has been a Full Professor at the Peking University in Beijing, China. Dr. Zheng has authored or co-authored over 360 scientific peer-reviewed articles, with the citation of over 8600 times, and a H-index of 45 (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-4146-2010). He served as the Editor-in-Chief of Bioactive Materials (http://www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/bioactive-materials/ ), Editor of “Materials Letters” (www.journals.elsevier.com/materials-letters), Member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research-Part B: Applied Biomaterials (Wiley), “Journal of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering” (American Scientific Publishers), “Intermetallics” (Elsevier), “Journal of Materials Science & Technology” (Elsevier), “Acta Metallurgica Sinica (English Letters)” (Springer) and Journal of Orthopaedic Translation (Elsevier). His areas of special interest include the development of various new biomedical metallic materials (biodegradable Mg, Fe and Zn based alloys, beta-Ti alloys with low elastic modulus, bulk metallic glass, ultra-fine grained metallic materials, etc). Dr. Zheng has received several awards including New Century Excellent Talents in University awarded by MOE of China (2007), Distinguished Young Scholars awarded by NSFC (2012) and Cheung Kong Scholars Programme awarded by MOE of China (2016).

Xuenong Zou is the director of the Orthopedic Research Institute at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and the director of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Orthopedics and Traumatology. He graduated from Jiangxi Medical School, and got the doctoral degree in Medical School, Aarhus University，Denmark. In 2008, Xuenong has been recruited as professor of the First Affiliated Hospital, SYSU, as One-Hundred Talent Program of SYSU. His works focus on the interaction between biomaterials and organisms, the effect of ECM-biomaterials on bone formation, epigenetic mechanisms of osteogenetic progress induced by different biomaterials. His research has been supported by The State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, The National Key Basic Research Program (“973” Program) and The Key Program of NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund, et al. So far, he has co-authored 87 SCI papers and has been cited more than 1200 times. He acquired 03/04 GRAMER European Spine Journal Award and got an honorary status as Fellow of the International Combined Orthopaedic Research Societies last year.

Dr. Lorenzo Moroni studied Biomedical Engineering at Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy, and Nanoscale Sciences at Chalmers Technical University, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. cum laude in 2006 at University of Twente on 3D scaffolds for osteochondral regeneration, for which he was awarded the European doctorate award in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering from the European Society of Biomaterials (ESB). In 2007, he worked at Johns Hopkins University as a post-doctoral fellow in the Elisseeff lab, focusing on hydrogels and stem cells. In 2008, he was appointed the R&D director of the Musculoskeletal Tissue Bank of Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, where he investigated the use of stem cells from alternative sources for cell banking, and the development of novel bioactive scaffolds for skeletal regeneration. From 2009 till 2014, he joined again University of Twente, where he got tenured in the Tissue Regeneration department. Since 2014 he works at Maastricht University and in 2016 he became professor in biofabrication for regenerative medicine at the MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine. His research group interests aim at developing biofabrication technologies to generate libraries of 3D scaffolds able to control cell fate.

In 2014, he received the prestigious Jean Leray award for outstanding young principal investigators from the ESB and the ERC starting grant. In 2016, he also received the prestigious Young Scientist Award for outstanding principal investigators from TERMIS.

Xuesi Chen received his Ph.D. degree at Waseda University, Japan, in 1997, and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, in 1999. He has been a full professor at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1999. He has published over 650 articles in academic journals, which have been cited more than 12,000 times until now. In addition, he has applied over 250 Chinese patents and more than 120 have been authorized. His research interests focus on preparations and biomedical applications of biodegradable polymers, mainly focused on polyethers, polyesters, polypeptides, polycarbonates, and their copolymers.

Pamela Habibovic obtained her PhD degree in 2005 from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. In 2006, she worked as post-doctoral research fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston-Harvard Medical School and in 2007 she spent a year as post-doctoral research fellow at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. From 2008 until 2014 she led a research group at the University of Twente, first as assistant and later as associate professor. In 2014, she moved to Maastricht University, where she became Full Professor of Inorganic Biomaterials and where she leads the Department of Instructive Biomaterials Engineering. The main focus of her research group is on synthetic bone graft substitutes, bioinorganics and high-throughput approaches in biomaterials research. For her research she received prestigious Veni and Aspasia grants of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research among other external research funds. She was elected a council member of the European Society for Biomaterials, and serves as an editorial board member of the journals Acta Biomaterialia, Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, Biomatter and Advanced Biomaterials and Devices in Medicine. In 2013, she received the Jean Leray Award of the European Society for Biomaterials.

Georg is the founding director of the Julius Wolff Institute at the Charité, Humboldt University and Free University of Berlin. The Julius Wolff Institute brings together researchers from engineering, mathematics, biology, biochemistry and clinical scientists in order to develop new therapeutic strategies for regeneration of injured or degenerated joint, bones and muscles. Conceptually, Georg’s research aims at understanding endogenous cascades of tissue formation, cytokine signaling and cellular self-organization especially in bone. This understanding is transferred to enable regeneration in clinically challenging healing scenarios of tissues normally capable of regeneration (bone) and those with intrinsic impaired regenerative capacity. Mechanical straining and adaptation due to mechanical cues plays a central role in all these tissues. The aim of Georg’s work is to understand the mechano-biological cues of regeneration and adaptation and how they can be employed to enable healing even in tissues with impaired regenerative capacity such as muscle, cartilage or tendon. All approaches are motivated by clinical challenges, employ basic research principles and aim at being translated into daily clinical routine. Examples of translation include innovative concepts for joint replacement procedures, angle stable fixation of implants or cell therapies for muscle regeneration. Given his broad interests in regeneration, Georg collaborates closely with Wyss staff that is working on bioinspired materials and is strongly interested to extend the mechano-biological branch of regenerative therapies at the Wyss Institute. Given his broad interest, core to all his activities is the close collaboration with clinical partners, specifically the scientific education of clinical scientists as core members of his team of research.

Georg Duda is Professor of Biomechanics and Musculoskeletal Regeneration at the Charité – Humboldt University of Berlin and Free University of Berlin and an Associated Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. He received his Master’s degree in precision engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, in 1991 and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg in 1996. He has been recipient of over a dozen awards for inventions, start-up engagements and PhD student mentoring.

Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from Wuhan University of Technology, China. Starting in 2003 he became a Professor, then the Distinguished Chair Professor and the Director of the Advanced Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. His previous academic positions were Professor (2000-2003), Associate Professor (1996-2000) and Assistant Professor (1992-1996) in Materials Science at Wuhan University of Technology. Prof. Zhang has over 20-year experience in biomaterials and tissue engineering fields and has authored more than 100 original papers, 5 books and given more than 50 keynote or invited speeches in various conferences. He is the inventor of more than 30 patents, some of which were further developed into 3 medical device products authorized by CFDA. He has been one of few key leaders in promoting collaborative research between Chinese and Korean biomaterials communities. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading international journals, such as Tissue Engineering, Biomedical Materials (IOP, UK), etc.

In 2015, he was selected as IUSBSE Fellow (FBSE) for his distinguished contributions to development and translation of regenerative medical materials, and to public promotion of biomaterials science.

Recent Publications:
1.Jun Ma, Jianglin Wang, Xin Ai, Shengmin Zhang. Biomimetic self-assembly of apatite hybrid materials: From a single molecular template to bi-/multi-molecular templates. Biotechnology Advances, 2014, 32:744–760
2.Y. Wang, H. Hao,H. Liu, Y. F. Wang, Y. Li, G. Yang, J. Ma, C. Mao, and S. Zhang. Selenite-releasing bone mineral nanoparticles retard bone tumor growth and improve healthy tissue functions in vivo. Advanced Healthcare Materials, 2015, 4:1813–1818 [A Front Cover Story]
3.J Wang,G..Yang, Y. Wang,Y. Du,H. Liu,Y. Zhu, C. Mao, and S. Zhang. Chimeric protein template-induced shape control of bone mineral nanoparticles and its impact on mesenchymal stem cell fate. Biomacromolecules, 2015, 16, 1987− 1996
4. Y. Wang, J. Wang, H. Hao, M. Cai, S. Wang, J. Ma Y. Li, C. Mao and S. Zhang. In vitro and in vivo mechanism of bone tumor inhibition by selenium-doped bone mineral nanoparticles. ACS Nano, 2016, 11: 9927-9937