Branislav Vlahovic
Director
NSF Center of Research Excellence in Science and Technology
USA
Biography
Branislav Vlahovic is director of the Computational NSF Center of Research Excellence and NASA University Research Center for Aerospace Device. He obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees (nuclear physics and material science) in Zagreb University, Croatia. He was research scientist at Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, from 1978 until 1990, when he come to Duke University to work on low energy nuclear physics. Between 1996 and 2001 he had a shared appointment with Jefferson National Laboratory (medium energy nuclear physics) and NCCU. At NCCU he established material science, semiconductor physics, and nanotechnology laboratories and strong theoretical and experimental programs in material science and nuclear physics. For his research and work with students in 2004 he was awarded Gardner award, which is the only state wide award in North Carolina given to UNC system faculty. He published more than 200 peer reviewed articles in the fields of experimental and theoretical material science, nanotechnology, chemistry, cosmology, genomics, atomic, nuclear, and hypernuclear physics
Research Interest
Theoretical material science, nanotechnology, chemistry, cosmology, genomics, atomic, nuclear, and hypernuclear physics
Biography
Dr. Xudong Huang is an assistant professor of Harvard Medical School (HMS), and the Co-director for Neurochemistry Lab at Psychiatry Department of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Huang received his PhD from MIT (Nuclear Science and Engineering). He performed his postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital MGH/HMS. His current research thrust is to high-throughput screen and design, synthesize, and characterize targeted theranostic compounds for human diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, etc. In addition, his lab is exploring novel applications of biomedical informatics (such as medical image analysis and bioinformatics) and cheminformatics (such as structure-based rational drug design and in-silico drug screening) in systems biology and nanotechnology in translational medicine. Dr. Huang serves on scientific advisory and editorial boards for several research foundations and many scientific journals.
Research Interest
His current research thrust is to high-throughput screen and design, synthesize, and characterize targeted theranostic compounds for human diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, etc. In addition, his lab is exploring novel applications of biomedical informatics (such as medical image analysis and bioinformatics) and cheminformatics (such as structure-based rational drug design and in-silico drug screening) in systems biology and nanotechnology in translational medicine.
Istvan Toth
Chair in Biological Chemistry
University of Queensland
Australia
Biography
Toth was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University, Ottawa Canada (1974-76, Prof J.W. ApSimon). He returned to Hungary to work as a Research Associate (1977-82), then Scientific Group Leader (1982-1987) at the Central Research Institute for Chemistry, Hungarian Academy of Science. Professor Toth joined the School of Pharmacy at the University of London in 1987 as a Senior Lecturer and Royal Society sponsored Senior Research Fellow. He became a Reader in Medicinal Organic Chemistry in 1994 before relocating to The University of Queensland in 1998. Professor Toth has since been appointed as a Fellow of both the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2008) and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009). He has more than 300 publications and 43 patents.
Research Interest
Professor Toth’s major research interests are drug delivery, immunoadjuvants, carbohydrates, lipids, peptides, nucleosides and nucleotides. New developments in drug/vaccine delivery will clearly have a strong economic impact on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
