Jan Vijg
Jan Vijg, Ph.D., is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York since 2008. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, in 1987, and was previously an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston (1993-1999), a Professor of Physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas (1999-2005), and a Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, California (2006-2008). With his research team he was the first to develop transgenic mouse models for studying mutagenesis in vivo (in 1989) and used these models ever since in studying the possible relationship between damage to the genome and aging. He has published more than 300 scientific articles, is inventor or co-inventor on 8 patents and co-founded two biotechnology companies. He is currently developing single-cell, whole genome sequencing methods to study somatic mutations and epimutations in cancer and aging.
Wolfgang Wagner
Wolfgang Wagner is Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Cellular Engineering at RWTH Aachen University Medical School (Germany). He studied Biology and Medicine in Bonn (Germany), Norwich (England) and Biel (Switzerland). From 2002 to 2006 he worked as intern and research assistant at the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, of Heidelberg University (chair: Prof. Dr.
A. D. Ho) and worked as
post-doctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In 2006 he started a research fellowship at the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology, University of Heidelberg where he received his habilitation in Physiology in 2008. In 2009 he was appointed as University Professor at RWTH Aachen.
Prof. Wagner is Cofounder of the company Cygenia (www.cygenia.com) that provides service for epigenetic analysis for other scientists since 2014. In 2015 he received second affiliation to the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences. Prof. Wagner is Editor of the journals PLoS ONE and Clinical Epigenetics.
His main research interests are 1) hematopoietic stem cells and their interaction with the niche; 2) standardization and characterization of mesenchymal stem cells; 3) interaction of stem cells with biomaterials; and 4) molecular and epigenetic effects of aging, replicative senescence, and malignant transformation.
Prof. Wagner is author of >120 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals (>80 with first or last authorship; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wolfgang_Wagner4; https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=sp5F7kEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao).
João Pedro de Magalhães
João Pedro de Magalhães, Integrative Genomics of Ageing Group, University of Liverpool
Dr de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then obtained his PhD in 2004 from the University of Namur in Belgium, where he worked in the Ageing and Stress Group led by Dr Olivier Toussaint. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, in 2008 Dr de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Liverpool in the UK to develop his own group on genomic approaches to ageing. Now a senior lecturer, Dr de Magalhaes leads the Integrative Genomics of Ageing Group (http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~aging/) which focuses on understanding the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of ageing. The group’s research integrates different strategies, but its focal point is developing and applying experimental and computational methods that help bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype, a major challenge of the post-genome era, and help decipher the human genome and how it regulates complex processes like ageing. Notably, his group is a world-leader in employing genomics and bioinformatics to study ageing with pioneering work in studying gene networks of ageing and in sequencing and analyzing genomes from long-lived species. Dr de Magalhaes has given over 100 invited talks, including a TEDx talk, and his research has been widely featured in the popular press (BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and many others).
