Speakers.
Professor Ada Yonath
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Nobel prize winner Professor Ada Yonath is a structural biologist. She has a BSc and MSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry respectively from the Hebrew University, Israel and a PhD in X-ray crystallography from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Since, she has worked in many well-respected scientific research institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Germany and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. She is currently the Director of the Biomolecular Structure and Assembly Centre at the Weizmann Institute.
Ada is interested in understanding the process of protein biosynthesis, in which the ribosome plays a central role. Investigating the structure and function of the ribosome was the main focus of her early career, an undertaking which involved developing crystallography techniques that are now widely used in the field of structural biology. Her research group was the first to publish the complete 3-dimentional structures of both subunits of the bacterial ribosome, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. Ada’s work has revealed the mechanism of action of the majority of antibiotics that target the bacterial ribosome, which has major implications in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria and in the design of novel antibiotics. Ada is also interested in understanding the origin and evolution of the ribosome.
In addition to the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Ada is the recipient of many awards, including the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2008, the UNESCO-L’Oréal Award for European Woman in Life Science in 2008, the Wolf Prize in 2007 and the Harvey Prize for Natural Sciences in 2002. She also has numerous honorary doctorates and over 200 publications.
Recent publications:
Eyal, Z., Matzov, D., Krupkin, M., Wekselman, I., Paukner, S,. Zimmerman, E., Rozenberg, H., Bashan, A. and Yonath, A. (2015). Structural insights into species-specific features of the ribosome from the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. PNAS, in press.
Krupkin, M., Bashan, A. and Yonath, A. (2014). Glimpse into the origin of life: what was first, the genetic code or its products, the proteins? In Why does Evolution Matter? The Importance of Understanding Evolution, G. Trueba ed. (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
Huang, L., Krupkin, M., Bashan, A., Yonath, A. and Massa, L. (2013). Protoribosome by quantum kernel energy method. PNAS, 110 (37), 14900-5.
Yonath, A. Ribosomes: ribozymes that survived evolution pressures but is paralysed by tiny antibiotics. Macromolecular Crystallography 2012, 195-208.
Fox, G. E., Tran, Q. and Yonath, A. (2012). An exit cavity was crucial to the polymerase activity of the early ribosome. Astrobiology, 12, 57-60.
Krupkin, M., Matzov, D., Tang, H., Metz, M., Kalaora, R., Belousoff, J., Zimmerman, E., Bashan, A. and Yonath, A. (2011). A vestige of a prebiotic bonding machine is functioning within the contemporary ribosome. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366, 2972-8.
Petter Hartman
Medicon Valley Alliance, Copenhagen, Denmark
Petter Hartman has a Masters degree in Political Science from Lund University, Sweden. He worked as a Project Manager for Interreg Øresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak, a crossborder cooperation between Denmark, Sweden and Norway financed by the European Development Fund, before joining the Medicon Valley Alliance (MVA) team in 2014. Petter’s first role at MVA was Funding Manager, with responsibility for project development and identifying funding opportunities. He is currently acting CEO for MVA.
Medicon Valley Alliance is a Danish-Swedish networking organisation for life science companies and research institutions in the regions of Zealand and Skåne, known collectively as Medicon Valley. MVA is a non-profit member organisation that aims to create new research and business opportunities by initiating and facilitating cooperation between members within Medicon Valley and with other life science clusters globally. The alliance has over 200 members including universities, hospitals, life science businesses, regional government and service providers that together provide around 140 000 jobs in the Øresund region.
Dr. Stephen Brusatte
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Dr. Steve Brusatte has a BS in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago, USA and MScs in Paleobiology and Earth Sciences from the University of Bristol, UK. He received an MPhil and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University, New York and has since pursued a career in vertebrate paleontology and evolutionary biology. He is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow in Vertebrate Paleontology in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Steve’s research interests include the anatomy, genealogy and evolution of dinosaurs, as well as other fossil vertebrates. His research spans a broad range of topics from the rise of dinosaurs to dominance in the Triassic period to the events before and after the mass-extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Fieldwork constitutes a major part of Steve’s research and he has participated in field research all over the world including Portugal, Poland, Romania and New Mexico, which has led to the discovery of over 15 new species of fossil vertebrates.
Steve has over 75 peer-reviewed publications and is the author of academic book ‘Dinosaur Paleobiology’. Aside from his academic work, Steve is very involved in communicating his research to the public and has made frequent television and radio appearances, spoken at many public events, schools and museums and published several popular books. He has consulted for numerous television documentaries and films, most recently the 2015 National Geographic Channel programme ‘T. rex Autopsy’, and is the resident palaeontologist for the BBC’s ‘Walking With Dinosaur’s’ programme.
Recent publications:
Lü, J. and Brusatte, S. L. (2015). A large, short-armed, winged dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the early Cretaceous of China and its implications for feather evolution.
Scientific Reports, 5, 11775 (DOI:10.1038/srep11775).
Brusatte, S. L. et al. (2015). The enxtinction of the dinosaurs. Biological reviews, 90, 628-642.
Brusatte, S. L., Lloyd, G. T., Wang, S. C. and Norell, M. A. (2014). Gradual assembly of avian body plan culminated in rapid rates of evolution across the dinosaur-bird transition. Current Biology, 24, 2386-2392.
Lü, J., Yi, L., Brusatte, S. L., Li, H. and Chen, L. (2014). A new clade of Asian Late Cretaceous long-snouted tyrannosaurids. Nature Communications, 5, 3788 (DOI:10.1038/ncomms4788).
Dinosaur Paleobiology, Wiley-Blackwell 2012.
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/geosciences/people?indv=3505