Speakers
Lucila Ohno-Machado - MD, PhD, MBA
Yale University
Dr. Onho-Machado holds a PhD in medical information sciences and computer science at Stanford University, a MBA in healthcare administration at Getulio Vargas Foundation and a MD at São Paulo University. Dr Ohno-Machado is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), chair of UCSD department of Biomedical Informatics and associate dean for Informatics and Technology of UCSD Health Sciences. She is also an elected member of the International Academy of Health Science Informatics, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the National Academy of Medicine. Her interests focus on Medical Informatics and Computational Biology, working as principal investigator in projects like the California Precision Medicine Research Program Consortium and the Genetic & Social Determinants of Health.
Marco S Nobile – PhD
University of Venice, Italy
Dr. Nobile has a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, all received from the University of Milano-Bicocca (Milano, Italy). He is associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics (DAIS) of the Ca’ Foscari University (Venice, Italy). Dr Nobile is guest researcher at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands).He is associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence and for Frontiers in Genetics. His main research interest is Computational Intelligence and he extensively exploits creative combinations of such techniques to create automatic tools able to tackle complex problems in Healthcare, Systems Biology, Synthetic Biology, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Imaging.
Serghei Mangul -PhD
University of Southern California
Dr Mangul is an assistant professor in the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the USC School of Pharmacy. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA’s Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences. Before that, he was a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School after he earned his PhD in bioinformatics at Georgia State University. His work combines expertise in computational biology and bioscience to help close the digital divide that can prevent life scientists from maximizing the potential of data-driven investigation. Mangul’s research focuses on improving the techniques of bioinformatics - computational analysis of biological data - to better understand the mechanisms of disease.
Alessandro de Mello Varani - PhD
Paulista State University
Dr. Varani has a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of São Paulo and a specialization in bioinformatics from the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing. Currently, Dr Varani is a researcher at the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho and develops several lines of research in the areas of metagenomics and bioinformatics of microorganisms and plants. He is particularly interested in studying the mechanisms that govern the evolution and structure of genomes, focusing on the role of transposable elements in the evolution and genomic structure of bacteria and plants. To this end, he developed several computational approaches to prospect, classify, catalog and analyze these TEs, based on the knowledge of their experimentally revealed biological mechanisms of mobilization.
Alexandre Rossi Paschoal - PhD
Federal Technological University of Parana
Dr Paschoal holds a specialization in Informatics in Education and Administration in Linux Networks from the Federal University of Lavras and a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of São Paulo. He held a postdoctoral degree in bioinformatics at the University of Leizipg-Germany. He works with topics related to machine learning, data mining, modeling and biological data integration. The specific line of research in Bioinformatics in the area of Computational Biology of RNAs. He is currently an associate professor at the department of Computer Science at the UTFPR Campus Cornélio Procópio and coordinator of the academic postgraduate program in bioinformatics.
Ana Tereza Ribeiro de Vasconcelos - PhD
National Laboratory of Scientific Computing
Dr Vasconcelos holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, a Master's degree in Biological Sciences (Biophysics) and a PhD in Biological Sciences (Genetics) from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is currently a researcher at the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing / MCTI where she coordinates the Bioinformatics Laboratory and the Darcy Fontoura de Almeida Computational Genomics Unit. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She participated in the creation and was the first president of the Brazilian Association of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (AB3C). She is currently on the board of SBPC (2021-2023) as second treasurer and is first vice-president of the INTERCIENCIA Association, a Federation of Associations for the Advancement of Science in the Americas. She coordinates the Fluminense Network of omics in COVID-19. She has experience in the areas of Genomics, Bioinformatics and Biology.
Carolina Minnicelli - PhD
MicroCiclo
Dr Minnicelli holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Pernambuco, a master's degree in oncology from the National Cancer Institute, a doctorate in Development and Technological Innovation in Medicines from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and a postdoctoral degree in Microbiota of oil reservoirs. She is currently co-founder of Microciclo Biotecnologia Ltda, a startup that is in the development phase and aims to offer the service of bioremediation of oily industrial waste. She has experience in the field of Immunology, Genetics and Environmental Microbiology.
Francisco Prosdocimi - PhD
University of Rio de Janeiro
Dr Prosdocimi is an associate professor and researcher at the Leopoldo de Meis Institute of Medical Biochemistry (IBqM), at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Doctor in bioinformatics and master in genetics from UFMG, Francisco has important and consistent international research experiences, having worked at the Sanger Center (UK), Institut de Genetique et Biologie Moleculaire (France), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (US), Duke University ( US), Université de Bourdeaux (France), Universitat Wurzburg (Germany), Botanischer Garten (Germany) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He works mainly in the area of Plant and Animal Genomics, in addition to having produced outstanding works in Theoretical Biology in recent years by proposing concepts such as FUCA (First Universal Common Ancestor) and Chemical Symbiosis, which consists of a Margulian view of the origin of life.
João Trindade Marques - PhD
University of Minas Gerais
Resident at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Advanced Studies, prof. Marques has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais since 2010. He holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (1997), a master's degree (1998) and a doctorate (2002) from the Graduate Program in Microbiology at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He performed postdoctoral work at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland / OH (2002 to 2006) and at Northwestern University in Chicago / IL (2006 to 2010), both in the USA. He works in the areas of Immunology and Microbiology with emphasis on the role of non-coding RNAs and RNA pathways of interference in the virus-host interaction in invertebrate models such as the mosquito Aedes aegypti and the fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Helder Takashi Imoto Nakaya - PhD
University of Sao Paulo
Dr Nakaya is an associate professor at the University of Sao Paulo, in the Department of Clinical Analyses and Toxicology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He has a PhD in Molecular Biology with extensive training in Bioinformatics. He is an expert in Systems Vaccinology, an interdisciplinary field that combines systems-wide measurements, networks, and predictive modeling in the context of vaccines and infectious disease. Dr. Nakaya has developed systems biology approaches to understand and predict the mechanisms of vaccine induced-immunity for Yellow Fever, seasonal Influenza, Meningococcal, and Tularemia vaccines. His lab is focused on investigating the basis of infectious diseases using computational systems biology. Additionally, Dr. Nakaya is an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology.Dr Nakaya is an associate professor at the University of Sao Paulo, in the Department of Clinical Analyses and Toxicology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He has a PhD in Molecular Biology with extensive training in Bioinformatics. He is an expert in Systems Vaccinology, an interdisciplinary field that combines systems-wide measurements, networks, and predictive modeling in the context of vaccines and infectious disease. Dr. Nakaya has developed systems biology approaches to understand and predict the mechanisms of vaccine induced-immunity for Yellow Fever, seasonal Influenza, Meningococcal, and Tularemia vaccines. His lab is focused on investigating the basis of infectious diseases using computational systems biology. Additionally, Dr. Nakaya is an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology.
Henrique Marques-Souza - PhD
University of Campinas
Dr Marques-Souza holds a PhD in genetics and functional genomics from the University of Cologne, was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and an associate researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Dr Marques-Souza is currently associate professor and head of the department of Biochemistry and Tissue Biology at the Institute of Biology at UNICAMP. His career has been dedicated to understanding the function of genes important for the development, physiology and survival of organisms considered pests or agricultural pathogens. For this, he uses molecular tools of genome editing (CRISPR-Cas9), gene silencing (RNAi) and global analysis of gene expression (RNA-seq). The focus of his laboratory is to develop biotechnological solutions through RNAi gene silencing technology to control agricultural pests and diseases.
Leonardo Capistrano Ferreira – PhD
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Dr Ferreira holds a PhD in biochemistry from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. During his postdoctoral studies at the Instituto de Medicina Tropical at UFRN, he worked with the analysis of transcriptomes from patients with visceral leishmaniasis and Berardinelli syndrome. He is currently an adjunct professor at the department of Biochemistry at UFRN and is interested in the genetics of complex diseases, with an emphasis on infectious diseases and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
Lucymara Agnez Lima – PhD
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Dr Lima holds a PhD in biological sciences (biology/genetics) from the University of São Paulo and a postdoctoral degree from the Universitat de Barcelona. She is currently a full professor at UFRN, and permanent advisor in postgraduate courses in Biochemistry (UFRN), RENORBIO (PhD linked to the Northeast Network of Biotechnology-Multinstitutional) and Bioinformatics (UFRN). She is also a representative of the Biosciences Center at the Oil and Gas Nucleus and on the FUNPEC board of directors. She is a member of the deliberative council of the BioInova business incubator at the UFRN Biosciences Center. She is co-founder of the startup MicroCiclo Biotecnologia LTDA, in incubation at the BioInova incubator (UFRN). She has experience in genetics, working mainly on the following subjects: DNA repair, mutagenesis, oxidative stress, human genetics, genomics, microorganism genetics, metagenomics, petroleum degradation, biosurfactants and bioremediation.
Marcel Ribeiro-Dantas – PhD
Seqera Labs
Dr. Ribeiro-Dantas holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Sorbonne Université having conducted his research on Causal Inference in non-experimental breast cancer data at Institut Curie. He also holds an M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte researching Ewing Sarcoma, plus two graduate degrees in Big Data and Health Informatics, and a Computer Engineering degree from the same university. He is currently the Nextflow and nf-core Developer Advocate for Latin America and the Caribbean at Seqera Labs, the leading provider of open-source workflow orchestration software needed for data pipeline processing, cloud infrastructure, and secure collaboration.
Mariana Boroni – PhD
National Cancer Institute
Dr Boroni is an associate researcher at the National Cancer Institute (INCA), leader of the laboratory of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; professor of the graduate program in oncology at INCA; co-founder of startup OneSkin. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in biochemistry from the Federal University of Viçosa, a PhD in bioinformatics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (with a sandwich period at the NIH-National Institute of Health, Bethesda, United States). She had professional experience in bioinformatics (postdoctoral) at the Gene Center at Ludwig Maximilian München University, Germany and at the Center for Computational Biology at the Cancer and Genomic Sciences Institute at the University of Birmingham, England, as a visiting researcher. She works in the area of bioinformatics, molecular biology and biochemistry, with emphasis on analysis and integration of different omics, such as genomics, epigenomics and transcriptomics and application of artificial intelligence techniques in the biology of cancer and aging.
Milton Yutaka Nishiyama Junior – PhD
Butantan Institute
Dr Nishiyama holds a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of São Paulo and currently he is an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Applied Toxinology (LETA) and coordinator of the Center for Bionformatics and Computational Biology at the Butantan Institute. His team works in the areas of machine learning, neural networks, big data and knowledge discovery with emphasis on information systems and molecular biology, involving the prediction of molecular targets, bioactive peptides and discovery of new toxins, based on the integration of large-scale data from multi-omics of Homo sapiens and non-model organisms, such as venomous animals and pathogenic organisms related to public health, to understand the molecular mechanisms that govern biological systems.
Raquel C de Melo Minardi - PhD
Federal University of Minas Gerais
Dr Minardi is a computer scientist and holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Federal University of Minas Gerais. She got a post-doc at Comissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (CEA) / Genoscope, France. She is an associate professor at the Computer Science department of UFMG, a researcher in Bioinformatics since 2003 and is a PI at the Bioinformatics and Systems Laboratory. Her main research interests involve the development of models, algorithms and heuristics to biological problems solving and information visualization.
Rodrigo Romão do Nascimento – MsC
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Rodrigo Romão is director of the Metropole Digital Technological Park, president of the Potiguar Network of Incubators and Technological Parks (REPIN), and leader of the WG-Entrepreneurial Education of the Thematic Commission on Innovation, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte state (COINCITEC). He is also a member of the municipal council of Science and Technology (COMCIT) of the city of Natal, and member of the sectorial chamber of Microentrepreneurs and Small Businesses of the state of RN. He is a specialist administrator in project management at Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Minas Gerais and holds a master dregree in information and knowledge management at UFRN. Romão worked in the health and mining industrial segments and, since 2016, he have been working in the management of entrepreneurship and innovation environments, where is also work as a researcher. The domain themes are Entrepreneurship, Innovation Management, Knowledge Management, Agile and Lean Methodologies, Design Thinking and Creative Process applied to Learning.
Sandro José de Souza – PhD
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Dr. Souza holds a degree in Biology from the Federal University of Paraná (1989) and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of São Paulo (1993). From 1995 to 1998, he was a Pew Latin American Fellow at Harvard University. He was one of the pioneers of genomics and bioinformatics in Brazil. He was an associate member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research from 1999 to 2012. He is currently a Full Professor at the Instituto do Cérebro at UFRN. Elected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2009. He was Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago in 2011. He is currently a CNPq 1A Research Fellow.
Tetsu Sakamoto – PhD
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Dr. Sakamoto is a biologist and holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Throughout his career, he developed computational tools and databases in the area of molecular phylogeny, such as TaxOnTree and Taxallnomy. Currently, he is a Professor at the Instituto Metrópole Digital (IMD) and a member of the Bioinformatics post-graduate program at UFRN. His main interests involve software and database development related to Bioinformatics, the discovery of genetic factors associated with a phenotype, evolution, machine learning, and structural biology.