Nancy Bonini
Dr. Bonini is the Florence R.C. Murray Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology (School of Arts and Sciences) at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty in the Cell & Developmental Biology Department in the Perelman School of Medicine, with affiliations with the Cell and Molecular Biology (CAMB) and Neuroscience Graduate Groups (NGG). Beginning in her post-doctoral studies under Dr. Seymour Benzer, Dr. Bonini focused on using the fly as a tool for understanding the genetic basis of the brain and behavior. Since establishing her lab at Penn in 1994, she has continued to make significant contributions in the fields of genetics, molecular biology and degeneration using the fly to elucidate mechanisms of human neurodegenerative disease, brain injury and aging. Her pioneering work in this field has resulted in numerous accolades including a David and Lucile Packard Award, John Merck Scholars Award, being named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an NIH R35 Outstanding Investigator award. Dr. Bonini is also an elected member of the National Academy of Science, and elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, an elected member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science.
Nicholas Lee-Ping Chia
Dr. Chia received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2006, and from 2006-2011 was a postdoctoral fellow at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Biocomplexity research theme. He then went on to a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Systems Biology before becoming a faculty member at Mayo Clinic. He has served as junior editor for several journals, including mSystems and Frontiers. He is currently focusing efforts in several areas including inverse reinforcement learning for cancer evolution to develop multiple generative modeling framework for treating cancer, which encodes insights of tumor development and progression on the molecular level to extrapolate the evolutionary trajectory of tumors, and personalized probiotic design, an automated, personalized approach that focuses on identifying which probiotics can become established and carry out the desired function in a given patient. Selected honors include the Humboldt Fellowship and Fredrick P. Li Impact Award (AACR).