Speakers

Visiting Staff in Neurological Intitute , Veterans General Hospital -Taipei, Taiwan.

Dr. Kon-Ping Lin is the Visiting Staff in Neurological Intitute , Veterans General Hospital Taipei, Taiwan.

1971, he graduated from the department of Kaohsiung Medical College, and went to Taipei Veterans General Hospital for five-year residency training in neurology. In 1977, he worked as a research fellow at the Royal Free Hospital in London, specializing in peripheral Neuropathy, in the 1998 Republic of China, went to the Houston Medical School again to learn the clinical related technology of molecular biology.
He specialties are Inherited and acquired neuropathies.

Dean of Research and Development
Distinguished Professor, Institute of Brain Science (IBS), Collegeof Medicine

Dr. Jin-Wu Tsai is the Dean of Research and Development and Distinguished Professor at NYCU, Taiwan, focusing on research in brain development and disorders. Dr. Tsai received his double Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and Zoology from National Taiwan University and Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York. He has been using interdisciplinary approaches to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms in brain development and brain malformation, such as lissencephaly and focal cortical dysplasia (FCD). He has identified key genes and molecular pathways for neural stem cell proliferation and neuronal migration during the development of cerebral cortex. In recent years, his group invented a transposon-based genetic screening method to further identify novel genes involved in these processes. His work was published in prominent journals including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature Communications, Developmental Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, etc. Dr. Tsai has received numerous honors for his contributions to this field, including the Kenneth K. Wu Lecture (2021), Outstanding Research Award from Ministry of Science and Technology (2020), Epilepsy Research Award from Taiwan Epilepsy Society (2020), TienTe Lee Award for Medical and Pharmacological Technologies (2019), Academia Sinica Research Award for Junior Research Investigators (2019), Y. Z. Hsu Science Paper Award (2019), Recognition Award from Genentech Inc. (2011), Rover Award for Outstanding Achievement in Anatomy and Cell Biology (2008), Brunie Prize in Neural Stem Cell Research (2005), etc.

Dr. Jeffrey Rothstein focuses on neuromuscular diseases, with a particular focus on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Other clinical areas relevant to his laboratory-based research include: idiopathic stupor, epilepsy and motor neuron degeneration.

His laboratory includes more than 20-post doctoral fellows, neurology residents, neuromuscular and epilepsy fellows, undergraduate students, technicians and ALS clinic staff. He has been the principal and/or local investigator in eight national or international trials in ALS. He is the author of more than 100 articles on basic and clinical neuroscience. Dr. Rothstein's laboratory research is funded through the National Institutes of Health, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the ALS Association and Project A.L.S.

Dr. Jeffrey Rothstein received a masters degree in neurochemistry from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Illinois Health Sciences Center. He then obtained his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He went on to complete an internship at the University of North Carolina Memorial Hospital before joining The Johns Hopkins for his residency. While at Johns Hopkins, he became chief resident in neurology and completed his fellowship in neuromuscular disease.

Department of Pathology Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Chuan-Hsiang Huang received his M.D. from National Taiwan University and completed two years of residency in internal medicine. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Immunology at Johns Hopkins University, where he solved the crystal structure of PI3Kα, one of the most frequently mutated proteins in human cancers. Dr. Huang conducted his postdoctoral research in the lab of Peter Devreotes, studying cell motility using Dictyostelium and human neutrophils as models. In 2016 Dr. Huang started his own lab in the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins where his team investigates the dynamics, structure, and function of the RTK/Ras/PI3K/ERK signaling network in cellular processes and cancer. Dr. Huang has numerous publications, including papers in Science, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, and Cell. He has received many awards, including a Silver Medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad, the Mette Strand Award, the Julian Baumert Award, and the Damon Runyon Fellowship.

Distinguished Investigator, Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan
Professor, Institute of Genetics, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan

Prof. Tsai studied medicine at Taipei Medical College, Taiwan, before obtaining his Ph.D., at the Division of Human Genetics, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, City University of New York, USA. Following numerous fellowships through renowned institutions across United States including Division of Medical Genetics, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York, USA (1987-1988), Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, USA (1988-1990), Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children's Hospital, Boston, USA (1988-1990), Prof. Tsai joined the Institute of Genetics, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan, where he acted as Associate Professor until 1997.

Prof. Tsai then began as a Professor at the Institute of Genetics, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan, a position he has held for over 20 years. During this time, Prof. Tsai helped the establishment of genome research facility at the National Yang-Ming University and the National Health Research Institutes(NHRI), acting as Director, Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, NHRI, Taiwan from 2000 to 2007. Between 2017~2021, Prof. Tsai was the Director of Department of Research Planning and Development of NHRI. He has played an active role in leading NHRI research development and engineering key international collaboration programs with Japan and USA. He is the Principle Investigator of the Flagship Program of Precision Medicine for AsiaPacific Biomedical Silicon Valley.

Prof. Tsai's research areas include human genetics, cancer genomics, and microbial genomics. His laboratory has applied genetic mapping and genomic technology to identifying genes associated with human diseases. Using high-throughput genotyping and DNA sequencing, recently, his laboratory has succeeded in discovering the genes responsible for two inherited diseases: type II collagen in osteonecrosis and IL6 receptor family genes in primary cutaneous amyloidosis. Also, he has characterized the genomic alterations associated with lung cancer and liver cancer and investigated the genetic basis determining individual difference in cancer treatment response. In the microbial genomics filed, Professor Tsai is a world expert on several important pathogenic bacteria, including V. vulnificus, K. pneumoniae, A. baumannii, and M. tuberculosis, all of which pose threats to health globally.

Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor, Dermatology and Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco
Distinguished Research Fellow and Director, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica

Pui-Yan Kwok, MD, PhD, is the Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and, since 2017, the Director of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr. Kwok received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, and residency in dermatology and postdoctoral training at the Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Kwok’s research focuses on developing tools and strategies to study the human genome and the role of human variation in common diseases. He played key roles in many large international consortia, and he currently leads the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative, where a reference database with genetic profiles and clinical data of 1 million people is being built to improve health through disease risk prediction and tailored heath management guidelines.

Dr. Kwok is an Academician of the Academia Sinica, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the 2017 University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Distinguished Service Award and the 2022 Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Human Genetic and Genomic Research.

Dr. Arianna Tucci is a Medical Research Council clinician scientist fellow at Queen Mary University of London, UK.

She studied medicine and trained in Clinical Genetics at the University of Milan, Italy, and obtained her PhD in neurogenetics at University College London, UK. Her main

research interest is neurogenetics, with a focus on using bioinformatics to translate genetic data into clinically relevant findings.