Speakers

Ivan Ahel is EP Abraham Professor of Chemical Pathology at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford.

He was appointed in 2009 as a Junior Group Leader at the CRUK Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester, before moving to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, in 2013. General interest of Ivan’s laboratory are poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) family of enzymes and their roles in DNA damage response, infection, and immunity.

Ivan is an EMBO member, and he is also recipient of the Cancer Research UK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize (2013) and of the Biochemical Society’s GlaxoSmithKline Award (2022).

Johanna Ivaska is currently a Finnish Cancer Institute K. Albin Johansson Research Professor.

She is also Professor of Molecular Cell Biology at Turku Bioscience Center at the University of Turku in Finland. Her main research interests relate to the biological role of integrins in cancer progression.

The current main research focus are integrin mediated cell adhesion and migration, cell-matrix interactions and mechanosensing as well as molecular mechanisms governing endosomal traffic of integrins and growth factor receptors in cancer. 

Professor Robert Harris was named Professor of Immunotherapy in Neurological Diseases at Karolinska Institute 2013. Robert leads the research group Applied Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Centre for Molecular Medicine, a designated translational medicine centre at Karolinska Institute.

In addition to his life science research, Robert has been Academic Vice President for Doctoral Education since 2019. In 2014 Robert was the first to receive the KI pedagogy prize for a contribution to doctoral education. He was also President of ORPHEUS (2015-2022), which aims to stimulate quality assurance of PhD research and education and to strengthen career opportunities for PhD graduates.

Boris Turk received a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Ljubljana in 1993 and a PhD in Medical and Physiological Chemistry from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala in 1996. He is Head of Department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Structural Biology at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana and a full Prof. of Biochemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology at University of Ljubljana. He is an EMBO member and a member of Academia Euroepea. He was President of the International Proteolysis Society in 2011-2013, secretary general of European Cell Death Organization 2008-2017 and vice president of EMBC 2017-2020.

Currently he is member of FEBS Publishing Committee and EMBO Fellowship Committee. His research focuses on the understanding of the role of proteases, in particular lysosomal cysteine cathepsins, in inflammation-associated diseases, such as cancer and arthritis.