Drew Weissmann, USA

Lecture Title: NUCLEOSIDE MODIFIED MRNA-LNP THERAPEUTICS

4^th November 2026

Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is recognized for his work alongside Katalin Karikó in discovering the modified mRNA technology, which has launched a new era of vaccine and therapeutic development. Their mRNA research breakthrough has been used in both the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines and has revolutionized the field of vaccine development. Dr. Weissman’s current research focuses on developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine to stop the next coronavirus epidemic, a universal flu vaccine, cancer therapeutics, a vaccine to prevent herpes, as well as developing in vivo gene therapy to allow worldwide use and a variety of protein therapeutics delivered with mRNA-LNPs. He has recently expanded his efforts in building scientific and medical equity and is developing the full RNA-LNP ecosystem of development, testing, and use in low and middle income countries.

Dr. Weissman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry and enzymology from Brandeis University in 1981 and his M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology and microbiology in 1987 at Boston University School of Medicine. Following a residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, he took a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Weissman hold many patents and has published over 400 papers. He has been recognized with numerous awards including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, and the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.

Célia M. Manaia, Portugal

Lecture Title: Environmental Antimicrobial Resistance: Both Symptom and Risk

4^th November 2026

C. Manaia is a Full Professor at the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia, Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Her research focuses on the ecology of bacteria and their resistance to antibiotics in the urban water cycle, particularly in wastewater environments. She has published extensively and has made significant contributions to global efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance in the environment (ORCID iD 0000-0002-3674-1789).

Emmanuelle Charpentier, Germany

Lecture title: TRANSFORMING LIFE SCIENCES THROUGH THE POWER OF MICROBIOLOGY: THE EXAMPLE OF GENE EDITING WITH CRISPR

5^th November 2026

Emmanuelle Charpentier is a French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist. She is founder, scientific and managing director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. She is co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics and ERS Genomics with Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy. She has received numerous prestigious international awards and honors, and is an elected member of national and international scientific academies. More information about Emmanuelle is available at http://www.emmanuelle-charpentier.org/

Craig Venter, USA

Lecture title: SYNTHETIC GENOMES AND CELLS TO UNDERSTAND CELLULAR SYSTEMS

6^th November 2026

J. CRAIG VENTER, Ph.D., Founder, CEO and Chairman, the J. Craig Venter Institute, is renowned for his contributions in genomics including sequencing the first draft human genome, the first complete diploid human genome and construction of the first synthetic bacterial cell.

He and his teams’ current research programs include continued analysis of the human genome with a focus on the intersection of the genome and all physical characteristics and how this relates to disease and health; synthetic biology advances; infectious diseases; and discovering and understanding genetic diversity in the world’s oceans.

Venter is a recipient of the 2008 National Medal of Science and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of The Voyage of Sorcerer II: The Expedition That Unlocked the Secrets of the Ocean’s Microbiome (Harvard University Press, 2023), Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life (Viking, 2013) and A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life (Viking, 2007).