Jim Huggett

Principal Scientist, LGC; Senior Lecturer, University of Surrey

Short biography TBA

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Allen Chan

Professor of Chemical Pathology, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Allen is currently serving as the Associate Vice-President (Knowledge Transfer) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Chairman of the Department of Chemical Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine at CUHK. He also serves as the Chief of Service for Chemical Pathology at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Allen’s research focus is on the development of plasma DNA-based technologies noninvasive prenatal testing and cancer detection. The noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) method developed by their team has since gained global recognition, with millions of tests performed annually. Allen is a co-inventor of over 120 inventions, boasting an impressive 1500 patents granted worldwide. In 2020, Nature Biotechnology acknowledged Allen's contributions, listing him as one of the top twenty translational researchers. Allen has pioneered the use of digital PCR for plasma DNA analysis. In 2009, he demonstrated that EGFR mutation can be sensitively detected in plasma of lung cancer patients by digital PCR. The “drop-off design” has been widely adopted for the detection of the exon 19 deletion and other variable deletions. The principle of NIPT was first illustrated using manual version of digital PCR. For these contribution, he was bestowed the “Positive Droplet Award” in 2023. Allen, together with his mentor Prof. Dennis Lo and long-term collaborator Prof. Rossa Chiu, ventured into the realm of entrepreneurship. They founded several biotechnology companies to further commercialize their inventions. Xcelom provided invaluable NIPT services to pregnant women, while Cirina, specializing in cancer-screening technologies, merged with Grail in 2017 before being acquired by Illumina for a staggering USD 8 billion. Close

Valerie Taly

Assistant Professor, UMC Utrecht

My research group (Translational Research and Microfluidics, TRAM) develops and uses microfluidic systems to perform experiments that are out of the possibilities of existing technologies.

We develop new tools, procedures and strategies for Cancer Research with three major focuses:

(i) Creating new generations of devices for the non-invasive detection of Cancer biomarkers with applications in personalized medicine, cancer recurrence detection and cancer diagnostics.

(ii) Highlighting of new Cancer biomarkers.

(iii) Developing whole platforms for toxicological analysis of chemical and drugs.ori Symons is also an honorary research fellow at the Peter Doherty Institute, he is involved in ongoing projects investigating nanomedicine with the goal to tackle HIV latency.

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Elisabeth Dequeker

Full professor, Head of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Officer for Medical Diagnostics, University of Leuven

Professor Elisabeth Dequeker, a chemist with a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Leuven, is an internationally recognized expert in quality management for medical diagnostic laboratories. She leads the Biomedical Quality Assurance Research Unit at the University of Leuven and is Head of the Quality Department for Medical Diagnostics and Regulatory Affairs Officer for Medical Diagnostics at University Hospitals Leuven. With over 25 years of experience, she specializes in external quality assessments (EQA), quality management systems, and validation of diagnostic tests.

She also serves as a liaison for the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) / Biomed Alliance and contributes to regulatory frameworks as part of the European Commission’s MDCG IVDR working group. A certified ISO auditor, she conducts audits for the Belgian accreditation authority and European bodies, driving advancements in medical diagnostics and laboratory quality.

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Stephen Bustin

Professor, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Stephen Bustin is Professor of Molecular Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), and a Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE). His research focuses on developing novel approaches for the early diagnosis of infectious diseases. As an expert witness at the 2007 Washington DC autism/MMR trial, his testimony was instrumental in debunking the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and childhood autism, laying the foundation for the development of the MIQE guidelines. Professor Bustin has authored numerous papers, review articles, and book chapters aimed at improving the reproducibility and robustness of molecular methods, particularly those involving reverse transcription and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). He has delivered hundreds of talks and workshops worldwide, including in North Korea. He has published three books: The A–Z of Quantitative PCR (2004), widely known as the “qPCR Bible,” The PCR Revolution (2011), and PCR Technology (2013). He is Editor-in-Chief (Gene Expression) of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and serves on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals.

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Alexandra Whale

Science Leader in Nucleic Acid Innovation, LGC

Dr. Alexandra Whale is a Science Leader in nucleic acid innovation at the LGC, National Measurement Institute for Chemical and Bioanalytical Measurements of the UK. Alexandra has ample experience in digital PCR. Her expertise includes assay design, such as higher-order multiplexing, for complex analyses in diverse areas such as viral vector production and characterisation, cancer diagnostics, regenerative medicine, quantum biology, and CRISPR gene editing.

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Megan Cleveland

Biologist, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland USA

Dr. Megan Cleveland is a research scientist at NIST, focusing on biomanufacturing and clinical diagnostics, with a special interest in digital PCR and next-generation sequencing. She is leading the release of NISTCHO (RM 8675), a reference material for monoclonal antibody production in a mammalian cell line. Dr. Cleveland also serves as the technical project lead for several viral reference materials, including H5N1, BK Virus, and JC Virus, contributing to diagnostic test harmonization and standardization.

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Diana Vargas-Gold

Research Scientist at the Public Health Research Institute, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers University

Diana Vargas-Gold, a microbiologist and Research Scientist at Rutgers University, has over 27 years of experience in microbiology and clinical diagnostics. Her research focuses on utilizing SuperSelective PCR primers and molecular beacon probes for non-invasive cancer diagnostics, enabling sensitive detection of somatic mutations via digital PCR (dPCR) and real-time PCR. She co-led projects with Bio-Rad to develop multiplexed ddPCR assays for detecting rare tumor signals in blood samples, and served as a subject matter expert with the NIPT team on molecular beacon design and optimizing chemistry for 200+ plex aneuploidy detection. She has also integrated the use of SuperSelective primers and molecular beacons into platforms such as Stilla Technologies’ Naica System and Qiagen’s QIAcuity Digital PCR System. Diana has authored numerous scientific publications and holds four U.S. patents. In collaboration with clinicians at the Rutgers Cancer Institute, she is developing sensitive dPCR assays for the early detection of lung cancer mutations and biomarker assays for pediatric central nervous system tumors.

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