Conference Speakers

Prof. Chase Beisel is a full professor in the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research based on Würzburg, Germany, where he heads the RNA Synthetic Biology department. Chase is originally from the US, where he received his BS (Iowa State University) and PhD (California Institute of Technology) both in chemical engineering. After completing his PhD thesis work with Christina Smolke at Caltech and then postdoctoral training with Gisela Storz at the National Institutes of Health, he launched his independent research group as a faculty member of the chemical & biomolecular engineering department at North Carolina State University. After receiving tenure and being promoted to associate professor, he transitioned to the HIRI shortly after its launch. His research group works at the interface of CRISPR biology and technologies, with the aim of translating discoveries into new and improved approaches to study, diagnose and treate infectious disease.

Aude Bernheim is a microbiologist interested in how bacteria fight off their viruses. She obtained her PhD from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France studying the evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems and led her post-doctoral research in the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israël focusing on the discovery of novel prokaryotic immune systems. She currently leads a lab at the Pasteur Institute in France exploring the conservation of immunity across domains of life. She's also an activist for a more inclusive and diverse science (both for people and the science itself).

Elizabeth Kellogg did her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and received a PhD from the University of Washington, working on computational biology in the group of David Baker. She then became a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eva Nogales at UC Berkeley using cryo-electron microscopy. Her scientific background results in a scientific approach that seeks to understand biology with a quantitative perspective, relying on biological structure determination and design. Since starting her own group at Cornell University in 2019, Dr. Kellogg has sought to understand how transposons reshape genomes and how they can be repurposed as genome-editing tools. In particular, her group has investigated the behavior and molecular mechanisms of programmable, CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs), to determine how DNA integration is regulated spatially and temporally in a genomic context, using a combination of biochemical, structural, single-molecule and genetic approaches. Among other honors, Dr. Kellogg was selected as Pew Biomedical Scholar in 2021 and received the 2023 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society. She joined St. Jude as an Associate Member in 2023.

Ming Li is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his undergraduate studies at Shandong University and obtained a PhD from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He currently leads a lab focusing on the diverse microbial defense systems, including but not limited to CRISPR-Cas, toxin-antitoxin (TA), and exploring their potential applications in biotechnology. Li’s group has uncovered the CRISPR-regulated toxin-antitoxin (CreTA), which was classified as a new type VIII TA, and investigated its widespread presence in type I and V-A systems, showcasing its critical role in protecting CRISPR-Cas against a wide range of anti-CRISPRs elements/mechanisms. Li’s lab also attempts to AssociaTe TA and CRISPR-Cas to Kill (ATTACK) multidrug-resistant pathogens.

Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University.
Talk Title: RNA Word and Gene Editing Research Interests:
The Liu lab uses multidisciplinary approaches to study the following topics:
（1） Design and development of new gene-editing tools
（2） Mechanism study about RNA-involved nuclease machinery
Major research achievements: Gogo Liu’s group has long utilized multidisciplinary approaches to explore and develop RNA functional elements with nucleic acid manipulation capabilities, as well as related molecular machines, successfully establishing several sets of novel gene editing systems. In terms of using RNA as a guiding element for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has identified and developed nucleic acid nuclease systems such as CRISPR-Casπ that use large guide RNAs, and proposed the hypothesis that the CRISPR-Cas system may have originated from RNA ribozymes; in terms of using RNA as a regulatory element for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has revealed the supervisory role of structural RNA molecules in the precise transposition of retrotransposons, and developed a retrotransposon-based tool for large fragment gene insertion; in terms of using RNA as the executor for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has identified and developed the HYER ribozyme that can cut DNA via hydrolysis, contributing to a new generation of gene editing platform independent of proteins.

Nicole is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Rice University in Houston, Texas with dual majors in Biochemistry & Cell Biology and Classical Studies. She completed her graduate thesis in John Boothroyd’s lab at Stanford University, where she exploredToxoplasma gondii cell biology and pathogenesis. Her fascination with the molecular arms race led her to explore Cas12a anti-CRISPRs in Joseph Bondy-Denomy’s lab at the University of California, San Francisco. Her lab currently explores molecular antagonism between bacteria and phage and their applications. Outside of lab, Nicole enjoys tango dancing, cooking, live music, and comedy shows.

Joshua Modell is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his Bachelor of Sciences from Duke University and worked with Dr. David McClay and Dr. Cynthia Bradham on the development of sea urchin embryos. He was then a technician for two years at the Broad Institute and worked on the Connectivity Map project under Dr. Todd Golub and Dr. Justin Lamb. Joshua next received his Ph.D. from MIT where he studied the cell cycle of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus in the lab of Dr. Michael Laub. As a postdoc at Rockefeller University in the lab of Dr. Luciano Marraffini, Joshua became fascinated with memory formation in CRISPR-Cas9, and in 2018, he opened his own lab at Johns Hopkins where he continues to study strategies of anti-phage defense.

Mitchell O’Connell is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at University of Rochester and a member of the Center for RNA Biology. He received his Bachelor of Sciences (Advanced) in at the University of Sydney with a double major in Biochemistry and Pharmacology. Mitchell then obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Prof. Joel Mackay, where he studied RNA-binding zinc fingers and used combinatorial techniques to design artificial zinc fingers with new RNA-binding specificities. After completing his PhD, Mitchell was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley, where he made a number of discoveries related to the ability for CRISPR-Cas systems to target RNA. In 2017, he moved to the University of Rochester and set his own lab, which focuses on understanding the biochemical mechanisms of RNA-mediated gene regulation, the development of new CRISPR-based tools to study these processes, and more recently understanding the role of membrane proteins that reside within CRISPR-Cas and other putative immune systems in anti-phage defense.