Mary Chan is the Acting Chair of the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She obtained her B.Eng. (Chem) and Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore and MIT in 1986 and 1993, respectively. Professor Chan joined the University in 2001, bringing with her extensive experience from the chemical industry. She was formerly a senior technical manager in Sipix Imaging (CA, USA) before joining NTU. Her main research interests are in polymers in nanoscience and biotechnology, and she has published extensively, with more than 165 papers in top-tier journals. She has published extensively in top tier journals such as Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Small, Biomaterials, etc.

Xuesi Chen is a Professor at the Key Laboratory of Polymer Ecomaterials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry since 1999. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Jilin University (1978), M.S. from the Graduate School of Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (1985), and his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from Waseda University (1993). He completed his postdoctoral studies at the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics in Pennsylvania University (1999). Prof Chen's current research interests are in biodegradable polymers for intelligent drug delivery and gene delivery; tissue engineering; novel catalysts for stereoselective polymerization of racemic lactides; and processing and industrialization of PLA.

Utkan Demirci is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2007. He received his B.S. Electrical Engineering as a James B. Angell Scholar (Summa Cum Laude) from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1999), M.S. Electrical Engineering (2001), M.S. Management Science and Engineering (2005), and Ph.D. Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (2005). Dr. Demirci applies nano and microscale technologies to manipulate cells in nanoliter volumes to enable solutions to real world problems in medicine. He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications in journals including PNAS, Advanced Materials, and Lab on a Chip, over 80 conference abstracts and proceedings, and 10 book chapters. His work was highlighted in Wired Magazine, Nature Photonics, MIT Technology Review Magazine, AIP News, BioTechniques, and Biophotonics, while his scientific work has been recognized by numerous national and international awards, such as the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2012), IEEE-EMBS Early Career Achievement Award (2012), IEEE-EMBS Translational Research Award (2011) and the Chinese International Young Scientist Award by the National Science Foundation of China (2010).

Hideyoshi Harashima is a Professor of Pharmaceutics and the chair of the Laboratory of Molecular Design of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Tokyo in 1981, 1983 and 1987, respectively. After a post-doctoral training in the School of Medicine (Anesthesiology) at Stanford University, he became an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokushima. He was appointed a Full Professor of the Laboratory for Molecular Design of Pharmaceutics at Hokkaido University in 1999. He was also appointed a Professor of a newly built Laboratory of Innovative Nanomedicine. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Controlled Release and Cancer Science, and as an Executive Editor of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. He is President of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology of Japan since 2012.

James L. Hedrick received his Ph.D. from James McGrath at Virginia Tech in Material Science and Engineering. He joined IBM Research in 1985 in the Advance Organic Materials Group. James has focused on the synthesis and basic structure property relationships on synthetic polymers for advance microelectronic and biomedicinal related applications. Areas of emphasis include organocatalytic methods to biocompatible/degradable polymers, functional oligomers, copolymers and complex architectures. He is the recipient of the ACS, Division of Polymer Chemistry, Carl S. Marvel Award 2003, ACS, Division of Polymer Chemistry, Industrial Sponsors Award 2006, Belgian Polymer Chemistry Award 2008, 2009 Cooperative Research Award in polymer science and engineering with Robert Waymouth of Stanford (ACS PMSE Division), ACS Fellow in Polymer Division (2010), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Presidential Green Chemistry Award 2012 (shared with Robert Waymouth, Stanford University). He has co-authored more than 360 papers and has more than 80 patents issued.

Allan S. Hoffman is Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received his B.S., M.S. and Sc.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering between 1953 and 1957. He taught on the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT for a total of ten years, and for the past 40 years he has been Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Three special recognitions he has received are the Founders Award of the Society for Biomaterials (2000), Election to the National Academy of Engineering (2005), and the Founders Award of the Controlled Release Society (2007). A special symposium (“NIPAM 80”) is scheduled in Maui, Hawaii on December 14-17, 2012, to celebrate Prof. Hoffman's 80th birthday.

Li Yang Hsu is a medical doctor working at the National University Health System, Singapore. He completed his training as an infectious diseases specialist at the Singapore General Hospital, obtained his Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene at the Cayetano Heridia University in Peru, followed by a Master in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also spent one year sitting in front of a computer at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. His primary research interests are in the evolution and prevention of antimicrobial resistance, and improving outcomes from infections in cancer patients.

Klavs F. Jensen is Warren K. Lewis Professor and Head of the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his chemical engineering education from the Technical University of Denmark (M.Sc.) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD). His research interests revolve around microfabrication, testing, and integration of microsystems for chemical and biological discovery, synthesis and processing. He serves on advisory boards to universities, companies, professional societies, and governments. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Allan P. Colburn, Charles C. M. Stine, R. H. Wilhelm, and W. H. Walker Awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Professor Jensen is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Eng Hin Lee is currently Professor and Emeritus Consultant of Orthopedic Surgery, NUHS and is the Program Leader of the NUS Tissue Engineering Program (NUSTEP). Dr Lee received his medical and postgraduate medical training in Canada and specializes in Pediatric Orthopedics. He is known internationally for his research on stem cells and tissue engineering in the musculoskeletal system. His research has won him many international and national awards. He is a member of the editorial boards of several international refereed journals in orthopedic surgery and basic research in stem cells and tissue engineering. He has over 150 publications in refereed journals and over 300 conference papers. He has co-authored a book entitled “Stem Cells: from Bench to Bedside” which is used by many international centers as a reference and textbook for stem cell courses. The book is now in its second edition.

Kam W. Leong is the James B. Duke Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a postdoctoral training in Applied Biological Sciences at MIT. After serving as a faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for 20 years, he moved to Duke University in 2006 to work on applying nanotechnology to drug, gene, immuno-, and cell therapy. He serves on the editorial boards of eight journals, owns more than 50 issued patents, and has published ~250 peer-reviewed research manuscripts. His research focuses on understanding and exploiting the interactions of cells with nanostructures for therapeutic applications.

Dr. Dan Luo is currently Professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He obtained his B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China and his Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University. He carried out his postdoctoral training in Chemical Engineering at Cornell under Prof. Mark Saltzman. Dr. Luo was a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award, the Cornell Provost's Award for Distinguished Scholarship, the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, the Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial Board Award, New York State Faculty Development Award, CALS Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Basic Research, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Point-of-Care Diagnostics Grand Challenge Award. Dr. Luo was also selected three times by undergraduate students as a Cornell outstanding educator. More information about Dr. Luo can be found at http://luolabs.bee.cornell.edu

Buddy D. Ratner is the Director of University of Washington Engineered Biomaterials (UWEB21) Engineering Research Center and the Darland Endowed Chair in Technology Commercialization. He is Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, University of Washington. Ratner received his Ph.D. (1972) in polymer chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Ratner is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), AVS, AAAS, ACS and the International College of Fellows Biomaterials Science and Engineering. In 2002 Ratner was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA. He has launched nine companies and won numerous awards including the AVS Welch Award (2002), Society for Biomaterials Founders Award (2004), the BMES Pritzker Distinguished Lecturer Award (2008), the Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal (2009), the Galletti Award (2011) and the George Winter Award of the European Society for Biomaterials (2012). His research interests include biomaterials, tissue engineering, polymers, biocompatibility, surface analysis and plasma thin film deposition.

Samuel Sia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. His lab focuses on using microfluidics for global health diagnostics and for 3D tissue biology. He obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Alberta, Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University, and postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry at Harvard University. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, National Science and Engineering Council of Canada Predoctoral Fellow, and Canadian Institute of Health Postdoctoral Fellow. Since 2005, he has been a faculty member of Columbia University's Biomedical Engineering department. His lab’s work has been supported by the NIH (NHLBI and NINR), NSF, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, American Heart Association, and World Health Organization. He has been named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT Technology Review, and one of 10 innovators in human health and sustainability by NASA. His research has been covered by NPR, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, Voice of America, and Agence France Presse. He is a founder of Claros Diagnostics, a venture capital-backed company that is developing novel point-of-care diagnostics products; the company's first microfluidics product for monitoring prostate cancer growth received European Union regulatory approval in 2010.

Kenneth A. Smith is the Edwin R. Gilliland Professor of Chemical Engineering (emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his doctorate (1962) from MIT and did postdoctoral work at University of Cambridge. Professor Smith's numerous awards and honors include the Professional Progress Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (1981) and election to the National Academy of Engineering (1983). For about a decade, he also served as Vice-President for Research and Associate Provost at MIT, in which capacity he was responsible for MIT's research policies and for its interdisciplinary centers and laboratories.

Myron Spector is a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery (Biomaterials), Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, since March 1993. He is also Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, since June 1993. Professor Spector is a Research Career Scientist and serves as Director of Tissue Engineering at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System in Boston, and also serves as Director of Orthopedic Research at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Spector obtained his B.S. (1967), M.S. (1969), and Ph.D. (1971) degrees in Civil Engineering and Civil Engineering-Biotechnology from the Carnegie Institute of Technology/Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Biochemistry-Crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh in 1971. Dr. Spector has held faculty positions at Clemson University, the Medical University in South Carolina, and Emory University.

Galen D. Stucky is the E. Khashoggi Industries, LLC Professor in Letters and Science; Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Professor in the Materials Department, and a member of the Interdepartmental Program in Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University (1962) and conducted postdoctoral study at MIT. Professor Stucky received the American Chemical Society Award in Chemistry of Materials (2002) and the International Mesostructured Materials Association Award (2004), and was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005).

Suresh Valiyaveettil received his Ph.D. in Organic Supramolecular Chemistry from University of Victoria, Canada. He joined and started a multidisciplinary program in Materials Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1998. Prior to joining NUS, he worked at the University of Twente, Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research and Cornell University. He has published more than 150 papers in international refereed journals. Recently, his group has established strong programs in biomineralization and nanotoxicity. His current research interests are in nanohealth, multifunctional polymers and developing methods for water purification.

Van Vliet leads the SMART BioSystems & Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG in Singapore, and is an Associate Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and Biological Engineering at MIT. She earned her Sc.B.and Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering at Brown University (1998) and MIT (2002), respectively, and completed her postdoctoral studies at Children's Hospital Boston. At MIT, Van Vliet leads Laboratory for Material Chemomechanics and directs the Nanomechanical Technology Laboratory, a multiuser experimental facility. She was awarded the US NSF CAREER Award and US President's Early Career Award in Science & Technology. Van Vliet's group focuses on understanding the coupling between chemistry and mechanics at complex material interfaces, developing new experimental and computational analyses to quantify this feedback both for engineered functional nanocomposites and for the biological cell-material interface.

Viola Vogel is a Professor in the Department of Health Science and Technology at the ETH Zürich, where she heads the Laboratory of Applied Mechanobiology. She received her doctorate from Frankfurt University after completing her graduate research at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and was then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Vogel started her academic career in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Seattle (1991-2004), and was there the Founding Director of the Center for Nanotechnology (1997-2003) before she moved to the ETH in 2004. Major awards include the Otto-Hahn Medal from the Max-Planck Society (1988), Feodor-Lynen Fellowship Humboldt Foundation (1989-1990), “FIRST” Award from the National Institutes of Health (General Medicine) (1993), Research Award from the Philip Morris Foundation (2005), Julius Springer Award for Applied Physics (2006), the ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (2008), the International Solvay Chair in Chemistry Brussels (2012), and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Tampere Finland (2012).

Jun Wang received a joint B.S. in Chemistry and Cell Biology in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry and Physics in 1999 from Wuhan University. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Singapore and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 1999 to 2004. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the University of Science and Technology of China as a professor of Life Sciences and Polymer Chemistry. He is a joint professor of Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale of China. He received the Capsugel Innovation Award in Controlled Drug Delivery from the Controlled Release Society in 2001. He was selected as the awardee of “One Hundred Talents” by the Chinese Academy of Science in 2005 and received the “Outstanding Young Scholar Award” from the National Science Foundation of China in 2011. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Biomaterials Science. His main research interest is drug, siRNA delivery and nanomedicine.

Feng-Shou Xiao received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Chemistry, Jilin University, China. From there he moved to the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China and the Catalysis Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan, where he was involved in collaborative research between China and Japan. He was a Ph.D. student in Dalian for two years and in Sapporo for two years, and was awarded his Ph.D. degree at Jilin University in 1990. After completing his postdoctoral work at the University of California at Davis, USA, he joined the faculty at Jilin University in 1994-2009, where he was a full and distinguished professor of Chemistry. Since November 2009, he moved to Zhejiang University as a distinguished professor. His research is mainly involved in synthesis, characterization and catalysis of zeolites and nanoporous materials.

Yi-Yan Yang received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Tsinghua University, China in 1990. She is a group leader at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore. She is a co-inventor of more than 20 patents, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal publications. Her research group is mainly focused on macromolecular antimicrobials and self-assembled nanostructures for drug/gene delivery.

Jin-Quan Yu earned his B.S. in Chemistry in 1987 at the East China Normal University, Shanghai, M.S. in Organic Chemistry in 1990 from the Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry, China, and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1999 at Cambridge University, UK, under the direction of Professor J. B. Spencer. Dr. Yu completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 2002, under the direction of Professor E. J. Corey. From 2003-2004, Dr. Yu was a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK. From 2004-2006, he held the position of Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. In 2007, he began his position as a Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, and in August 2010 he was promoted to a Full Professor. His contributions to synthetic chemistry have recently been recognized by several awards, including the ACS Cope Scholar Award and the Mukaiyama Award.