Prof. Dr. Alessandro Bertolino
Head Biomarkers and Clinical Imaging Group
F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland

“Imaging Genetics at the frontier of Drug Development in Neuroscience”

Dr Alessandro Bertolino is head of the Biomarkers and Clinical Imaging section in the NORD DTA at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Basic Medical Science, Neuroscience and Sense Organs at the University of Bari, Italy. Dr Bertolino received his MD in 1991 from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bari and completed his residency in psychiatry, also at the University of Bari in 1995. Between 1994 and 1999 he worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (MD, USA) and for the last 4 years of this period he was at the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. Starting from October of 1999, he has worked at the University of Bari, first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor. In 2010 he has also won a national competition for full professorship in psychiatry (venia legendi).

He completed his Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2002 at the University of Bari. He has been the recipient of the A. D’errico award from the Italian Society of Psychopathology and received Stanley Foundation grants in 1999 and 2002. He has also received several other research grants from the Italian government, the EU, the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).

Dr Bertolino has published a significant number of papers in peer-reviewed journals. At the beginning of his scientific career his work was predominantly focused on neuroimaging studies in schizophrenia. His more recent work has been centred around understanding genetic aetiology of schizophrenia and pharmacogenetics of response to treatment with antipsychotic drugs.

Prof. Dr. Gene Myers
Research Group Leader and Director
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

“Image-Based Molecular & Developmental Biology”

In 2012 Gene Myers became the founding director of the Systems Biology Center – Dresden (CSBD) that is part of the MPIs for Molecular Cell Biology and for the Physics of Complex Systems. Previously Gene had been a group leader at the HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus (JFRC) since its inception in 2005. Gene came to the JFRC from UC Berkeley where he was on the faculty of Computer Science from 2003 to 2005. From 1998 to 2002 he was the Vice President of Informatics Research at Celera Genomics where he and his team determined the sequences of the Drosophila, Human, and Mouse genomes using the whole genome shotgun technique that he advocated in 1996. Prior to that Gene was on the faculty of the University of Arizona for 17 years and he received his Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Colorado in 1981.

At the CSBD the Myers lab is building their own, next generation light microscopes with superior spatial and temporal resolution, capable of recording long time-series of developing organisms.  The lab also works on segmentation and tracking methods and software for application in development such as single cell expression analysis of C. elegans, the morphogenesis of fly wings, the development of the spine of a zebra fish, the regrowth of a salamander’s severed limb, and the development of every neuron in a fly’s brain.