Invited Speakers

Profile picture of Dr.Reinhard Laubenbacher,

Dr.Reinhard Laubenbacher: Director of Laboratory for Systems Medicine and a professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine. He also holds the titles of fellow of AAAS, the Society for Mathematical Biology, and the American Mathematical Society and editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, the flagship journal of the Society for Mathematical Biology. His research interests include multi-scale modeling and control of disease processes, systems biology, and computational immunology. His lab utilizes mathematical and computational technology to study disease modeling.

About Dr.Reinhard Laubenbacher

Picture of Dr. Amanda Ramer-Tait

Dr.Amanda Ramer-Tait: An ISU alumni of the immunobiology program  and currently a Maxcy Professor of Agriculture and National Resources Associate Professor, Department of Food Science and Technology  at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the director of the Nebraska Gnotobiotic Mouse Program. Her work focuses on host-microbiota interactions including understanding  the causative relationship between the microbiota of the gut and chronic inflammatory disease and manipulating the microbiome to prevent or treat disease. 

About Dr. Amanda Ramer-Tait

Picture of Dr. Ryan Rapp

Dr.Ryan Rapp : An ISU alumni who now works as an Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering in Cambridge, MA. Since his graduation from the Interdepartmental Genetics and Genomics program at ISU he has worked with several companies including Pairwise, Illumina, and Monsanto. His work centers bringing new companies with new agricultural technology to fruition. Dr Rapp brings an interesting perspective with his experience in industry and the skill sets needed to succeed in an industry position. He plans to discuss the experience of working for a a large corporation vs working in a startup and the Flagship model (which has brought companies like Moderna, Indigo, and Inari to life). 

About Dr. Ryan Rapp

Trista E. North, Ph.D.

Dr. Trista E. North is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) and Harvard Medical School  HMS) in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She is Co-Director of the Developmental and Regenerative Biology Program and Faculty of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at HMS. She is also Principal Faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) Leukemia Program and affiliated faculty in the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Dr. North received her BA from Bowdoin College in 1996, and her PhD from Dartmouth College in 2002. She conducted her graduate work with Dr. Nancy A. Speck (University of Pennsylvania) and her postdoctoral research with Dr. Leonard I. Zon at Boston Children's Hospital. Dr. North started her own laboratory 2008, rejoining the Stem Cell Program and Department of Hematology and Oncology Boston Children's Hospital in 2017. Dr. North currently serves as Treasurer for the Zebrafish Disease Models Society (ZDMS), the Scientific Committee on Stem Cells for the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and as a member of the Nominating Committee of the International Society of Experimental Hematology (ISEH).

About Dr. Trista North