For more than 24 years Lizette worked in the cellular therapy field, first managing the cellular therapy laboratory at Florida Hospital, Orlando, FL (1996-2011), and the Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) Laboratory at UCSF, San Francisco, CA (1996-2020).  She joined Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson) as an Associate Director, Clinical Cell Therapy Lead (CTL).  Lizette serves as a cross-functional, point of contact within Janssen for operational and technical aspects of collections and cryopreservation of apheresis cells used to manufacture chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T). 

Katie Pollock, PhD is a cryobiologist specializing in formulation, fill finish, container closure, and cryopreservation of cellular therapies. She currently serves as Associate Director, Head of Formulation and Cryobiology in the Cell Therapy Development Organization at Bristol Myers Squibb. During the last 6 years at Juno/BMS, she has contributed to cryopreservation development and support on 8 cell therapy commercial, clinical, and pre-clinical pipeline products.

Karen is a broad-spectrum blood bank specialist with decades of management experience in a variety of settings including donor centers, academic medical centers, community hospitals, reference laboratories, military settings, and information technology. She was an early advocate for the use of ISBT 128 labeling to support the globally unique identification of medical products of human origin (MPHO).

Dr. Alireza Abazari is Associate Director of Process Development at Pluristyx, Inc., an advanced therapy tools company providing seamless client support to cell therapy groups through CMC consulting, contract development services, and research- and clinical-grade Ready-To-Differentiate® (RTD®)  Pluripotent Stem Cells and their differentiated Progeny.

Dr. Rui Li is a senior scientist at West Pharmaceutical Services, where she drives innovation in cryogenic packaging solutions and leverages containment and delivery technologies to improve the safety and quality of advanced therapies. Previously, while at the Univ. of Minn., she led the invention of a DMSO-free cryopreservation formulation for cell therapy and regenerative medicine applications and helped to found a  product-service hybrid startup that later became Evia Bio.

Dr. Woods has devoted his career to advancing cell isolation, culture and cryopreservation to facilitate mainstream clinical use of cellular therapies. He is Chief Science Officer, EVP and Co-Founder of Ossium Health, a clinical-stage company developing the first cryopreserved bone marrow bank from deceased organ and tissue donors.

Dr. Jason Acker is the Senior Research Scientist with Canadian Blood Services and a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. His cryobiology research program focuses on understanding the response of cells and tissues to ex vivo storage and the development of methods for their preservation and use as therapeutic products. 

Meiling May, PhD is a Principal Scientist in the Technical Research and Development group at Novartis, with a primary focus on early process and analytical development for advanced cell therapies to ensure GMP compliance and robustness for first in human clinical trials. Meiling has driven the development of early autologous CAR-T and allogeneic adult stem cell therapy programs toward IND submissions. 

Cinzia is a medical device and packaging project leader of various cell & gene and biologics projects at Novartis (Switzerland).  As a post doc at the Washington University in St. Louis (USA), she focused on developing lipid and polymeric nanoparticles and biodegradable implants for application in gene delivery, tumor targeting, and cancer therapy. 

Dawn holds a PhD in Genetics and Genomic Sciences from University of Alabama at Birmingham. Currently Dawn is the senior scientific program manager at The Standards Coordinating Body. She is responsible for overseeing all standard development and technical efforts. Prior to joining SCB, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the National Eye Institute performing stem cell research developing retinal organoids for testing and therapeutic purposes from stem cells.

Lexi Garcia is the Director of Strategic Projects at the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) | BioFabUSA.  She leads ARMI | BioFabUSA’s strategic standards initiatives, which includes guiding both ARMI members and other tissue engineered medical product (TEMP) subject matter experts through the standards development process, particularly those related to bioprinting.