Plenary speakers
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Professor Zhen Gu
Dr. Zhen Gu is Qiushi Distinguished Chair Professor and Associate Vice President at Zhejiang University. He also serves as the Director of the National Key Laboratory of Advanced Drug Delivery and Release Systems, and Deputy Director of the Drug Delivery Committee of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association. Dr. Gu was elected to the College of Fellows of the Controlled Release Society (CRS, 2025), Chinese Society for Biomaterials (CSB, 2025), Chinese Biomaterials Academic Advisory Committee of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS, 2024), International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE, 2021) and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE, 2019).
Dr. Gu received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and M.S. degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from Nanjing University. In 2010, he obtained Ph.D. from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was a Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Robert Langer at MIT and Harvard Medical School. Before he moved to Zhejiang University in 2020, he was a Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Director of the NIH Biotechnology Training in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Program at UCLA. From 2012 to 2018, he was working in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, where he had been appointed as a Jackson Family Distinguished Professor.
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Professor Tony Weiss
Professor Anthony (Tony) Weiss PhD AM FAA FTSE FAHMS FRSN FRACI FRSC FRSB FAIMBE FNAI FBSE FTERM is the McCaughey Chair in Biochemistry, NHMRC Leadership Fellow, and Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology. He leads the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine program within the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney.
The Weiss Laboratory at the University of Sydney is the world-leading research site for tropoelastin and synthetic elastin biomaterials. His work focuses on human tropoelastin, the component that provides tissue elasticity and significantly enhances the repair of scars and wounds. Funded by premier grants from Australia and around the globe, the laboratory thrives on the contributions of a high-calibre team of competitively placed postdocs, postgraduate students, and technical staff.
He is a Fellow of Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine (FTERM) and current Chair of FTERM, former President of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS), former Chair of TERMIS Asia Pacific, and former President of MBSANZ. Professor Weiss is a rare ‘Triple Fellow’ of Australia’s 3 scientific Academies: he is a distinguished Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.
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Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz is the Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. A leading developmental biologist, she completed postdoctoral training at the University of Cambridge with Nobel Laureates Martin Evans and John Gurdon, and led her own lab at Cambridge for twenty years.
Her research has redefined the understanding of early mammalian development, revealing cellular heterogeneity in the early embryo, the role of epigenetic mechanisms in cell fate determination, and the processes by which aneuploid cells are selectively eliminated. Her lab was the first to establish a culture system that supports human embryo development beyond implantation up to the legal 14-day limit, and pioneered development of stem cell-based embryo models.
She has published over 200 scientific papers, and her many honors include the 2023 Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize and the 2025 ISSCR Public Service Award.