Keynote Speaker

Prof. Luke O’Neill, Ireland

Luke O’Neill is Professor of Biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is a world expert on innate immunity and inflammation. His main research interests include Toll-like receptors, Inflammasomes and Immunometabolism. He is listed by Thompson Reuters/ Clarivates in the top 1% of immunologists in the world, based on citations per paper. Professor O'Neill is co-founder of Sitryx, which aims to develop new medicines for inflammatory diseases. Another company he co-founded, Inflazome was recently acquired by Roche.

He was awarded the Royal Dublin Society / Irish Times Boyle Medal for scientific excellence, the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal for Life Sciences, The Society for Leukocyte Biology (SLB) Dolph O. Adams award, the European Federation of Immunology Societies Medal and in 2018 the Milstein Award of the International Cytokine and Interferon Society. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Luke also has a passion for communicating science to the public. He has a weekly radio slot on the Pat Kenny show on Newstalk. In 2018 he published with Gill the best-selling ‘Humanology: a scientist’s guide to our amazing existence’  and in 2019 Gill published ‘The Great Irish Science Book’, a Science book for 10-12 year olds. His latest book, also published by Gill is called ‘Never Mind the B#ll*cks Here’s the Science’.

Prof. Karsten Hiller, Germany

Professor Dr Karsten Hiller is the director of Biochemistry and Bioinformatics and head of the Immunometabolism Team at the University of Braunschweig. He obtained his diploma in Biology and Computer Science and performed his PhD in Bioinformatics and Microbiology at the University of Braunschweig, Germany and focused on the development of algorithms for the analysis of metabolomics data.

His team discovered that mammalian macrophages reprogram their metabolism to synthesize the antimicrobial and immunomodulatory metabolite itaconate. Moreover, Prof Hiller and his team investigate macrophage physiology during an infection with bacterial pathogens. They developed a strong expertise in stable-isotope assisted metabolomics and metabolic flux analysis both on a whole cell as well as on a mitochondrial sub-compartment level. The team takes advantage of its in-house bioinformatics background to develop tailored tools for the analysis of GC-MS based data obtained from stable-isotope labeling experiments.

Prof. Dr. John Holloway, United Kingdom

John Holloway is Associate Vice-President (Interdisciplinary Research) at the University of Southampton, UK and Professor of Allergy and Respiratory Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine. His research program focuses on genetics, epigenetics, and functional genomics of allergic and respiratory diseases such as asthma and COPD, with a particular focus on the mechanisms of transgenerational and prenatal programming of respiratory disease, epigenetic mechanisms underlying atopy and asthma susceptibility and gene-environment interactions in the early life origins of asthma and COPD.