Invited Speakers

Cezmi Akdis is the director of the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) located in Davos and Ordinarius Professor in Zurich University Medical Faculty.

He is a Senate Member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.

Cezmi Akdis has published more than 600 peer-reviewed articles. His h-index is 110 and he was selected as a highly cited author consecutively in 2016-2017-2018-2019-2020 and 2021 by Clarivate (Thomson Reuters) with approximately 70 thousand citations.

Cezmi Akdis acted as the President of the European Academy of Allergy & Clinical Immunology (14’000 members) between 2011-2013. He was the editor of Global Atlases of Allergy, Asthma I-II, Chronic Rhinosinusitis and Allergic Rhinitis. He was the founder and organizer of the World Immune Regulation Meetings, Davos I-XV (600-1000 participants).

He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Allergy, impact factor 13.15.

Cezmi Akdis’s major scientific contributions are on immune regulation and allergen tolerance, plasticity of antigen-specific T cells 1995, human T regulatory cells 1996, immune suppressive role of histamine receptor 2 2000, human Type 2 NK cell subset 2001, human regulatory NK cells 2007, regulatory innate B cell subset 2017, regulatory innate lymphoid cells 2019.

His current research is the continuation of his epithelial barrier hypothesis studies starting from mechanisms of eczema 2000, mechanisms of epithelial shedding in asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis 2003, endotypes of asthma, chronic rhinosinusitis and atopic dermatitis 2011, epithelial barrier hypothesis for the development of allergic and autoimmune diseases 2015 - 2022. Cezmi Akdis is an author of more than 40 publications on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 including pathophysiology, risk factors, severity, patient characteristics and how to handle allergy and asthma patients during the pandemic.

PROF. HUGUES DUFFAU, MD, PhD is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, Gui de Chauliac Hospital, Montpellier University Medical Center and also the Director of the Team "Brain plasticity, Stem cells and Diffuse Low Grade Gliomas" at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), France.

He was awarded with the Victory of Medicine (French National Award in Medicine) in 2009 and 2010, and the Herbert Olivecrona Medal (Karolinska Institute) in 2010. He received Doctorate Honoris Causa from KU Leuven, University of Messina, and University of IberoAmerica.

He is also a Member of the French National Academy of Medicine, the French National Academy of Surgery, and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium.

Hugues DUFFAU has published more than 500 peer-reviewed articles. His h-index is 87 and his work received more than 27 thousand citations.

Professor DUFFAU is still serving as a Member of the Editorial Board of many highly reputed journals including Brain and Language, Neurosurgery, Neuro-Oncology, Central European Neurosurgery, European Journal of Surgical Oncology, Acta Neurochirurgica, and World Neurosurgery

His main fields of interests are brain tumor surgery, neuro-oncology, low-grade gliomas, functional brain mapping, neuroplasticity, awake surgery, hodotopy, connectomics, quality of life, and cognitive neurosciences.

Prof. Dr. Türker Kılıç is a Professor of Neurosurgery. He conducted his post-doctoral work on brain tumors and treatments at Harvard University and holds a PhD degree in Anatomy. In 2015, Prof. Kılıç was selected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, one of the three most important academies in the world with over 30 Nobel Prize winners and a total of 15 Turkish members since its inception a quarter of a century ago. Dr. Kılıç was nominated as a fellow to the World Academy of Art and Science in May, 2019, and in 2021, he was elected as a member of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), the most distinguished scientific academy in the world founded by Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Robert Oppenheimer in 1960 and under the auspices of the United Nations. Prof. Kılıç became the 8th scientist and the first neurosurgeon elected from all fields of science from our country to this Academy, which has a 62-year history. Having received medical training at Hacettepe, Marmara and Harvard Universities, Dr. Kılıç has been carrying out his academic work as the founding dean of the Bahçeşehir University School of Medicine since 2012. His research interest areas include the Mind-Brain Connection, Brain and Hypophysis Tumors, Microsurgery of Blood Vessels in the Brain, Intraoperative MRI. Prof. Kılıç has been invited as a guest lecturer by more than 10 universities, including Harvard Medical School, Yale Medical School, and Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Kılıç has received over 100 awards throughout his career for his contributions to medicine. His most prized awards are the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies Scientific Research Award (1999) and the American Association of Neurosurgery Award for Tumor Research in 2001.

Prof. Kılıç, who has an H-index score of 36 and over 200 academic publications that have received +4000 citations, is the inventor of various brain surgery methods and has made significant contributions to Glivec, a smart drug for brain tumors. He is among the pioneers of Gamma-Knife Surgery, Tumor Banking, and Intraoperative MRI in Turkey.

In addition to his ongoing scientific research, Dr. Kılıç is involved in Medical Education and Science Education. Dr. Kılıç’s speeches on Science and Science Education have received over 10 million views online. Dr. Kılıç is the author of the books, published in 2021; Yeni Bilim: Bağlantısallık, Yeni Kültür: Yaşamdaşlık, published by the Ayrıntı press, and Beyin Nedir’den Yaşam Nedir’e Bir Hayat Serüveni: Türker Kılıç, published by Epsilon press.He is also the Founding Chair of the Istanbul Neurosciences Institute established in 2020.

Professor Helen O’Connell is an academic Urologist based in Melbourne who was Director of Surgery and Head of Urology at Western Health from 2016-21. Recently elected Vice President Urology Society of Australian and New Zealand she has held major leadership roles including examiner and Councillor for Royal Australasian College of Surgeons 2005 - 2014. She is a world renowned anatomy researcher.

Dr Ozdinler is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine. She is the founding director of the Ozdinler Upper Motor Neuron Lab, focusing on the biology and pathology of upper motor neurons, which degenerate in diseases such as ALS, HSP and PLS.

Dr. Ozdinler graduated from Bogazici University, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, earned Best Master Thesis award, and went to United States for PhD. She studied with Prof. Dr. Reha Erzurumlu at LSUHSC, and earned PhD in Cell Biology, Anatomy and Neuroscience. She then went to Harvard Medical School, Neurosurgery Department for her postdoctoral studies and received HCNR fellowship. She was recruited to Northwestern University in 2008 and continues to work at Northwestern.

Ozdinler's research is funded by NIH, NIA and numerous foundations.

Scott F. Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology, emeritus, at Swarthmore College, where he teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology. He is also a Finland Distinguished Professor, emeritus, at the University of Helsinki.

He received his B.A. in both biology and religion from Wesleyan University, and he earned his PhD in biology from the pediatric genetics laboratory of Dr. Barbara Migeon at Johns Hopkins University. His M.A. in the history of science, also from The Johns Hopkins University, was done under the supervision of Dr. Donna Haraway. He pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin in the laboratories of Dr. Masayasu Nomura and Dr. Robert Auerbach.

Scott has received several awards, including the Service Award for Education and Outreach at the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, the Medal of François I from the Collège de France, the Dwight J. Ingle Memorial Writing Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award, honorary doctorates from the University of Helsinki (Finland) and the University of Tartu (Estonia), and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant. In 2002, the Society for Developmental Biology awarded him its first Viktor Hamburger Prize for Excellence in Education, and in 2004, he was awarded the Kowalevsky Prize in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. He has been elected a fellow of the AAAS and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. He received the Burnhill Award from the American Reproductive Health Association in 2009.

In 1994, Scott established the first website for a textbook, and he is also the co-author of a digitally-based history of developmental biology. He continues to do research and write in both developmental biology and in the history and philosophy of biology.