We are pleased to announce that the Ri.MED 2025 Scientific Symposium, entitled “Engineering Biology for Next-Gen Medicine”, will be held on 16 and 17 October 2025 in Palermo.
The event will take place at the Palazzo dei Normanni, also known as the Royal Palace of Palermo: its rooms – which tell the story of Sicily – will host internationally renowned researchers engaged in discussing the new opportunities offered by engineered biology and how they can influence medical care in the near future.
The development of technologies has made gene editing increasingly precise and economical. The integration of computational models and artificial intelligence today allows scientists to predict the effects of genetic modifications and optimize the design of biological circuits. This opens up new perspectives for the creation of synthetic organisms with specific functions and applications in the medical field.
It is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field of research that integrates molecular biology, engineering, computer science, chemistry and bioinformatics, with the goal of understanding and using biological systems in new and innovative ways. How are recent technological advances and the rise of artificial intelligence reshaping our ability and confidence to design and manipulate biological systems for biomedical purposes? What are the new emerging possibilities? And how could these innovations affect medical practice, both in the short and long term? To address these questions, we brought together speakers working on a wide range of systems, all united by a common goal: to reprogram biological processes for new and impactful solutions.
The poster session and social dinner will be held on Thursday 16 October at the magnificent Palazzo Fatta, a testament to Palermo’s aristocratic heritage. Submit your abstract for short presentations and/or posters and feel free to share this
Invited Speakers
Djenet Bousbaine, Ph.D Postdoctoral Scholar, Bioengineering, Stanford University – Engineering the skin microbiota for vaccination
Michael Bronstein, DeepMind Professor of AI, University of Oxford; Founding Scientific Director AI, Aithyra Institute – Biology 2.0: data in the age of AI
Gaetano Burriesci, Professor of Bioengineering at UCL and University of Palermo – Reinventing valve implantation: a Bioengineering journey from model to patient
Bruno Correia, Associate Professor, Laboratory of Protein Design and Immunoengineering, EPFL – Expanding the universe of functional proteins
Antonio D’Amore, Group Leader in Tissue Engineering, Ri.MED Foundation; Full Professor, University of Palermo; Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh – Observe, understand, develop: biomimicry in cardiovascular tissue engineering
Simone Giaveri, Scientist in Syntetic Biology, Ri.MED Foundation; Max Plank Institute – Towards Autonomous Minimal Cells as Next-Gen Therapeutics
Possu Huang, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Bioengineering, Stanford University – Novel molecular and generative design platforms for immunotargeting and beyond
Tanja Kortemme, Vice Dean of Research; Professor, Dept. of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF – De novo protein design: from new structures to programmable molecular and cellular functions
Wendell Lim, Byers Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology; Director, Cell Design Institute, UCSF – Generative Biology: Learning to Program Cells
Ben Lehner, Professor, Head of Generative and Synthetic Genomics, Wellcome Sanger Institute – THE EMBO KEYNOTE LECTURE: Mutate Everything!
Maria Lluch-Senar, Principal Investigator, Autonomous University of Barcelona – Engineering Bacteria for Cancer Treatment
Petra Mela, Full Professor, Chair of Medical Materials and Implants, Technical University of Munich – Cardiovascular tissue engineering
Randall Platt, Associate Professor, Dept. of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH; Associate Professor, University of Basel; Investigator, Botnar Research Center for Child Health; Investigator, NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering – Harnessing the CRISPR toolbox to engineer biology
Petra Schwille, Director, Cellular and Molecular Biophysics, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry; Honorary Professor, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich – Life as a matter of function
Francesca Spagnoli, Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Guy’s Campus, King’s College – Engineering stem cell fate through niche interactions for diabetes: lessons from islet development
TBC – Molly Stevens, John Black Professor of Bionanoscience, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford – Designing biomaterials for therapy and sensing
Ana Teixeira, Principal Researcher, Dept. of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet – Mapping and targeting membrane protein nanodomains using DNA nanotechnology approaches
Georg Winter, Principal Investigator, Chemical biology of oncogenic gene regulation, CeMM – Chemical rewiring of protein degradation networks