Adam M. Klein, MD, FACS, is Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor in Voice in the Department of Otolaryngology at Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Klein serves as Director of the Emory Voice Center and as Chief of the Division of Laryngology. Board certified with the American Board of Otolaryngology, Dr. Klein's clinical specialties include general otolaryngology, laryngeal disorders and the professional voice. 

Dr. Klein is a member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. He is a Fellow of The American College of Surgeons and American Laryngological Association. He holds professional memberships with American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, American Broncho-Esophagological Association, and Georgia Society for Otolaryngology.

Kim joined the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in July 2013. Prior to his current appointment, he was a Postdoctoral Associate in the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, where he developed biomimetic microsystems for probing nanoparticle behaviors in the inflamed endothelium and for synthesizing therapeutic and diagnostic nanomaterials. His doctorate research at CMU focused on closed-loop microfluidic control systems for lab-on-a-chip applications to biochemistry and developmental biology. Prior to his Ph.D., he was a researcher in areas of dynamics, controls, and robotics at R&D Divisions of Hyundai-Kia Motors and Samsung Electronics for six years.

Mijin Kim is an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech. Her research program is focused on the development and implementation of novel nanosensor technology to improve cancer research and diagnosis. The Kim Lab combines nanoscale engineering, fluorescence spectroscopy, machine learning approaches, and biochemical tools (1) to understand the exciton photophysics in low-dimensional nanomaterials, (2) to develop diagnostic/nano-omics sensor technology for early disease detection, and (3) to investigate biological processes with focusing problems in lysosome biology and autophagy. For her scientific innovation, Kim has received multiple recognitions, including being named as one of the STAT Wunderkinds and the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 List.

Pinar Keskinocak is the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She is also co-founder and director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems. Previously, she served as the College of Engineering ADVANCE Professor and as interim associate dean for faculty development and scholarship. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she worked at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. She received her Ph.D. in Operations Research from Carnegie Mellon University, and her M.S. and B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University.

Keskinocak's research focuses on the applications of operations research and management science with societal impact, particularly health and humanitarian applications, supply chain management, and logistics/transportation. Her recent work has addressed infectious disease modeling (including Covid-19, malaria, Guinea worm, pandemic flu), evaluating intervention strategies, and resource allocation; catch-up scheduling for vaccinations; hospital operations management; disaster preparedness and response (e.g., prepositioning inventory); debris management; centralized and decentralized price and lead time decisions. She has worked on projects with companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and healthcare providers, including American Red Cross, CARE, Carter Center, CDC, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University, and Intel Corporation.

She is an INFORMS Fellow and currently serves as the president of INFORMS. Previously she served as the Secretary of INFORMS, a department editor for Operations Research (Policy Modeling and Public Sector area), associate editor for Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and INFORMS Vice President of Membership and Professional Recognition. She is the co-founder and past-president of INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service, and Needs, and the president of the INFORMS Health Applications Society.

Melissa Lambeth Kemp received her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from University of Washington. Dr. Kemp joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2006 after completing postdoctoral training at MIT. Her expertise is in computational modeling of metabolism and signal transduction, as well as developing statistical modeling tools to examine network relationships in high-dimension datasets. One major aspect of her research program linking ROS – the byproducts of aerobic metabolism – to the fundamental way that cells interpret instructions from their environment, their neighbors, and their own genetic blueprint. Specific applications of her diverse work include systems modeling of transient phosphatase oxidation of kinase cascades, patient-specific differences in cytotoxicity to redox-cycled chemotherapeutics and radiation, and the coordination of oxidative metabolism with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Her research program also includes a component of developing high-throughput screening methods for assaying cue-signal-response relationships in cells and analytical tools for single cell gene expression. 

Dr. Kemp currently serves as the Research Director of the multi-site NSF Engineering Research Center “Cell Manufacturing Technologies”. In her former role as Associate Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center “Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems”, she spearheaded the multi-site center’s computational activities by developing agent-based models of context-dependent cellular decisions to generate new hypotheses of intercellular communication in pluripotent stem cell differentiation and emergent patterning; this work continues currently in quantifying organizational principles and spatial relationships in iPSC-derived tissues from multi-omics data. Dr. Kemp’s career honors include a Whitaker Graduate Fellowship, Merck/CSBi postdoctoral fellowship, Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar, NIH New Innovator Award, and the CSB2 Prize for Innovative Measurement Methods from the Council for Systems Biology in Boston.

Dr. Keilholz has been working in preclinical imaging for more than twenty years, with the goal of using animal models to improve the analysis of human MRI imaging. Her research uses multimodal approaches to extract information about neural dynamics from functional neuroimaging studies.

Dr. Keeling earned his medical degree at the University of Louisville in 2001, did his general surgery residency at the University of South Florida School of Medicine from 2001-2008, and completed his cardiothoracic surgery fellowship at Emory in 2011. Dr. Keeling directs the cardiothoracic surgery program at Grady Memorial Hospital and provides clinical service at Emory University Hospital Midtown. His clinical interests include reoperative cardiac surgery, valve repair and thoracic aortic pathology, and his research focuses on clinical trials as well as data-driven investigations of adult cardiac surgical sub-populations.

Yonggang Ke's research is highly interdisciplinary combining chemistry, biology, physics, material science, and engineering. The overall mission of his research is to use interdisciplinary research tools to program nucleic-acid-based "beautiful structures and smart devices" at nanoscale, and use them for scientific exploration and technological applications. Specifically, his team focuses on (1) developing new DNA self-assembly paradigms for constructing DNA nanostructures with greater structural complexity, and with controllable sizes and shapes; (2) developing new imaging or drug delivery systems based on DNA nanostructuresl; (3) exploring design of novel DNA-based nanodevices for understanding basic biological questions at molecular level; (4) developing DNA-templated protein devices for constructing artificial bio-reactors.

For cancer-related research/application, Ke will focus on using DNA/RNA nanostructures as drug delivery vehicles. He is also interested in using DNA/RNA nanostructures to study cancer cell biology at molecular level.

Peter Kasson is an international leader in the study of biological membrane structure, dynamics, and fusion, with particular application to how viruses gain entry to cells. His group performs both high-level experimental and computational work – a powerful combination that is critical to advancing our understanding of this important problem. His publications describe inventive approaches to the measurement of viral fusion rates and characterization of fusion mechanisms, and to the modeling of large-scale biomolecular and lipid assemblies. He has applied these insights to the prediction of pandemic outbreaks and drug resistance, with particular attention to Zika, SARS-CoV-2, and influenza pathogens in recent years. See https://kassonlab.org/ for more information.