SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME AND SPEAKERS

Preliminary programme

Updated version: 20th April 2020

Preliminary Programme

Symposia

Symposium 1 - Lifestyle, toxicity and cancer
Symposium 2 - Endocrinology, gonad differentiation and sexual development
Symposium 3 - Sperm evolution, physiology, quality and ART
Symposium 4 - OMICS of testis and sperm function and dysfunction
Symposium 5 - Spermatogenesis
Symposium 6 - Genetics and epigenetics
Symposium 7 - Accessory sex glands, fluids and sperm maturation (ISA sponsored)
Symposium 8 - Germ stem cells, spermatogonia and fertility preservation
Symposium 9 - Testicular physiology and somatic cells

Confirmed speakers

8-Gonen-Nitzan

Nitzan Gonen

Israel

View CV

Dr Immler, Simone

Simone Immler

UK

View CV

9-Mayerhofer-Artur

Artur Mayerhofer

Germany

View CV

30-Orwig-Kyle

Kyle Orwig

USA

View CV

silueta-hombre

Antoine H.F.M. Peters

Switzerland
3-Robertson-Sarah

Sarah Robertson

Australia

View CV

10-Ruiz-Herrera-Aurora

Aurora Ruiz-Herrera

Spain

View CV

Tüttelmann-Frank

Frank Tüttelmann

Germany

View CV

Dr. Nitzan Gonen

Nitzan performed her PhD in the field of Cancer Biology at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.
She did her Post-doc fellowship at the thab of Prof. Robin Lovell-Badge at the Francis Crick Institute, studying mammalian sex determination.
She recently established her independent research group at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where they study sex determination and gonad development.

Dr. Simone Immler

I am currently an Associate Professor at the University of East Anglia, UK. Our research takes an evolutionary approach to study genetic and genomic processes involved in sexual reproduction. I finished my PhD in 2006 at the University of Sheffield, UK and started my own lab in 2011 at Uppsala University, Sweden where I stayed until 2018. I have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2013 and a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship in 2015. Our research is also supported by HFSP and NERC.

Dr. Artur Mayerhofer

Medical studies and promotion (Dr. med., University of Ulm; Germany); Postdoc: Department of Physiology, SIU Carbondale, Illinois (USA); Habilitation (Dr. med. habil., Anatomy; University of Ulm); Schering AG, Berlin; Heisenberg Fellow (DFG) OHSU, ONPRC, Portland/Beaverton, Oregon (USA); Professor (Molecular Anatomy) 1996, TU Munich, since 2000 LMU, Munich, since 2015: Biomedical Center Munich

Dr. Orwig

Dr. Orwig is a Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he serves as the director of research in the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility.  His lab has been continuously funded by NIH and other sources with research focused on stem cells, germ lineage development, fertility and infertility.  Dr. Orwig is the founding director of the Fertility Preservation Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.  In this capacity, his group is keenly interested in understanding the effects disease, medical treatments, age and other factors on reproductive function as well as developing technologies to preserve and restore the fertility of patients with the most intractable cases of infertility.

Prof. Sarah Robertson

Professor Sarah is a graduate of the University of Adelaide (BSc 1983; PhD 1993). Most of her career has been in Adelaide after periods at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) and University of Gothenburg (Gothenburg, Sweden). She was an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow until appointment to Director of the Robinson Research Institute in October 2013, after 18 years in the NHMRC Fellowship scheme.
Her research focus is mammalian reproduction and development, particularly immune system regulation of fertility and pregnancy. She strives to advance understanding of the fundamental biology of conception, embryo implantation and early development, and mechanisms by which environmental factors impact the conception environment to program fetal development. Notably, she has discovered a novel role for seminal fluid factors in signalling to the female reproductive tract after insemination, with consequences for female immune adaptation for pregnancy and offspring health. Her research offers new insights on causes of infertility and subfertility in couples, and potential to devise new approaches for diagnosing and managing infertility in men.
She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and a Fellow of the Society for Reproductive Biology.

Dr. Ruiz-Herrera

Dr. Ruiz-Herrera is Associate Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) at the Department of Cell Biology. Her research group has as a main objective to study of the mechanism(s) that are responsible for the origin and maintenance of mammalian genome integrity through a multidisciplinary approach, combining computational analysis and whole-genome comparisons with cutting-edge experimental technologies. More specifically her group is currently working on (i) unveiling the conservation and functionality of the high-structural organization of mammalian genomes with special focus on the germline and (ii) the identification of the genetic basis of reproductive isolation and barriers of gene flow in mammalian natural populations.

Prof. Frank Tüttelmann

Frank Tüttelmann, MD, was recently appointed professor of Reproductive Genetics at the Institute of Human Genetics, Münster, Germany, and since then also coordinates the Clinical Research Unit ‚Male Germ Cells: from Genes to Function‘ comprising eight projects from seven basic and clinical institutions. He is a certified Clinical Andrologist of the European Academy of Andrology, a specialist in human genetics, senior physician and deputy director of research and teaching at the IHG. His primary research topic is male infertility and the majority of his publications deals with genetic causes of spermatogenic failure.