Claudia Bevilacqua studied Food biotechnologies at the University of Campobasso (Italy) and obtained her PhD on the Biotechnology breeding of domestic animals at the same university.

During her PhD training, she spent 12 months in 2 French laboratories: INRA (Genetics and cytogenetics laboratory, Jouy-en-Josas) and INSERM (Interactions between intestinal epithelium and immunity systems and antigen, Faculty Necker, Paris) studying milk protein polymorphisms and their impact to sensitized guinea pigs.

She obtained European postdoc fellowship from INSERM laboratories to understand the mechanisms involved in allergic response to milk proteins. In 2004, she conducted a second long research study at INRA laboratory (Jouy-en-Josas) to obtain mammary epithelial cells by laser capture microdissection for microgenomics analysis.

After postdoc, she WAS recruited at INRA laboratory and is NOW in charge of the microgenomics core facility. Since 2004, she HAS tested different RNA extraction protocols to obtain good quantity and quality for qPCR analyses from microdissected cells of different tissues. She is involved in several microgenomic projects. Since 2009, she has been organizing microgenomic trainings for users.

(claudia.bevilacqua@jouy.inra.fr)

Dr Charles DECRAENE received his PhD in Biology, in 2001, from the University of PARIS VII, obtained a postdoctoral position at the CEA, Functional genomics laboratory to work on stem cell biology (2001-2003), and joined the CNRS - Institut Curie in 2003  to develop omics approaches. Since 2008, he has been involved in Circulating Tumor Cell characterization and omics projects.

Dr Kubista is founder and CEO of the TATAA Biocenter and the head of the department of gene expression at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences .  He was one of the pioneers contributing to the development of quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) and introduced qPCR for single cell expression profiling.  He led the development of reagents for high throughput expression profiling and quality control at TATAA and he developed qPCR tomography for intracellular expression profiling.

Dr Bénédicte Goustard-Langelier is a research engineer with the Micalis Institute (Food and Gut Microbiology for Human Health) of INRA (the French National Institute for Agricultural Research) of Jouy-en-Josas. During her doctoral studies, her research was focused on the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids on brain development during the perinatal period (PhD dissertation in Food Sciences from the University of Paris XI in 1997). She then joined a team in INSERM (the National Institute on Health and Medical Research, Paris) during two years of post-doctoral research. There she studied the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids on the lipid metabolism of nerve cells in culture. When she joined INRA in 2000, she specialized in the study of gene expression and participated in setting up Taq Man Low Density Arrays at the Iso Cell Express Core Facility (ICE). Currently, she is studying the effect of obesity and food on the expression of genes controlling enteroendocrine cell differentiation in relation with gut microbiology as a member of the AMERICA research team (Food, Microbiota and Integrative Research of Eating Behaviour).                                                        

Lance A. Liotta MD PhD is CoDirector and CoFounder of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at George Mason University, where he is also Medical Director of the Clinical Proteomics Laboratory. Prior to this position he was Chief of the Laboratory of Pathology and Deputy Director of NIH, NCI.  Dr. Liotta has devoted his career to the study of tumor invasion and metastasis and the creation of technology for molecular analysis of tissue and body fluids. This technology includes Laser Capture Microdissection, Reverse Phase Protein Microarrays, Biomarker Harvesting Hydrogel Nanoparticles, and Molecular Preservatives for Phosphoprotein Preservation. These technologies are used in ongoing clinical research trials aimed at the discovery of markers for early stage disease, individualized therapy for metastatic cancer, and adjuvant therapy of premalignant breast cancer.

Dr. Livak is Senior Scientific Fellowat Fluidigmand is charged with pioneering novel assayson Fluidigm microfluidic platforms.  His current focus is on enabling robust quantification of RNA transcripts in single cells.  He has recently relocated to the Boston area to help spearhead a Single Cell Genomics initiative in partnership with the Broad Institute. Prior to joining Fluidigm, Dr. Livak spent 13 years at Applied Biosystems improving the robustness and versatility of using fluorogenic (TaqMan) probes in the 5’ nuclease PCR assays and coordinating scientific efforts across all instrument platforms.  Dr. Livak was part of Research and Development at Du Pont’s Experimental Station in 1982.  He received his Ph.D. in 1979 at Harvard University in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College in 1974.  He has 28 issued U. S. Patents and 58 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Patrice MARTIN is Director of Research with an agronomist background (1974). Scientist at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique since 1975, he is currently group leader in the GABI (Génétique animale et Biologie Intégrative) unit at Jouy-en-Josas. First involved in the biochemistry of milk proteins and milk-clotting enzymes (Thesis “Doctorat d’Etat” in Enzymology, University of Paris XI in 1984), he joined the Institut Pasteur (Paris) in 1984 to get a science degree in Microbiology and worked four years on transposable elements and antibiotic resistance in bacteria. He went back to INRA (Jouy-en-Josas) in 1988 where his main work was dedicated to the genetics of milk proteins in ruminants, before to take the direction of the “Laboratoire de Recherches de Génétique et de Cytogénétique”, in 1992. One of the designers of the French programme of Genomics for Animal Breeding (AGENAE), his main research interests are in the field of the functional genomics of the mammary gland. He is in charge of the Microgenomics core facility (ICE: Iso Cell Express platform) of the INRA research center, at Jouy-en-Josas. Dr. P. Martin is member of the International Society for Animal Genetics and of the American Society for Animal Physiology. He is member of the French Milk Institute (Actalia) scientific committee and Member of the scientific advisory committee of the International Milk Genomics Consortium.

Michael W. Pfaffl started 1986 to study “Agriculture” with focus on “Animal Science” at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His second university degree in “Biotechnology” he finished 1997 in parallel to his PhD, where he worked in the field of molecular muscle and growth physiology. In June 2003 he completed his Habilitation (Dr. habil.) at Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan with the title ""Livestock transcriptomics: Quantitative mRNA analytics in molecular endocrinology and mammary gland physiology"". Early 2010 he became Professor of Molecular Physiology at the Technical University of Munich in Freising. Today he has reached the “Principal Investigator” status at the Institute of Physiology and is one of the leading scientists concerning qPCR technology, relative quantification, and RNA expression profiling.

He is author of around 160 peer reviewed publications and 170 lectures world wide. In March 2012 the SciVerse Scopus Award 2012 was granted to Prof. Michael W. Pfaffl, whose top cited Scopus article entitled ""A new mathematical model for relative quantification in real-time RT-PCR"" published 2001 in Nucleic Acids Research 29(9) has been cited more than 6.500 times in Scopus.
In 2004 he founded the company BioScience Events, in 2006 in collaboration the TATAA Biocenter Germany, and in 2008 BioEPS GmbH.

Anders Ståhlberg, Associate Professor, is working as principal investigator at theCancer Center, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Anders primary research interest is to understand molecular mechanisms in tumor initiation, tumor development and stem cell differentiation. The research is focused on sarcomas caused by specific fusion oncogenes, but other tumor types are also studied. He has developed several strategies for gene expression profiling, especially at the single-cell level.

Web site : http://www.biomedicine.gu.se

Dr Catherine TARAGNAT is Director of Research at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in the Unit of Reproductive physiology and Behavior at Nouzilly. Her main research interests are in the field of  reproductive physiology. Her research is mainly focused on the molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of gonadotrope hormone synthesis at the pituitary level. Recently, she joined the « Integrative Neurobiology of Reproduction » team where she conducts new studies on the mechanisms of action of the RFamide neuropeptides at the hypothalamic and pituitary levels

She is in charge of the core facility for integrative analysis of  biomolecules (PAIB² platform) of the INRA research center at Nouzilly. The expertise of the PAIB² platform includes the identification and purification of cell populations or single cells, the purification of biomolecules (proteins, peptides and mRNA), the identification, the quantification and the structural characterization, the localisation of biomolecules (proteins, peptides) and the characterization of real time interactions between biomolecule (DNA-protein, protein-protein…). These approaches combine five powerful technologies: flow cytometry, laser microdissection, separative analysis, mass spectrometry and surface plasmon resonance.