Panels

The pressing need for novel bioproduction approaches faces limitations in the number and type of molecules that can be accessed through synthetic biology. Halogenation is widely used for tuning physicochemical properties of molecules and polymers, but traditional halogenation chemistry often lacks specificity and generates harmful by-products. Deploying synthetic metabolism tailored for biohalogenation represents an unique opportunity towards economically-attractive and environmentally-friendly organohalide production. On this background, growth-coupled selection of functional metabolic modules that harness the rich repertoire of biosynthetic and biodegradation capabilities of environmental bacteria for in vivo biohalogenation will be discussed. By rationally combining these approaches, the chemical landscape of living cells can accommodate bioproduction of added-value organohalides which, as of today, are obtained by traditional chemistry. In particular, fluorine is a key element for the synthesis of molecules broadly used in medicine, agriculture and materials. Adding fluorine atoms onto organic structures is a unique strategy for tuning molecular properties—yet organofluorines are rarely found in Nature, and approaches to integrate fluorometabolites into the chemistry of living cells are scarce. Thus, synthetic metabolism can be implemented to expand the chemical landscape of bacteria, providing alternative biosynthetic strategies for new-to-Nature building-blocks.

Climate change is happening faster than previously expected, according to the latest IPCC report, and its impacts are now starting to be evident all over the world. The need for an energetic transition away from polluting fossil fuels and towards clean and renewable energy is therefore more urgent than ever.
Renewable and clean energy options are now available to decarbonise most sectors and climate neutrality in 2050 is technically feasible. In this talk, we will look into the national decarbonisation roadmap (RNC2050) and we will explore the energy options now available for both electricity production and transport, the costs or difficulties associated with their implementation and also some of the emerging technologies that might present an alternative solution in the near future.

Iberian native cattle retain high genetic diversity relative to that of their European counterparts, including unique paternal and maternal lineages, as well as African taurine cattle ancestry in their autosomal genomes. This renders Iberian breeds a great model to study the genomic impact of cattle diversification, but also to explore if some of their unique adaptive features to harsh environments can be useful for the genomic improvement of mainstream breeds. The OPTIBOV international project aims to study cattle populations from 6 biogeographic regions, from north to south, in Europe and Africa. The genomic variability of native breeds will be investigated to identify markers for adaptation traits. We use high-throughput resequencing data to carry out association studies of well-defined phenotypes under local conditions, and to identify genomic regions which have been under natural (environmental adaptation) as well as artificial (human-mediated) selection. OPTIBOV results will be used to improve breeding programs. We will discuss some of the controversial aspects related to the use of genomic tools for adjusting mainstream breeds to climate change.

The use of biometrics is ever increasing in society. They provide a convenient way to unlock our phones, or to login to systems. In this session, the security and privacy implications of a biometric future will be discussed. We will cover how systems use your fingerprint or face to verify you, and how biometric data is stored within them. The tradeoffs between convenience and security will be discussed, as well as the ethics surrounding the collection of data. By attending this session, you will gain a better understanding of the implications of biometric authentication systems so that you may make more informed decisions about their usage.

Classical Biomechanics is a branch of physics that deals with motion, mass, acceleration, and force which are applied specifically to biological structures. In general, Biomechanics has a large scope of disciplines ranging from subcellular mechanisms to full-scale body kinematics. One specialized discipline of Biomechanics is known as Forensic Injury Biomechanics. Forensic Injury Biomechanics can be simply defined as a methodology for estimating injury probability through determining the biomechanical plausibility for injury. The challenge in characterizing the response of the human body to external stimuli, specifically the kinetics, kinematics, and the injury biomechanics involved, is that it requires high accuracy and surgical precision especially when shadowed in the umbrella of litigation. Thus, in unfortunate events such as vehicular crashes, understanding the occupant dynamics, restraint system efficacy, external forces, and environmental conditions becomes paramount. At VA Forensics/Aperture, we specialize in defining all such available parameters, vehicular and/or anthropomorphic specifications, and relevant inertial considerations to determine the extent of injury and biomechanical plausibility.

The big aims of Forensic Anthropology are to return back the identity to human remains, no matter how decomposed they are, and to assist in the assessment of cause, mechanism, and manner of death. More and more, to achieve those goals, forensic anthropologists are counting on other sciences such as genetics, chemistry, artificial intelligence, biomechanics, imaging, among others. We here present and discuss case studies where the contributions of each of the mentioned sciences were essential to their resolution.

Bioengineering is defined as the application of engineering concepts and approaches towards biological sciences and problems. However, such a definition is difficult to relate to what are the capabilities of a person with an academic background in the field, mainly due to the wide variety of distinct subjects that are approached in such courses.
I completed the Integrated Master in Bioengineering (biomedical engineering), in 2014 and my thesis focused on the development of multifunctional nanoparticles for the theranostic of rheumatoid arthritis. After my master I wanted to continue to work with nanotechnology and an opportunity to do so presented itself, towards animal nutrition, as part of the Sustainable Animal Nutrition and Feeding doctoral programme. I took the challenge and began a PhD in Animal Science, in an industrial setting in collaboration with the feed supplement company PREMIX®, aiming to design and produce a nanoparticle-based system for the supplementation and protection of amino acids for dairy cow nutrition. This project involved communication and working with people from several different backgrounds, including but not limited to, feed producers, chemical analysts, veterinarians, dairy farmers and engineers, chemometric scientists and physicists. It was a degree in bioengineering, and its interdisciplinary nature, that enabled me to approach all of these different professionals and both explain and solve the issues that arose during my PhD. After my PhD, a chance to embrace a challenge in a new field came up and I joined the BioEngineered Surfaces group at i3S, to work with antimicrobial wound dressings. Here, a degree in bioengineering not only provided the required scientific basis but, once again, imbued me with an interdisciplinary mindset that has made it possible to address the needs and problems of my work, both in and out of the laboratory.
To summarize, a course in bioengineering enables you to experiment with a substantial amount of different scientific areas that will allow you to understand and communicate with virtually any professional throughout your career.

Artificial Intelligence has been steadily conquering a prominent place in our society. As computers evolve and become more powerful, even in edge scenarios, the same deep learning algorithms are being used to learn and predict everything from tumour malignancy to human actions. In these times where cutting-edge AI often looks as simple as following a recipe, and researchers compete daily against mighty technological powerhouses, knowing the intricacies of the application domain is the key to getting us ahead of the competition. So, could there be a better way to dominate all things AI than Bioengineering, the course that covers (almost) everything? I doubt it. Thus, in this talk, I will discuss my path from biomedical engineering to AI, and illustrate how the often-overlooked multidisciplinary background can be your best friend in the quest to create intelligent software solutions to real problems.Artificial Intelligence has been steadily conquering a prominent place in our society. As computers evolve and become more powerful, even in edge scenarios, the same deep learning algorithms are being used to learn and predict everything from tumour malignancy to human actions. In these times where cutting-edge AI often looks as simple as following a recipe, and researchers compete daily against mighty technological powerhouses, knowing the intricacies of the application domain is the key to getting us ahead of the competition. So, could there be a better way to dominate all things AI than Bioengineering, the course that covers (almost) everything? I doubt it. Thus, in this talk, I will discuss my path from biomedical engineering to AI, and illustrate how the often-overlooked multidisciplinary background can be your best friend in the quest to create intelligent software solutions to real problems.

Security requirements all over the world were put into perspective after the 9/11 attacks and governments and civil entities had to define new rules and processes to increase passenger security, trackability and traceability. To this end, manual security checks and more complex processes were rolled out on every airport with an increase in cost, processing times and hassle to the passengers. Once a global and connected world was now separated by rules, checks and controls.
Pressured by these new processes, and powered by new technologies such as digital cameras, secure RFIDs, Identity Management solutions gained traction. These solutions, like the electronic passport (ePassport), reduced the time at border control by ensuring that the passenger data was up to date and with enough quality for easier recognition by the officer, and by enabling the use of new technologies, like automatic passport security checks. The use of ePassport with good quality biometrics ramped up the applicability of biometric recognition as a technology to automatically validate the passenger identity. Biometric recognition is the attempt to assess a subject's identity based on a set of intrinsic physiological or behavioral traits, that are both universal to every subject as well as presenting a high uniqueness between different subjects. From face, to iris, to fingerprint, biometric recognition rose drastically in the last 20 years cementing itself in almost everyone's day-to-day life, from simpler applications such as mobile phone access to extremely high security applications such as bank account access. The use of biometrics at the border control improved the passenger experience by reducing processing times without compromising security.
As much as biometrics is already a part of everyone's lives, it is still a rapidly growing market, with a promising future and a multiplicity of applications still to be explored enabling seamless world for all of us.

The Koch's postulates provided a significant advancement in medical microbiology, in the late XIX century, by establishing four criteria designed to determine if there was a causative relationship between a specific microorganism and a disease, therefore being able to determine a disease etiology. On the late XX century a new version of the Kock’s postulates considered no the presence of bacterial cultures, but the presence of their DNA, basically because some pathogens are not easily grown in laboratory. However, these postulates did not consider that some bacterial infections are caused not by a specific bacterial species, but by bacterial consortia, wherein the outcome caused by these polymicrobial consortia are significantly more virulent that the sum of the individual parts. Examples of polymicrobial infections include cystic fibrosis, dental caries, or bacterial vaginosis. While the first two are easily diagnosed, bacterial vaginosis presents a further challenge, not only due to the very high recurrence rates after antimicrobial treatment, but mainly because its etiology is yet fully understood, making diagnosis also a challenge.
During this talk, it will be highlighted how different bacterial species can cooperate to overcome the host immune response and to become refractory to current antimicrobial therapy and will provide some examples of how my research group is tacking these challenges.

Organ transplantation is presently the only proven therapy able to extend survival for end-stage organ disease. It is also the only treatment available for severe acute organ failures and to some forms of inborn errors of metabolism. Nevertheless, the waiting list for organ transplantation is long and many patients will not survive long enough to receive an organ due to the dramatic shortage of donors or lack of eligibility. This distressing donor shortage is common to most solid organs like the liver, lung, heart and particularly kidneys.
In light of the grim situation of organ transplantation, our laboratory has developed novel methods to generate an entire liver scaffold from whole animal livers, using tissue decellularization that preserves the organ’s vascular network. This same method is also able to decellularize other solid organs generating specific acellular kidney, lung, intestine, pancreas or heart scaffolds. Our subsequent studies showed the possibility to efficiently recellularize the liver bioscaffolds by perfusing them with human liver progenitor and endothelial cells in a perfusion bioreactor. The outcome of this was a bioengineered human liver.
Although, most of the current generation of bioengineered organs lack in vivo-like functional tissue and physiological vascular networks, making their transplantation still a mirage. These challenges and potential solutions will be described in detail drawing a path to transplantation, to truly shape organ bioengineering into the Future of Transplantation Medicine.

The study of elite athletes provides a unique opportunity to define the upper limits of human physiology and performance. Across a variety of sports, these individuals have trained to optimize the physiological parameters of their bodies in order to compete on the world stage. To assess athletic performance, techniques such as heart rate monitoring, indirect calorimetry, and whole blood lactate measurement have provided insight into oxygen utilization, and substrate utilization and preference, as well as total metabolic capacity. However, while these techniques enable the measurement of individual, representative variables critical for sports performance, they lack the molecular resolution that is needed to understand which metabolic adaptations are necessary to influence these metrics. Recent advancements in mass spectrometry-based analytical approaches have enabled the measurement of hundreds to thousands of metabolites in a single analysis. Using a high-throughput platform developed by our group, we have analyzed blood samples from some of the world’s top endurance athletes, including Tour De France cyclists and Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc ultrarunners, to identify molecular profiles of endurance capacity and fatigue. These signatures may serve as a guide to personalize fitness training, and offer insights into a variety of disease pathologies including kidney disease and Covid-19.

Current protocols for the differentiation of muscle and fat lineages from pluripotent cell lines are lengthy and require complex cocktails of small molecules and growth factors. Similarly, variation in differentiation efficiency and reproducibility remains problematic and mostly results in an immature phenotype. Here we describe the generation of porcine pluripotent stem cell lines making use of the Opti-ox (Optimized Over-expression) system. Utilising the self-renewal properties of pluripotent cell lines together with an efficient and rapid method of differentiation enables us to scale-up the production of muscle and fat for cultivated meat applications and allows us to explore different biofabrication methods.

OpenAi’s GPT-3 language model has triggered a new generation of Machine Learning models. Leveraging Transformers architectures at billion-size parameters trained on massive unlabeled datasets, these language models achieve new capabilities such as text generation, question answering, or even zero-shot learning - tasks the model has not been explicitly trained for. However, training these models represent massive computing tasks, now done on dedicated supercomputers. Scaling up these models will require new hardware and optimized training algorithms, and raises new questions regarding sustainability.