Mohamad Ahmad

Mohamad Ahmad is the Vice President of Quality and Compliance at BMC, where he oversees the organization’s quality functions, ensuring adherence to industry standards and regulations. In his role, he leads cross-functional teams dedicated to driving operational efficiency and quality excellence. He was promoted to Vice President in April 2024, after serving as Director.

With over 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Mohamad has developed a strong leadership track record, specializing in building and managing high-performing teams. His leadership has been crucial in establishing BMC’s quality control department from the ground up, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, adaptability, and a commitment to meeting the evolving needs of the business.
Mohamad holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Concordia University. He is known for his ability to translate technical expertise into practical solutions that align with business goals and drive organizational growth.

Sharon Anderson

Sharon Anderson joined ARM in 2025 as Vice President for Scientific Affairs, bringing more than 20 years of leadership in cell therapy, immuno-oncology, and manufacturing operations. Prior to ARM, she served at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where she directed global teams and oversaw production for the company’s Type 1 Diabetes program.

Throughout her career, Sharon has led multidisciplinary teams across the cell and gene therapy landscape, with responsibilities spanning research and development, quality control, and manufacturing. Her expertise includes stem cell–based therapies, genetic transduction, cell banking, technology transfer, international manufacturing, and advanced analytical methods.

She holds an MS in Project Management from Boston University and a BS in Biology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. 

Neil Blackburn

Neil Blackburn is the Senior Director, Process Sciences & Analytical Development at OmniaBio. He earned his PhD from the University of Guelph, focusing on protein biochemistry and immunology. His post‑doctoral training at Eli Lilly and Company focused on dendritic cell tolerization and immune interactions with novel TLR ligands.

He led the development and commercialization of immunochemical clinical assays and companion medical devices at Siemens Healthineers, followed by 14 years at Sanofi’s vaccine division in progressively senior CMC leadership roles. At Sanofi, he was accountable for leading transversal CMC teams and transferring candidates from early development into late‑stage pilot and commercial facilities.

Neil has deep experience in tech transfer, PPQ strategy, and QbD‑based CMC development. Prior to OmniaBio, he worked at Turnstone Biologics, a CGT biotech innovator company focused on TIL and oncolytic virus programs targeting solid tumors. He has comprehensive experience designing phase‑appropriate CMC strategies aligned with global regulatory requirements

Elizabeth Csaszar

Elizabeth (Liz) Csaszar is a scientist and biomanufacturing expert specializing in cell and gene therapy development. She holds a PhD in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto, where her research focused on hematopoietic stem cell expansion and self-renewal.

Liz previously held leadership roles at the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), where she led process development teams and oversaw immunotherapy and cell manufacturing programs supporting clinical translation.

She later joined Notch Therapeutics, where she led manufacturing sciences and process development activities for cell-based therapies, including GMP manufacturing and scale-up strategies.

She is currently working at the University Health Network (UHN), contributing to the advancement of innovative cell therapy manufacturing and translational research. 

Yvan Côté

Yvan Côté is a seasoned senior executive with over 30 years of experience in the diagnostic, biopharmaceutical, and life sciences industries. Since beginning his career in 1992, he has built a strong track record in transforming and growing organizations.

He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the Université de Sherbrooke and brings expertise in life sciences, clinical development, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, infectious diseases, microbiology, and immunology.

Mr. Côté has held leadership roles at several prominent organizations. He led Research and Development at BioChem for seven years and later served as Vice President, R&D and General Manager at Warnex for eight years. He then became General Manager of Dynacare Genetics and Specialty Services, where he helped expand a leading national laboratory testing network. During his tenure, he received the LabCorp Chairman Award in 2015 and a Hero Award for his contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, he joined Neopharm Labs in a senior leadership role. In October 2024, he was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the C3i Centre. He is focused on strengthening the organization’s impact in cell and gene therapy, laboratory services, and precision medicine to advance innovation and improve patient outcomes. 

Dre Michèle De Guise

A cardiologist by training and a graduate of the Université de Montréal, Dr. de Guise pursued further training in cardiac rehabilitation, echocardiography, and the management of patients with end-stage heart failure, including mechanical support and transplantation, in London, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

She subsequently worked as a cardiologist at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). As a clinician, she proposed and implemented a heart failure clinic and a cardiac rehabilitation program for high-risk patients. On the management side, after completing a master’s degree in management at McGill University (International Master in Health Leadership), she went on to hold several positions at CHUM, including Director of Health Promotion; Director of Quality, Health Promotion and Patient Experience; and Associate Medical Director responsible for quality and the evolution of clinical practice.

Dr. de Guise joined INESSS in July 2015 as Director of Health Services and Technology Assessment. She has served as President and Chief Executive Officer since June 2022.

Dr Jean-Sébastien Delisle

After completing his medical and hematology training at McGill University, and his PhD in biomedical sciences at the Université de Montréal, Dr. Jean-Sébastien Delisle focused his research on T-cell biology and human T-cell adoptive therapy. He now leads a research program in T-cell biology and translational T-cell immunotherapy at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and is the Medical Director of the Centre d’excellence en thérapie cellulaire (CETC). Since 2022, Dr. Delisle is also the Director of the Québec Cell, Tissue and Gene Therapy Network (ThéCell). Dr. Delisle has been appointed interim scientific director of the HMR Research Center in May 2025. 

Alice Dragomir

Alice Dragomir is a Full Professor at Faculty of pharmacy of Université de Montréal. She is the Director of the Réseau Québecois de Recherche sur les Médicaments (RQRM) and the principal investigator of the PROVEM, a real-world evidence (RWE) platform for Quebec. She is an health economist, pharmacoepidemiologist and biostatistician. She has 22 years of experience in academic research. Her research is focused on creating RWE by conducting clinical and health economic evaluations for different treatments strategies offered to patients with cancers. 

Boro Dropulić, PhD MBA

Boro received his PhD from the University of Western Australia and his MBA from the Johns Hopkins University (JHU). He has been in the gene therapy field since the late 1980s.

After a Fogarty Fellowship at the NIH, he joined the faculty at JHU where he worked on developing Lentiviral vectors as delivery systems for gene therapy. After 4 years in academia, he founded his first company ViRxSys and led the team that first demonstrated the safety of Lentiviral vectors in humans with his UPenn colleagues. Later he founded Lentigen, which first developed the Lentiviral vector used to produce Kymriah®, the first FDA-approved gene therapy product.

Later, Boro saw an opportunity to integrate Lentiviral vector technology with closed-system automated cell processing devices to enable distributive place-of-care manufacturing at hospitals, potentially improving the affordability and accessibility of gene therapy products like CAR-T cells. He therefore spearheaded the acquisition of Lentigen by Miltenyi Biotec in 2014 and led the development of a global place-of-care network of clinical centers that were able to successfully manufacture CAR-T cell products and demonstrate their therapeutic benefits in clinical trials.

Seeing a need for improved business models to support the affordability and accessibility of gene therapy products, Boro co-founded Caring Cross a 501 (c)(3) non-profit and serves as the Executive Director. He also is the CEO of Vector BioMed, a public benefit corporation that was spun-out of Caring Cross to provide affordable GMP Lentiviral vector manufacturing services to the gene therapy scientific community. 

Martin Giroux

After graduate studies at McGill University, a PhD in immunology and virology at INRS-IAF, working in the crossmatch histocompatibility laboratory for Transplant Québec and a post-doc with Dr Claude Perreault in hematopoietic graft and graft versus host disease, he was project manager in multiple projects in the Translation Platform of the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. Since 2013, he is the Director of operations (CSO and COO) of the Centre d'Excellence en Thérapie Cellulaire (CETC). The CETC is a GMP-compliant manufacturing center for cell therapies with 13 cleanrooms and regulated by Health Canada, FACT, EMA and FDA for more than minimal manipulations.  

Kevin Hay

Dr. Kevin Hay is a Clinician Scientist at the University of Calgary and Charbonneau Cancer Institute. Dr. Hay received a Master of Science in Immunology at the University of Manitoba (2008), followed by an MD (2011). After completing residency in Internal Medicine (2014) and a clinical fellowship in Haematology (2016) at the University of British Columbia, he was awarded a scholarship through the Clinician Investigator Program of UBC to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in cellular immunotherapy at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle Washington under the mentorship of Dr. Cameron Turtle. In 2019 he then took a position with Leukemia/BMT Program of BC and UBC, where he served as Director of Clinical Cell Therapy Laboratory and developed a research program in CAR-T cell therapy, before moving to the University of Calgary in 2023. He continues to serve as Medical Director of the Conconi Family Immunotherapy Laboratory, a facility in Victoria, British Columbia dedicated to the manufacturing of cellular immunotherapies, and maintains a research laboratory at the BC Cancer Research Institute as well as at the Charbonneau Cancer Institute in Calgary. 

Rob Henderson

Rob Henderson is President and CEO of BioTalent Canada, where he’s led the organization’s growth into a national leader in bioscience talent development. With over 30 years of executive experience, Rob has helped connect thousands of Canadians to careers, championed workplace diversity, and advised governments on HR strategy. He’s a bilingual Quebec native, a biology graduate, and a passionate advocate for inclusion and the life sciences.

Cédric Héroux

With over 20 years of experience leading teams and driving operational excellence, Cedric has held various leadership roles in innovative companies. After leading business development at Biodextris, he now serves as CEO, applying his expertise to foster growth, operational excellence and innovation. 

Ohad Karnieli

A well-known international expert in cell therapy. Dr. Karnieli is the founder and former CEO of Atvio Biotech, a leading Innovation center for cell & gene therapy that was sold to Orgenesis Inc. in 2018. Former VP of Technology & Manufacturing at Pluristem Therapeutics, and the former VP of the medical device at Goji solutions. Dr. Karnieli served as the chair of the process & product development committee of the International Society for Cellular Therapies, as an expert member in the ISO TC276 Biotechnology standard committee, and was the former chair of the science and technology committee of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. 

Benoit Larose

Mr. Benoit Larose is President and Chief Executive Officer of BIOQuébec. He has more than 35 years of experience in the life sciences and health technologies industry. He brings strong expertise in commercialization, business development, and investment. Mr. Larose has extensive experience and a broad network within the Canadian ecosystem, having worked with organizations of various sizes and business models. He holds an MBA from HEC Montréal. 

Dr. Joelle Laudisio DVM, DVSc

Dr. Joelle Laudisio is Senior Director, Global Head of Quality for Biologics Testing Solutions at Charles River Laboratories, where she leads global quality and regulatory strategy across North America and Europe. She brings over 15 years experience in pharmaceutical research, testing, manufacturing, and quality. Her work focuses on biologics testing, regulatory strategy, and the application of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) to modernize quality control frameworks for advanced therapies. Dr. Laudisio is a laboratory animal veterinarian by training, holding a DVM and DVSc from the University of Guelph, and completed postdoctoral research in virology focused on viral systems in gene therapy. She has extensive experience working with global regulatory agencies, including the FDA, EMA, and Health Canada.

Laurent Leblanc

Laurent Leblanc manages the Culture media & Automation R&D department for the Pharmaceutical Quality Control division of bioMerieux. He graduated from the University of Limoges in France with a Master’s degree in Biotechnology. Prior to joining bioMerieux, he worked in microbiological quality control in the pharmaceutical industry and for the previous 20 years at a number of biotechnology companies. He is currently working on creating and introducing to the market creative and effective solutions for the cosmetics and pharmaceutical areas. 

Renaud Manuguerra-Gagné

Renaud Manuguerra-Gagné is a multimedia journalist specializing in science. A PhD candidate in biomedical research at the Université de Montréal, he also holds a certificate in journalism from the same institution. He began his journalism career after receiving the Fernand-Séguin Award in 2015. Since then, he has contributed to numerous television and radio programs, including Découverte, Les Années Lumière, Midi Info, and RDI.

Michael May

Michael May is President and CEO of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), a Canadian, not-for-profit that develops technologies, launches new companies and catalyzes investment in the field of regenerative medicine, including cell and gene therapy. Prior to CCRM, Michael was the President, and co-founder, of Rimon Therapeutics Ltd., a Toronto-based tissue engineering company developing novel medical polymers that possess drug-like activity.

Michael sits on a number of boards and advisory committees including: the ARM Foundation for Cell & Gene Medicine; AgeX Corporation; panCELLa Inc.; CCRM Enterprises; the International Advisory Board of the Swedish Centre for Advanced Medical Products (CAMP); the Poietis SAB; the Entrepreneurship Leadership Council at the University of Toronto; the Cell and Gene Therapy Insights, Editorial Advisory Board; the Commercialization Committee of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy; He is the Chairman of ExCellThera Ltd.

Dr. May completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1998 as an NSERC Scholar and was awarded the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technological Entrepreneurship. In 2023, he was honoured with the Le Prix Luc Sensebé Innovation and Leadership Award by the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy, recognizing his impact on the field. In 2025, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Engineering Alumni Network at the University of Toronto, the highest honour given to a University of Toronto Engineering graduate. 

Domhnall McGowan

Domhnall is a graduate of NUI Galway and the University of Edinburgh, where he gained his M.Sc. in Regenerative Medicine: Clinical and Industrial Delivery. After graduating, he jumped straight into the cleanroom, working with Roslin Cell Therapies manufacturing cell therapies for clinical trials in the UK. As a renowned CDMO for advanced therapies, his time at RCT introduced him to the world of GMP and allowed him to work with cutting-edge technologies. He was fortunate to be a part of the team which manufactured the first GMP iPSC MCB in Europe.

After leaving RCT, he moved to Toronto in 2017 where he joined the Deliver team at CCRM. He was part of a team who built, commissioned, and qualified a 10-cleanroom facility in downtown Toronto, the CCVP. This experience gave him a tremendous background into facility design and construction, a side of the industry not many get a chance to experience and understand. At CCRM, he progressed from working in the cleanroom, manufacturing cell banks and drug products, to stepping out of the cleanroom and managing the facility operations such as training, maintenance, and cleaning.

Domhnall McGowan is now the Chief Training Officer at the Canadian Advanced Therapies Training Institute (CATTI), where he leads the development and delivery of workforce training programs designed to prepare the next generation of talent for cell and gene therapy manufacturing. His work focuses on bridging the gap between academic education and the practical, GMP-ready skills required in modern biomanufacturing facilities. 

France Mignault

With over 25 years of experience in the life sciences sector, France Mignault has held roles across industry and consulting, including regional leadership responsibilities spanning Québec and Atlantic Canada. She has contributed to key decision-making bodies such as IMC Core and Access committees, as well as BTC.

France specializes in Market Access and Reimbursement Strategy, with deep expertise in health technology assessment processes, particularly with INESSS. Her work is grounded in strong relationships with government stakeholders and payers, complemented by extensive external engagement with life sciences organizations and patient groups.

A seasoned negotiator, she brings significant experience in pricing discussions with the pCPA and provincial payers. Her approach to Market Access is both strategic and pragmatic, developing creative, evidence-based solutions and actionable plans that optimize reimbursement and patient access to therapies.

Recognized for fostering alignment across cross-functional teams, France leverages diverse insights to drive cohesive strategies and deliver impactful outcomes.

Massimiliano Paganelli, MD, PhD

Massimiliano “Max” Paganelli is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Morphocell Technologies, a regenerative medicine company developing breakthrough cell and tissue therapies for liver disease. Under his leadership, Morphocell raised a US$50M series A, has grown to 44 employees and established offices and laboratories in three countries, with headquarters in the Greater Montreal area. A clinician, scientist, and entrepreneur, Max is also Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Université de Montréal and pediatric transplant hepatologist at CHU Sainte-Justine, where he directs the Liver Tissue Engineering and Cell Therapy Laboratory. His mission is to transform the treatment of severe liver disease and bring hope to patients worldwide. 

Yoo Jin Park

Yoo Jin Park, PhD, is Director of the Biomanufacturing Hub Network (BioHubNet) at the University of Toronto. She leads a national initiative focused on developing industry-ready talent for Canada’s rapidly growing biomanufacturing and life sciences sector. Yoo Jin works closely with academic institutions, startups, and industry partners to implement training programs and build strategic collaborations that strengthen Canada’s biomanufacturing workforce. She trained as a diabetes and cancer researcher at the University of British Columbia and the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre/University Health Network. Prior to BioHubNet, she worked at Sanofi Pasteur and Ontario Genomics, advancing research translation, academic–industry partnerships, and venture and investment development that connect scientific discovery with real-world impact.

Gayle Piat

Gayle has a background in Medical Laboratory Technology and has over 30 years of experience working in the life science field with 12 years spent specializing in Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and 11 years in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).

In 2003 she earned the designation of Registered Quality Assurance Professional in GLP through the Society of Quality Assurance while working at the Alberta Research Council as the Quality Assurance Manager at a GLP toxicology facility. In 2011 Gayle joined the University of Alberta as Project Manager for construction of a GMP cell therapy manufacturing facility.

Gayle is currently the Operations Manager of Alberta Cell Therapy Manufacturing (ACTM), and in 2016 she earned Regulatory Affairs Certification through the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society. 

Donna Rill

Ms. Rill currently serves as the Chief Technical officer of Diakonos Oncology. As a recognized leader in in biotechnology innovation with over 30 years of experience advancing cell and gene therapeutic concepts, she has worked in academic environments engaging in pre-clinical and early clinical research to start-up/small biotechs progressing through clinical trial manufacturing and development towards BLA submissions. She has extensive manufacturing, clinical and translational research laboratory experience in cell and gene therapy, monoclonal antibody production, and protein production. She has setup and managed core development laboratories covering a large range of testing services to facilitate research, core drug development activities as well as manufacturing, quality systems, and quality control laboratories. Her experience coves a broad range of activities inclusive of laboratory construction, project management, development and operations, cGMP, cGTP, and GLP regulatory compliance, quality control/assurance system development, database development, and clinical standards of practice. She has designed and qualified/validated cGMP Cell & Gene Therapy Laboratories, cGMP Vector Production facilities, core service laboratories, and Translational Research Labs. Her core focus is advancing cell-based therapies from preclinical development through clinical trials integrating automation, data integrity, and rigorous regulatory standards.

Ms. Rill has previously held the positions of Chief technology Officer with Triumvira Immunologics, Vice President of Manufacturing for Cell Medica, Chief Development Officer for Opexa Therapeutics, Laboratory Director of Cell and Gene Therapy, Translational Research Laboratories for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine; Associate Scientist/Lab Manager of the Bone Marrow Transplant Research Laboratory, and the GMP Cell & Gene Therapy Laboratories, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Education Coordinator and Clinical Instructor, Department of Clinical Laboratory, LeBonheur Children's Medical Center and University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. 

Irene Rombel

Dr. Irene Rombel is the CEO, President, and Co-Founder of BioCurie, a TechBio company located in Cambridge, MA, and the greater Philadelphia region. BioCurie is pioneering mechanistic artificial intelligence (mAI) to transform the development and manufacturing of cell, gene and nucleic acid therapies. Irene is an industry veteran with 25+ years of leadership experience in science and business, spanning biotechnology, big pharma, consulting, investing, and academia. Prior to founding BioCurie, Irene held leadership roles at Spark Therapeutics and Johnson & Johnson; was Founder and President of Biomedical Intelligence LLC, a life science consulting company; and a biotechnology hedge fund analyst. Dr. Rombel started her career in academia as an Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, in the Center for Biomedical Inventions, leading research on DNA vaccines, synthetic biology, and cell-specific targeting. Dr. Rombel is on Columbia University’s Translational Therapeutics Accelerator Steering Committee and the Columbia University Irving Cancer Drug Discovery Advisory Board. Irene received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and B.Sc. (Hon.) in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and her MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Irene is also a registered U.S. Patent Agent. 

Dr Denis-Claude Roy

After a research fellowship at Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Denis-Claude Roy began his practice as a hematologist and clinical researcher at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont. There, he set up the Clinical Cell Therapy Laboratory as well as his Translational Cell Therapy Research Laboratory, where he develops immunotherapeutic and photodynamic approaches to eliminate cancer cells and prevent graft-versus-host disease. In 2012, Dr. Roy was awarded the construction of the cell therapy production center (CETC), one of the largest centers in Canada with 14 clean rooms. For 14 years, Dr. Roy was Scientific Director of the HMR Research Center. Dr. Roy co-founded the ThéCell Network, and CellCAN. In 2016, he co-founded and has since been Scientific Director of C3i Centre, a CDMO in cell and gene therapy. Since 2019, Dr. Roy acts as director of the Hematology-Oncology & Cell Therapy University Institute at HMR.

Christopher Rudd

Christopher Rudd is a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, and the Director of Immuno-Oncology at the Centre de Recherche Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University and a member of the Centre of Translational Research in Cancer-McGill University. Rudd has previously held professorial positions at the Harvard Medical School (1987-2000), the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI, Boston) and Imperial College London (2000-2005) and was Professor of Molecular Immunology and the Head of the Cell Signalling Section in the Department of Pathology at Cambridge University (2005-2016). He also served as a member of the prestigious Board of Tutors, Harvard College, for more than a decade and was a Principal Investigator at the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR) in Cambridge, UK. Professor Rudd’s research focuses on signal transduction pathways in T cells and how these pathways regulate immune functions.

Dr. Patrycja Thompson

Patrycja completed her MSc in Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, after which, she spent 2 years working at VIDO in Saskatoon in the area of vaccine development. She returned to academia to complete a PhD in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto, followed by post-doctoral studies at the Fox Chase Cancer Institute in Philadelphia. She spent several months working at the Sunnybrook Research Services office managing large institutional funding awards. She then went on to join the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) as the Manager of Technology Sourcing and Evaluation, leading diligence on novel academic discoveries, developing commercialization strategies for regenerative medicine therapies, building stakeholder networks to support venture creation, and being part of start up incubation teams. She joined the University of Toronto’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives office, division of Vice President Research and Innovation in 2021 where she led strategic partnership and consortia building with the private sector stakeholders to support a number of university’s multi-divisional strategic research initiatives across all sectors (i.e microfluidics, robotics, climate positive energy, life sciences).

Currently as the Director of Strategy & Operations at HI3, Patrycja builds and implements national research and business strategies to create collaborative opportunities with academic institutions, industry, non-for-profit, and government partners to build a strong and resilient life sciences and biomanufacturing ecosystem that can pivot to produce interventions and solutions for health threats and emergencies in support of national advancement of dual use technologies and health security endeavours.

Laurent Tillement

Laurent Tillement is Director partnerships, AI & Health at Mila - Quebec AI Institute. He is Doctor in Pharmacy (Paris, France) and PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology (Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA), and has several years of experience in academia and pharmaceutical industry in France, the USA and Canada. He was trained as a life sciences researcher, and involved in the different processes of the drug development, from exploratory to clinical research, with a focus on the positioning and impact of innovations in the pharmaceutical processes. Laurent is representing Mila in the life sciences ecosystem, to establish close relationships with stakeholders, to instigate partnership’s opportunities, and to help to develop research collaborations.

Dr Simon Turcotte

Dr. Turcotte is a Canadian surgeon-scientist with extensive expertise in solid cancer immunology and T cell immunotherapy, spanning from bench to bedside. After completing his training in immunology and surgery at the Université de Montréal, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, focused on the immune recognition of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers. During this time, he established that T cells could recognize chemotherapy-refractory gastrointestinal cancers and demonstrated that tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes (TIL) could be used for T cell immunotherapy in these malignancies. Dr. Turcotte also completed a fellowship in hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB) surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Turcotte currently serves as associate professor at the Université de Montréal, HPB surgical oncologist, scientist and early phase trialist at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). His laboratory specializes in the selection and ex vivo expansion of tumor-reactive TIL and in deciphering immune suppression in HPB malignancies. He leads the Cell Therapy Clinical Research Program and directs the CHUM Unit for Cell Production, enabling TIL manufacturing for early-phase clinical trials. Additionally, he oversees one of the largest HPB cancer biobanks and prospective database in Canada. Under his leadership, the CHUM is one of only two centers in Canada offering TIL immunotherapy through clinical trials.

Kasondra White

Kasondra White is a senior public sector leader currently serving as Acting Director General for Health Emergency Readiness Canada, at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), where she plays a key role in providing leadership and support to ensure that Canada has the necessary innovation and industrial capacity for the development and production of key medical countermeasures (MCMs) to respond to health emergencies.

Recognized for her impactful leadership, Kasondra was named an Emerging Leader for her contributions to advancing Canada’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy, including her pivotal role in negotiating the landmark agreement with Moderna to establish mRNA vaccine production capacity in Canada. Her work has required navigating complex, high-stakes policy environments and coordinating across multiple federal departments to secure alignment and Cabinet-level approvals.