Hosts

• Dr. Aline Gottlieb, OHSU Hillsboro Medical Center (host)
• Dr. Jan Lüdert, Head of Programs, DWIH New York (host)

Dr. Willem Buys, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a member of the Kimmel Cancer Center and Institute for Cell Engineering. My research focuses on myeloid immune modulation and engineered stem cell-derived immune therapies for critically ill and immunocompromised patients, especially in hematology and oncology. Previously, I completed my medical training and doctorate in Germany, where I was an ELAN scholar at the BIOME graduate school. In 2026, I will launch an independent junior research group at Hannover Medical School to translate iPSC-derived macrophage therapies toward early clinical application.

Dr. Kimberly Hartl, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Kimberly Hartl is a biotechnologist by training. She got her PhD in cell biology from Humboldt University in 2024 and has moved to New York early 2025 to pursue her Postdoc at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research focuses on epithelial cell states in intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer and how to harness those cell states for therapy.

Dr. Shivani Kumar, University of Michigan

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, where I study how large language models, like ChatGPT, reason about moral and cultural values. I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at IIIT-Delhi, India, where my research focused on affective traits in general conversations. Before that, I earned my masters and bachelors degree from the University of Delhi, India. I have prior experience at Adobe Research and have published across top NLP conferences like ACL, EMNLP, and AAAI.

Noemi Linden, Weill Cornell Medicine

Noemi Linden is a PhD candidate in Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, where she investigates how HIV hides from immune detection by integrating into protective regions of the human genome. Her research focuses on T cell biology and cell-intrinsic barriers to viral eradication, with the broader aim of contributing to a functional HIV cure. Originally from Hamburg, Germany, Noemi earned her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Jacobs University Bremen, where she studied MHC class I protein dynamics in the lab of Professor Sebastian Springer.

Her scientific journey has been shaped by international research experiences at the CBMSO in Madrid, NYU, and the University of Cambridge. In parallel, she has remained committed to education and global development—having volunteered with the German Development Ministry’s Weltwärts program in Ecuador, tutoring and teaching extensively, and mentoring students across academic levels. At Cornell Medicine, she plays an active role in advancing sustainability in science, leading her lab’s green certification and contributing to institutional sustainability initiatives.

Dr. Melanie Ptatscheck, New York University

Dr. Melanie Ptatscheck is a Visiting Scholar at New York University, a research associate at Leuphana University Lüneburg, and a fellow in the DAAD PRIME program. Her research focuses on the mental health of creative professionals in the music industry, working at the intersection of Popular Music Studies and Public Health. Her current postdoctoral projects explore music and well-being, health narratives in popular music, and the sustainability of urban music cultures.

Dr. Xingyuan “Zazzy” Zhao, Johns Hopkins University

Xingyuan “Zazzy” Zhao is a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI). She holds a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines, where she investigated the compressive performance of layered solids, including MAX and MAB phases, across strain rates. Her current postdoctoral research focuses on characterizing damage in geomaterials under hypervelocity impact and developing multiaxial dynamic compression capabilities to examine the multiphysics of geomaterials using in-situ synchrotron X-ray imaging. She can be reached by email at xzhao114@jh.edu.