Dr. Kannan Rangaramanujam is the Arnall Patz distinguished professor of ophthalmology, and co-director of center for nanomedicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He holds joint appointments in Physiology, Pharmacology, and Therapeutics, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is a chemical engineer by training [PhD (Caltech)]. His research interests are in the field of translational nanomedicine centered on novel approaches to target specific cells at the site of injury. His team has developed and extensively validated the hydroxyl dendrimer and glucose dendrimer platforms through Hopkins-wide collaborations in many animal models of ocular, brain disorders, pain, depression, and cancer. These have the opportunity to address long standing challenges in the field and will lead to medicines that are easy to administer (e.g., oral pills for AMD and diabetic retinopathy), have minimal side effects, and are affordable to large fractions of the world population. He is leading the translation of his research to the clinic, through start-ups and partnerships. He is the co-founder of Ashvattha Therapeutics Inc. and Samata Therapeutics (>$150M raised) – Johns Hopkins spinoffs that are translating some of his team’s patented dendrimer technologies to the clinic, with three products that have completed, or in Phase 2 trials. Dr. Rangaramanujam is an author of >190 patents (issued and pending, licensed), more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, and is supported by significant NIH and federal funding. He has won several recognitions, including fellowship of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE), Controlled Release Society, and Distinguished Alumni Award from BITS (Pilani). He is on the editorial boards of Biomaterials, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, and Theranostics.

Dr. Sihong Wang is an Associate Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014, and his Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in 2009. From 2015 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. He has published over 80 papers in numerous high-impact journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Electronics, Nature Sustainability, Matter, Nature Communications, Science Advances, etc. His research group currently focuses on soft polymeric bioelectronic materials and devices as the new generation of technology for biomedical studies and therapeutics. As of August 2025, his research has been cited more than 30,700 times and he has an H-index of 68. He was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics from 2020 to 2024, and was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35 Global List), Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award, Advanced Materials Rising Star Award, ACS PMSE Early-Stage Investigator Award, iCANX Young Scientist Award, MRS Graduate Student Award, Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad, Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2012 by Physics World, etc.

Dr. Eric Rellinger is a pediatric surgeon and physician-scientist dedicated to improving outcomes for children with neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood. He focuses on high-risk, MYCN-amplified disease, aiming to identify and exploit metabolic vulnerabilities to guide new combinatorial therapies.

His investigative career began during a three-year research fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he studied epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in neuroblastoma and developed inhibitors to disrupt MYC recruitment to target genes. After completing pediatric surgery fellowship training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Dr. Rellinger joined the University of Kentucky’s Department of Pediatric Surgery and the Markey Cancer Center. There, he leads a multidisciplinary program in cancer metabolism, recently achieving the first in situ profiling of the neuroblastoma N-linked glycome and identifying core fucosylation as a promising therapeutic target.