Vladimir Muzykantov (MD in Internal Medicine from First Moscow Medical School, 1980 and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Russian National Cardiology Research Center, 1985), joined PENN in 1993, got tenure in 2003 and in 2010 became a Full Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics. In 2010 he established Center for Targeted Therapeutics and Translational Nanomedicine (CT3N) at PENN, which he directed for 15 years. For four decades he works on targeted delivery of pharmacological agents in the cardiovascular system. His research focuses on drug delivery by RBCs and endothelial targeting for treatment inflammation, thrombosis and ischemia. He published >300 papers (h-index 91) and edited a book “Biomedical Aspects of Drug Targeting” (Kluwer, 2003). Honors include: AHA Established

He graduated with honors and received PhD in Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1981. He started his scientific carrier at P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and later worked in many research centers worldwide. At present, he is Professor of Physics at Leibniz University Hannover, Institute of Quantum Optics and Chair of Nanoengineering. In 2024 he received the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics.

Thomas J. Webster’s (H index: 137) degrees are in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (B.S., 1995; USA) and in biomedical engineering from RPI (Ph.D., 2000; USA). He has formed over a dozen companies who have numerous FDA approved medical products currently improving human health in over 45,000 patients. He is currently helping those companies and serves as a professor at Brown University, Saveetha University, HebeiUniversity of Technology, UFPI, University of the Basque Country, and others. Dr. Webster has numerous awards including: 2020, World Top 2% Scientist by Citations (PLOS); 2020, SCOPUS Highly Cited Research (Top 1% Materials Science and Mixed Fields); 2021, Clarivate Top 0.1% Most Influential Researchers (Pharmacology and Toxicology); 2022, Best Materials Science Scientist by Citations (Research.com); and is a fellow of over 8 societies.Prof. Webster is a former President of the U.S. Society for Biomaterials and has over 1,350 publications to his credit with over 55,000 citations. He was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Prof. Webster also recently formed a fund to support Nigerian student research opportunities in the U.S.

Jingwei Xie received his B.S. (1999) and M.S. (2002) from Nanjing University of Technology, China, and his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (2007). He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Xia group at Washington University in St. Louis (2007‐2010). He is currently a Professor in the Department of Surgery-Transplant and Holland Regenerative Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He has won several prestigious awards including Most Promising New Invention Award at UNMC (2017), Maurer Scientific Achievement Award (2019), CAB Mid-Career Investigator Award (2020), and Distinguished Scientist Award at UNMC (2021). He was selected as AIMBE Fellow in 2024. His research interests include biomaterials, drug delivery, wound healing, hemostasis, and regenerative medicine.