Keynote: From Blueprint to Breakthrough: Envisioning the Future of Cell & Gene Therapy

Michael Friedlander, Ph.D., is the Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology at Virginia Tech where he also serves as the founding Director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute (FBRI) at VTC and as senior Dean for Research at the VTC School of Medicine. He is Professor of Biological Sciences and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and is an affiliated faculty member of the School of Biomedical Engineering and Science at VT. He has built the FBRI’s programs to over $240M in extramural funding with 46 research teams and over 600 staff and students. Friedlander was among the first neuroscientists to directly label and identify individual physiologically characterized neurons in the living brain, to show the importance of the diffusible gaseous signal, nitric oxide, in modifying chemical signaling and visual processing in the brain and to directly measure the communication between individual connected pairs of neurons in multiple regions of the brain including areas involved in learning and memory and visual processing (the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex). His lab’s most recent work has characterized the role that timing of electrical signals in the brain can play in plasticity after traumatic brain injury and the richness of how calcium controls synaptic communication in learning. His research findings have been published in leading scientific journals including Cell, J. Neuroscience, Nature, Neuron, three in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Friedlander previously served as the Evelyn McKnight professor of learning and Memory at UAB and the Wilhelmina Robertson professor at Baylor College of Medicine. He was the founding Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Director of the Civitan International Research Center on Intellectual Disabilities at UAB and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. Friedlander was the founding President of the Association of Medical School Neuroscience Department Chairs, Chair of the Council of Academic Societies of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) representing over 90 professional medical and scientific societies, and was elected as an AAMC Distinguished Service Member. He served as Chair of the National Association of Intellectual Disabilities Research Centers and as President of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Friedlander is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in Neuroscience, an NIH Fogarty Center Senior International Research Fellow, a recipient of the American College of Physicians’ Menninger Award for Mental Health Research, the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine. He has served as a visiting professor at the Australian National University’s John Curtin School of Medical Research, Oxford University and the University of Paris. Friedlander completed a BS in Biology at Florida State University, a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois and postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, Sandra, have five daughters and nine grandchildren. Friedlander is originally from Miami, Florida.

Dr. Nathan Kuppermann serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Academic Officer, and Distinguished Professor at Children’s National Hospital, as well as Chair of Pediatrics and the Associate Dean of Pediatric Academic Affairs at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Before joining Children’s National in 2024, he was a Distinguished Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, Associate Dean for Global Health, and for 19 years served as the Bo Tomas Brofeldt Endowed Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at UC Davis Health.

Dr. Kuppermann has been recognized nationally and internationally for his research and mentorship with many awards. In 2017 a PEM Scientific Research Mentoring award was named after him by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, and in 2020 he was awarded the UC Davis Hibbard Williams Extraordinary Achievement Award and the Faculty Distinguished Research Award, the most prestigious awards at UC Davis. He was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in the U.K. and in 2010 was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. In 2022 he received the Maureen Andrew Mentor Award from the Society for Pediatric Research, in 2024 he was recognized with the John Marx Leadership Award from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, and in 2025 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM).