Elizabeth Grice

Elizabeth A. Grice, Ph.D. is Professor and Vice Chair of Basic Science Research in the Department of Dermatology, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Microbiology, at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Dr. Grice’s scientific training began as an undergraduate at Luther College in Iowa, followed by a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 2006. Her post-doctoral work at NIH/NHGRI pioneered sequencing-based approaches to profile the topographic and temporal diversity of the healthy human skin microbiome. Since 2012, Dr. Grice has led a research group of multi-disciplinary scientists and trainees at Penn to investigate roles of the skin microbiota in health and disease. Dr. Grice is Director and PI of the Penn Skin Biology and Disease Resource Center (SBDRC) and Co-Director of the Penn Dermatology Research Training Program. At the graduate education level, she serves as Vice Chair of the Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology Ph.D. Program. Dr. Grice is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of Investigative Dermatology. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Sandra J. Lazarus endowed Associate Professorship, Penn Medicine Michael S. Brown New Investigator Award, the Penn One Health Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund PaTH Award, and the Sun Pharma Research Award from the Dermatology Foundation.

Dr. Sasha Shafikhani completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. He is currently a Professor and the Director of Microbiome Research in the Department of Dermatology at UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Shafikhani has served on the editorial boards of 13 scientific journals and is currently an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Microbiology and Scientific Reports. Additionally, he has contributed to the grants evaluation panels for prominent organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and various national and international research funding agencies. As a cellular microbiologist, Dr. Shafikhani leads research projects focusing on host/pathogen interaction, normal and chronic wound healing, and cancer biology. His research has been supported by grants from NIH, philanthropic funds, and institutional grants.

Paul Bollyky received his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, his D.Phil at the University of Oxford, and his M.D. at Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA and then his Fellowship Training in infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Paul was appointed to the Stanford University Medical School faculty in 2013. He currently serves as a professor and division chief of infectious diseases at Stanford. He has a longstanding interest in preventing autoimmune diseases. His research has focused on how immune responses are regulated in infected wounds.

Dr. Lindsay Kalan is an Associate Professor at McMaster University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania where she developed methods to employ whole genome shotgun (WGS) metagenomic sequencing and analysis to decipher the functional and pathogenic potential of microbial communities in diabetic foot ulcers. Dr. Kalan’s current research is aimed at investigating the microbial ecology of the skin and interactions with microbes in the context of wound healing and skin infection.

M. Martins-Green is a Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology at the University of California, Riverside. She came to the US from Portugal on a Fulbright Fellowship and received a PhD in 1987 at UC Davis, followed by a National Research Service Award at Berkeley and then as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Rockefeller University before joining the UC Riverside faculty in 1993. She is currently at the highest level (IX) in the professorial scale at the University of California. She has received numerous awards throughout the years in research and teaching including being a fellow of AAAS and the WHS and having received the Oliver Johnson award, the highest award the UC gives to one of its faculty for leadership skills. She has also received the innovation teaching award and the Chancellor award for excellence in mentoring undergraduates in research. She is an internationally recognized researcher in wound healing and pioneered the role of chemokines in wound healing and angiogenesis. In the last 10 years, her research program has focused on understanding how wound chronicity is initiated. She developed a murine model of chronic wounds that mimics closely cell and molecular mechanisms of chronic wound initiation and development in humans. From her numerous studies she has proposed a three-stage treatment for chronic wounds in diabetic patients; a preparatory, an earlier and a later stage treatment. Her findings have lead to initiation of a clinical trial on using this approach to treat DFU