Plenary speakers

Laureate Professor Ingrid Scheffer

University of Melbourne and Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

Laureate Professor Ingrid Scheffer AO MBBS PhD FRACP FAA FAHMS FRS is a physician-scientist whose work as a paediatric neurologist and epileptologist at the University of Melbourne and Florey Institute has led epilepsy genetics research over more than 27 years. In collaboration with Professor Samuel Berkovic and molecular geneticists, they identified the first epilepsy gene and many genes subsequently. She led the first major International League Against Epilepsy revision of the classification of epilepsies in 28 years (March 2017) and was a co-recipient of the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Science and in 2018 was elected to the Royal Society (London).

Geoffrey W. Abbott 

Department of Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, USA

Dr. Geoffrey W. Abbott earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of London in 1997, followed by postdoctoral research at Yale University School of Medicine.  He was made a tenured full professor at Weill-Cornell Medical School in 2011, and soon afterwards moved to University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where he is now Professor in Physiology & Biophysics, Vice Dean for Basic Science Research and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Personnel.  Funded by multiple NIH institutes, Dr. Abbott currently studies ion channel modulation by ancillary subunits, solute transporters, neurotransmitters, metabolites, modern synthetic drugs, and herbal medicines. In 2022 he was awarded a Samueli Scholarship for his molecular mechanistic research in botanical ethnomedicine.

Ji Sun, Department of Structural Biology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA