Future of Research in Medicine – Technologies and the Future of Healthcare

Dr. Olga Pierrakos (PhD) is a national higher education leader and innovator, interdisciplinary biomedical and mechanical engineer, experienced educator, and mother of four.  She is currently a STEM Education Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) working across the education, engineering, and technology innovation directorates and managing a $50M portfolio of federal investments. Prior to joining NSF for a second stint, Olga served as the Founding Chair of Wake Forest Engineering (2017-2024) from launch to accreditation and led transformational change with a vision to Educate the Whole Engineer for Human Flourishing and positioned Wake Forest Engineering as the 14th Best Undergraduate Engineering Program (2023 US News Report, among 275 US institutions). Achieving unprecedented student and faculty diversity (over 40% women and over 25% racial/ethnic diversity), Olga led leveraged Inclusive Innovation to transform the culture, curriculum, and research enterprise of Wake Forest Engineering, serving as a catalyst for institutional change. Olga has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and a MS and BS in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech. She has been founding faculty of two brand new U.S. engineering undergraduate programs – Wake Forest University and James Madison University – demonstrating institutional and national transformation of engineering education. Serving in national, state, and regional leadership roles, Olga is a national thought leader in higher education as well as innovation ecosystems. She has been PI on many NSF awards and currently is PI on a multi-year Kern Family Foundation KEEN award targeted at “Educating the Whole Engineer” through innovation (entrepreneurial mindset) and character. Prior to joining WFU, Olga was managing $100M of federal investments as a Program Director at NSF.

Dr. Anthony Atala is a practicing surgeon and the G. Link Professor and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. His work focuses on bioprinting and growing human cells, tissues and organs. Seventeen applications of technologies developed in Dr. Atala’s laboratory have been used clinically. Dr. Atala was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He is a recipient of the US Congress funded Christopher Columbus Foundation Award, bestowed on a living American who is currently working on a discovery that will significantly affect society, the World Technology Award in Health and Medicine, the Edison Science/Medical Award, the R&D Innovator of the Year Award, and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. Dr. Atala’s work was listed twice as Time Magazine’s top 10 medical breakthroughs of the year, as one of 5 discoveries that will change the future of organ transplants and was ranked by the Project Management Institute as one of the top 10 most impactful biotech projects from the past 50 years. Dr. Atala was named by Scientific American as one of the world’s most influential people in biotechnology, by U.S. News & World Report as one of 14 Pioneers of Medical Progress in the 21st Century, by Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review as one of 50 key influencers in the life sciences intellectual property arena, and by the journal Nature Biotechnology as one of the top 10 translational researchers in the world. Dr. Atala has led or served several national professional and government committees, including the National Institutes of Health working group on Cells and Developmental Biology, the National Institutes of Health Bioengineering Consortium, and the National Cancer Institute’s Advisory Board. He was a Founder of the Tissue Engineering Society, the Regenerative Medicine Society, the Regenerative Medicine Foundation, the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, the Regenerative Medicine Development Organization, the Regenerative Medicine Manufacturing Society, and the Regenerative Medicine Manufacturing Consortium. Dr. Atala is editor of 25 books and 2 journals, has published more than 900 journal articles, and has applied for or received over 300 national and international patents.

Dr. Metin Gurcan is Senior Associate Dean for Artificial Intelligence, the founding Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, Professor of Internal Medicine, Pathology, and Biomedical Engineering, and Director of the Clinical Image Analysis Lab at WFUSM. Dr. Gurcan is an internationally recognized researcher and educator in the fields of medical image analysis, artificial intelligence, and biomedical informatics. His research has been supported by NIH NCATS, NCI, NIDCD, NHLBI, NLM, NBIB, NIAID, and DOD, as well as awards from several nonprofit organizations. He holds ten patents for his interventions in medical artificial intelligence, which have led to the establishment of two startup companies. Dr. Gurcan received his BSc and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey, and his MSc. Degree in Digital Systems Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, England.

Ashley Weaver, PhD is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Her research uses medical image analysis and finite element modeling to study injury, with a particular focus on musculoskeletal health and fracture. Her research portfolio includes studies on high-energy trauma (e.g., automotive, spaceflight), as well as low-energy trauma (e.g., osteoporotic fracture). Her group is leading musculoskeletal imaging assessments for several NIH-funded clinical trials to assess the effects of interventions to prevent bone loss with weight loss, and she is PI of an R01 examining muscle-bone crosstalk in the Study of Muscle, Mobility, and Aging. She uses multiple imaging modalities in her human subjects’ research, including computed tomography (CT), high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HRpQCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA).