Conference Speakers

Dr. Anthony Atala the W. Boyce Professor and Chair of the Department of Urology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine 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 for transplantation and therapy and for developing body-on-a-chip technologies for drug discovery and personalized medicine. 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 Industry Achievement Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the R&D Innovator of the Year Award, and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. He is also the recipient of the Jacobson Innovation Award from the American College of Surgeons, the Barringer Medal from the Association of Genitourinary Surgeons, the John Duckett Research Excellence Award and the Ramon Guiteras Award from the American Urological Association, the Eihilali Award from the Societe Internationale D’Urologie, the Samuel D. Gross Prize from the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. He holds 3 University Honorary Degrees.

Dr. Atala’s work was listed twice as Time Magazine’s top 10 medical breakthroughs of the year and 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 and Boards, 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.