Irena Levitan, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in Biophysics and Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994 and completed postdoctoral training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Institute for Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the biophysical properties of endothelial membranes and sub-membrane cytoskeleton. Specifically, the studies of her group, which combine computational and experimental biophysical approaches, provided the first comprehensive structural insights into cholesterol regulation of K+ channels. In 2012, she was named a Guyton Distinguished Lecturer “for her quantitative and biophysical work on cholesterol modulation of ion channels and how this can affect integrated organ function. She and her group also discovered a paradoxical relationship between fluidity/deformability of the membrane and cell stiffness. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of AIMBE for “outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid-ion channel interactions, cellular biomechanics and vascular dysfunction under dyslipidemia. Eric Delpire, PhD, is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics in the Department of Anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN. He earned his PhD in Physiology from the University of Liège, Belgium. He completed postdoctoral training at Wright State University in Dayton, OH, and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. He is a recognized expert in cell volume regulation and ion transport mechanisms across biological membranes. He is credited with discovering the regulatory pathway involving WNK and SPAK/OSR1 kinases, as well as their interaction with cation-chloride cotransporters. Dr. Delpire has developed numerous genetically modified mouse models of cation-chloride transporters, kinases, and other regulatory molecules, including traditional global and conditional knockouts and knock-ins, as well as CRISPR/Cas9-generated knockout and knock-in models. These models are crucial tools for understanding how genetic mutations in these proteins affect various cellular functions and medical conditions such as hypertension, neurological disorders, and gastrointestinal diseases. For his groundbreaking research, Dr. Delpire has received numerous awards, including the Hugh Davson Distinguished Lectureship (2023) from the Cell and Molecular Physiology Section of the American Physiological Society. He has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physiological Society. He has published over 230 peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters. Dr. Hector Rasgado-Flores teaches at Rosalind Franklin University, Chicago, USA
