Sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tee 2023

Meet our com­mit­tee, a team of renowned spe­cial­ists who shape the sci­en­tif­ic vision of the con­fer­ence in the field of neu­ro­science. Their knowl­edge and lead­er­ship guar­an­tee a high stan­dard of pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions focused on brain research. Get to know the experts behind this year’s program.

Grupa Badawcza Biologii Astrocytów_Michał Ślęzak

Dr. Michał Ślęzak

Senior Leader of the Research Group of Astro­cyte Biol­o­gy at Łukasiewicz – PORT 

He received the PhD at the Louis Pas­teur Uni­ver­si­ty in Stras­bourg and accom­plished post­doc­tor­al train­ing in Inst. Phar­ma­col­o­gy PAS in Cra­cow (Young Inves­ti­ga­tor Award, Pol­ish MSHE) and in VIB, KU Leu­ven (Marie-Curie Intra-Euro­pean Fel­low­ship). In 2016, he won a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion at Bio­Med X Insti­tute to lead a team spon­sored by Boehringer Ingel­heim. The team led by Ślęzak, PhD, focus­es on the role of astro­cytes in brain phys­i­ol­o­gy and pathology.

In recent years, we dis­cov­ered aber­ra­tions in the mol­e­c­u­lar pro­gram of astro­cytes elicit­ed by chron­ic stress in rodents. Like­wise, the tran­scrit­pi­onal analy­sis of post-mortem human brain sam­ples pro­vid­ed evi­dence for the impair­ment of fun­da­men­tal func­tions of astro­cytes in depres­sion. Cur­rent­ly, the team com­bines genet­ic manip­u­la­tions with state-of-the-art func­tion­al imag­ing to inves­ti­gate the con­tri­bu­tion of astro­cyte-spe­cif­ic path­ways to neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal symp­toms of psy­chi­atric diseases.

Witold Konopka

Dr. Witold Konopka

Leader of the Research Group of Synap­to­ge­n­e­sis at Łukasiewicz – PORT

He received the PhD at Nenc­ki Insti­tute in War­saw and accom­plished post­doc­tor­al train­ing at Ger­man Can­cer Research Cen­ter (DKFZ), Hei­del­berg (Guen­ther Schuetz lab). From 2012 he ran the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Ani­mal Mod­els and in 2014 – 2018 he was a deputy direc­tor for sci­en­tif­ic affairs at the Nenc­ki Institute.

In the Łukasiewicz – PORT we study the pre­cise mech­a­nisms that reg­u­late periph­er­al metab­o­lism by the brain. We focus on reg­u­la­tion of eat­ing – espe­cial­ly the feel­ing of hunger and sati­ety. We are inter­est­ed in how neu­rons mod­i­fy their activ­i­ty in response to both inter­nal and exter­nal sig­nals, inform­ing the brain of such phys­i­o­log­i­cal states. Under­stand­ing these phe­nom­e­na will help in the fight against eat­ing dis­or­ders such as anorex­ia and the pan­dem­ic of the mod­ern world – obesity.

Grupa Badawcza Synaptogenezy_Tomasz Prószyński

Dr. Tomasz Prószyński

Senior Leader of the Research Group of the Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Metab­o­lism at Łukasiewicz – PORT

He received the PhD at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Dres­den (Kai Simons’ lab) and accom­plished post­doc­tor­al train­ing at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty (Joshua Sanes’ lab). In 2013 – 2020, he was lead­ing a Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Synap­to­ge­n­e­sis at the Nenc­ki Insti­tute where he was a mem­ber of the Sci­en­tif­ic Coun­cil for two caden­cies. Co-orga­niz­er of Euro­pean Mus­cle Con­fer­ence, Neu­rons in Action, and „Actin and actin-bind­ing pro­teins in health and dis­eases 2022”. His recent pub­li­ca­tion (Rojek K. et al., Plos Biol­o­gy 2019) has been award­ed the Konors­ki Award for the best pub­li­ca­tion in neu­ro­science per­formed pre­dom­i­nant­ly in Poland.

Research Group of Synap­to­ge­n­e­sis stud­ies mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms that reg­u­late neu­ro­mus­cu­lar junc­tions in the periph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem as well as synaps­es and neu­ronal orga­ni­za­tion in the brain. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing the func­tion of the Ani­giomotin fam­i­ly of pro­teins and the Hip­po path­way sig­nal­ing in the cen­tral ner­vous system.

Grupa Badawcza Mechanizmów Neurodegeneracji_Agnieszka Krzyżosiak

Dr. Agniesz­ka Krzyżosiak

Junior Leader of the Research Group of Mech­a­nisms of Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion at Łukasiewicz – PORT

Agniesz­ka com­plet­ed her PhD research at The Insti­tute of Genet­ics and Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cel­lu­lar Biol­o­gy (IGBMC) in Stras­bourg, France. She next accom­plished the EMBO and HFSP fund­ed post­doc at the Med­ical Research Coun­cil Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy (MRC LMB) in Cam­bridge, UK fol­lowed by the trans­la­tion­al devel­op­ment of her sci­en­tif­ic research in a spin­off biotech startup.

Agnieszka’s Research Group is inter­est­ed to under­stand how pro­tein qual­i­ty con­trol (PQC) dereg­u­la­tion con­tributes to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. In her pre­vi­ous research, togeth­er with her col­leagues, Agniesz­ka showed that PQC can be tar­get­ed for the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fit against pro­tein accu­mu­la­tion – an approach cur­rent­ly devel­oped clin­i­cal­ly. Build­ing on that, with the use of patient-derived mod­els, the aim of the lab is to scru­ti­nize the PQC path­ways in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion in the aim to iden­ti­fy nov­el treat­ment strategies.