Sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tee 2022

Michał Malewicz, Ph.D., Direc­tor of Life Sci­ence and Biotechnology 

Michal’s sci­en­tif­ic work began at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw (Poland) where he defend­ed a mas­ter’s degree in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy on the genet­ics of RNA metab­o­lism in yeast mito­chon­dria. There after Michal moved to Karl­sruhe Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (Ger­many), where his Ph.D. the­sis focused on the func­tion of the immune sys­tem in genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered mice. 

For his post­doc­tor­al stud­ies, Michal moved to Stock­holm (Swe­den) to work at the Lud­wig Insti­tute of Can­cer Research (affil­i­at­ed with the Nobel Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute), where he devel­oped new bio­chem­i­cal meth­ods to study pro­tein-pro­tein inter­ac­tions. In 2012 Michal was appoint­ed as an Inde­pen­dent Group Leader at the MRC Tox­i­col­o­gy Unit (Unit­ed King­dom) to build and run a sci­en­tif­ic group work­ing on mech­a­nisms of DNA dam­age respons­es (DDR).

In 2019 Michal moved back to Ger­many to work as the Head of Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy at an ear­ly-stage biotech Genome Bio­log­ics, where he had direct­ed the team work­ing on nov­el human heart organoid tech­nol­o­gy. From the end of 2020, Michal is direct­ing the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Genome Dynam­ics (Łukasiewicz — PORT, Poland), where his group focus­es on the mech­a­nisms of DNA dam­age respons­es and their con­nec­tion to can­cer devel­op­ment uti­liz­ing CRISPR/​Base edit­ing genome edit­ing tech­nolo­gies and advanced mod­els of dis­ease such as IPSC-derived human organoids. From the begin­ning of 2022, Michal had been appoint­ed as the Direc­tor of Life Sci­ence and Biotech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre at Łukasiewicz — PORT.

Grze­gorz Chodaczek, Ph.D.

Grad­u­at­ed from the Wro­claw Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty in 2001, where he stud­ied at the Fac­ul­ty of Phar­ma­cy. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in immunol­o­gy from the Insti­tute of Immunol­o­gy and Exper­i­men­tal Ther­a­py in Wro­claw, Poland. 

Between 2005 – 2011 he was a research asso­ciate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch at Galve­ston and then a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas MD Ander­son Can­cer Cen­ter in Hous­ton, TX, in the Depart­ment of Immunol­o­gy. His post­doc­tor­al project involved intrav­i­tal imag­ing of the immune sys­tem dur­ing wound heal­ing and cancerogenesis. 

In 2011, he start­ed a new posi­tion as microscopy core man­ag­er and instruc­tor at La Jol­la Insti­tute for Immunol­o­gy, San Diego, CA. Since 2014, he has worked as the Head of Bioimag­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Łukasiewicz Research Net­work — PORT Pol­ish Cen­ter for Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment. His research inter­est is in visu­al­iz­ing the immune cell activ­i­ty in tis­sues, includ­ing the can­cer microenvironment.

Patryc­ja Gaz­ińs­ka, Ph.D.

Senior Leader for the Biobank Research Team at Łukasiewicz PORT Research Cen­ter in Wro­claw. For many years, Patryc­ja man­aged histopathol­o­gy research projects and ser­vices for mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary teams at Kings Col­lege in Lon­don. From 2019 to 2021, she led a Dig­i­tal & Exper­i­men­tal Research Pathol­o­gy unit at the Insti­tute of Can­cer Research in Lon­don spe­cial­iz­ing in dig­i­tal pathol­o­gy, and mol­e­c­u­lar pathol­o­gy, with spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tion to breast can­cer research. This includ­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive work with Mer­ck on nov­el bio­mark­ers for patient treat­ment stratification.

More recent­ly she worked for AstraZeneca in Cam­bridge, apply­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al pathol­o­gy frame­works to oncol­o­gy phase III clin­i­cal tri­als. Her pri­ma­ry research inter­est relates to breast can­cer pathol­o­gy and under­stand­ing how tumor microen­vi­ron­ment fea­tures pre­dict clin­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal aspects of this disease.