Sci­en­tif­ic committee

Meet our com­mit­tee – a group of dis­tin­guished experts who guide the conference’s aca­d­e­m­ic direc­tion. Their expe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship ensure the high­est qual­i­ty of oncol­o­gy-focused pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions. Learn more about the pro­fes­sion­als shap­ing this year’s program.

Grze­gorz Chodaczek, PhD

Senior Leader of the Immunother­a­py Group at Łukasiewicz – PORT 

Grad­u­at­ed from the Wro­claw Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty in 2001, where he stud­ied at the Fac­ul­ty of Phar­ma­cy. In 2007, he received his PhD 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, PhD

Senior Leader of the Biobank Research Group at Łukasiewicz – PORT 

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.

Mateusz W. Kuchar­czyk, PhD

Junior Leader of the Can­cer Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy Research Group at Łukasiewicz – PORT 

Mateusz earned Biotech­nol­o­gy degrees (BSc, MSc) from Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­si­ty in Kraków. As a Marie Skłodows­ka-Curie trainee, he com­plet­ed his PhD in Neu­ro­science (2019) at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, spe­cial­is­ing in in vivo elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy with Pro­fes­sor Antho­ny Dick­en­son and in vivo cal­ci­um imag­ing with Pro­fes­sor Stephen McMa­hon (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) to study can­cer-induced bone pain.

After learn­ing opto­ge­net­ics in Yves De Kon­inck Lab (Que­bec, Cana­da), he worked as a PDRA in Dr Kirsty Ban­nis­ter group (King’s Col­lege Lon­don), where he advanced opto- and chemo­ge­net­ic tech­niques for study­ing descend­ing mod­u­la­to­ry cir­cuits in health and dis­ease. His group bridges Neu­ro­science with Oncol­o­gy, aim­ing to com­pre­hend neu­ro­genic reg­u­la­tion of car­cino­gen­e­sis and asso­ci­at­ed pain.

Employ­ing state-of-the-art tech­niques (i.e., in vivo opti­cal imag­ing, elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy and opto­ge­net­ics) they selec­tive­ly sam­ple and mod­u­late activ­i­ty of genet­i­cal­ly defined neu­ronal pop­u­la­tions and their effects on tumour biol­o­gy. In this pur­suit, the group aspires to forge inno­v­a­tive ther­a­pies for can­cer and asso­ci­at­ed pain, root­ed in a deep under­stand­ing of neu­ronal systems.

Marek Wag­n­er, PhD

Junior Leader of the Research Group of Innate Immu­ni­ty at Łukasiewicz – PORT

He received his Ph.D. in can­cer research from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bergen (Bergen, Nor­way) with part of his research per­formed at Har­vard Med­ical School & Children’s Hos­pi­tal Boston (Boston, USA). Dur­ing his post­doc­tor­al train­ing he joined RIKEN IMS (Yoko­hama, Japan), where he worked on a recent­ly iden­ti­fied sub­set of innate lym­pho­cytes, which pro­duce type 2 cytokines and are now called group 2 innate lym­phoid cells (ILC2s).

He con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of a new field of immunol­o­gy by car­ry­ing out stud­ies to assess the role of ILC2s in the tumor growth and pro­gres­sion. His group stud­ies ILC2s with­in the tumor microen­vi­ron­ment and their inter­ac­tions with malig­nant and non-malig­nant stro­mal cells, using a vari­ety of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approaches.

The long-term research objec­tive is to increase under­stand­ing of the mech­a­nisms of tumor devel­op­ment and iden­ti­fy nov­el diag­nos­tic and prog­nos­tic bio­mark­ers as well as prospec­tive ther­a­peu­tic targets.