Southern California Eukaryotic Pathogen Symposium

2025 SCEP Speakers

Image of Morning Keynote Speaker - Elizabeth Winzeler

Morning Keynote Speaker

Elizabeth Winzeler, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Research and Innovation
Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Professor, Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine

 

Dr. Winzeler is an expert in drug development for microbial pathogens.  Ongoing projects cover many areas within small molecule drug development and range from target discovery and validation, cheminformatics, chemistry, bioinformatics, assay development, high throughput screening and the genetics and genomics of drug resistance.  Much of her work focuses on malaria parasites. She is the director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Malaria Drug Accelerator (MalDA,https://MalariaDA.org) a consortium of 18 international laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and research groups whose collective work focuses on identifying new targets and early chemical leads for the global malaria drug discovery pipeline. 

Visit Dr. Winzeler's Faculty Profile 

Visit Dr. Winzeler's Lab 

Image of Afternoon Keynote Speaker - Dr. Peter Bradley

Morning Keynote Speaker

University of California Los Angeles
 
 
The research in the Bradley lab is focused on invasion, host-pathogen interaction, and replication in the intracellular protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. In immune competent individuals, T. gondii is controlled by the immune system, and infections are typically mild or asymptomatic. The parasite establishes a chronic infection, however, which persists in various tissues in the body, including the brain, heart, and eye. The goal of our research is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of T. gondii survival, enhancing our grasp of disease progression and aiding in the creation of improved anti-parasitic treatments.