Darek graduated in “Technology of Renewable Raw Materials” in 2001 at the University of Applied Sciences Hannover. In 2003, he was employed as Project Manager for “Microencapsulation of Probiotic Bacteria” at J.Rettenmaier & Söhne GmbH & Co KG, Rosenberg, Germany a worldwide, dynamic leader in the fiber industry. JRS provides its fiber products solutions for various applications and chemical processes for almost every field of daily life, i.e., for pharmaceutical and food applications, or technical and industrial use.   

From 2004 to 2006, he was responsible as the Food and Feed Safety Manager and then as Corporate Quality Manager for JRS Pharma. JRS Pharma is a leading manufacturer of excipients. It offers a complete portfolio of solutions for the global health science industry with high functionality excipients, binders, disintegrants, lubricants, and functional fillers thickeners, stabilizers, carriers, and coatings.  

Since 2007, Darek is the Head of Quality for the JRS Group with production plants in Europe, the USA, India, China, and Mexico.

Christian-Friedrich Trendelenburg is a senior toxicologist in Preclinical Safety (PCS) at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Basel/Switzerland. He is a scientific expert for the safety evaluation of impurities, extractables/leachables, and excipients, with a major focus on the safety evaluation of pharmaceutical products for children. As a Preclinical Safety project leader in the Neuroscience and Global Health therapeutic areas, he represents PCS in global project teams to support drug development by summarizing, evaluating, and interpreting nonclinical safety aspects. He graduated in biochemistry from the University of Kaiserslautern/Germany and has a PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Toxicology. Christian has a strong background in all areas of safety sciences, including agrochemical, food, chemical (home & personal care), and pharmaceutical products. He is a EUROTOX-certified toxicologist and member of the German and Swiss toxicological societies (DGPT & SST). 

John earned an MSc from the University of Waterloo in theoretical chemistry and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in computational chemistry. Following post-doctoral research in computational chemistry at the University of British Columbia, he worked for Procter & Gamble studying surfactants' structures in solution. For the last 21 years, John has worked for Schrödinger, LLC, as a scientific software developer and a research scientist, managing several products, including the Materials Science Coarse-Grained product. 

Dr. Matthias Knarr studied chemistry at the University of Hamburg and holds a Ph.D. from the Institute for Technical & Macromolecular Chemistry. He has been working since 2005 at the Bomlitz R&D Center in Germany. Matthias Knarr leads the lab for the pressurized synthesis of new cellulose ethers as well as the labs for the applied material characteristics for many years and he is now focusing his work on the development of new methods for improved characterization of the portfolio products and formulations containing those. Additionally, he supports various R&D projects with the focus of the development of new cellulose ether products according to the specific market needs and to tailor their performance based on structure-property relationships. 

Matthias Knarr authored 10 journal publications in e.g. Carbohydrate Polymers, Food Hydrocolloids, or Macromolecular Symposium; (co-) authored/presented more than 50 presentations on international events and holds more than > 60  US + EP &  JP granted patents.  

Besides this, he is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. 

TBA

Shilpa Mistry has completed her studies at De Montfort University in BSc Pharmaceutical and cosmetic sciences. Then she went to work for Elan Pharmaceuticals in Athlone, Ireland for two years as a formulation scientist working on solid dosage forms. Shilpa has then moved in working closely with excipients and has 17 years’ experience working within cellulose derivatives.