Company

Dave Litwiller

Dave Litwiller is a senior executive of DALSA Corporation, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He oversees strategy and market development for DALSA's business units in semiconductor fabrication, image sensor integrated circuit development, MEMS, digital cinema and life sciences instrumentation. In previous roles with DALSA, Mr. Litwiller was the head of marketing, and before that, the head of engineering. Prior to joining DALSA, Mr. Litwiller was a design engineer at several high technology start-ups in the wireless, fiber optic telecom, and broadcast industries.

Mr. Litwiller is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, and holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree. He serves as an advisor for various private corporations in matters of strategy, technology, and business development. Mr. Litwiller is a frequent speaker at technology start-up forums and executive industry association conferences on business strategy.

Robert E. Palazzo

Professor and Chair
Department of Biology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Research Scientist
Division of Molecular Medicine
The Wadsworth Center
New York State Department of Health

Robert E. Palazzo, who previously served as professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Kansas, is professor and chair of the biology department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In addition to teaching and research, Palazzo's appointment involves a cooperative arrangement between Rensselaer and the Wadsworth Center. As such, Palazzo will conduct a portion of his research with scientists there.

Palazzo received his B.S. in biology and a doctorate in biological sciences from Wayne State University in 1979 and 1984, respectively. He spent four and a half years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia until 1989 when he joined the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as a year-round scientist. He moved to the University of Kansas in 1992 and remained there until taking his current position at Rensselaer in 2002.

Palazzo has authored numerous journal and conference research papers in areas such as cellular organization, cell motility, and cell replication. He has served as chair of the Science Council and is an ex officio member of the board of trustees for the MBL. As a member of the American Society for Cell Biology Public Policy Committee, Palazzo has been a strong advocate for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and K-12 Science Education.

Joachim Wegener

Institut fuer Biochemie
University of Muenster
Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 2
48149 Muenster
Germany
Homepage

Joachim Wegener is currently affiliated with the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Muenster in Germany. There he is performing independent research studying new applications of the ECIS technology and its combination with other techniques for cell monitoring and manipulation. His broader research interest is the adhesion of cells to technical surfaces and its quantitative description.

He started to work with ECIS and related techniques in 1993 inspired by the publications of Ivar Giaever and Charles Keese. In 1994 he earned a Diploma degree (Master) in Chemistry from the University of Muenster for his initial studies on the application of ECIS to monitor barrier-forming cell layers. In 1998 he received his PhD from the University of Muenster (Germany) for his work on animal cells grown on planar gold-film electrodes and piezo-electric sensors. In particular the combination of both methods has been the key element of his research. Wegener then joined the Giaever lab for two years working as a postdoc with Giaever & Keese on cell adhesion, electroporation and cell wounding - all based on the ECIS technology. Since this time he has strong interest in modeling and simulating the electrical properties of living animal cells on conducting surfaces.