Ziyad S. Haidar, professor and scientific director at the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago de Chile, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with a PhD in biomaterials and nanotechnology from McGill University, Montréal, Canada followed post-doctoral training in tissue engineering at the Shriners Hospital, McGill University Health Center, Montréal, Canada. He is the Founder and Head of the Biomaterials, Pharmaceutical Delivery and Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Tissue Engineering Research Group (BioMat'X), a newly-established R&D&I unit within the Centro de Investigación Biomédica (CIB), Faculty of Dentistry, UAndes. Prof. Haidar is also a Faculty member in the doctoral program (BioMedicine) at the Facultad de Medicina, UAndes. Before moving to Chile, he served as the Chair of Excellence in BioEngineering at the European Ceramics Center, Science of Ceramic Processing and Surface Treatments (SPCTS - UMR CNRS 7315, Université de Limoges, Limoges, France and was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Department of BioEngineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. He has won several prestigious awards from the International Bone and Mineral Society, US Society for Biomaterials, Canadian Biomaterial Society and Canadian/Lebanese Society of Plastic Surgeons, to name a few. He has contributed to over 80 publications, conference proceedings, textbooks and patents.Murugan Ramalingam is Professor at the Centre for Stem Cell Research (a unit of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine-Bengaluru), Christian Medical College Campus, India. Concurrently he is Adjunct Professor at the Tohoku University, Japan. Prior to joining the CSCR, he was Associate Professor of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Faculté de Chirurgie Dentaire, Université de Strasbourg, France. He received his Ph.D. in Biomaterials from the University of Madras. He has also undergone training in Ethical and Policy issues on Stem Cells from Harvard University, USA, and in Operations Management from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of over 200 publications, including peer-reviewed journal papers, conference proceedings, book chapters, authored books, edited books, and patents relevant to biomaterials, stem cells, and tissue engineering. His current h-index is 25 with over 4500 citations. He is a recipient of several prestigious fellowships and awards, including CSIR Fellowship (India), SMF Fellowship (Singapore), NRC National Academies Fellowship (USA), Nationale Professeur des Universités (France), Fellow of Institute of Nanotechnology (UK) and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
