Dr. Susanne Glowienke graduated from the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany, in food chemistry/technology. She then undertook research in the area of analytical chemistry and obtained her PhD degree from the faculty of food technology (cereal chemistry) in 1997 at the same university. In 2000, she joined Novartis in Basel, Switzerland, as a postdoc in the area of Q(SAR) for toxicological endpoints. Susanne was working as a lab head for bacterial mutagenesis in genetic toxicology, preclinical safety and is responsible for the QSAR predictions and impurity/excipient assessments at Novartis. 

Currently, Susanne is a director in preclinical safety at Novartis, Basel, Switzerland. She held several positions at Novartis, including positions in genetic toxicology and QSAR modelling. She is currently head of the impurity safety group and as such responsible for contaminant issues including nitrosamines. Susanne is part of and has led a number of industry expert groups within DruSafe IQ (US), European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), the Extractables and Leachables Safety Information Exchange (ELSIE), and several data sharing initiatives.

Raphael (Raphy) Nudelman is a chemical toxicologist with over 20 years of industry experience. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science and completed postdoctoral research at the US Air Force Research Lab and Duke University Medical Center. At Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Raphy held various roles, including in the medicinal chemistry department, the patent department, the non-clinical safety department, and as the Impurity Expert of the company. His expertise spans impurity and excipient qualification in drug substances and drug products, with a recent focus on risk assessment of nitrosamine impurities in pharmaceuticals. Raphy retired from Teva in September 2024 and founded Nudelman ChemTox Consulting, where he continues to provide consulting services in the pharmaceutical impurity qualification field.

Andrew Teasdale, PhD, is a senior principal scientist in impurity management and external advocacy at AstraZeneca. Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry as an analytical chemist and within quality assurance and regulatory roles. In his current role, he chairs AstraZeneca’s impurity advisory group. Andrew has published over 30 papers relating to genotoxic impurities and other impurity-related matters and has been a speaker at many international conferences. He has also led a number of industry expert groups; these include both safety and quality groups within Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Product Quality Research Institute (PQRI), and the Extractables and Leachables Safety Information Exchange (ELSIE). Andrew led the recent development of the ICH M7 addendum table from an industry perspective and was the inventor of the purge tool concept, Mirabilis™. He also published a book addressing genotoxic impurities, ‘Genotoxic Impurities Strategies for Identification and Control,’ (Wiley and Son) and is soon to publish as editor a book focussed on practical implementation of ICH quality guidelines.

Irene Cecchini works as a principal scientist in Merck Biotech's product development division based in Guidonia Site, close to Rome, Italy. She graduated in analytical chemistry at the University of Rome in 2003, and in the same year joined Serono as an analytical methods development junior researcher. In the following years she developed her expertise, particularly in extractables and leachables (E&L), elemental impurities (EI), and sub-visible particles (SbVP). In 2016 she was appointed lab manager of the E&L group, where she managed E&L studies on the final biotech products containers, as well as for manufacturing processes components (single-use systems) and coordinated analytical investigations linked to manufacturing processes issues. Since 2019, she has been a principal scientist in the impurity analytics unit of analytical development biotech department dealing with chemical and biological process impurities. In this role she contributes to building up strategies for her department's core business, especially looking for cross-functional synergies. She is a member of ELSIE and BPOG industry consortia for E&L topics. She recently joined EFPIA and PhRMA working groups as a Merck representative expert following the development of the new ICH Q3E.

Dr. Carla Landolfi graduated in chemistry and pharmaceutical technology from Rome University. She has more than 20 years of experience in the toxicology field gained in the pharmaceutical industry, 10 of them as manager to the toxicology group. She's the main or co-author of several papers and posters, has published in peer-reviewed journals, and she's an invited speaker at international conferences as well as the founding editor of archives of clinical toxicology. In 2020, she founded the ToxHub, a consultancy company specialised in toxicological risk assessment and regulatory toxicology.

Dr. Paulo Eliandro da Silva Junior is a pharmacist-biochemist (USP) with a master's and PhD in medicinal chemistry, synthesis and drug discovery (FCFRP-USP, University of East Anglia – UEA, UK; Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz – JGU, Germany). Paulo's experience in the pharmaceutical industry started in 2013 as a trainee at Novartis, Horsham, UK, in the global discovery chemistry department. After that Paulo worked mainly in regulatory affairs, quality audits, and drug product and drug substance development with focus on impurities control, including E&L, mutagenic impurities, such as nitrosamines, in his own consulting company, Integra Consultancy. Paulo also is a founder of another company, BIND, which is a startup for synthesis and characterisation of analytical standard for development processes, and teaches postgraduate courses that cover various pharmaceutical topics.

Dr. Rodney Parsons earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1986 from Trinity College and then received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Vermont under the guidance of Professor Martin E. Kuehne. His doctoral studies were focussed on the development of novel routes for the construction of indole alkaloids. He then carried out postdoctoral studies in organic chemistry with Professor Clayton H. Heathcock at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1994 he became a research scientist at Dupont-Merck Pharmaceutical Co., where he eventually rose to the rank of director. In 2001, after the acquisition of the DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co., he joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he is currently an executive director in the chemical process development department. He has been involved with drug development programs in a number of therapeutic areas including virology, cardiovascular, oncology, and metabolic diseases. His research interests include pharmaceutical process R&D, asymmetric synthesis, heterocyclic chemistry, and natural products total synthesis. He has been the BMS Mutagenic Impurity Assessment Committee (MIAC) chair since 2006. On the MIAC he leads an R&D-wide committee to establish control strategies for mutagenic impurities and align BMS internal practices with the evolving health authority regulations. Most recently he has led the end-to-end nitrosamine assessment and control process for the organisation. He has published over 40 papers and multiple patents in these areas.

Aloka Srinivasan, PhD, the principal and managing partner of RAAHA LLC (www.raahallc.com) has more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including nine years of progressive experience with the US FDA in the office of generic drugs, Lupin Pharmaceuticals, Lachman Consultants, and Parexel International.

Prior to starting her own consulting, Aloka was the VP and head of regulatory at Lachman, VP of regulatory at Lupin, and principal at Parexel. Aloka spent more than nine years in the FDA’s office of generic drugs as a reviewer and team leader and spearheaded the establishment of a division for review of APIs in Type II DMFs. Aloka was also part of the team that initiated the question-based review (QbR– QOS) for generic drugs in CDER.

Aloka is one of the world-class experts on nitrosamine based on her research background and has been supporting the industry in addressing these carcinogenic impurities in the drugs.

She received her PhD from the University of Missouri, Columbia, under Dr. Richard N. Loeppky of nitrosamine fame. Her thesis was titled, “Putative Intermediates in Activation of Beta Hydroxy Nitrosamines”. Aloka also spent seven years as a scientist at National Cancer Institute, working for Dr. Larry K. Keefer, researching on nitrosamines in potential nitric oxide donor drugs.

Joerg Schlingemann is a director and principal expert for quality control systems within Merck KGaA’s/EMD Serono’s healthcare quality unit. He studied molecular biology in Uppsala and Heidelberg, where he completed a doctorate degree at the German Cancer Research Center in 2005.

He has 14 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry from various roles within quality control and quality assurance. Since late 2019, Joerg has been leading EMD Serono’s analytical activities for N-nitrosamines, based on which he has authored or co-authored several scientific publications dealing with analytical challenges, NDMA in metformin, nitrite in excipients and the prevalence of NDSRIs. Joerg is an advocate of scientific collaboration, data sharing and expressive visualisation of data. He is married and has three children.

Dr. Dana Budde graduated in biotechnology from Bielefeld University. She works at Sartorius Stedim Biotech as the technical lead for in-house biocompatibility testing. Her work focusses on in-vitro cell compatibility assessment of single-use material and the cytotoxicity of extractables and leachables. Her work highlights the importance of leachables evaluation in the context of cell and gene therapy, publishing her research in several peer-reviewed journals.

George Johnson is an associate professor of genetic toxicology at Swansea University. He has expertise in the quantitative use of genetic toxicity data for hazard and risk assessment purposes and has an interest in high content and multiplex in-vitro test systems. He currently has active roles in the HESI-GTTC, IWGT 2022, COM and EEMGS-EXCOM, and carries out teaching, research, and consultancy at Swansea.

Marina Couva has a lot of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in the fields of both quality and safety. She is a pharmacy graduate, a registered pharmacist in Cyprus, and also holds a master's degree in management.

She has served in a number of positions in Medochemie Ltd, a generics pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Lemesos (Limassol), Cyprus. She is a qualified person and currently holds the role of the QPPV, as well as the position of group quality senior manager, responsible for GDP. Her experience spreads across many issues relating to GxP compliance, combining quality and safety.

Arianna Bassan is a chemist with long-term expertise in toxicology. She graduated from the University of Padova (Italy) and she earned her PhD in chemical physics at the department of physics of Stockholm University (Sweden). She had worked several years in international environments including Stockholm University, MSD/Merck&Co., and the European Commission. Her main interest lies in the use of computational toxicology for human health hazard assessment. She also led several different scientific projects with focus on data management (e.g., development of the EFSA’s hazard database known now as OpenFoodTox, and management of pre-clinical data for pharma) and data curation.

She is currently principal consultant in Innovatune, where she is also partner in the firm. She provides integrated toxicology services making the most of (Q)SAR and read-across methodologies for different applications including regulatory submissions (e.g. ICH M7) and product development. She is engaged in numerous activities aiming at standardising industrial and regulatory applications of computational toxicology. She is currently involved in different projects such as the update of the EFSA pesticides genotoxicity database and the EMA-funded research project MutaMind (led by Fraunhofer ITEM) that aims at shedding light on the mutagenicity of different classes of nitrosamines to distinguish highly potent from less potent carcinogens.

Markus Obkircher is director of R&D, heading Merck’s reference materials and proficiency testing division with teams in the US and Switzerland. He is responsible for the in-house development of new analytical standards and certified reference materials under ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO 17034 double accreditation. Prior to this position he was R&D manager in Buchs, Switzerland, with a strong focus on synthesis, characterisation, and certification of reference materials. He joined Merck/Sigma-Aldrich eight years ago after heading the development unit for a custom API manufacturer. He completed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard in Boston and his PhD thesis in Basel, and further holds an executive MBA degree from the University of Zurich.

Michael Burns joined Lhasa Limited in 2015 as part of the Mirabilis project, aiding the research and curation of knowledge relevant to understanding the potential for purging of mutagenic impurities from drug substance syntheses. In 2017, Michael took over leadership of the scientific development of Mirabilis, working closely with leading members of the purge calculation community to develop both Mirabilis and the broader purge concept. More recently, Michael has been involved with a number of projects focussing on the ongoing nitrosamine challenges facing the pharma industry. As part of this work Michael has been working with academic institutions and industry bodies, such as the IQ consortium and USP, to find collaborative approaches to both understanding and subsequently addressing nitrosamine issues related to drug quality. 

Karl Abele studied organic chemistry with a PhD in 1988 and has been using hyphenated GC/MS and LC/MS quadrupole systems since 1985. He worked for three main MS manufacturers as an application chemist or product manager from 1990-08, using quadrupoles, triple quadrupoles, ion traps, and time-of-flight instruments. In 2010, he joined Solvias AG, a Swiss contract research organisation with > 800 FTEs today, located in Switzerland, France, and in the USA. Karl has been leading the Solvias E&L team in Switzerland since 2010, and established HRAM-LC/MS/MS systems (Q-Exactive Orbitrap and Exploris MS) and HRAM-GC/MS (Exploris MS) as main tool for impurity ID and quantification at trace level. Today, the team has in total six Orbitrap systems qualified for GMP and is validating up to 50 trace analysis methods per year for a wide range of pharma manufacturers.