CordenPharma LNP Summit 2026

Olivia Merkel has been a Professor of Drug Delivery at LMU Munich since 2015 and Chair since 2022. She is a Registered Pharmacist, received a MS (2006) and a PhD (2009) in Pharmaceutical Technology as well as numerous awards, including an ERC Starting Grant, ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant and ERC Consolidator Grant, the APV Research Award and the Carl-Wilhelm-Scheele-Award.

Merkel is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters. She served as NIH reviewer from 2014-2015, SNF reviewer from 2018-2022, is an Editorial Board member for JCR, EJPB, Molecular Pharmaceutics and other journals, was the President of the German Controlled Release Society in 2020 and the Chair of the CRS Focus Group on Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery from 2020-2022, and currently is a scientific advisory board member of Coriolis Pharma, Carver Biosciences, AMW, and CordenPharma. Her research focuses mainly on RNA formulation and pulmonary delivery for the treatment of a variety of lung diseases.

Elias Halabi is a Senior Manager in Non‑Viral Delivery at Novo Nordisk (Lexington, US), leading a multidisciplinary team focused on advancing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technologies for gene therapy applications. Passionate about translating scientific innovation into tangible clinical and commercial impact, with a strong focus on shaping next-generation delivery platforms that bridge discovery and therapeutic application. His expertise spans fluorophore synthesis and the design and characterisation of polymeric, magnetic, and lipid nanoparticles for in vitro and in vivo studies. He brings hands-on experience in nanotherapeutics, CMC readiness, and translational development to support robust, regulatory-aligned programmes.

Ash Nagpal is the Director of LNP Process Development at Nava Therapeutics, where he leads cross-functional CMC activities supporting the development and scale-up of RNA-based therapeutics. He specializes in lipid nanoparticle (LNP) drug product development, clinical manufacturing scale-up, and GMP technology transfer to enable clinical and commercial supply.

Prior to Nava, Ash held multiple process development and technology transfer roles at Verve and Moderna, where he supported the drug development for clinical trials including work at Moderna that enabled global supply of Spikevax. His experience spans early-stage formulation development, late-stage process characterization, and large-scale manufacturing implementation across internal facilities and external CMOs.

Ash holds both a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is passionate about bridging scientific innovation and manufacturing execution to translate cutting-edge genetic medicines from discovery to the clinic.

Jason Coleman is the Associate Director of the Lipids & LNPs Platform at CordenPharma. Jason’s focus is on building this platform to help clients as they create the latest lipids and non-viral delivery carriers for RNA based therapeutics. Previously, Jason was Associate Director of R&D at iCeutica where he focused on developing and taking a novel bioavailability enhancement technology from lab scale to FDA approval and commercialization. Jason also led the Global Field Application Scientists team at Precision Nanosystems / Cytiva with a focus on using a platform mixing technology to help clients develop and scale-up nanoparticle-based delivery systems. Jason received his PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Drexel University with a focus on nanoparticles for drug delivery.

Cory Sago is co-founder & CEO of Amplitude Therapeutics, a seed-stage company developing differentiated RNA medicines and vaccines enabled by their trans-amplifying RNA platform. Previously, Cory co-founded and was CTO of Guide Therapeutics which advanced a high-throughput platform to discover novel LNPs to a variety of tissues including the liver, immune cells, and blood stem cells. GuideTx was acquired by Beam Therapeutics in 2021, where Cory served as Head of LNP Discovery. Cory received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Dr. Matthieu Giraud (Senior Director, Global Platform Head Lipids & Nanomedicines Services) joined CordenPharma in 2017 as Director, Global Peptides, Lipids & Carbohydrates Platforms, CordenPharma International. Prior to joining CordenPharma Matthieu held various senior positions in the CDMO business, with >25 years of experience in increasingly senior roles, culminating as the Director, Head of R&D Peptides and Oligonucleotides at Lonza (CH), then Head of API production at BASF Pharma (CH), API Site Managing Director at BASF Pharma (FR), and finally Global Key Account Manager for Siegfried (CH). Matthieu has an MBA and Ph.D. in the peptide field from the University of Montpellier (FR), where he conducted research in the group of Prof. J. Martinez, jointly with Osaka University in the group of Prof. Shimonishi. Matthieu Giraud owns > 10 patents, the most recent ones on TAPS technology (Novel TAG for liquid-phase Peptide Synthesis), on LNP targeting (Phlip ®-lnp for targeted intracellular delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics), and on new PEG free polymers (Novel n-substituted polyglycine lipids).

Ujjwal C. Joshi, PhD, is a drug delivery leader specializing in lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation, process development, and clinical translation of nucleic acid therapeutics. He currently serves as Senior Director of LNP Formulation and Development at Stylus Medicine, where he leads discovery and development efforts advancing an in vivo CAR-T therapy enabled by targeted LNP (tLNP) technology.

Dr. Joshi has extensive experience building and advancing LNP delivery platforms across RNA and gene editing modalities, including mRNA, circRNA, and genome editing systems. Across his roles at Stylus Medicine, Orna Therapeutics, and Chroma Medicine, he has led the design of novel LNP systems, development of scalable manufacturing processes, and integration of targeting strategies to enable next-generation therapeutics.

He has a strong track record of translating complex drug delivery systems into the clinic, having led CMC strategy, IND-enabling activities, and Phase 1 manufacturing at Flexion Therapeutics, including tech transfer and GMP production of novel formulations. Dr. Joshi is an inventor on multiple patents in nanoparticle and drug delivery technologies and received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Northeastern University.

Cedric Devos obtained his BSc in Engineering Science in 2017 and his MSc in Chemical Engineering Science from KU Leuven in 2019. He subsequently earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering Science, also from KU Leuven in 2023, where his research focused on pharmaceutical crystallization and process intensification. During his doctoral studies, he was awarded a prestigious FWO Fundamental Research Fellowship and worked as a visiting scientist at Johnson & Johnson within the crystallization technology unit. Since 2023, he has been a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducting research on lipid nanoparticle manufacturing. Cedric has authored 20+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including ACS Nano, Chemical Society Reviews, Nature Chemical Engineering, and AIChE Journal. He has received several awards for his research, most recently the “Most Transformative Manufacturing Research” award from the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing. He is an active member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), where he has organized and chaired technical sessions at the Annual Meeting.

Urmi Chheda is the Sr. Process Engineer at Editas Medicine specializing in LNP process development. She brings extensive experience across full development lifecycle-from early R&D to technology transfer to CDMOs. Prior to joining Editas, she has contributed to biologics development at Tome Biosciences and GreenLight Biosciences.