A native of Maryland, Julia is a graduate of The University of Maryland College Park, and Mount St. Mary's University where she received a B.S. in microbiology, and an MBA respectively.

While pursuing her B.S at UMD, Julia launched her career as a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. After graduating she moved to Baltimore MD and continued to develop her career through conducting cancer research and gaining authorship on multiple publications at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Following her desire to establish a career in the biotechnology industry Julia joined the Advanced Cell Systems/ADME Tox team at Thermo Fisher Scientific. In her 4 years with the company she has utilized her extensive technical expertise as well as product knowledge and has worked in manufacturing (cell isolations), product management, and is currently an R&D Scientist in Cell Biology.

Currently living in Frederick MD, in her free time Julia enjoys being outdoors, and cooking, as well as spending quality time with her baby daughter.

Dr. Kuninger leads research, development and commercialization of media systems for pluripotent stem cell culture & differentiation, neurobiology, and (non-hepatic) primary cell biology at Thermo Fisher Scientific in the Cell Biology business based in Frederick MD. His teams support numerous portfolios and have launched over 25 new products spanning stem cell culture & cryopreservation, differentiation (endo-, ecto- and meso-dermal lineages) and neurobiology over the past 3 years. David is a seasoned scientist and manager, experienced in media formulation & optimization, assay design and implementation, and troubleshooting. Expertise in GLP/GMP compliance, tech transfer and scale up, as well as verification and validation processes. Prior to starting at Thermo Fisher Scientific (legacy Invitrogen) in 2007 as Staff Scientist, he joined Oregon Health Sciences University as a Postdoctoral Fellow investigating the actions of insulin-like growth factors in the lab of Dr. Peter Rotwein, subsequently joining the faculty in the Department of Biochemistry at OHSU as a Research Instructor. He completed is PhD in Biochemistry and Genetics University of Texas Medical Branch in the laboratory of Dr. John Papaconstatinou and has a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Oregon.