Director Regulatory, Clinical and Medical Affairs, Emerging Businesses
Esther Abels, MSc, Dir Regulatory, Clinical and Medical Affairs Philips Digital Pathology Solutions. Graduated in Biomedical Health Science, toxicology. Experienced in clinical validation studies used for regulatory purposes in USA, Europe and Asia. Has a background in bridging R&D, Proof of Concept and socio economics studies. Was Clinical Research Scientist and Global Clinical Trial Manager for pivotal regulatory studies in pharma. Worked and lived in NL as well as USA prior to joining Digital Pathology Solutions in 2011. She played a crucial role in the Digital Pathology Association (DPA) Regulatory Taskforce and FDA collaborations. The successful outcome was that WSI for primary diagnosis was recommended to become a class II instead of class III device in the United States. She also played an integral role in the legally marketed Philips’ HER2 manual digital read device and led the entire regulatory de novo process for WSI “Primary Diagnosis” with the successful outcome for DPS. Esther is currently Chair of the DPA Regulatory and Standards Taskforce.

Associate Vice President, Product Line Management, Product Marketing
 

Senior Research Scientist
Biography

CIO
Dr. Adams is the Chief Information Officer at Celmatix Inc., and has been working in biomedicine and data analytics for more than 20 years, encompassing work in computational biology, biomedicine, intelligence, finance, and biotechnology. He was VP, Bioinformatics at Variagenics - one of the first companies to work on pharmacogenomics/human genetic variation, and led a key project at the National Cancer Institute to integrate oncology care and research data. Dr. Adams is visiting faculty at the Center for Science and Industry at Bentley University, and has also held senior positions with Booz Allen Hamilton, Bridgewater Associates, and Good Start Genetics. Adams holds a BA from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine.

Lung Cancer Survivor & Chair
Bonnie J. Addario has been an activist, advocate, educator and change agent empowering patients and giving them a strong voice in the fight against lung cancer since receiving a stage 3B diagnosis more than a decade ago. Although thrust into a role that she had never envisioned for herself, she embraced it and now considers it to be her second career and a personal calling. Recognizing the critical need for education, empowerment, advocacy and research to help patients and families, especially those without resources and support, Bonnie and her family founded the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) in 2006, and then went on to found the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) with her husband, Tony Addario, in 2008. Bonnie’s business acumen and skills honed in her first career as President of Olympian Oil Company and Commercial Fueling Network (CFN), as Past President of the CA Independent Oil Marketers Association (CIOMA) and as a community activist serving on diverse boards have all contributed to her work at ALCF in developing business strategies and being the Foundation’s patient voice at national/international conferences, on panels and boards, and to industry leaders, clinicians and policy makers. Bonnie’s personal interests include collecting wine, travel, sports (Go SF Giants!) and spending time with family and friends at Lake Tahoe.

FACS, Associate Attending and Deputy Chief, Thoracic Surgery
Biography

Principal Pathologist
Dr. Aeffner received her DVM from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany, and completed a 5-year combined PhD and residency program in veterinary anatomic pathology from The Ohio State University. Dr. Aeffner currently is a Principal Pathologist at Amgen Inc. in South San Francisco, California. Prior to joining Amgen, she was the Associate Director of Pathology at Flagship Biosciences, a digital image analysis service provider. In her previous role, she served as lead pathologist supporting ongoing and retrospective clinical trials. Dr. Aeffner’s special expertise is in the field of digital image analysis of human and animal tissue sections, especially to investigate oncology, immuno-oncology, medical devices and animal models of human disease. She has extensive experience in biomarker assay development, validation, and interpretation of chromogenic and fluorescent immunohistochemistry. Most recently, she was recognized for her work in the field of digital image analysis with the 2017 Distinguished Early Career Award from the Society of Toxicologic Pathology.

Associate Professor, Radiation Oncology
Dr. Aerts is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Computational Imaging and Bioinformatics Laboratory (CIBL) at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Aerts’ group focuses on the development and application of advanced computational approaches applied to medical imaging data, pathology, and genomic data. Furthermore, he is a PI-member of the Quantitative Imaging Network (QIN) and Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) initiative of the NIH.

Program Director, Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB), Cancer Diagnosis Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis
Lokesh Agrawal earned his Ph.D. from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India and did his M.S., and B.S. at different institutions in India. He has authored and co-authored several manuscripts in high impact journals and has given/presented his work at both national and international conferences. He has published extensively on antioxidant gene therapy approaches against neuroinflammation/neurodegeneration, dopaminergic neurons apoptosis, rat models of ischemia, role of caspases, metalloproteinases and VEGF. He was the first one to show the Role for CCR5Delta32 protein in resistance to R5, R5X4, and X4 human immunodeficiency virus type I in primary CD4+ cells using recombinant Adenoviruses and has developed assays to quantify viruses in blood. His main interests include development and validation of human (both normal and cancer) biospecimen integrity markers using proteomic and molecular approaches and novel biomarkers for cancer treatment and diagnosis. He directs and leads Biospecimen Research Network (BRN)-PI-led projects on human biospecimen integrity and biomarker development by studying preanalytical variables using proteomics and molecular approaches. His work also involves leading the collaboration with several other programs/ institutions at the NCI including the office of physical sciences and oncology (OPSO) and Center for Strategic and Scientific Initiatives (CSSI). He has expertise in biomarker development including clinical laboratory science and regulatory experience to strengthen BBRB programs in biospecimen acquisition and biospecimen research. He worked most recently at MedImmune Inc., where he was a team leader on various projects involving pre-clinical/clinical biomarker assay development/validation and managed several cross functional teams across to qualify and validate clinical biomarker assays; CTC's, SNP's, vaccine immunogenicity, B and T-cell proliferation & repertoire analysis. Prior to MedImmune he worked at Rapid Pharmaceuticals, Inc., as a team leader in infectious diseases/vaccines biomarker and clinical end point assay development, qualification and validation in collaboration with contract research organizations (CRO's). He also led and directed several NIH-sponsored projects at Thomas Jefferson University and did his postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI).

Director, Scientific Strategy and Communications
Biography

Professor and Director, Preclinical Therapeutics Core
I am a PhD scientist and professor within the HDFCCC, with over twenty-five years of experience working with mouse models of cancer, focusing on the TGFβ signaling pathway. We have shown that TGFβ is a major player in tumor progression, cancer stem cell maintenance, and a major regulator of tumor microenvironment including angiogenesis and potent immune-suppression, all activities that drive tumor metastasis. Most recently, we began investigations into interactions between TGFβ blockade and immune checkpoint blockade. We use primary chemically induced carcinomas, namely DMBA/TPA-induced cutaneous SCC and urethane-induced lung adenocarcinoma, to investigate cellular and molecular mechanisms of complementation between TGFβ blockade and immune checkpoint inhibitors in tumor rejection. In collaboration with the Derynck lab, we also investigate detailed molecular mechanisms regulating TGFβ-driven EMT in cancer. We also have a strong interest in cellular and molecular mechanisms driving abnormal angiogenesis in the human genetic disorder HHT, which is caused by functional loss of a single allele of one of the genes encoding TGFβ/BMP signaling molecules, endoglin, ACVRL1/Alk1, or Smad4. We are currently investigating circulating stem cells and immune cells from HHT patients to provide deeper molecular insight into altered cellular properties and signaling pathways in human HHT. As Faculty Director of the NCI-sponsored CCSG Preclinical Therapeutics Core (PTC), I have a strong interest in providing access to state of the art technology and technical support for small animal cancer therapeutics and imaging for members of the HDFCCC scientific community and beyond. Since my tenure as Director of the PTC, through federal and non-federal awards, we have acquired instrumentation for all three UCSF cancer campuses. This includes Vevo770 and Vevo2100 ultrasound imaging platforms, two IVIS Spectrum multichannel fluorescent/ bioluminescent imagers, two IVIS 100 imagers, and a Leica fluorescence dissecting microscope. We also have successful and pending awards for a SAARP CT-guided irradiator.

Principal Scientist, Cancer Immunology
Biography

Senior Vice President, CMO, Director, Research and Development
Biography

Director, Laboratory of Rare Human Circulating Cells (LCCRH), Cellular and Tissular Biopathology of Cancers
Dr. Catherine Alix-Panabières received her PhD degree in 1998 at the Institute of Virology, University Louis Pasteur, in Strasbourg in France. In 1999, she moved to Montpellier where she did a postdoctoral research in the Department of Immuno-Virology of the University Medical Centre of Montpellier, France. During this last decade, Dr Alix-Panabières has focused on optimizing new techniques of enrichment and detection of viable disseminating tumor cells in patients with solid tumors. She is the expert for the EPISPOT technology that is used to detect viable tumor cells in the peripheral blood and the bone marrow of patients with breast, prostate, colon, head & neck cancer and melanoma. In 2010, she achieved getting a permanent position at the Hospital and at the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier (MCU-PH), a wonderful mixture of giving teaching lessons to medical students on Cancer Biology in combination of developing this field of tumor cell dissemination at the hospital for the cancer patients, leading strongly translational clinical research. As an associate professor, she recently became the new director of the Laboratory of Rare Human Circulating Cells (LCCRH) in the Department of Cell & Tissue Biopathology of tumors. In this unique platform LCCRH, they isolate, detect and characterize circulating tumor cells using combinations of the EPISPOT assay, the CellSearch® system (Janssen), the flow cytometry, the CellCollector (GILUPI), the molecular biology (AmpliSpeed device), the Parsortix system and the DEPArray (Silicon Biosystem) for single cell sorting. She has authored or co-authored >50 scientific publications in this field during the last years including 10 book chapters and she is part of two big European projects: CTC-SCAN (Transcan project) and CANCER-ID (IMI project). After she got the Scientific Prize given by the Region Languedoc-Roussillon in 2008, it was a great honor for her to receive the Gallet et Breton Cancer Prize, the highest honor conferred by the French Academy of Medicine in November 2012.

Professor, Pathology; Director, Anatomic and Surgical Pathology; Laboratory Director, Laboratory Services
Timothy Craig Allen, M.D., J.D., obtained his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in 1984 and completed his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology, subsequently serving on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine until 1995. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School and graduated with the degree of Doctor of law with honors in 1998, subsequently practicing health care law and litigation. Dr. Allen completed a 2-year fellowship in pulmonary pathology in the Texas Medical Center in 2004. He is currently Director of Anatomic Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Allen is certified by the American Board of Pathology in anatomic and clinical pathology, with added qualification in cytopathology. He is an associate editor of the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Allen is the Immediate Past President of the Pulmonary Pathology Society and President of the Texas Society of Pathologists. He is Governor of the College of American Pathologists Board of Governors, and is chair, co-chair, or member of several CAP Councils and Committees. He has authored and coauthored numerous articles and book chapters on pulmonary pathology and medicolegal issues and has coauthored and co-edited several books on pulmonary pathology. Dr. Allen is series coeditor of the Advances in Surgical Pathology series.

CEO and President
After completing his PhD in Molecular Biology (Grenoble, 1986), Dr. Allibert spent 15 years with bioMérieux (Lyon, France) installing the Molecular activity and launching the first HLA-DR test based on multi detection molecular methods for bone marrow and graft transplantation. From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Allibert worked with Merial as Corporate Director for BioAnalytical Development (Athens, GA, USA), where he played a key role in the launch of multiple new animal vaccines (first DNA vaccine (Melanoma for Dog) and the first Circo Virus Vaccines for Pigs (PCV2 vaccine)). In 2006, Dr. Patrice Allibert joined BD Diagnostics GeneOhm (Québec City, Canada) as Vice President R&D Molecular and Strategic Innovation in Molecular Infectious Diseases. He drove the launch of multiple tests to cover the increasing needs for the Health Acquired Infections (HAI). Under its drive, BD launched the first FDA approved Molecular test for the detection of Clostridium difficile. He was also a key actor for the acquisition of the BD MAX Molecular platform. In 2012, he took the position of CEO of GenePOC, a young private and dynamic Medical Device Company located in Quebec City, which aims to become the leader in Molecular Diagnostics Point of Care (POC) for Infectious Diseases. Under its supervision, the company received in 2013 the Frost & Sullivan Award for the Best Molecular Company in North America. In December 2014, he finalized GenePOC funding, ensuring the future of GenePOC for the coming years. In July 2016, GenePOC obtained the FDA clearance for its first test (GBS LB) and its instrument revogeneTM. He has acted as a Genomic and Proteomic Expert for the European Community and as a member of the board of the Institute of Infection and Immunity of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR).

MolDX Medical Director
 

CTO, Biomedical Informatics
The new intersection between cloud computing and web computing is also where a new quantitative framework is emerging for data-intensive analytical applications to the life sciences. My work explores this new computational ecosystem, with the development of portable software solutions that can migrate between data sources – from consumer genomics to wearable sensing, and between different contexts of application from patients to caregivers. The trans-disciplinary contextualization and the quantitative methodologies needed to traverse them are defining challenges of data science. Within that field, my research draws an arc between systems biology, computational statistics and software engineering. For an example, see bit.ly/KMestimator, part of our work developing tools and methods to support radiology-based and pathology-based visual analytics.

CEO and Founder, Executive Career Coach
Janet Andrews is the CEO/Founder of ‘A Career Above’ and a leading Executive Career Coach, Job Search Strategist, LinkedIn Specialist and Résumé-Writer. She has over 20 years’ experience helping thousands of individuals demystify the job search process, take their career to the next level and find emerging opportunities. With over 7.5K connections on LinkedIn and 85 Recommendations, Janet specializes in Medical Devices, Biotech, Lifesciences, Pharma, Healthcare and Tech globally. Janet helps clients crystallize a career vision, strategize their job search, increase their marketability and find exciting new jobs, often with a substantial bump in compensation. Janet teaches candidates how to be proactive, communicate effectively, network extensively, interview exceptionally and negotiate skillfully. Her “resume makeovers” and extraordinary gift for branding client expertise, qualifications and accomplishments into promotional pieces has been invaluable in increasing job search confidence and standing out from the crowd. Janet specializes in a proven, step-by-step job search plan through the “Ultimate Job Success Jump Start Program” - The Easy & Proven Step by Step Process to Finding Your Perfect Position. Janet has a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling Psychology from Pepperdine University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from Centenary College. She is certified by the Career Planning and Adult Development Network as an International Career Coach/Transition Coach.

Associate Professor, Urologic Oncology
Dr. Antonarakis is an Associate Professor of Oncology and Urology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. He graduated from the University of Wales College of Medicine (United Kingdom) in 2003, and then completed a Residency in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, followed by a Fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 2010, he joined the Johns Hopkins faculty as an attending physician and translational researcher. Dr Antonarakis’ clinical interest is the management of prostate cancer and other genitourinary malignancies (cancers of the bladder, kidney and testis). His research focuses on drug development and clinical trial design for patients with prostate cancer. More specifically, he is interested in developing novel androgen-directed therapies as well as immunotherapies for men with recurrent or advanced prostate cancer. He also has an interest in biomarker development, specifically the clinical validation of the AR-V7 marker as well as DNA repair markers. He is currently the PI of several phase II and III prostate cancer trials, and is an active member of the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC) and the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) as well as the NCI Prostate Cancer Task Force and the NCCN Prostate Cancer Panel. He serves on the Editorial Board of several oncology journals, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology. He is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed articles, and several book chapters.

Pathologist and Director, Diagnostic Molecular Pathology Laboratory
As a molecular genetic pathologist, my work primarily involves the study and detection of genetic changes in cancer tissue. These changes can be used to diagnose and confirm the presence of individual cancer types and help tailor patient-specific treatment, determine patients’ prognosis and risk of recurrence, and monitor their disease once they start therapy. As a hematopathologist, I work closely with our clinical colleagues to diagnose diseases that affect the blood and the lymphoid systems. I directly examine tissue and blood samples to diagnose, stage, and monitor hematologic cancers including leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and other diseases at both the morphologic and the molecular levels. My research is focused on the molecular changes that fuel the development of lung carcinoma and the search for possible therapeutic and prognostic markers in patients with this disease. Because of this interest, I have become directly involved with the expansion, validation, and implementation of clinical tests at Memorial Sloan Kettering to detect mutations relevant to the management and treatment of patients with lung carcinoma.

CSO
Biography

Lecturer, Department of Bioengineering
Sam completed a Tosteson postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Mehmet Toner at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2017, where he studied the biomechanics of circulating tumor cell cluster behavior within the microcirculation using microfluidic models of capillaries. He obtained his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Toronto in 2013, where he developed digital microfluidic devices for cell based applications with Aaron Wheeler. He also has industrial R&D work experience at Genentech Inc. and Corning Inc. Sam is a now a lecturer (N.A. equivalent: assistant professor) in the Bioengineering Department of Imperial College London, where his lab studies the intersection of biomechanics, microfluidics and cell biology.

Associate Professor, Medicine, Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation
Biography

Director, Functional Genomics
Sunita Badola is currently employed as the Director of Functional Genomics at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. She has a strong record of scientific innovation in the field of genetics and genomics with more than 18 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Recently, her focus has been on developing, implementing, and managing a virtual next-generation sequencing data pipeline for Takeda R&D. In her previous role as part of the Translational Medicine group at Takeda for 5 years, she applied Genomics and novel technologies to develop biomarker assays for oncology clinical programs. Before Takeda, she worked at Amgen for 5 years where she developed the NGS platform to support oncology clinical programs. Before Amgen she worked at Millennium pharmaceuticals for 7 years in the target ID and validation group.

Scientist
Biography

Associate Professor of Pathology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases & Geographic Medicine); Medical Director, Stanford Health Care Clinical Microbiology Laboratory Director, Stanford Clinical Microbiology
 

Senior Principal Scientist & Head, Immuno-Oncology
Xingfeng received his Ph. D in 2002, and completed postdoc in 2009. Worked as Staff Scientist at Sanford-Burnham Medical Institute, La Jona, CA, in the areas of tumor microenvironment biology and immunology before he joined Eisai in 2011. Currently, he is the Director of Immuno-Oncology at Eisai Andover Innovative Medicine Institute and responsible for the discovery and translational pipeline of cancer immunotherapy portfolio.

Director Microbiology and Virology; Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; University of Southern California
 

Assistant, Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor, Pathology, Harvard Medical School
Jason Baron, M.D. is a medical director in the Core Laboratory and an investigator in Pathology Informatics within the Department of Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Baron's research interests are focused on clinical decision support for laboratory testing and the application of statistical methods and “big-data” analytics to enhance laboratory diagnosis. He is particularly interested in the use of artificial intelligence to derive more precise and patient-specific, diagnostic, prognostic and prescriptive information from sets of routine laboratory data. His clinical responsibilities include overseeing reference laboratory send out testing as well as advancing quality improvement and utilization management initiatives throughout the MGH Core Lab.

Group Medical Director & Head, RWE Strategy & External Relationships, US Medical Affairs
Charlie Barr currently is Group Medical Director and Head of RWE Strategy at Genentech. He has over 15 years of experience in clinical trials and observational studies at several pharmaceutical companies. Previously he was a practicing physician, researcher and teacher in academia for 15 years at 3 different universities. He is Board-Certified in Internal Medicine and did an NIH/NLM Research Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health. Currently Dr. Barr’s passion is to improve drug development and health care by advancing the science of precision medicine and translational research by combining the power of technology and the patient perspective.

Head, Synthetic Biology, Synthego
Kevin Holden, PhD is Head of Synthetic Biology at Synthego in Redwood City, California where he is part of a team responsible for integrating CRISPR into novel engineering and automation technologies and partnering with leaders in the CRISPR field to help advance Synthego's synthetic sgRNA platform.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Center for Pharmacogenomics
Biography

Practice Leader, TechVision-Innovation Services
Biography

CEO
Biography

Founder & CSO
Dr. Holger Becker is co-founder and CSO of microfluidic ChipShop GmbH. He obtained physics degrees from the University of Western Australia/Perth and the University of Heidelberg. He started to work on miniaturized systems for chemical analysis during his PhD thesis at Heidelberg University, where he obtained his PhD in Applied Physics in 1995. Between 1995 and 1997 he was a Research Associate at Imperial College with Prof. Andreas Manz. In 1998 he joined Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH. Since then, he founded and led several companies in the field of microsystem technologies in medicine and the life sciences, for which he received various awards, most notably a nomination for the “Deutscher Gründerpreis” in 2004. He led the Industry Group of the German Physical Society between 2004 and 2009, and is the current chair of the SPIE ‘‘Microfluidics, BioMEMS and Medical Microsystems’’ conference, co-chair of MicroTAS 2013 and in the Industrial Committee for MicroTAS 2016 and 2017. He serves on the Advisory Board of “Lab-on-a-Chip”, the Editorial Boards of “Microelectronic Engineering” and “Micro and Nanosystems” as well as on the Board of Trustees of the “Physik Journal”. In 2014, he was appointed a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (London). He has published more than 160 journal and conference paper with currently >5.500 citations.

Executive Director of Clinical Markets
Biography

Director of Clinical Services
Biography

Vice President, Clinical Genomics
Annerose Berndt, PhD, DVM, received her D.V.M. from the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany, in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, in 2007. After completing her graduate studies, she became a postdoctoral fellow and — in 2008 — an associate research scientist under Beverly Paigen at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Dr. Berndt was recruited to join the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in March 2010. Dr. Berndt’s research interests focus on the identification of causative genomic variations for chronic pulmonary diseases.

Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery and Oncology
Biography

Sr. Director, Computational Biology, Oncology R&D
Dr. Bienkowska is a Senior Director at Pfizer, Oncology Research and Development division in Oncology Translational Research (OTR) and heads the Computational Biology Department. OTR focuses on development and identification of biomarkers, new targets and combination therapies for cancer with research focus on identification of patients’ sub-populations most likely to benefit from our Immune Therapies and combinations. Dr. Bienkowska has over 17 years’ experience working in Pharma and Biotech industry applying computational methods to understand molecular drivers of disease, advance new therapies and patient selection. Dr. Bienkowska joined Pfizer in 2014 from BiogenIdec where she was a Principal Investigator and led computational biology group supporting new drug target identification and biomarker discovery for Oncology, Immunology and Neurology indications. Dr. Bienkowska is actively involved academic research through academic collaborations and appointments. Dr. Bienkowska is an Adjunct Professor in the department of Medicine at UCSD. Her prior academic appointments include Visiting Scientist at CSAIL, MIT and an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering Department at Boston University. Dr. Bienkowska obtained her PhD degree in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1993 and completed postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Immuno-Oncology Asset/Team Lead
Biography

Executive Director, Genetics and Pharmacogenomics, Head, Clinical Pharmacogenomics
Rebecca Blanchard is the head of Clinical Pharmacogenomics and Operations within the Genetics and Pharmacogenomics department at Merck & Co., Inc. Dr. Blanchard’s career in academia and Merck has spanned preclinical, translational, and clinical development across multiple therapeutic areas. Rebecca’s education includes a B.S. in Pharmacy from Albany College of Pharmacy and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. After receiving her Ph.D., Rebecca completed postdoctoral studies at the Mayo Clinic with a focus on human pharmacogenetics. From 1998 through 2004 Rebecca was an Assistant Professor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia where her NIH R01 funded-research focused on human pharmacogenetics with emphasis on sulfotransferase and UDP-glucuronosyltransferase genes. In 2004, Rebecca joined Merck & Co., Inc. in Pennsylvania. She has held positions of increasing responsibility across Clinical Pharmacology, Clinical Oncology and Genetics and Pharmacogenomic departments within Merck. Rebecca has led several drug development teams across early and late stage development, with a recent focus on identification of predictive biomarkers for drug response. In 2013 Rebecca accepted the position as Head of Clinical Pharmacogenomics, where she is responsible for the scientific strategy and execution of Merck’s clinical pharmacogenomic efforts, biomarker sample management, and project management of Merck’s genetic and genomic project portfolio. Rebecca is past-chair of the Industry Pharmacogenomic Working Group (I-PWG), a member of the National Academy of Medicine Genomic Roundtable, and a member of the International Committee on Harmonization (ICH) E18 Working group on Genomics.

Research Associate, Center for Advanced Technologies
Biography

Director
Dr. Borchers received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz, Germany. After his post-doctoral training and employment as a staff scientist at NIEHS/NIH/RTP in North Carolina, he became the director of the UNC-Duke Proteomics Facility and held a faculty position at the UNC Medical School in Chapel Hill, NC (2001-2006). Since then, Dr. Borchers has been employed at the University of Victoria (UVic), Canada and holds the current positions of Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology and the Don and Eleanor Rix BC Leadership Chair in Biomedical and Environmental Proteomics. He is also the Director of the UVic – Genome BC Proteomics Centre, which is a member of the Genome Canada funded Genomics Innovation Network. Dr. Borchers is also appointed as Professor at McGill University in the Department of Oncology, Montreal, QC and where he holds the Segal Chair in Molecular Oncology at the Jewish General Hospital at McGill University. Dr. Borchers’ research is centered around the improvement, development and application of proteomics technologies with a major focus on techniques for quantitative targeted proteomics for clinical diagnostics. Multiplexed LC-MRM-MS approaches and the immuno-MALDI (iMALDI) technique are of particular interest. Another focus of his research is on technology development and application of the combined approach of protein chemistry and mass spectrometry for structural proteomics. Dr. Borchers has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and is the founder and CSO of two companies, Creative Molecules. Inc. and MRM Proteomics Inc. He is also involved in promoting proteomic research and education through his function as HUPO International Council Member.

Director, Strategy and Business Development
Biography

Associate Professor, The Robert and Sandra Glass Term Chair in Diabetes, Diabetes Center of Excellence, Program in Molecular Medicine
Dr. Brehm received his Ph.D. from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a member of the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence. Dr. Brehm’s research program is focused on understanding how human effector T cells are regulated, and his laboratory is actively using “humanized” mice to model human T cell responses. Dr. Brehm has published over 70 manuscripts and reviews and is supported by funding from the JDRF, NIAID, NIDDK and the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Vice President, Product and Business Development
Trisha Brown is a board certified, licensed genetic counselor with over two decades of experience in clinical genetics. She is currently the Vice President of Product and Business Development at BeaconLBS. Ms. Brown is experienced in commercialization of genomic tests, operations, and utilization management. Prior to joining BeaconLBS, she has held executive leadership roles at distinguished corporations such as LabCorp and Medco, and the entrepreneurial successes DNA Direct and Fabric Genomics.

CEO
Kris Buchanan is owner and CEO of Phase Three Product Development which was founded in 2009. He has driven the development of many products while holding numerous engineering and product development positions in companies which produce products from consumer electronics to medical devices. Mr. Buchanan has been awarded over 75 USPTO and international patents as inventor or co-inventor. These patents range from air filtration and spin motor design in the disc drive industry to bio containment, nozzle and flow cell designs for flow cytometry to patents in the microfluidics field. More recently, Mr. Buchanan has helped researchers develop designs and systems which allow “organ-on-chip” technologies to be developed and to prepare them for commercialization while also developing lab-on-a-chip technologies for continuous cell sorting. Phase Three has been instrumental in preparing microfluidics products for integration in water quality and food safety applications soon to launch in the marketplace covering the cellular therapy, RNA detection, cellular analysis, protein detection fields, and IVD fields. Surrounding Mr. Buchanan at Phase Three is a team of experts hand-picked for their areas of expertise covering industrial and human factors design, assay development, electrical and mechanical engineering, fluidics engineering and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), software, and systems engineering. This integrated approach has allowed Phase Three to develop instrumentation systems, disposables, and technologies in the IVD, life science, water and food quality fields.

Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Director of Clinical Microbiology, LAC+USC Medical Center
Biography

Vice President, Diagnostic Solutions
Biography

Research Assistant, Jay Shendure Laboratory, Genomic Science
Junyue Cao is a graduate student from Jay Shendure’s lab in the department of Genomic Science, University of Washington. He is interested in single cell analysis. More specifically, his research focuses on developing high-throughput single cell transcriptome sequencing techniques and identifying novel cell types in multicellular organism. In the past two years, he developed a combinatorial indexing strategy to profile the transcriptomes of single cell or nuclei (sci-RNA-seq, Single cell Combinatorial Indexing RNA sequencing) and generated a catalog of single cell transcriptomes with over 50-fold “shotgun cellular coverage” of L2 C. elegans soma (J. Cao et al., bioRxiv, 104844, 2017). Currently he is working on applying sci-RNA-seq to other multicellular systems, and by integrating single cell RNA-seq and ATAC-seq, learn about the association between epigenome and transcriptome in single cell level.

Global Head, Regulatory Affairs, Oncology Precision Medicine
Peggy Carter, Ph.D., RAC, is currently Global Head, Regulatory Affairs Oncology Precision Medicine, and joined Novartis in January 2011. Peggy has more than fifteen years’ experience working in the IVD industry. She previously served as the Director of Product Development at R2 Diagnostics where she was responsible for both the development of IVD assays for coagulation and regulatory strategy and submission. She spent five years working at Ventana Medical Systems before coming to Novartis. For the past eleven years, her focus has been on providing regulatory support for the development of companion and complementary diagnostics. Her activities include support of global companion diagnostic regulatory strategy, and engagement of global stakeholders to further the cause of precision medicine. She received her BA in Biology from Earlham College and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

CMO
Biography

Director, Cancer Program, MGH Center for Systems Biology, Hematology - Oncology
Biography

Applications Specialist, Applications & Sales
Biography

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Biography

CEO
Before he founded Fractal Therapeutics, Arijit was the Director of the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) function at Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co., Cambridge, MA. He has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College, and a Bachelor's in Pharmacy and a Master's in Biological Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. Prior to his current role, Arijit has worked in other roles at Takeda (formerly Millennium), as a computational biologist, as a group leader and biomarker team leader in the in vivo pharmacology group, and in a translational group, where he led cell biology and pharmacology teams, and served as the discovery project leader for seven programs. He has contributed directly to around fifty drug discovery and development programs in multiple therapeutic areas, from target identification to discovery and early clinical development. Arijit has spoken at more than thirty conferences and invited seminars, published over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and over fifty abstracts.

Head of Experience Design
Biography

Investigator, Immuno-Oncology
My current role in Immuno-Oncology is to combine immune therapy with cell and gene therapy. My lab is focusing on immuno engineering and enabling CRISPR and CAR-T to create next generation immune engineering therapy.

Director, Scientific Informatics, Global Research IT, R&D IT
Biography

Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Biography

Lecturer and Senior Biostatistics and Mathematical Biology Consultant
Tom Chittenden is Vice President of Statistical Sciences and Founding Director of the Advanced AI Research Laboratory at WuXi NextCODE. Dr. Chittenden leads NextCODE’s predictive analytics initiative, which includes deep learning and probabilistic programming research and development. In addition to his position at WuXi NextCODE, Dr. Chittenden holds faculty appointments at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and MIT.

Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at University of California, San Francisco, Director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center (VDDC), and Associate Director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory
Charles Chiu, M.D./Ph.D. is a microbiologist and infectious diseases physician who has pioneered the development of metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) testing for clinical diagnosis of infectious diseases. He currently leads a translational research laboratory aimed at (1) sequencing-based clinical assay development and laboratory validation, (2) characterization of emerging pathogens (including Borrelia burgdorferi, Ebola virus, enterovirus D68, and Zika virus), (3) pathogen discovery in unexplained acute illnesses, and (4) new technology development in areas such as real-time nanopore sequencing analysis and machine learning. Dr. Chiu is the principal investigator of the nationwide, multi-hospital “Precision Diagnosis of Acute Infectious Diseases” study to study the clinical impact and cost-effectiveness of a validated metagenomic next-generation sequencing assay for diagnosis of encephalitis and meningitis in hospitalized patients. He has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications since 2011, holds over 10 patents or patents, and serves on the scientific advisory board for Therabio. His translational work has been supported by funding from the NIH, philanthropic organizations (Sandler, Bowes, Marcus, Charles and Helen Schwab, and Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundations), and the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine.

Vice President, R&D Operations IT, Oncology IT
Biography

Senior Vice President, Quality & Regulatory
Melina Cimler has over 25 years of experience in the FDA-regulated diagnostic industry leading regulatory, quality systems, clinical affairs, research, and product development organizations. Prior to joining Adaptive as Senior VP of Regulatory & Quality, Dr. Cimler was VP of Quality & Regulatory at Illumina, where she led the effort for FDA clearance of the first NGS platform. Previously, she held leadership positions in quality, regulatory, clinical and government affairs at Beckman Coulter, Abbott Molecular, Gen-Probe Inc., and C.R. Bard. Dr. Cimler holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Washington.

Lab Head, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Biography

Senior Market Manager (Medical/CBRN)
Biography

Distinguished Professor, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
Dr. Rita Colwell is a Distinguished University Professor at both the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Colwell was the 11th Director of the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004 and the recipient of the 2006 National Medal of Science of the United States and the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize. Dr. Colwell is a member of the National Academy of Science and has authored or co-authored 17 books and more than 750 scientific publications.

Director, R&D Custom Assay Services
Biography

William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Law, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Counsel, Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson
Biography

Showrunner and Host, Life Science Marketing Radio; Content Marketing Strategist, Words 2 Wow Life Science Marketing, LLC; Marketing Director, Association of Commercial Professionals – Life Sciences (ACP-LS)
Chris Conner is the Showrunner and Host of Life Science Marketing Radio, a podcast where marketing leaders inside and outside the sciences share creative ideas and practice approaches to increase their marketing ROI. He is also the Content Marketing Strategist for Words 2 Wow Life Science Marketing, LLC where he helps life science companies create integrated content marketing strategies to generate more leads with less effort. Chris is also the Marketing Director for the Association of Commercial Professionals – Life Sciences (ACP-LS), an organization specifically for the professional development of marketing and sales people in the life sciences. Previously, Chris was Marketing Communications Director, Mass Spectrometry at Thermo Fisher Scientific. He developed strategic integrated content marketing plans with budgets for liquid chromatography mass spec product lines targeting both research and applied markets. Chris also worked at Varian, Inc. (now Agilent Technologies) as Global Marketing Program Manager, Research Products where he developed strategic global and regional marketing communications plans with budges for magnetic resonance and X-ray crystallography product lines. He also managed agencies and internal resources for creative, social media blog, video, print collateral, and online media campaigns. He is a published scientist with two patents and several publications. Chris has a Master of Science Degree in Genetics from the University of Utah and Bachelor of Arts Degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. To learn about Chris and his work in Content Marketing, please visit his website.

Senior Vice President of Technology Development, R&D
Jeffrey Conroy, Co-Director of the Genomics Shared Resource since the facility started as the Microarray and Genomics Facility in 1999, has overseen its expansion to offer over 50 genomics-based services, and grown revenue to over $1.5M per year. Mr. Conroy meets regularly with investigators and the Bioinformatics Resource staff to provide guidance for next generation sequencing (WGS, ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, targeted) microarray analyses (gene expression, copy number/LOH, GWAS), SNP genotyping (targeted and whole genome) and epigenetic studies (targeted and whole genome methylation). He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and also teaches several lectures in the UB/RPCI graduate programs on genomic applications, NGS, epigenetics and genotyping.

Professor and Joseph R. Coulter Jr. Chair, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine; Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Chief, Pathology, Jackson Memorial Hospital; Director, Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute
Richard J. Cote, M.D., FRCPath, FCAP is the Joseph R. Coulter Jr. Chair of the Department of Pathology, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He is a board-certified Pathologist, serving over 20 years in senior academic, consultative, and director/clinical roles with leading universities, hospitals and healthcare enterprises. Dr. Cote obtained degrees in chemistry and biology at the University of California at Irvine, and received his medical degree from the University of Chicago - Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his residency at New York Hospital - Cornell University Medical College. His training included a clinical fellowship in pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a research fellowship in Human Tumor Immunology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a fellowship in Molecular Pathology at New York University School of Medicine. Prior to joining the University of Miami in 2009, he was Professor, Department of Pathology; Professor, Department of Urology; Director, Genitourinary Cancer Program; Director, Laboratory of Immunology and Molecular Pathology; and Director of the USC Biomedical Nanoscience Initiative at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Cote’s research is focused on the elucidation of cellular and molecular pathways of tumor progression and response to therapy. He has special interests in micrometastases and circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection and characterization, the pathology of breast and genitourinary tumors and technology development. Most recently, he and his colleagues at the University of Southern California, Caltech and UC Berkeley have developed nanoscale technologies for cancer diagnostic applications, including bionanosensors for the detection of serum tumor markers, and technologies for the capture and characterization of circulating tumor cells. As a result of these efforts, he established the Biomedical Nanoscience Program at USC and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Miami for the development of novel diagnostic platforms and targeted therapeutics. He has led three of the largest clinical trials in breast, lung and bladder cancer, which were based on discoveries from his research. Dr. Cote is the author of over 300 publications, and participates on numerous scientific advisory boards for both academic and industry related institutions. He is the founder of several technology based companies, including Impath, Inc., Clarient, Filtini and Sensitini.

Assistant Professor
Laurence Court currently runs a research team at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where they work on two topics: (1) the use of quantitative imaging to support cancer treatment decisions, and (2) the development of tools to improve access to cancer care in low- and middle-income countries. He has been working in radiation oncology for 15 years, having worked in the imaging industry before that.

Vice President Health Plans/Market Access/Reimbursement, Health Plans
Mr. Cox has served in multiple senior healthcare roles including President & CEO of a medical device company, Vice President of Market Access/Payor Strategy, and as the U.S. National Sales Director for a leading biotech company. His experience includes launching numerous biotech injectable, medical device, diagnostic, and genetic products into diverse markets and has dealt extensively with national and regional commercial insurance and governmental payors such as Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. Damon is a Registered Medical Coder (RMC) with an in-depth understanding of healthcare reimbursement-related issues. He has expertise establishing billing and reimbursement processes, protocols, and distribution of healthcare products. Additionally, he is a decorated veteran military Army officer who has served as an Airborne Ranger Commander and in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Director, Partnerships & Alliances
Biography

Assistant Professor, Immunology
Biography

Founder and CEO
Biography

Executive Vice President, Strategic Development
Kevin is the author (or co-author) of three popular science books exploring the medical and societal impact of advances in DNA sequencing and analysis. Kevin’s debut book (co-authored with Michael White) -- Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene -- examined the fierce rivalry to isolate the BRCA1 gene. Cracking the Genome: The Race to Unlock Human DNA (Free Press, 2001) was the first published account of the Human Genome Project saga and was translated into 16 different languages. The $1,000 Genome: The Revolution in DNA Sequencing and the New Era of Personalized Medicine (Free Press, 2010) considered the advances in DNA sequencing and consumer genetics. Coming soon: Kevin is the co-author with Nobel laureate Jim Watson of an updated edition of DNA: The Story of the Genetics Revolution (Knopf, August 2017). A native of London, Kevin studied biochemistry at the University of Oxford and took a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School (University of London), where he worked on mapping the cystic fibrosis gene. After postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and Harvard Medical School, Kevin hung up his lab coat for good and moved into science publishing, joining the editorial staff of Nature. Within two years, he was named the founding editor of Nature Genetics, the world’s leading genetics research journal, which debuted in 1992, establishing the template for a string of successful spin-off journals. Kevin has held several prominent editorial and publishing positions since then, including Editor-in-Chief of Cell Press, the flagship journal division of Elsevier, and launch editor for Bio-IT World, a sister magazine to Macworld covering big data in the life sciences. Kevin has also worked at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, where he was publisher of the Society’s weekly magazine Chemical & Engineering News.

Director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center, Professor of Biochemistry and of Genetics, Department of Biochemistry, Department of Genetics, Stanford School of Medicine
Ronald W. Davis, Ph.D., is Director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center and Professor of Biochemistry and of Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine in Stanford, California. Recently named by The Atlantic as one of the greatest living inventors, Dr. Davis is regarded as a world leader in biotechnology, and the development and application of recombinant DNA and genomic methodology to biological systems. His laboratory has developed many of the techniques currently used in academic and industrial biotechnology laboratories; in particular, he was instrumental in the development of DNA microarray technology. He is also considered to be a world expert in the electron microscopy of nucleic acids and developed many of the key mapping methods, earning him the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology in 1976. His laboratory was instrumental in the development of lambda vectors, which were commonly used for the primary cloning of DNA molecules in E. coli. He also developed many of the yeast vectors and helped to develop yeast as a host for recombinant DNA, for which he was presented the United States Steel Award in 1981 by the National Academy of Sciences. Given his major contributions to recombinant DNA technology, he helped develop the United States’ policy on recombinant DNA as a co-signer of the 1973 letter alerting researchers to the potential hazards of recombinant DNA and by contributing to the NIH guidelines for recombinant DNA. Dr. Davis co-authored a concept paper on the use of DNA as a marker for the construction of a human genetic linkage map, which was key groundwork for the Human Genome Project. For this, he received the Rosentiel Award for Work in Basic Medical Research. In 1989, Dr. Davis and Dr. David Botstein co-founded the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC), participating in the sequencing of the yeast genome (the first eukaryotic genome sequence) and then building automated technology for the Human Genome Project. As director of SGTC, Dr. Davis and his research team are developing new technologies for the genetic, genomic, and molecular analysis of model organisms and humans with a focus on clinical medicine, diagnostics, and biosensors. Through his participation in a large-scale genomics project studying trauma and injury, Dr. Davis is experienced in bridging basic science technology development and implementation of novel methodologies with biomedical research. His experience in commercializing technologies is also extensive, with ~30 spin-out companies from SGTC, almost all of which have been successful. Dr. Davis’ additional honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences, the 1998 Genetics Society of America Medal, the 2004 Sober Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB/IUBMB), the 2004 Yeast Genetics Meeting Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2011 Gruber Prize in Genetics, the 2013 Warren Alpert Prize, and the 2015 Personalized Medicine World Conference Luminary Award.

Associate Professor, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Biography

Professor, Radiology, Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection
Dr. Demirci is currently a Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine with tenure at the Canary Center for Early Cancer Detection. Prior to his Stanford appointment, he was an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology serving at the Division of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Infectious Diseases and Renal Division. He leads a group of 20+ researchers focusing on micro- and nano-scale technologies. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1999 as a James B. Angell Scholar (summa cum laude) from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his M.S. degree in 2001 in Electrical Engineering, M.S. degree in Management Science and Engineering in 2005, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2005, all from Stanford University.

Instructor, Laboratory of Dr. Matthew Porteus, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center
Daniel Dever is a Research Instructor in the Laboratory of Dr. Matthew Porteus at Stanford University. He completed his PhD in molecular toxicology at the University of Rochester where he studied the mechanisms of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor in mediating cerebellar transcriptional programs. During his postdoctoral work in the Porteus group, he (with others) developed a CRISPR/Cas9-based beta-globin (HBB) gene editing by homologous recombination methodology (previously known as gene targeting) in CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) as a potential therapeutic strategy to treat severe sickle cell disease. Details of these studies are described in our article in Nature (Dever et al., 2016). Currently, he is leading IND-enabling preclinical efficacy, feasibility, safety and tumorigenicity studies for FDA approval of a first-in-human clinical trial at Stanford for the treatment of severe sickle cell disease using CRISPR/Cas9-based HBB gene correction.

Senior Director, Head of Translational Genetics
Frederick Dewey received his AB in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University, and MD, with concentration in cardiovascular and pulmonary sciences, from Stanford University. He received clinical training in internal medicine and cardiovascular medicine, and research training in human genetics at Stanford Hospital and Clinics. He joined the Regeneron Genetics Center, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, in 2014 and is currently Senior Director and Head of the Translational Genetics group, which uses large scale sequencing to identify and validate therapeutic targets.

CEO, Pinpoint Diagnostics
Biography

Manager, Applied Genomics and Biology
Biography

Program Director, Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives
Anthony Dickherber is a Program Director with the NCI Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives, in the NCI Office of the Director. His primary role is Director of the Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies (IMAT) program, but also serves as co-Director for the Cancer Moonshot Implementation Team for New Enabling Technologies. Tony also assists with general strategic planning for initiatives involving emerging cancer technologies and in development of strategic partnerships. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where his dissertation research focused on the development of label-free cancer protein microarray biosensors based on microelectronic acoustic device technology. Dr. Dickherber joined the National Cancer Institute as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in 2009 to assist with the design and development of the Cancer Human Biobank (caHUB) with the Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research. Prior to joining the NCI, Tony's research focused on innovative biosensor platforms for early detection of cancer and arrayable ion-trapping structures for quantum-bit computing at the Georgia Tech Microelectronics Research Center in Atlanta, GA. He also spent four years as a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute working on military-related telecommunications research projects.

Assistant Professor, Radiation Oncology, Stanford Cancer Institute, Institute for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University
Biography

Postdoctoral Scholar, Pathology
Biography

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology
Biography

Vice President, Oncology Diagnostics
Dr. Nicholas Dracopoli is Vice President, Head Oncology Diagnostics at Janssen R&D, Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he was Vice President of Clinical Discovery Technologies at Bristol-Myers Squibb, and prior to that spent five years in the biotechnology industry at Sequana Therapeutics. Dr Dracopoli obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Subsequently, he served as an Assistant Director at the Whitehead/MIT Genome Center, and as a Section Chief at the National Center for Human Genome Research at the NIH before moving to the biotechnology industry. Dr Dracopoli has authored >80 scientific publications, and has extensive experience in the fields of genomics, molecular biology and cancer research.

Assistant Professor, Pathology & Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine (AMP Hematopathology Subdivision Representative to the AMP 2018 Program Committee; Member)
Dr. Eric Duncavage is an Associate Professor and the section head of hematopathology in the department of Pathology & Immunology at Washington University in St Louis where he signs out both clinical NGS and hematopathology cases. He has developed clinical grade wet lab and informatics tools for the detection of measurable residual disease and structural variants since 2011. His grant-funded research is focused on the genomics and biology of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and the application of new genomic methods to cancer diagnostics.

Senior Technologist and Independent Consultant
Chris Dwan is an independent consultant, technologist, and leader in scientific computing and data architecture for the life sciences. He works with universities, research institutes, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and the government. From 2014 to 2017 Dwan directed the research computing team at the Broad Institute. He was instrumental in the development of Broad’s program in data sciences, as well as its transition from on-premise to a hybrid cloud infrastructure. He served as Acting Director for all of Broad IT during the yearlong search for a new CIO. Chris was the first technologist at the New York Genome Center, from its inception in 2011 through 2014. He architected, designed, and built all of the computing, data storage, and network infrastructure for NYGC, including substantial renovations to its Manhattan headquarters. In this role he reported to the executive director and presented regularly to the board of directors. Chris was the first full time employee of the Boston based consulting firm, BioTeam. Between 2004 and 2011 he designed and deployed solutions for hundreds of customers, who were at all stages of adopting and leveraging technology for genomic science. By the end of his tenure, he was also managing the entire consulting team and serving on the Board of Directors for the company. Chris’s academic background is in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning / artificial intelligence.

Scientific Affairs Director, Flow Cytometry
Mark Edinger is the scientific advisor for Flow Cytometry at Q2 Solutions. As the scientific advisor, Mark is responsible for flow cytometry assay design and implementation. He works with both the Translational Biomarkers Laboratory to develop assays and the Global Cytometry Group to produce assays, and is the architect of the systems and workflows used in Q2 Solutions’ flow cytometry assay development and production laboratories. Mark began his career at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, a preeminent medical institution, where he pioneered flow cytometry in the late 1970s, building both clinical and research core flow cytometry laboratories. During his 21 years at the Cleveland Clinic, Mark developed many of the techniques and assays employed today for clinical practice and academic research. During this time, Mark also was a consultant for Becton Dickinson (BD) Immunocytometry Systems and participated in clinical trials of new BD products. In 1998, Mark formally joined BD where he founded the Technical Applications Group, and later the R&D Systems Validation Laboratory. While at BD, Mark, working with scientists at Amgen, developed the whole blood phosphoprotein lysing buffer that is now used daily in laboratories throughout the world. Mark joined Quintiles in 2012 and has been part of a collaboration which introduced the quantitative standardization of flow cytometers, along with other state of the art practices, making Quintiles flow laboratories the first to offer this level of instrument standardization anywhere in the world. Mark became part of the Q2 Solutions team when the company was officially launched in June 2015 as a result of a Quintiles and Quest Diagnostics joint venture. Mark graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology.

President & CEO
Stephen L. Eck, M.D., Ph.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of Aravive Biologics (Houston, TX). Aravive is developing novel biologic agents for cancers and related disorders. Their lead compound is a highly specific GAS-Axl pathway inhibitor. Dr. Eck was formerly Vice President of Oncology Medical Sciences at Astellas Pharma Global Development, Inc. Prior to joining Astellas Pharma, he served as Vice President, Translational Medicine & Pharmacogenomics at Eli Lilly. Dr Eck previously served in a variety of oncology and neuroscience drug development leadership roles at Pfizer, Inc. Dr. Eck is a board-certified hematologist, who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University and received his M.D. degree from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. He serves on the Board of Directors of Luminex Corporation, the Personalized Medicine Coalition and the Central Pennsylvania Clinic. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Staff Pathologist and Director of Telepathology, University Health Network, Department of Pathology
Dr. Andrew Evans is a Staff Pathologist and consultant in Genitourinary Pathology at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at The University of Toronto. He has served as Director of the UHN Telepathology program since its inception in 2003. UHN has successfully integrated digital pathology into patient care for a variety of applications, including frozen sections, consultation and primary diagnosis. He is currently Chair of the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Digital Pathology Committee and Chair of the CAP Pathology and Laboratory Quality Center Committee which is revising CAP 2013 guidelines for validating and implementing digital pathology systems for diagnostic purposes.

Director, Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Director, Basic Science Research in the Women’s Heart Center, Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Heart Health
Dr. Van Eyk is a Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Director of the Basic Science Research in the Barbra Streisand Woman’s Hearth Center and Director of the new Advance Clinical Biosystems Institute where she recently moved from Johns Hopkins University. Most recently she has become the co-director of the Cedars Sinai Precision Health, focused on in-hospital and population individualization of health care.

Drug Safety and Metabolism, Microphysiological Systems Lead
Dr. Fabre is the Microphysiological Systems (MPS) Lead and is part of the MPS Center of Excellence, Drug Safety and Metabolism at AstraZeneca. She works with several key AZ members and external partners to develop how to best utilize MPS technology for drug development and screening. Other vital tasks include advisory roles in various MPS-relevant consortiums, including the NIH Tissue Chip Consortium and the IQ Consortium. Prior to joining AZ in 2016, she was the Scientific Program Manager for the Microphysiological Systems (or Organs-on-Chips) Initiative at NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). This role included providing oversight on all MPS cooperative agreements, including members from FDA, DARPA, NIH and several academic institutions across the United States in addition to building public-private partnerships. Dr. Fabre received her BS in Biology from the University of Wyoming, followed by her MS and PhD from Colorado State University in Cell and Molecular Biology. Prior to joining NCATS, she was at the NIH National Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow in the Radiation Biology Branch. During her time at the NCI, Dr. Fabre was highly involved with training programs and was Chair of the NCI Fellows and Young Investigators Steering Committee and created the NCI Fellows Outreach Committee.

Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Z. Hugh Fan is a professor in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemistry at the University of Florida (UF). He is also a member of UF Health Cancer Center. Prior to joining UF in 2003, Dr. Fan was a Principal Scientist at ACLARA BioSciences Inc. and a Member of the Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corp. Dr. Fan is a recipient of Fraunhofer-Bessel Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), E.T.S. Walton Award from Science Foundation Ireland, and Career Award from National Institute of Health (USA). He is a fellow of AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science). He edited a CTC book, "Circulating Tumor Cells: Isolation and Analysis", published in 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Section Head, Molecular Pathology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute
Daniel H. Farkas, PhD, HCLD (ABB), CC, CLSp(MB), FACB, is Section Head of Molecular Pathology at the Cleveland Clinic. Prior to that he was Chief Clinical Laboratory Officer for Celmatix in New York City where he established its CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited genomics-of-infertility laboratory. Prior to Celmatix, Dr. Farkas was the lead laboratory director for Sequenom Laboratories with facilities in Morrisville, NC, San Diego, CA, and Grand Rapids, MI and oversaw these molecular diagnostics laboratories committed to maternal fetal medicine. Previously, Dr. Farkas had been Executive Director of the Center for Molecular Medicine in Grand Rapids, a collaborative genomics initiative between Spectrum Health and the Van Andel Institute. Dr. Farkas has established three hospital-based molecular diagnostics laboratories (St. Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston, NJ; Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI; and The Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX) and done two stints in the biotechnology industry. Dr. Farkas served on the American Association for Clinical Chemistry Board of Directors from 2007-2009 and has served on two College of American Pathologists Committees, notably for nine years on the Molecular Pathology Resource Committee. Dr. Farkas was the first professional certified by the American Board of Bioanalysis (ABB) in Molecular Diagnostics (1996) and served six years on ABB's board. Dr. Farkas has been President of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), its Program Chair, and is a past AMP Leadership Award winner. He has been a member of the FDA Clinical and Molecular Genetics Devices Panel and is under consideration in 2017 to re-join this group. He has been on the faculties of Michigan State University (MSU; current), Baylor College of Medicine, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and Beaumont Hospital's Medical Technology program. Dr. Farkas earned a BS degree in Microbiology and Public Health from MSU and a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Farkas has lectured internationally and published widely on molecular diagnostics, including his latest book: “DNA From A to Z and Back Again.”

Assistant Professor, Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Andrey Fedorov is an Assistant Professor in Radiology at the Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL), Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Andrey joined SPL in 2009 after obtaining his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The College of William and Mary in Virginia. His research is in translation and validation of medical image computing technology in clinical research applications, with the focus on quantitative imaging, imaging informatics and image-guided interventional procedures. Andrey is committed to advancing the role of reproducible science, data sharing and open source software in academic research. He has contributed to several open source projects, most notably 3D Slicer. Together with Ron Kikinis, he is a co-PI of the Quantitative Image Informatics for Cancer Research (QIICR) project funded by NCI. QIICR is focused on developing open source informatics technology in support of quantitative imaging biomarker development, and interoperable sharing of the imaging biomarker data using the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard.

Associate Professor, Medicine, Division of Oncology
Biography

Associate Professor, Personalized Genomics Laboratory, Department of Pathology & Cell Biology
Helen Fernandes PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pathology in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology and the Co-director of Genomic Oncology in the Personalized Genomic Medicine Laboratory, at Columbia University Medical Center. She has over 20 years of experience in Molecular Pathology and has implemented clinical next generation sequencing assay for the detection of somatic variants in cancer. Dr. Fernandes is involved in the training and education of molecular diagnosticians and has presented at several meetings and webinars nationally and internationally. She is an active member of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC).

Senior Associate, Civil Health – Informatics
Dr. Fernandez has over 15 years of healthcare experience with subject matter expertise spanning medical imaging, biorepository management and translational/precision medicine related informatics solutions. She has led informatics efforts with NCI cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (biorepositories), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Pediatric Heart Network, and international cardiac association strategy in precision medicine related efforts. She works with the American College of Radiology (ACR) in IT and next generation data discovery and analytics platform connecting cancer trial data. Dr. Fernandez has authored over 20 publications on medical imaging, interventional radiology, ultrasound technology, and pathology. She holds a BSEE from University of Maryland, College Park; MS and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University; and is currently Adjunct Assistant Faculty member at the University of Maryland University College.

President
Biography

Professor & Chair, Pathology
Andrea Ferreira-Gonzalez, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Division of Molecular Diagnostics in the Department of Pathology and Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at the VCU Health System. Dr. Ferreira-Gonzalez is an internationally recognized expert in the field of molecular diagnostics in the area of genetics, oncology, and infectious diseases. Dr. Ferreira-Gonzalez has played a major role in shaping national policy regarding the practice, reimbursement, and guideline development for molecular diagnostics and molecular genetic testing. Dr. Ferreira-Gonzalez is a consultant for the US Health and Human Services Department for the FDA’s Clinical Genetics Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee, Center for Devices and Radiological Health. She also served as President of the Association for Molecular Pathology, Chair of the Professional Relations Committee and currently as Secretary/Treasurer. At the international level, Dr. Ferreira-Gonzalez is a member of the Molecular Biology Education Committee for the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry (IFCC).

Vice President & General Manager, Diagnostic Services, MDx Support Services
Biography

Professor, Director, NIH West Coast Metabolomics Center Molecular and Cellular Biology
Prof. Oliver Fiehn has pioneered developments and applications in metabolomics with over 26,000 citations (h-index 76) to date. Since 2004 he is Professor at the UC Davis Genome Center, overseeing his research laboratory and the satellite core service laboratory in metabolomics research. Professor Fiehn’s research aims at understanding metabolism on a comprehensive level in human population cohorts, animal models and cells. In order to leverage data from these diverse sets of biological systems, his research laboratory focuses on standardizing metabolomic reports and establishing metabolomic databases and libraries, for example the MassBank of North America and the BinBase metabolome database. Professor Fiehn’s laboratory members develop and implement new approaches in analytical chemistry for covering the metabolome, from increasing peak capacity to compound identifications through cheminformatics software. He collaborates with a range of investigators for interpreting metabolomic data in human diseases through statistics, text mining and pathway-based mapping efforts. He also studies fundamental biochemical questions from metabolite damage repair to the new concept of epimetabolites, the chemical transformation of primary metabolites that gain regulatory functions in cells.

Data Engineer
Andrew FigPope is a Data Engineer at Celmatix, where he provides technical leadership on developing a unified data architecture to empower women with genomic insights about their fertility and reproductive health. Prior to joining Celmatix, Andrew has spent the past four years applying Big Data techniques to recommending viral content and learning from its performance, and developing new neuroimaging and spiking neural network simulator technologies. When not sitting in front of a computer, he can be found hiking deep in the wilderness.

Chief Strategy Officer, AdvaMed; Executive Director, AdvaMedDx
Andrew Fish is Chief Strategy Officer of AdvaMed, the leading trade association advancing medical technology in the U.S. and around the world. As chief strategy officer, Mr. Fish leads the association’s strategic planning, oversees AdvaMed's global, regulatory, and payment departments, and coordinates the development and operations of AdvaMed’s membership divisions and sectors. Mr. Fish also serves as Executive Director of AdvaMedDx, AdvaMed’s diagnostics division that operates as the U.S. trade association representing leading manufacturers of medical diagnostic tests. Mr. Fish joined AdvaMedDx upon its founding in 2010 and led the development of AdvaMedDx into a globally influential advocacy organization. Mr. Fish has extensive experience navigating the complex intersections of business, science, media, law, regulation, and politics. Prior to joining AdvaMedDx, Mr. Fish was Senior Vice President of Legal and Government Affairs, General Counsel, and Secretary for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), representing manufacturers of non-prescription medicines. Mr. Fish also led the American Cancer Society’s federal lobbying team as the Senior Director of Federal Government Relations. Earlier in Mr. Fish’s career, he served in the Senate-confirmed post of Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to that position, he worked twice for the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, first as a professional staff member and later as deputy chief counsel. In his legal practice, Mr. Fish focused on biotechnology regulation, as well as on a wide range of food, drug and agriculture issues. Mr. Fish is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School.

Assistant Professor, Department of Cell and Tissue Biology and Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Biography

Principal
Becky Foster, Principal, has nearly 20 years of industry and consulting experience in managed care, health policy, and reimbursement for biotechnology manufacturers, molecular diagnostic labs, and digital health companies. She has worked across multiple therapeutic areas, drug classes, and treatment modalities for both launch and legacy products. Her experience includes marketing, account management, strategic planning, training, market analytics, and operations. Becky received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and a master’s in public health with a focus on health policy and administration from the University of California at Berkeley.

Associate Director, Product Development, Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics
After obtaining his degree in Bioscience and Biotechnology, Dr. Fraietta moved to Philadelphia, PA to complete his graduate studies at Drexel University College of Medicine. He conducted research to interrogate the signaling and molecular requirements for the generation of successful effector and memory T cells and to determine why these cells fail to control certain chronic infections. In 2012, Dr. Fraietta graduated with a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology. He then held a position as a research fellow in the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease at Drexel where he discovered and developed novel inhibitors of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Dr. Fraietta continued his training as a postdoctoral scientist in Carl June’s laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) where for the next four years he conducted research on the mechanisms underlying the persistence of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In 2016, Dr. Fraietta assumed the directorship of the Product Development Laboratory (PDL) in the first-of-its-kind Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics in the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. He has published multiple primary research and review articles in the field of T cell immunity to cancer and viruses. Dr. Fraietta also directs graduate as well as undergraduate courses in immunology and virology.

Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering
Dr. Stephanie Fraley joined UC San Diego in July 2014 as an assistant professor of Bioengineering. She earned her BS in Chemical Engineering in 2006 from The University of Tennessee Chattanooga and her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2011 from The Johns Hopkins University. For her graduate work, she was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, National Tau Beta Pi Fellowship, and was an Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Scholar, Johns Hopkins Heath Fellowship, National Siebel Scholarship, and ASEE/NSF Engineering Innovations Fellowship. Dr. Fraley then joined the Emergency Medicine department at The Johns Hopkins University as a postdoctoral fellow where she developed novel technological approaches to sensitively detect and quantitatively identify genetic material circulating in the bloodstream. Recently, she received a National Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface for her research merging clinical diagnostic and basic research approaches. She is also a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, SAGE Bionetworks Scholar, BMES CMBE Rising Star, and recipient of an NSF CAREER award.

Head of Computing Infrastructure for Science (CiS)
Biography

Chief, Laboratory of Neurogeriatrics
Dr Friedland is a clinical and research neurologist devoted to the study of brain disorders associated with aging. He is a graduate of the City College of New York and was a student at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine before graduating from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in 1973. He completed his neurology residency at the Mount Sinai Hospital and was a Fellow in dementia and aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY. He then worked at the University of California, Davis, and in the Research Medicine Group of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University California, Berkeley where he served as Chief Neurologist. From 1985 to 1990 he was Deputy Clinical Director and Chief of the Section on Brain Aging and Dementia of the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health of Bethesda, MD. At the CWRU School of Medicine he was Professor of Neurology, Radiology and Psychiatry and Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogeriatrics from 1990 to 2008. In December of 2008 he joined the faculty of the University of Louisville, as a Professor of Neurology. Dr. Friedland’s work has focused on clinical and biological issues in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Dr. Friedland has authored or coauthored over 200 scientific publications and has current research funding from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging), as well as several Foundations, Institutes, Corporations and Families. He has had over $1,000,000 of research funding to support his work from 1985-2013.

Vice President and Head, Genetics and Pharmacogenomics, Translational Medicine
Caroline joined the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Framingham Heart Study in 2001, where she developed a research program focused on the genetics and epidemiology of obesity, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. In 2012, she became a tenured investigator at NIH and Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Metabolic and Population Health. Caroline was instrumental in establishing the CKDGen consortium, a large genomics consortium dedicated to uncovering loci for chronic kidney disease. She is the author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications, serves as an Associate Editor at Circulation, and is Vice Chair of the Functional Genomics Translational Biology Council of the American Heart Association. Caroline was inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigators in 2012, and named on the Thomson Reuters list of “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” in 2014. She has served on multiple program committees for the American Heart Association, The Obesity Society, and The American Diabetes Association. Caroline graduated from the University of Michigan, where she also received an MPH in Epidemiology. She completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and she completed her internship, residency, and endocrinology fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. In 2015, Caroline joined Merck Research Laboratories in Boston as the Vice President of Human Genetics and Pharmacogenomics (GpGx).

Vice President, Clinical Affairs, Veritas Genetics; Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School (AMP Genetics Subdivision Chair and Representative to the AMP 2018 Board of Directors; Member)
Birgit Funke, Vice President of Clinical Affairs, a board-certified clinical molecular geneticist, and also an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Funke focuses on genetic testing with emphasis on genetically heterogeneous inherited diseases, with further specialization in cardiomyopathies, myopathies, and congenital cardiovascular malformations. Her main goals are to pave the way for implementing clinical exome sequencing as a universal first-line test, to improve curation of genetic knowledge, and to work towards automation of knowledge-driven decision support for interpreting and reporting genetic test results. In addition, she is interested in facilitating clinical genome-wide reporting for common, complex disorders and pharmacogenetic traits.

Senior Vice President, R&D
Biography

Medical Director, Molecular Oncology
Dr. Furtado is an assistant professor of pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She completed her residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of Utah and ARUP Laboratories, where she was chief resident, and her molecular genetic pathology fellowship at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining ARUP as a medical director, Dr. Furtado co-founded the Division of Genomic and Molecular Pathology at the University of Chicago, where she worked as an assistant professor of pathology and was the co-director of the University of Chicago Clinical Genomics and Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories. Dr. Furtado’s research interests include genomic diagnostics in solid tumors and molecular diagnostic methods in oncology.

Applications Scientist, Cancer and Inherited Disease Program Lead
Sarah Garcia is a scientist in the applications group at 10x Genomics, and leads the Cancer and Inherited Disease Programs, managing collaborations and participating in product development for those applications. Dr. Garcia completed her PhD in Genetics at Stanford University characterizing transcriptional factor binding networks and understanding population variation in gene families. Dr. Garcia then went on to become a board certified genetic counselor, to further the translation of genomics into clinical care. Dr. Garcia completed her postdoctoral work in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford, where she worked on tumor characterization in individuals with an inherited predisposition to cancer. Dr. Garcia was the first employee at Personalis, where she focused on the development of clinical diagnostic assays, eventually managing both R&D and clinical operations groups for the clinical portfolio of products.

CEO
Biography

Senior Scientific Consultant
With over 15 years of insight into HPC and research infrastructure, Aaron serves as a Senior Scientific Consultant for BioTeam. Previously, as Director of the University of Florida’s Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) team, he was responsible for the center’s computing and bioinformatics efforts, also serving as the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) Campus Champion. He earned a degree in Digital Arts and Sciences from the University of Florida.

Assistant Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Biography

Senior Director, Global Clinical Biomarkers and Companion Diagnostics
Biography

Senior Research Scientist, Research and Development
Biography

Co-founder and CEO
Biography

Senior Principal Scientist, GS & T, Comparative Medicine
Biography

Associate Chief, Pathology
John Gilbertson is an Associate Chief of Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Founder of the MGH Clinical Informatics Fellowship program. He has been developing, commercializing and implementing WSI systems since the late 1990s. His laboratory at MGH worked closely with Philips Healthcare on the FDA’s de novo approval of the Philips whole slide imaging platform for primary diagnosis. He is on advisory boards at Philips and Inspirata.

Medical Director
Dr. Glassy is a community pathologist in Southern California and director of pathology at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center, San Pedro. He is a member of Affiliated Pathologists Medical Group, a 40-person independent pathology group covering 15 hospitals and laboratories in California, Portland and Phoenix. Dr. Glassy has won a number of pathology awards, including the Distinguished Service Award and Excellence in Education Award from the College of American Pathologists (CAP). He has chaired hospital and CAP national committees. He served as chairman of the Hematology and Clinical Microscopy Resource, Publications, Digital Pathology and Curriculum Committees. He is a past Board Member of the CAP Foundation and a graduate of the Engaged Leadership Academy. He is president of the Digital Pathology Association. He edited, wrote and illustrated several pathology color atlases and developed software programs for pathology reporting, outreach, and practice management. He holds a green belt in Six Sigma. He is a trustee of the American Board of Pathology as well as a board of governor of the College of American Pathologists.

Head of Research Imaging Sciences
Charles Glaus, PhD is a Senior Scientist and Head of the Research Imaging Sciences department at Amgen, Inc. Research Imaging Sciences is an advanced, multimodal imaging laboratory that supports Discovery and Translational Research to deepen the understanding of Amgen’s novel medicines for the treatment of human diseases. The laboratory utilizes the latest in imaging technology, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), x-ray computed tomography (CT), fluorescence, and bioluminescence, as well as large-molecule radiochemistry.Prior to joining Amgen, Charles was a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University School of Medicine where he designed probes and methods for PET imaging of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and helped establish cGMP production of an immuno-PET radiopharmaceutical at the Siteman Cancer Center. He earned a B.S. in Physics from the University of Missouri and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine developing nanotechnology-based molecular imaging probes.

Healthcare Consultant
Harry Glorikian is an influential global business expert with more than three decades of experience building successful ventures in North America, Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. Harry is well known for achievements in life sciences, healthcare, diagnostics, healthcare IT and the convergence of these areas. He is a sought-after speaker, frequently quoted in the media, and regularly asked to assess, influence, and be part of innovative concepts and trends. He holds four US patents in telecommunications, and has others pending. He currently serves as General Partner at New Ventures Funds. Before joining New Ventures Funds, he served as an Entrepreneur In Residence to GE Ventures – New Business Creation Group. He currently serves on the board of GeneNews Ltd. (a molecular diagnostic company). He also serves on the advisory board of Evidation Health (a digital health startup launched with support from GE Ventures), and several other companies. He is also a co-founder and an advisory board member of DrawBridge Health (a revolutionary diagnostics startup launched with support from GE Ventures). Previously he co-founded and held the position of managing director and head of consulting services for Scientia Advisors, a company that became the go-to provider of strategic advice and implementation services for next-generation healthcare and life science innovators and Global 25 market leaders. Scientia Advisors was acquired by Precision for Medicine in November of 2012. Among his other professional roles, Mr. Glorikian served as senior manager for global business development at PE Applied Biosystems, founded X-Cell Laboratories, managed global sales at Signet Laboratories and held various roles at BioGenex Laboratories.Mr. Glorikian holds an MBA from Boston University and a bachelor's degree from San Francisco State University. Harry has addressed the National Institutes of Health, Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference, World Theranostics Congress and other audiences, worldwide. He has authored numerous articles for industry publications, appeared on CBS Evening News and been quoted regularly by Dow Jones, The Boston Globe, BioWorld Today, Los Angeles Times, London Independent, Medical Device Daily, Science Magazine, Genetic Engineering News and many other media outlets. He is also the Author of two books: Commercializing Novel IVD’s; A Comprehensive Manual for Success and MoneyBall Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market.

CSO and Senior Vice President, Therapeutics
Dr. Greenberg has over 25 years of experience conducting pioneering translational research and advancing innovative and challenging cancer therapies to the clinic. Dr. Greenberg was previously the Senior Vice President of Translational Research at Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, the Vice President of Global Research, Oncology at MedImmune and Senior Director of Research, Oncology at Pfizer. Before joining industry, Dr. Greenberg was a Full Member in the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and tenured Professor in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Greenberg is well known for his work developing novel therapeutics targeting the immune system (CTLA4, PD-L1, OX40, 41-BB), creating sophisticated animal models such as the TRAMP mouse to help advance our understanding of androgen action and prostate cancer progression and how immune checkpoint regulators would be combined in the clinic.

Director, R&D Project & Portfolio Management Business Technology
Biography

Principal Scientist, Cancer Immunology Research
Biography

Director, Center for Data Intensive Science (CDIS); Core Faculty, Institute for Genomics & Systems Biology and Computation Institute, Professor of Medicine, Section of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago
I am the Chief Research Informatics Officer (CRIO), the Director of the Center in Data Intensive Science, and the Frederick H. Rawson Professor at the University of Chicago. I am a Professor and Co-Chief in the Section of Computational Biomedicine and Biomedical Data Science in the Department of Medicine. I am also a Professor of Computer Science and Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute and in the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology (IGSB). I am also the Founder and the Chief Data Scientist of Open Data Group. Open Data Group has provided analytic services so that companies can build predictive models over big data since 2002. I am the Chair of the not-for-profit Open Commons Consortium, which develops and operates clouds to support research in science, medicine, health care, and the environment.

Director, Statistical Programming
Sunil Gupta, MS, is an international speaker, best-selling SAS author, and a global CDISC corporate trainer. Sunil is the Director of Statistical Programming at Cytel and has over twenty-five years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2016, Sunil became a CDISC Oncology ADaM reviewer and has taught his CDISC online class at the University of California at San Diego and SAS Institute India. Sunil also taught the new Sharpening Your SAS Skills online class for UCLA Extension. In 2011, Sunil launched his unique SAS resource blog, SASSavvy.com, for smarter SAS searches. Sunil has MS in Bioengineering from Clemson University and a BS in Applied Mathematics from the College of Charleston.

Associate Professor, Developmental Neuroscience, Munroe Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation, and Director, Mouse Genome Engineering Core Facility, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Biography

Global Head Data Science, Pharma Research and Development Informatics
Biography

Associate Professor, Medicine and Pathology
Biography

Founder and CIO
Mark founded Concert Genetics (formerly NextGxDx) in 2010 to bring efficiency to the genetic testing market. He has over 15 years of experience in molecular biology, technology commercialization, and executive leadership. Today, as Chief Innovation Officer, Mark leads a dynamic team of software engineers, data scientists and clinicians to advance the company’s product suite and outline its roadmap for the future. Deeply involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Mark has been a mentor for several accelerator programs and an advisor for startup companies and investment groups. He frequently speaks at healthcare, genetics, and technology industry events. In 2010, before founding Concert Genetics, Mark worked for Athena Diagnostics, leading a team that designed one of the first implementations of a Next Generation Sequencing platform for a commercial lab. He earned his PhD in Cancer Biology and a Master of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University.

Founder and CEO
Dr. Harwood is a former Principal Research Investigator at Pfizer. Currently, he is the Founder and Chief Consultant at Delphi BioMedical Consultants LLC, Adjunct Professor Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and Health Professions Advisory Committee Member at the University of Rhode Island, and Adjunct Professor Department of Pathology at Wake Forest University. Jim brings more than 30-year experience in drug R&D in pharmaceutical industry especially in physiology and pharmacology of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

Distinguished Professor and Scientific Director, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute
David Haussler develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to explore the molecular function, evolution, and disease process in the human genome, integrating comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. He is credited with pioneering the use in genomics of hidden Markov models (HMMs), stochastic context-free grammars, and discriminative kernel methods. As a collaborator on the international Human Genome Project, his team posted the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence on the Internet on July 7, 2000. His team subsequently developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research and serves, along with the Ensembl platform, virtually all large-scale vertebrate genomics projects, including NHGRI’s ENCODE project, the 1000 Genomes Project, and NCI’s TCGA. He built the CGHub database to hold NCI’s cancer genome data and is a co-founder and organizing member of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), a coalition of the top research, health care, and disease advocacy organizations that have taken the first steps to standardize and enable secure sharing of genomic and clinical data. Haussler received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2014 Dan David Prize, in the Future category, 2011 Weldon Memorial prize for application of mathematics and statistics to biology, 2009 ASHG Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics, the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology, the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in Artificial Intelligence.

Director, Translational Pathology and Biomarker Technologies
Cyrus Hedvat is a pathologist in the Translational Pathology and Biomarker Technologies group in research and development at Bristol-Myers Squibb. His research interests focus on cancer immunotherapy and predictive biomarkers. He is a member of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the American Society of Hematology and the College of American Pathologists. Dr. Hedvat has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications including a number of studies demonstrating the utility of molecular and protein biomarkers in hematological malignancies and solid tumors.

Distinguished Scientist, OHSU Knight Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR); Professor Emeritus, Departments of Nanoengineering and Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego
Biography

Research Director, Clinical Microbiology
Biography

Lester John and Lynne Dewar Lloyd Distinguished Professor, Bioengineering Investigator, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Bioengineering
Amy E. Herr is the Lester John and Lynne Dewar Lloyd Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub Investigator. Prof. Herr joined UC Berkeley as Assistant Professor of Bioengineering in 2007, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2012, and promoted to Full Professor in 2015. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member in the Biosystems Research Group at Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA; 2002-2007). She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford with Profs. Tom Kenny & Juan Santiago as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, an MS in Mechanical Engineering also from Stanford, and a BS in Engineering & Applied Science from Caltech.

Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer
Kathy Hibbs, Esq. joined 23andMe as Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer in 2014. Kathy brings more than 20 years of legal and management expertise in the clinical laboratory and medical device industries to 23andMe. Prior to joining 23andMe, Kathy served as senior vice president and general counsel, responsible for the legal, regulatory and business development functions at Genomic Health, Inc. Kathy has also held related posts at Monogram Biosciences Inc., and Varian Medical Systems, Inc. Kathy is active in several industry groups including the American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA), the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine and the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC). Kathy holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Hastings School of Law, and a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science, from the University of California, Riverside.

Professor, NanoScience Technology Center
James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he held the position of the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry. For the past twenty-five years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in the latter years in academia. While in industry he established one of the first bioelectronics labs in the country that focused on cell-based sensors and their integration with electronic devices and MEMS devices. He is interested in creating hybrid systems for biosensor and biological computation applications and the creation of functional in vitro systems for human body-on-a-chip applications. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the founder and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 119 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 19 issued patents out of 42 total patent applications. He has presented over 150 invited presentations with more than 200 total presentations. Dr. Hickman was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineers (AIMBE) in 2004 and a fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) in 2007. He received the NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration for contributions to integrating biology and information technology research in 2002. He received the SAIC Publication Award in 1993, 1994 and 1995; the Berman Award from the NRL in 1993 and 1995; the SAIC Technology Achievement Award in 1995 and the MIT Gold Award for community service in 1989. Dr. Hickman along with Dr. Michael Shuler, won the Lush Prize, in the Science Category, which Supports Animal Free Testing in 2015.

Director, Pathologist
Dr. Jason Hipp, MD/PhD is a board certified pathologist and physician-scientist with over 50 publications. He earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of California at San Diego and an MD/PhD from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. Hipp’s Doctoral research focused on Regenerative Medicine and the characterization of novel types of stem cells under Dr. Atala. He then completed a residency in Anatomic Pathology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH followed by a 2- year pathology informatics fellowship at the University of Michigan. At the University of Michigan, he also served as a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton. He then went to the NCI as a junior investigator where he worked on the integration of digital pathology tools into the laser dissection workflow and was a formal collaborator with the FDA on digital pathology. He was 1 of 12 pathologists nationally selected to be on the College of American Pathologist committee on Digital Pathology, where he remains a member. Following his time as a junior investigator at NIH’s NCI, he joined Novartis as a molecular pathologist and worked at its Clinical Trial Center for Excellence in San Diego, CA supporting the company’s high profile Phase I/II/III clinical trials. He then became Director of Pathology at Bristol-Myers Squibb (Princeton, NJ) in the Exploratory Clinical & Translational Research division. In this role, he led the integration of digital pathology into drug and biomarker discovery programs and ensure that strategies for the treatment and cure of disease are based on accurate analyses of pathogenetic mechanisms. He joined Alphabet in 2016 as head of pathology at Verily (formerly Google Life Science / Google X) and recently transferred to Google where he is the lead pathologist for the Medical Brain team leveraging artificial intelligence/machine learning to develop computer aided diagnosis (CAD) tools for the detection of cancer.

CSO
Biography

Head, Synthetic Biology
Biography

President and Co-Founder, Institute for Systems Biology; Senior Vice President & CSO, Providence St. Joseph Health
Dr. Hood’s outstanding contributions have had a resounding effect on the advancement of science since the 1960s. Throughout his career, he has adhered to the advice of his mentor, Dr. William J. Dreyer: “If you want to practice biology, do it on the leading edge, and if you want to be on the leading edge, invent new tools for deciphering biological information.” Hood was involved in the development of six instruments critical for contemporary biology—namely, automated DNA sequencers, DNA synthesizers, protein sequencers, peptide synthesizers, the ink jet printer for constructing DNA arrays and large scale synthesis of DNA and the nanostring instrument for the single molecule analysis of RNA (and later DNA). These instruments opened the door to high-throughput biological data and the era of big data in biology and medicine. He helped pioneer the human genome program—making it possible with the automated DNA sequencer. Under Hood’s direction, the Human Genome Center sequenced portions of human chromosomes 14 and 15. In 1992, Hood created the first cross-disciplinary biology department, Molecular Biotechnology, at the University of Washington. In 2000, he left the UW to cofound Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), the first committed to systems approach to biology and disease. He has pioneered systems medicine in the years since ISB’s founding and has argued for a healthcare that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory (P4). Hood has made many seminal discoveries in the fields of immunology, neurobiology, cancer biology and biotechnology and, most recently, has been a leader in the development of systems biology and its applications to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as pioneering technologies and strategies that bring systems biology to personalized medicine. Hood is now pioneering new approaches to P4 medicine and most recently, has embarked on creating a P4 pilot project on 108 well individuals, that is transforming healthcare and leading to a new healthcare discipline termed scientific wellness. In addition to his ground-breaking research, Hood has published 750 papers, received 36 patents, 17 honorary degrees and more than 100 awards and honors. He is one of only 15 individuals elected to all three National Academies—the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Hood has founded or co-founded 15 different biotechnology companies including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Rosetta, Darwin, Integrated Diagnostics, Indi Molecular and Arivale. Dr. Hood has also had a lifelong interest in K-12 science education and ISB has been a leader in this area.

Associate Director
Biography

Founder
Biography

Associate Professor, Center for Metabolic Disease Research, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Biography

Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology
Dr. Siwen Hu-Lieskovan is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Her clinical focus includes treating patients with melanoma and other solid tumors, and early phase testing of cancer immunotherapies. She is experienced with protocol development and conduct of immunotherapy-based clinical trials, and has been principal investigator of industry-sponsored, investigator- or cooperative group-initiated trials testing single agent or combination of checkpoint inhibitors, immune-modulatory agents, targeted agents, oncolytic viruses, adoptive cell transfer of TCR modified T cells and hematopoietic stem cells, or cancer vaccines. Siwen was a member of the NCI Cancer Therapy and Evaluation Program (CTEP) TVEC Project Team as a Clinician and Translational Scientist, and has served as Study Chair and Translational Lead of several immunotherapy trials initiated by the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) melanoma committee. She has served on advisory boards of major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.Siwen’s research interests focus on characterization of the tumor immune microenvironment, mechanisms of response and resistance to immunotherapies, and provide rationale for combination strategies to overcome resistance, by studying immune-competent (syngeneic) animal models and patient-derived clinical samples. She has authored original research articles, reviews, and invited editorial comments in peer-reviewed journals, as well as several book chapters. Siwen has made contributions in understanding the role of driver mutations in the oncogenic process, delivery of siRNA using nanoparticle technology as cancer therapeutics, mechanisms of action of PD-1/L1 checkpoint blockade, as well as development of combination immunotherapy strategies to treat cancer. She has been awarded the American Society of Clinical Oncologist (ASCO) Young Investigator Award and Career Development Award, the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C)/ American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Phillip A Sharp Award, the SWOG Coltman Fellowship Award and ITSC Pilot Award, the Tower Research Foundation Award, the UCLA KL2 award, the Daniel Von Hoff Innovative Protocol Award, the ASCO Annual Meeting Merit Award, and the AACR Scholar-In-Training Award. Siwen is a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, the SWOG melanoma committee working group, ASCO, and AACR.

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine
Dr Husain received his undergraduate and medical degree from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and an oncology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including Nature Cell Biology, Oncology, Pharmacogenetics, Annals of Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Pharmacogenetics and Genomics, the Journal of Neuro-Oncology, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology, among others. His research focuses on novel cancer therapeutic strategies in solid tumors, specifically lung cancer, with an emphasis on the epithelial growth factor receptor and non-invasive cancer detection strategies.

Assistant Professor, Center for Systems Biology
Hyungsoon Im is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Systems Biology (CSB), Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2011. He received postdoc training under Drs. Ralph Weissleder and Hakho Lee and joined the CSB as a faculty member in 2015. He has expertise in nanofabrication, spectroscopy, microfluidics and imaging. His lab focuses on developing the next-generation diagnostic technology.

Professor, Chemistry & Chemical Engineering
Biography

Assistant Professor, Bioengineering and Electrical & Systems Engineering
David is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the integration of microelectronics, microfluidics, nanomaterials and molecular targeting, and their application to medicine. This multidisciplinary approach enables Issadore’s lab to explore new technologies to bring medical diagnostics from expensive, centralized facilities, directly to clinical and resource-limited settings for applications including early detection of pancreatic cancer, Tuberculosis diagnosis in patients co-infected with HIV, and prognosis of traumatic brain injury. His academic background in electrical engineering and applied physics (PhD, Harvard 2009) and his research experience in a hospital research laboratory (MGH) have prepared him to work and collaborate effectively on these inherently cross-disciplinary problems.

Associate Professor, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics
Biography

Senior Scientist, Discovery Pharmacogenomics, Genetics, Pharmacogenomics
Biography

John and Marva Warnock Professor, Surgery; Chief, Surgical Oncology Research
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Professor, Infectious Disease, Loyola Medicine
Biography

Associate Director, Healthcare Data Standards, Value Based Medicine
Biography

Senior Scientist, In Vitro Pharmacology
Elma Kadic is currently a Senior Scientist within the department of In Vitro Pharmacology at Merck Research Laboratories. Prior to joining Merck she worked at Invitrogen (now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific). She has more than 10 years of experience supporting drug development, from target identification through preclinical validation in multiple therapeutic areas including neuroscience, immunology, and immuno-oncology. Her expertise lies in flow cytometry and high-content based imaging assay development/optimization, biomarker, and immunoassay development via multiplexed mass cytometry and imaging mass cytometry. Elma received her BS from Clark University in Biochemistry, and her MS from Northeastern University in Biotechnology with emphasis on drug delivery methods.

CMO
Biography

Professor, Chair, Department of Cancer Biology
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Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases
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Pathologist, CMO, Corista LLC; Publisher, Tissuepathology.Com
Dr. Kaplan is a native of Chicago and a graduate of Michigan State University and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He completed residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC. While at Walter Reed, Dr. Kaplan was named Resident of the Year, and in conjunction with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Dr. Kaplan founded and directed the Army Telepathology Program. This program connected 25 hospitals internationally for consultation via telepathology. Dr. Kaplan was also with Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota as an Associate Professor of Pathology of Mayo Medical School. Since then he has served as CMO for Corista and is an active member of the College of American Pathologists and executive board member of the American Pathology Foundation. Since 2007, Dr. Kaplan has been publisher of tissuepathology.com, widely regarded as a leading pathology blog within the specialty.

Associate Director
Shailaja Kasibhatla, Ph.D, Associate Director of Cancer Therapeutics at Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) is leading discovery and development efforts of novel cancer therapeutics. Dr. Kasibhatla has over 20 years of experience in cancer biology pioneering translational research and advancing innovative and challenging cancer therapies to the clinic. Dr. Kasibhatla was previously a Senior Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories and Fellow at Harvard Medical School and has more than 50 peer reviewed research publications.

Neuroscience Researcher, Argonne National Laboratory; Assistant Professor (Part-Time), Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago
Dr. Kasthuri is a Neuroscience Researcher at Argonne National Labs and an Assistant Professor (Part-Time) in the Dept. of Neurobiology, University of Chicago. He has an MD from Washington University School of Medicine and a D.Phil. from Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes scholar. The Kasthuri lab is pioneering new techniques for large volume reconstructions of the fine structure of the nervous system – ‘connectomics’. These developments include: large volume automated electron microscopy for mapping neuronal connections, synchrotron source X-ray microscopy to map the cellular composition of entire brains; improving sample preparation in order to increase the efficiency of automated algorithmic tracing of these datasets; and combining electron microscopy with current techniques for interrogating the proteome and the genome. These tools will be applied in the service of answering the question: how do brains change as they grow up? In particular, the lab is interested in how changes in the micro biome affect the structure and the function of developing neurons in the periphery (e.g. in the enteric nervous system) and in the brain.

Senior Investigator, Neuroscience Department
Biography

Scientific Data Architect, Research Information Technology
Saira A. Kazmi, currently serves as the Scientific Data Architect in the Research Information Technologies group at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine (JAX-GM) in Farmington, Connecticut. She loves working with complex data and enjoys designing and implementing solutions for problems associated with generating, storing and analyzing large amounts of data. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus in Bioinformatics from The University of Connecticut and her post-doctoral training in Medical Informatics is from Yale School of Medicine.

Professor, Department of Stem Cell Transplantation & Cellular Therapy
Biography

Senior Associate, Civil Health
Dr. Keller leads Booz Allen Hamilton’s life sciences research and informatics business in the civil health market. His professional experience includes developing informatics implementation strategies across federal, commercial and not-for-profit clients and managing multi-disciplinary teams to develop and deploy solutions based on those strategies. Since 2012, Dr. Keller has been leading a portfolio of work supporting the VA’s Million Veteran Program, a precision medicine initiative to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms of health and disease in the nation’s veterans. He received his doctorate in microbiology and immunology with a specialization in molecular virology.

Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Biography

Chief, Cancer Informatics Branch
Dr. Kerlavage serves at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI/CBIIT), where he is Chief of the Cancer Informatics Branch. Major program areas in his branch include omics data management and analysis, cloud computing, imaging informatics, clinical trials infrastructure and decision support, and semantics and interoperability; all with a strong emphasis on open software and open data. Prior to joining the NCI in 2011, Dr. Kerlavage spent over 25 years in the public and private sector as a leader in bioinformatics and genomics. After his post-doctoral work at University of Pennsylvania, he spent seven years at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) working on the structure of neurotransmitter receptors and on identifying genes expressed in the brain. He left the NIH to become a founding member of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), focusing on informatics support for whole genome sequencing and analysis, and subsequently, Celera Genomics, where he managed their online information business. He spent several years at Applied Biosystems and Life Technologies, where he supported global customers with intelligent monitoring systems for scientific instrumentation, LIMS systems, and computational infrastructure support for next-generation sequencing technologies. Dr. Kerlavage received an MS and Ph.D. from UC San Diego, and his undergraduate degree from Penn State, all in Chemistry.

Assistant Professor, Medicine
Biography

Immuno-Oncology Lead, Cancer Pharmacology
Dr. Khattar is an immunologist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where he is leading efforts within cancer pharmacology to leverage the immune-phenotypic features of anti-cancer agents, and is engaged in designing next-generation approaches for cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Khattar’s previous research has focused on discovery of novel, antigen-specific immune therapies for cancer, autoimmunity and transplantation; involving modalities like CAR T-cells, personalized cancer vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and small molecule inhibitors. Prior to Takeda, he has held positions at Agenus Inc., Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Khattar received his PhD in Immunology from the University of Toledo-Medical Center.

Pathologist Consultant
Dr. Khelifa is a Board Certified Pathologist who recently joined the Medical and Scientific Affairs department, RDC. In 1985, Sihem has earned her M.D. degree at Annaba Medical School of Algeria and her board Certificate in Dermato-Venereology in Paris Decartes University, France. After more than 15 years of practice in both France and Algeria Shem had coordinated clinical trials in dermatology At Madison skin and Research. In 2004 she pursued a Residency in Surgical Pathology in New Jersey, followed by a Breast Pathology fellowship at Northwestern University of Chicago while consulting for Actavis, reviewing and editing their clinical protocols for clinical trials using drugs for skin diseases. In 2008, Dr. Khelifa joined Yale University as an assistant professor specializing in Breast and Gynecologic oncological surgical pathology. From 2011 to 2014 she has also acted as Foreign Medical Director of the Breast Clinic in Wenzhou University Hospital, China where she initiated the practice of tumor board and supervised research projects. In 2015, Sihem joined the CDx department at Ventana Medical Systems in Tucson, AZ where she participated in developing multiple CDx Assays with a focus on breast biomarkers. Sihem came to Indy in May of this year to join her husband Alexander who works at IU. Both of them are enjoying their new life in the Midwest.

Vice President and COO, Eutilex Institute of Biomedical Research
Biography

Director, Korean Bioinformatics Center (KOBIC)
Biography

President and CEO
After a comprehensive search process, Stephen F. Kingsmore, M.D., DSc was appointed as the inaugural President and CEO of the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine in September 2015. Previously he was the Dee Lyons/Missouri Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City. He has been the President and CEO of the National Center for Genome Resources, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Chief Operating Officer of Molecular Staging Inc., Vice President of Research at CuraGen Corporation, founder of GatorGen, and Assistant Professor at the University of Florida’s School of Medicine. Dr. Kingsmore received MB ChB BAO BSc and DSc degrees from the Queen’s University of Belfast. He trained in clinical immunology in Northern Ireland and did residency in internal medicine and fellowship in rheumatology at Duke University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. He was a MedScape Physician of the year in 2012, and received the 2013 Scripps Genomic Medicine award and 2013 ILCHUN prize of the Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. TIME magazine ranked his rapid genome diagnosis one of the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2012. In March of 2015, Dr. Kingsmore surpassed his previous record in genetic sequencing by reducing the process to 26 hours which was recognized in April 2016 by Guinness World Record as the fastest genetic sequencing in the world.

Director, Oncology, Mount Sinai Hospital (AMP Member)
Biography

Professor, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University; Professor, Engineering in Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Weill Cornell Medical College
Brian Kirby is a Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell In Ithaca, NY, and is also a Professor of Engineering in Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medicine in New York. He studies microfluidic devices and the transport of fluids and particles in these devices, and applies microscale devices for bioanalysis in cancer and infectious disease.

CEO
Biography

Associate Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy
Biography

Professor, Pharmacy Practice
Biography

Vice President, Research & Development
Biography

IT Business Partner, BS-ITBPPH-RD-R
Biography

CEO
Biography

Director
Andreas Kogelnik, MD, PhD is founder and Director of OMI and a practicing physician. Prior to OMI, Dr. Kogelnik founded two companies and a non-profit organization. Having received his MD from Emory University, a PhD in Bioengineering from Georgia Tech, and completing his medical residency and fellowship at Stanford, he has been centrally involved in the information and genomic revolutions in medicine. He has served as an advisor/consultant to many Silicon Valley biotech and IT organizations including Epocrates, Counsyl, the Fogarty Institute for Innovation, and the El Camino Hospital Genomic Medicine Institute.

Acting Assistant Professor, Associate Director, Genetics and Solid Tumor Laboratory Department of Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Konnick is an associate director of the Genetics and Solid Tumor Laboratory in the UW Department of Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Konnick is responsible for the design, implementation and clinical evaluation of advanced laboratory methods to aid in the diagnosis and management of patients with a wide variety of diseases. His academic interests include the intersection of germline and somatic mutation testing in malignancy and the use of automation and software to reduce laboratory errors. Dr. Konnick completed his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology and fellowship in molecular genetic pathology at the University of Washington. He is board certified in molecular genetic pathology, clinical pathology and anatomic pathology by the American Board of Pathology.

Director, Chemistry/Pharmacology/HTS Informatics IT, Merck Research Labs
Biography

Vice President, Bioinformatics
Biography

Associate Dean, Scientific Computing
Patricia Kovatch is the founding Associate Dean for Scientific Computing at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Co-Director for the Master of Science in Biomedical Informatics. She is funded by NIH to lead multiple projects including the creation of a Big Omics Data Engine, a national data repository for the Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource and a de-identified image data warehouse for the Clinical and Translational Science Award. She also leads the Community Research Education and Engagement for Data Science project for NIH. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, she was Director of an NSF supercomputer center.

Associate Professor, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
Colleen Kraft’s interests are in translational research of genomic sequencing to clinical care. She has experience in the genomics-based analysis of HIV-1, human rhinovirus, Staphylococcus aureus and the microbiota related to fecal transplantation. She started the fecal transplant program at Emory University and am involved in clinical trials.

Professor, Microbiology, Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, Public Health Research Institute
Fred Russell Kramer is Professor of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the Public Health Research Institute of the New Jersey Medical School of Rutgers University. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1964 and received his doctorate from the Rockefeller University in 1969. He was on the faculty of the Department of Genetics and Development at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for 17 years, and was a Research Professor in the Department of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine for 27 years. He is the co-recipient, along with Sanjay Tyagi, of the 2005 Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine.

Professor, Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Dr. Sanjay Kumar is Professor and Associate Chair of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. He earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University, and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Since joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 2005, he and his research group have been recognized with a variety of honors including the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the PECASE, and the Stem Cells Young Investigator Award. He has published over 70 papers in a broad range of venues including Science, PNAS, various Nature titles, and Cancer Research. His trainees have gone on to leadership positions in academia, R&D, and consulting. He is an elected Fellow of AIMBE and BMES.

Director, Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy
Biography

Program Director, Life Science Technologies, imec Life Science Technologies
Biography

Head of Translational Medicine
Biography

CSO
Debbie Law has served as CSO of Jounce Therapeutics, a Cambridge-based biotech focused on cancer immunotherapy, since January of 2015. She has helped progress JTX-2011, a novel ICOS agonist antibody from discovery to the clinic. Prior to Jounce, Debbie served as Vice President of Immunology, Oncology and Immunomodulators at Merck working on programs including pembrolizumab and MK-4166 (anti-GITR). She has over 20 years of experience in biologics in the fields of oncology and immunology has held positions including VP of Biologics Discovery (Merck), CSO for Ablynx n.v. and VP of Research at PDL Biopharma. Debbie received her BSc in Immunology from Glasgow University and her D.Phil. in Immunology from Oxford University prior to pursuing post-doctoral research at UCSF in San Francisco.

ACESO Director
Dr. James Lawler is an expert consultant in emerging infectious diseases, global health, and health security. He spent 21 years in the US Navy Medical Corps focusing on research, policy, and operations to improve patient care and mitigate biological threats in resource-limited settings. His duty assignments included USAMRIID, Naval Medical Research Center, NIAID, and the White House Homeland Security and National Security Councils. He is a graduate of Duke University and Georgetown University School of Medicine.

Vice President, R&D IT, Enterprise Data Management & Analytics, IT
Biography

Director, Bioinformatics; Assistant Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Biography

Associate Professor of Pathology and Medical Director
Biography

Professor, Pediatrics; Director, Cellular Therapy and Cancer Immunotherapy Program, Nationwide Children’s Hospital; James Comprehensive Cancer Center/Solove Research Institute, The Ohio State University
Biography

Senior Algorithmic Officer
Nigel Lee is Senior Algorithmic Officer at Corista, where he leads Corista’s development of advanced machine learning algorithms for medical imaging. He is also Chief Science Officer at EuclidIQ, where he oversees EuclidIQ’s R&D on state-of-the-art video compression techniques. Previously, Dr. Lee worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Advanced Sensor Techniques Group and at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in the Weapons Technology Branch. He received his B.S. degree from Brown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University, all in electrical engineering.

Associate Professor, Computer Science
Jure Leskovec is associate professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator, and chief scientist at Pinterest. Computation over massive data is at the heart of his research and has applications in computer science, social sciences, economics, marketing, and healthcare. This research has won several awards including a Lagrange Prize, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and numerous best paper awards. Leskovec received his bachelor's degree in computer science from University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and his PhD in in machine learning from the Carnegie Mellon University and postdoctoral training at Cornell University.

Fellow, Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine
Biography

Professor, Pathology & Cell Biology at CUMC; Director, Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory; Co-Director, Division of Personalized Genomic Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Medical Center, and the New York Presbyterian Hospital
Brynn Levy, M.Sc. (Med), Ph.D. is a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Medical Center. He is also the Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory of the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a Co-Director of the Division of Personalized Genomic in the Department of Pathology & Cell Biology and the Director of the Preimplantation Genetics Diagnostic (PGD) laboratory at the Foundation for the Assessment & Enhancement of Embryonic Competence. Dr. Levy is regarded internationally as an expert in the clinical utility of genomic technologies in reproductive medicine. He has authored multiple book chapters and publications on molecular genetics, clinical cytogenetics and molecular cytogenetics and lectured internationally about his experience utilizing CGH and high resolution SNP microarrays both as a clinical and research tool. His research areas of interest include early prenatal screening using fetal cells and cell-free fetal DNA from maternal circulation, PGD and the etiology of recurrent miscarriage. Dr. Levy was a Co-Investigator of the Multicenter NICHD study that investigated the use of microarrays for prenatal diagnosis and was the Columbia University site Principal Investigator of a NIH-funded study from the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network (SCRN) that assessed CNVs in stillbirths. Dr. Levy is the past President of the Cancer Genomics Consortium (GCC) and was the PI at Columbia University Medical Center for the GCG Multi-center Quality Control trial that performed cross-platform validation of cytogenomic arrays for cancer diagnostics.

Director, Corporate and Business Development
Biography

Research Fellow, Sean Wu Laboratory, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
Guang Li got his Ph.D. degree in 2013 from Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His Ph.D. thesis focused on the developmental and transcriptional roles of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling factor Imitation Switch (ISWI) in Arabidopsis. For being interested in the molecular regulation of cardiac development, he joined Sean Wu's lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2012. Now he is interested in the molecular mechanisms underlying the differentiation of bi-potential cardiac progenitor cells.

Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics, Chair, Graduate Program in Biostatistics Director, Center for Statistics in Big Data (CSBD)
Dr. Hongzhe Li is a Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). He is the Chair of the Graduate Program in Biostatistics and Director of Center of Statistical Methods in Big Data at Penn. Dr. Li has been elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Dr. Li severed on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute of NIH and regularly serves on various NIH study sections. He is currently an Associate Editor of Biometrics, Statistica Sinica and also co-Editor-in-Chief of Statistics in Biosciences. He also serves as Chair of the Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics of the ASA. Dr. Li’s research has been focused on developing powerful statistical and computational methods for analysis of large-scale genetic, genomics and metagenomics data and high dimensional statistics with applications in genomics. He has published papers in Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, Science Translational Medicine, Cell Host and Microbes, JASA, Biometrika, etc.

Associate Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Associate Professor, Department of Systems Biology
Dr. Liang is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Chair in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University through the Quantitative and Computational Biology program and postdoctoral training in computational genomics at the University of Chicago. At MD Anderson, his research group has focused on the integrative analysis of cancer genomic data and the development of related bioinformatics tools. He has been very productive in terms of publications in leading scientific journals: over the last 5 years, he has published >50 papers (nearly half of them in Nature or Cell sister journals) including corresponding-author papers in Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Cancer Cell, Nature Communications and Genome Research. He is the PI for multiple large government grants including NIH/NCI R01 and U24, and the total grant amount he secured is >$9 million. He is also a leader in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) Projects.

Managing Director, IPQ Analytics, LLC; Professor, Drexel College of Medicine; Professor, Wenzhou First University Medical School
Michael N. Liebman is the Managing Director of IPQ Analytics, LLC and Strategic Medicine, Inc after serving as the Executive Director of the Windber Research Institute (now ChanSoon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine) from 2003-2007. He is an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drexel College of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Drug Discovery, First Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University and also Fudan University. He served as Global Head of Computational Genomics, Roche Pharmaceuticals and Director, Bioinformatics and Pharmacogenomics, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Director of Genomics for Vysis, Inc.

Director, Head of Clinical Biomarkers & Diagnostics, Medical Sciences
Robert Loberg, PhD, Director Medical Sciences, is the Head of Clinical Biomarkers and Diagnostics at Amgen and is responsible for discovery, development and execution of biomarker and diagnostic strategies to support the Amgen portfolio across all therapeutic areas. Dr. Loberg leads a team of biomarker scientists and computational biologists in pursuit of biomarker and diagnostic driven drug development efforts. Dr. Loberg joined Amgen in 2009 in the Oncology Biomarker group within Medical Sciences. He served as the Biomarker Lead for multiple oncology programs and was responsible for biomarker discovery and development activities of clinical candidates from pre-First in Human studies through clinical development. In addition, he led an active lab-based research group charged with technology evaluation and biomarker discovery/implementation to support the biomarker needs of a growing pipeline. In 2013, Robert assumed the role of Director Medical Sciences / Therapeutic Area Lead, Clinical Biomarkers - Oncology and was responsible for management of discovery, development and execution of biomarker strategies across the Oncology portfolio.Dr. Loberg received his B.A. degree in biology from Baylor University and Ph.D. from The University of Michigan. He completed his post-doctoral training in a prostate cancer biology laboratory. Following his post-doctoral fellowship he joined the faculty at The University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine and Urology where he continued his research in prostate cancer. Dr. Loberg has authored more than 50 peer reviewed scientific publications and is involved in a number of scientific consortia advancing translational medicine in drug development and medical research.

Professor, Krefting Research Centre, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Chief Scientist, Codiak BioSciences
Jan Lötvall is Professor at the Institute of Medicine at Göteborg University since 2002, and has also in 2016 taken up the position as Chief Scientist at the company Codiak BioSciences in Cambridge, MA. Codiak has the goal to develop extracellular vesicles as therapeutics in disease. At the University of Gothenburg, he is leading the extracellular vesicles research group, which includes work developing extracellular vesicles as therapeutics, but also a large effort in identifying new vesicle-based diagnostics markers in diseases such as cancer. JL is a clinical specialist in both Clinical Allergy and Clinical Pharmacology, and has a long-term experience in translational studies in asthma and allergy, and was in 2007 first to show that exosomes shuttle RNA between cells. He is the Past-President of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI, period 2009-2011), and was first elected President of the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV, period 2012-2016), a rapidly growing non-profit organisation in the field of exosomes, microvesicles and other extracellular vesicles (www.isev.org; with 980 delegates 2017).

Professor, Hematopathology
Dr. Luthra is a professor in the Department of Hematopathology, Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and serves as the Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She has established a state-of-the-art Molecular Oncology Diagnostic Laboratory that tests patient tumor samples to identify genomic changes that are of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive value. Dr. Luthra is instrumental in developing and implementing diagnostic molecular assays using various platforms including MiSeq, Ion Torrent and Ion Proton next generation sequencing instruments for clinical management of patients with cancer. The laboratory directed by Dr. Luthra supports prominent clinical trials such as NCI-MATCH in addition to standard of care testing. Dr. Luthra has over 250 peer-reviewed publications in molecular diagnostics and molecular oncology and has authored several book chapters in this field. She plays a prominent role in education as the Director of the Molecular Genetic Pathology Fellowship Program and as the Medical Advisor for Molecular Genetic Technology Programs at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Medical Director, Molecular Genetics and Genomics, ARUP Laboratories; Professor, Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine; Past President, Association for Molecular Pathology
Dr. Elaine Lyon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine. In addition to her academic duties, Dr. Lyon is the Senior Medical Director of Molecular Genetics and Genomics and Co-Medical Director of Pharmacogenetics at ARUP Laboratories, where she has overseen the growth of these laboratories for over 15 years. As a Medical Director, Dr. Lyon transitions new instrumentation and new molecular assays for inherited conditions into clinical diagnostics applications. In addition, she reviews molecular test results and provides sequence variant interpretation.

CSO, OAMD
Biography

Associate Professor, Surgery
Shyamala Maheswaran’s research is focused on defining the molecular mechanisms that drive breast cancer progression and metastasis. Breast cancer, initially confined to the primary site, eventually spreads to distal sites, including lung, liver, bone and brain, by invading into the bloodstream. Upon reaching these distal sites, the tumor cells continue to grow and evolve well after removal of the primary tumor resulting in overt metastasis and disease recurrence, the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Using cell culture and mouse models and patient-derived tissues and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) enriched from breast cancer patients’ blood, Dr. Maheswaran's laboratory characterizes the contribution of oncogenic cues, tumor microenvironment-derived signals, epithelial to mesenchymal transition and tumor heterogeneity to breast cancer progression and therapeutic responses. She collaborates closely across several disciplines including Clinicians and Engineers at MGH and is currently the Scientific Director of the Center for Cancer Risk Assessment at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Professor, Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Biography

Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering
Biography

President
Lara Mangravite, PI is President of Sage Bionetworks. Her work uses community-based research methods to address complex biomedical problems through implementation of technical, social, ethical, and scientific practices that promote sharing and collaboration. As PI of multiple projects funded by the NIH and private foundations, Lara works on the practical design, development and implementation of open processes and tools to advance science within the context of multiple large-scale consortia. This includes innovative approaches to advance understanding of the patient experience through digital phenotyping. Her team includes engineers, designers, data scientists, research analysts, and governance specialists. Lara obtained a BS in Physics from Penn State, a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from UCSF, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular pharmacogenomics from Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute.

Medical Director, Molecular Genetics and Genomics, ARUP Laboratories; Assistant Professor, Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine
Dr. Mao is a Professor of Pathology and Co-Director of the Clinical Medical Genetics Fellowship Program at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She received her M.D. from Capital University of Medicine in Beijing, China and her MS in Molecular Pathology from Beijing Union Medical College. She is board certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics with a subspecialty in clinical molecular genetics, and certified with the New York State Department of Health with a subspecialty in genetic testing. She is also a member of several professional societies, including American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMGG), Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) and American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) and College of American Pathologists (CAP). Her research interests include the genotype-phenotype correlations in inborn errors of metabolism and genetic diseases in the RAS/MAPK pathway, and she is involved with implementing Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques into molecular diagnostics.

Vice President, Head of Personalised Healthcare and Biomarkers
Ruth March, PhD, is Senior Vice President of AstraZeneca’s Personalised Healthcare & Biomarkers (PHB) function, leading over 100 diagnostic scientists and experts globally. A member of the senior team in Innovative Medicines and Early Development, Ruth is accountable for delivering diagnostics to drug projects, and also leads AstraZeneca’s Genomics Initiative, analysing genome sequence from up to 2M patients. She led the build of Personalised Healthcare (PHC) within AstraZeneca, ensuring 80% of clinical drug projects are following a PHC approach. She has achieved 15 diagnostic launches in partnership with diagnostic companies: linked to Iressa (EGFRm tissue and plasma), Lynparza (BRCAm blood and tissue), Tagrisso (EGFRm T790M tissue and plasma) and Zurampic (serum uric acid). Ruth has pioneered innovation, delivering the world’s first drug label based on circulating tumour DNA (Iressa); first companion diagnostic partnership in next generation sequencing (Illumina); first FDA approval of lab-based companion diagnostic (Lynparza); first diagnostic approval based on both ctDNA and tissue testing (Tagrisso); first point of care diagnostic in gout (Zurampic) and first partnership for asthma point of care diagnostics (AgPlus).She is a member of Definiens’ Supervisory Board and a genomics specialist with 50 scientific publications and patents.

Head of Clinical Genetics and Biospecimens
Dr. Jean-Claude Marshall graduated with a doctorate from McGill University (Montreal, Canada). His work there focused on the establishment of a new animal model of Uveal Melanoma as well as preclinical assessment of possible treatments to prevent liver metastasis from this ocular cancer. In addition he did research on retinoblastoma, a childhood ocular cancer. He was then invited to work at the National Cancer Institute on a preclinical models of breast metastasis, investigating the potential role of a cell surface receptor in inducing metastatic dormancy. From there he was recruited to lead a CLIA regulated laboratory, part of the Center for Translational Research (CTR), Catholic Health Initiatives group of hospitals. While there he established new CLIA Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) for both patient response and toxicity to commonly utilized first and second line chemotherapeutics for lung and breast cancer. Two years after joining the CTR, Dr. Marshall was recruited to head up the Clinical Pharmacogenomics Laboratory for Pfizer. There he has continued to specialize in genomics, offering LDTs and research use only assays to clinical trials across the Pfizer portfolio. In addition to leading the Pharmacogenomics group, he has also served as subject matter expert on Pharmacogenomics and regulatory environments for multiple conferences and regulatory agency responses. He now leads the Clinical Genetics and Biospecimens group within Pfizer, which is responsible for Pfizer biobank samples, exploratory biomarker research and regulated clinical genomics.

Professor, Physiology, Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Martin received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, after training as a Howard Hughes undergraduate research fellow at the University of Virginia. Dr. Martin completed a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School that combined functional genomic studies with mouse models of breast tumor metastasis, under the mentorship of Dr. Phil Leder. In 2004, Dr. Martin joined the Greenebaum Cancer Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Martin is working to apply physical science and engineering approaches to the study of cancer metastasis. In 2010, Dr. Martin was one of only three investigators nationwide recognized with an Era of Hope Scholar Award from the Congressionally-directed Medical Research Program for his innovative research on breast cancer metastasis.

Vice President
Mr. Mathews has worked on a variety of diagnostic reimbursement projects involving the analysis, development, and implementation of coding, coverage, and payment strategies for both emerging and established innovators. This includes involvement in the commercialization of over 100+ different test products in the cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and infectious disease spaces. These tests range from simple point of care technologies to esoteric molecular approaches involving drug diagnostic combinations. He has knowledge gained by working not only with IVD platform and kit developers but also sole-source laboratories that are pursuing value-based pricing. He also has specific knowledge and expertise in the development of global market access plans for companion diagnostics. Mr. Mathews’ prior experience includes several years of working on health policy issues as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill. He also worked for the government affairs office of a biotechnology company and has worked on a National Institutes of Health sponsored clinical trial focused on genetic testing for Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Mathews completed his undergraduate work at Colgate University and received a Master’s Degree in Public Policy at Duke University.

Systems Engineer
Chris is a Systems Engineer working at Confluent (provider of the first streaming platform based on Apache Kafka™), and living in Philadelphia. Chris has spent the past 5 years working in the big data space for a large retail bank, a Hadoop vendor, and now Confluent. Previously, Chris worked for Sun Microsystems and later as a consultant for large-scale storage systems.

Vice President, RCM Reengineering and Service, Revenue Cycle Management
Kurt Matthes currently serves as Vice President of Revenue Cycle Management Reengineering and Service at TELCOR and has more than 25 years of experience in laboratory systems. Mr. Matthes holds a BA in Allied Health from Doane College. Prior to joining TELCOR, Mr. Matthes held a variety of roles in laboratory systems and operations for Bryan Health Systems and Quest Diagnostics.

Managing Director
Biography

Vice President and Global Head of Oncology, Biomarker Development and Companion Diagnostics
Biography

Vice President, Translational Sciences
Biography

Adjunct Associate Professor, Duke University; Founder, Precision Medicine Advisors
Jeanette McCarthy is a UC Berkeley trained genetic epidemiologist and spent the early part of her career in industry at Millennium Pharmaceuticals before transitioning to academia. She currently holds adjunct faculty positions at Duke University and UCSF. Her previous research had focused on the genetic underpinnings of complex diseases, both infectious and chronic. More recently, she has become a leading educator in the field of genomic and precision medicine involved in demystifying genomics for non-technical audiences, including health care providers, patients and other stakeholders. In 2014, she helped launch the first consumer-facing magazine in this field, Genome, where she served as editor-in-chief until 2016. She teaches genomic and precision medicine through UCSF and UC Berkeley Extension and online through Coursera and through the Precision Medicine Academy (precisionmedicineacademy.org). She also designs and delivers custom workshops and courses to international audiences through her consulting business (precisionmedicineadvisors.com). Jeanette is coauthor of the new book, Precision Medicine: A Guide to Genomics in Clinical Practice (2016, McGraw Hill Education).

Executive Director, Profiling & Expression, Translational Medicine
Biography

CEO
Dr. McManus joined Asuragen in August 2014 bringing more than 20 years of clinical diagnostic leadership experience. Matt was most recently CEO and President of PrimeraDx, Inc., a molecular diagnostics company acquired by Qiagen. He has held leadership positions in a number of other companies, including as Head of Cleveland Clinic Laboratories, COO of the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, and a variety of positions at Novartis, McKinsey & Co., and Procter & Gamble. Dr. McManus received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A from Boston College and B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross.

CIO, Technology Director
The career of Peyton McNully, CIO for HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, spans more than 15 years and multiple continents. At HudsonAlpha, a nonprofit genomics research institute, he leads the information technology division. Genomics requires massive amounts of data (storage, calculation, manipulation), and he is responsible for the caretaking strategy for an organization producing 1 petabyte every two months. In addition, he leads a team providing technology services to 700 additional people in 34 for-profit companies that call HudsonAlpha’s 155 acre campus home. McNully also founded two startups at HudsonAlpha Leavendary and Ploid Inc. In 2016, McNully was appointed by the Governor to the Board of Directors of Alabama Supercomputer Authority, an Alabama public corporation established in 1989 for the purpose of planning, acquiring, developing, administering and operating a statewide supercomputer and related telecommunication systems. McNully also serves on the Board of Advisors of Alabama CIO Association, the preeminent professional association for senior technology leaders in Alabama.

Research Scientist
Biography

Vice President, Marketing and Planning
Kristine C. Mechem is the VP of Marketing and Planning for OncoCyte, a molecular diagnostic company that is focused on areas of high unmet need in Oncology. She has over 15 years of life science experience in diagnostics, medical devices, and therapeutics. Her corporate background includes market planning and business planning roles at both Genentech and Abbott, as well as leadership positions at diagnostics companies. In addition to her corporate experience, she has also worked in market access consulting and commercialization consulting, where she has done extensive voice of customer research with both payors and physicians. She has a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago.

CMO
Jessica L. Mega is the Chief Medical Officer at Verily Life Sciences. As CMO, Dr. Mega's focus is on translating scientific insights and technological innovations into partnerships and programs that improve patient outcomes. She oversees all of Verily's clinical research efforts, including the Baseline Study. As a faculty member at Harvard Medical School (on leave), a senior investigator with the TIMI Study Group, and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she led large, international, randomized trials evaluating novel cardiovascular therapies. She also directed the TIMI Study Group’s Genetics Program. Her research findings have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, and elsewhere. Dr. Mega is a graduate of Stanford University, Yale University School of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health. She completed Internal Medicine Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Cardiovascular Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology. She has won the Laennec Society, Samuel A. Levine, and Douglas P. Zipes Awards, and she is a Fellow of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC).

Director, Product Development & Correlative Sciences Laboratories (PDCS); Adjunct Associate Professor, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, University of Pennsylvania
Biography

Chief Specialty Pediatrics, Genomics Medicine Program Clinician
Dr. Nancy Mendelsohn is the Chief of Specialty Pediatrics at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. She has been a board-certified Medical Geneticist, researcher and a national healthcare leader in the clinical genetics community for 25 years. Dr. Mendelsohn received an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology from Indiana University and a Medical doctorate from the University of Missouri in 1987. From 1987 to 1992, she completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in medical genetics at Washington University Children’s hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. She then spent 3 years as a Public Health Service Pediatrician at the West Side Community Health Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Mendelsohn has served Children’s Minnesota for 15 years and became the Senior Medical Director of Ambulatory Specialty Care in 2013 until her promotion to the Chief of Specialty Care. Her scope of work includes the strategy and development of the multi-specialty physician practice. She is responsible for all medical specialty departments including accountability, managing and improving the delivery of specialty care services, ensuring top quality outcomes, developing external partners, and partnering to manage divisional budgets across the departments. Dr. Mendelsohn has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and presentations. She has clinical expertise in lysosomal storage disorders, has published in the New England Journal of Medicine on this topic, and has served broadly on national committees for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Medical Genetics & Genomics (ACMGG), and within Children’s Minnesota. Dr. Mendelsohn’s clinical concentration has been around integrating genomics clinical care across the medical delivery system and providing exceptional care for children with genetic disorders.

Assistant Professor, Pathology; Co-Director, Stanford Medicine Clinical Genomics Program
Biography

Associate Professor and Director, UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory
Biography

Vice President, Lab Operations
Biography

Executive Director, Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy
Dr. Shaw is executive director of the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy (Khalifa Institute). She joined The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2013, bringing an extensive background in science leadership and education. Dr. Shaw is responsible for daily operations at the Khalifa Institute and its work to improve molecular characterization of tumors and apply that knowledge to clinical trials and advanced patient care. She also is operations director for MD Anderson’s Cancer Genomics Laboratory and administrative director of the Precision Oncology Decision Support System. Prior to joining MD Anderson, Dr. Shaw spent four years with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a flagship project of the National Cancer Institute focused on accelerating understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. She was scientific projects manager for a year, during which she served as the lead technical and public communications officer. In 2010, she was promoted to director and provided oversight and leadership to the TCGA’s complex research program with more than 300 funded components. Dr. Shaw earned undergraduate degrees in Spanish and Biology at the College of William and Mary, and completed her doctoral degree in cell and developmental biology at Harvard University. She has made a strong commitment to training and education for science professionals, students and the lay public. She served as executive editor of Nature Education from 2007 to 2009 and was director of education for the American Society of Human Genetics from 2005 to 2007. She was lead investigator of the Geneticist-Educator Network of Alliances Project, an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, and worked on several programs to combat misconceptions about biology and genetics among students and the general public. After completing her undergraduate education, Dr. Shaw was a Fulbright Scholar and spent a year in Chile. There she worked with a group that revised the nation’s biology curriculum for elementary and secondary students. She also directed professional development for Chilean high school educators on methods of teaching molecular biology to secondary students.

Senior Scientist, Molecular Biology Department
I joined Genentech in 2004 and throughout the past 13 years I have managed a core laboratory that provides a full suite of genomic technologies, including Sanger sequencing, Microarrays and NGS technology. The genomic technologies that my lab provides is supporting Genentech’s research effort towards drug discovery and development. Prior to Genentech, I worked as a Scientist at Incyte Genomics, a company that provided an integrated platform of genomic technologies designed to help understand the molecular basis of disease. Before Incyte Genomics I was a Group Leader at ID Biomedical, Vancouver where I managed a product development team working on gene-based diagnostics. I hold a Ph.D. in plant molecular genetics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and a BSc and MSc in biology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

Executive Director, Translational Medicine
Dr. Montalto is a research and development leader with a broad range of experience at the executive level including R&D, clinical, regulatory, medical and scientific affairs. He is currently the Executive Director and Head of Translational Pathology and Biomarker Technologies in Translational Medicine at Bristol-Myer Squibb. In this role he leads genomics, genetics, flow cytometry, histo-chemistry and pathology laboratories in support of clinical trials, exploratory biomarker research and companion diagnostics. Prior to this role, Dr. Montalto was a co-founder and executive of Omnyx, LLC, a joint venture of GE Healthcare and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that commercialized diagnostic pathology imaging and software products. He has patented and published on novel pathology-based multiplexing technology (MultiOmyx™, Neogenomics) for oncology biomarker discovery. He has designed and led global clinical trials for in vitro diagnostic digital pathology devices and served as chair of the regulatory taskforce of the Digital Pathology Association (DPA). He currently sits on the board of directors as President-elect of the DPA. He has served as a member of NIH study sections for in vivo molecular imaging centers. Dr. Montalto earned his PhD in tumor biology from Albany Medical College and received his post-doctoral training in anti-inflammatory drug discovery and whole animal physiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Vice President
Biography

President, OmniSeq Precision Medicine Technology; Professor of Pathology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute
Dr. Carl D. Morrison joined the faculty of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in January 2007, and is currently Executive Director of the Center for Personalized Medicine, Director of the Pathology Resource Network; Clinical Chief, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine; Director, Division of Molecular Pathology, and Professor of Oncology. Prior to coming to RPCI, Dr, Morrison spent five years as faculty at The Ohio State University Medical Center after completing his residency there in Anatomic Pathology. Dr. Morrison is a board-certified pathologist with a Certificate of Qualification in Oncology in NYS who has an interest in both clinical and research areas. As Executive Director of the Center for Personalized Medicine, Dr. Morrison provides vision and integration with other resources at RPCI. Dr. Morrison continues to lead the Pathology Resource Network (PRN) at RPCI. The overall goal of the PRN is to facilitate access to human biospecimens for IRB-approved investigators with an emphasis on translational efforts. The services offered are quite diverse and serve a unique link between the research and clinical arena. Dr. Morrison started and previously directed the Clinical Data Network (CDN) at RPCI. The CDN is the organization of clinical data for research purposes utilizing a federated database approach. The primary goal of the CDN is the promotion of translational research at RPCI in a non-human subject research setting.

Scientific Director, Clinical Cancer Cytogenetics; Clinical Director, Center for Personalized Diagnostics, Department of Pathology
Jennifer Morrissette, PhD received her PhD from the University of Buffalo and subsequently completed post-doctoral research in the molecular biology of tumor suppression at Harvard Medical School. Her clinical fellowship training was through the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania (CHOP/Penn) joint training program with board certification in Clinical Cytogenetics and Clinical Molecular Genetic Diagnosis through the ABMGG. She joined St Christopher’s Hospital for Children becoming adjunct faculty of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Drexel University, where she directed a clinical cytogenetics laboratory. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is the Scientific Director of the Clinical Cancer Cytogenetics Laboratory and the Clinical Director of the Center for Personalized Diagnostics (CPD). Her interests lie in the implementation and analysis of clinical cancer genomic data to detect alterations relevant for patients treated at Penn Medicine. The Center for Personalized Diagnostics (CPD) is a clinical NGS laboratory and is certified through CAP/CLIA and has run over 10,000 clinical tumor specimens and over 1,500 research specimens in the past 4.5 years.

Research Scientist, Brian J. O’Roak and Andrew Adey Laboratories, Molecular and Medical Genetics
Ryan Mulqueen graduated from Stony Brook University in 2014 with a BS in Interdisciplinary Biology. He began his research career studying the speciation of native drosophilids under the instruction of Walter Eanes, Ph.D. This work became his undergraduate thesis, in which he analyzed the morphology of drosophila sex-combs intraspecifically, interspecifically, and in previously undocumented interspecies hybridizations. Ryan joined OHSU’s program in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences in the fall of 2014. He became a member of the labs of both Brian O’Roak, Ph.D. and Andrew Adey, Ph.D., under a joint-mentorship. Ryan is interested in studying the roles of heterogeneity and epigenetic factors in the developing brain. To this end, Ryan’s ongoing work involves the improvement of high-throughput single cell epigenetic assays and enhancing neuronal population targeting in transgenic lines. His recent work has greatly improved the throughput of single cell methylome analysis, lowering cost substantially. He plans to apply this new method to study neurodevelopment.

Partner
Yatin Mundkur focuses on early-stage Technology and Medtech investments. As a Partner of Artiman Ventures, he is currently on the boards of Prysm, Virsec, Yantra and Zspace, and is on the board and CEO of Cellworks. Before joining Artiman Ventures in 2004 as a Partner, Yatin was Managing Director at TeleSoft Partners, where he led investments in over twenty companies, in the early stage semiconductor and software sectors. Prior to joining TeleSoft Partners, Yatin founded and served as President of Equator Technologies, a developer of Programmable MediaProcessors. His prior experience also includes VP/Group Manager at Conexant, and Chief Architect/Design Manager at Sun Microsystems, Ross Technology and Cypress Semiconductor. Yatin has over 17 years of overall experience working with technology companies in venture capital. He also holds fourteen patents in areas of computer architectures, digital consumer electronics, semiconductor design, and software. Yatin holds a B.S.E.E. from MSU of Baroda, India, and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Texas at Austin.Yatin has led the following investments: Aarohi Communications (acquired by Emulex), BayPackets (acquired by privately-held GenBand), BioImagene (acquired by Roche), Catamaran Communications (acquired by Infineon), Crossbar, Ikanos (Nasdaq: IKAN), Jungo (acquired by NDS Group), Lara Networks (acquired by Cypress), LogLogic (acquired by TIBCO), Looxcie/Vidcie, Matrix Semiconductor (acquired by Sandisk), Nethra (assets acquired by Imagination Technologies), OmegaBand (shutdown), Prysm, RedClover Networks (assets acquired by Oplink), Sierra Design Automation (acquired by Mentor Graphics), SigmaTel (Nasdaq: SGTL), Validity (acquired by Synaptics), Versatile Optical Networks (acquired by Vitesse), Virident Systems (acquired by Western Digital), VxTel (acquired by Intel), Xambala, Xpedion Design Systems (acquired by Agilent), Virsec, XTRM, Yantra and zSpace.

Founder & CEO
Dr. Myatt is the founder and CEO of MBio Diagnostics, Inc. He is an entrepreneur with a proven track record for building technology companies, securing patents and licensing technology, raising funding, establishing commercial operations, and leading through growth. Prior to MBio Diagnostics, Chris successfully founded and led Precision Photonics Corporation, a successful laser and optical technology supplier that is now a division of IDEX. Trained as a physicist and measurement scientist, Chris invented and developed multiple technologies that formed the basis of his companies. He earned a B.S. in Physics and a B.A. in Mathematics at Southern Methodist University. Chris also earned a Ph.D. in Atomic Physics at the University of Colorado. He studied Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) under Carl Wieman (Nobel Prize, 2001), helping to create the first BEC condensate in the Wieman lab. He also studied quantum information under David Wineland (Nobel Prize, 2012) as a National Research Council (NRC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder.

Associate Director, SAP Infrastructure
Choong Teik Ng is Associate Director of IT at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Choong has led complex projects at Alexion, including the migration of the corporate data center with over 700 servers to a cloud hosting environment. Prior to this, Choong has played a leading role building out and managing Alexion’s complex SAP infrastructure and has accumulated nearly 20 years of experience on all aspects of SAP to run organizations in virtually every sector. In 1996, Choong earned a First Class Honours degree from Middlesex University of London in Information Technology and Business Information systems.

Associate Professor, Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School; Associate Program Director; MGH Neurosurgery Residency, Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Brian Nahed is an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Program Director for the MGH Neurosurgery Residency Program. Clinically, Dr. Nahed specializes in brain tumors (glioblastoma, gliomas (low grade and high grade), metastatic brain tumors, and meningiomas) and specifically in brain tumors of the eloquent cortex (language and motor areas of the brain) which require awake surgery, language and motor mapping, and subcortical stimulation. Dr. Nahed graduated from Yale School of Medicine, after which he completed his neurosurgical residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship under Drs. Daniel Haber, Shyamala Maheswaran and Mehmet Toner focusing on circulating tumor cells. Dr. Nahed published the first evidence of circulating tumor cells in the blood of patients with glioma; and together with Dr. Shannon Stott, are co-principal investigators developing the first blood based test for patients with brain tumors.

Director, Translational Imaging Biomarkers
Tapan K. Nayak leads a group of scientists in Translational Imaging Biomarker department at Merck Research Laboratories. His group’s primary focus is developing translational PET imaging biomarkers that facilitate early decision making in discovery and early clinical drug development across different disease areas. Prior to joining Merck, he was a Senior Principal Scientist at Roche Innovation Center Basel, Switzerland. Tapan K. Nayak is trained as a radiopharmacist, holds a doctorate degree in biomedical sciences and completed his postdoctoral training at the NCI/NIH.

Professor, Pathology; Director, Molecular & Genomic Pathology Laboratory, Pathology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (AMP Member)
Marina N. Nikiforova, MD, FCAP is Professor of Pathology and Director of the Molecular & Genomic Pathology Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Dr. Nikiforova has a longstanding clinical and research interests in genomics of thyroid cancer and brain tumors and she has led the development of a novel NGS-based tests for preoperative diagnosis of thyroid cancer in FNA samples (ThyroSeq) and for diagnosis, prognostication and treatment of adult and pediatric brain tumors (GlioSeq). Dr. Nikiforova is a member of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) where she served on Nominating committee, Program Committee, and as a Chair of Solid Tumors subdivision. During past two years, Dr. Nikiforova served as a Chair of the Clinical Practice Committee and on the Board of Directors at AMP. Under her leadership, the committee has developed analytical and clinical guidelines for NGS analysis and variant interpretation in cancer. She is also a member of the Laboratory Practice Committee at the American Thyroid Association (ATA). Dr. Nikiforova has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles and five book chapters, most of which in the area of molecular diagnostics of cancer.

Research Fellow
Ryan is currently leading the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) function at Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co. in San Diego, CA. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and a Bachelor's in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ryan has 13 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry across various large and small companies including Wyeth, Pfizer, Momenta, and Millennium. He has contributed directly to numerous drug discovery and development programs in multiple therapeutic areas, including inflammation, immunology, and oncology. Ryan has published several peer reviewed articles, a book chapter, and two patents.

Senior Research Advisor, Cancer Immunobiology, Biomarkers
Dr. Ruslan Novosiadly (currently Senior Research Advisor at Eli Lilly and Company, New York) is a translational scientist with 10+ years of academic/industrial experience and strong background in medical sciences, molecular/cell biology and translational (immuno)oncology. He received M.D. degree from Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical Academy (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) in 1999 followed by Ph.D. degree in Biology from Georg-August University of Goettingen (Goettingen, Germany) in 2004. Ruslan joined Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York City) in 2005 where he completed postdoctoral training followed by his appointment as Assistant Professor in 2009. In 2009, Ruslan joined ImClone Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly, as Senior Scientist and Biology Lead for Cixutumumab (IGF-IR Antibody). In 2011, he transitioned to the role of Director at the Department of Oncology/Translational Medicine where he led Cancer Signaling Biomarkers and Genetics Group. At present Ruslan leads Experimental & Translational Immunooncology Group at the Department of Cancer Immunobiology.

Professor, Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego; Division Chief, Medical Genetics, Kaiser Permanente
During his nine years with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California (KPSC), Dr. Nunes has lead the ongoing integration of three major genetic innovations into broader clinical practice: the evolution of next-generation sequencing (NGS) panels, the introduction of fetal cell free DNA testing (cfDNA) or non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), and the emergence of whole exome sequencing (WES). He has facilitated KPSC to become a learning healthcare system by actively tracking health outcomes through the electronic medical record (EMR) for individuals receiving cancer NGS panels, prenatal cfDNA, prenatal diagnosis, and WES results. He completed his medical school at the Uniformed Services University, a military Residency in Pediatrics, and Fellowships in Clinical Genetics, Clinical Molecular (Laboratory) Genetics, and Teratology at the University of Washington, Seattle. His 25 years of clinical experience in Genetics have spanned prenatal diagnosis to Alzheimer disease, the birth and infancy of cancer genetics, and the revolution of gene discovery in Pediatric dysmorphology and “unknowns”. Before “settling down” in San Diego, he directed the USAF DNA Diagnostic Laboratory and introduced genetics to the Metabolic Bone Clinic he co-directed at the Ohio State University. Like most practicing clinical and diagnostic laboratory geneticists, the span of topics within the field of Genetics and Genomics that he is interested in remains fairly broad. In addition to the translational activities described above, he is an expert in metabolic bone disease and also an authority on genetic diagnoses confused with child abuse; a successful advocate for patients encountering genetic discrimination; and a voice in the Ethics, Legal, and Social Issues community at the local, national, and international levels.

CMO
Dr. Nussbaum has served as Invitae’s Chief Medical Officer since August 2015. Prior to joining Invitae, he was chief of the Division of Genomic Medicine at UCSF Health where he also held leadership roles in the Cancer Genetics and Prevention Program beginning in January 2009 and the Program in Cardiovascular Genetics beginning in July 2007. From April 2006 to August 2015, he served as a member of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics. Prior to joining UCSF Health, Dr. Nussbaum was chief of the Genetic Disease Research Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health, from 1994 to 2006. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Nussbaum is a board-certified internist and medical geneticist who holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in the Harvard-MIT joint program in Health Sciences and Technology. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and a fellowship in medical genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Vice President, Technology Staff
Kevin O’Connell is a Vice President with In-Q-Tel, the stragetic investor for the US Intelligence Community, where he has vetted and overseen investments in the life sciences since 2007. His career began in applications of molecular microbiology to problems in agriculture, and progressed to applied R&D projects in biological defense. He was a scientist and principle investigator at the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center for 10 years, where he focused on pathogen detection and genetic characterization. He is the author of 24 peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters, technical reports and other publications, and the editor of a book on biological defense. He hold 8 patents in the areas of microbial detection and soil biochemistry. Dr. O’Connell received his SB in Life Sciences from MIT, and MS and PhD degrees in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Technical Director, Genomics Institute, Computational Genomics Platform
Dr. O’Connor has spent the last year building the Computational Genomics Platform at the UCSC Genomics Institute. This system is based on emerging GA4GH standards and concepts central to the NIH Commons efforts. This development process is further inspired by his work over the last three years at OICR on the PCAWG project, an international collaboration of over 700 scientists to build cloud-based infrastructure and consistently analyze 2,800 cancer donors. Previous to this project, Brian worked on the ICGC Data Portal, a platform for exploring cancer data in realtime using advanced indexing technologies and modern web UIs.

Scientist II, Neurology
Dimitry received his Ph.D. at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the laboratory of R. Suzanne Zukin, looking at mechanisms of neuronal cell death after global ischemia. He then joined Junying Yuan’s laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard University. His research focused on understanding the role of neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases. Dimitry received a career transition award from the National MS society for his research. In 2016, Dimitry joined Biogen and is studying various aspects of neurodegeneration.

Associate Dean, Informatics and Technology
Biography

Senior Scientist
Dr. Ohashi received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto with Dr. Tak Mak, and did her postdoctoral training at the University of Zurich with the Nobel Laureate Dr. Zinkernagel, and Dr. Hans Hengartner. She is the Co-Director of the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research, Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Immunology at the University of Toronto. She is also the Director of the Tumor Immunotherapy Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Her interests include understanding CD8+ T cell biology and mechanisms that regulate anti-tumor immunity.

Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Life Science, Division of Basic Medical Science and Molecular Medicine
Biography

Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bioengineering
Biography

CSO, Translational Research
Biography

COO, Administration
Biography

Vice President, Head of Biomarker Strategy and Development
Biography

Professor, Pathology & Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Pantanowitz is a Professor of Pathology and of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA. He is the Director of the Pathology Informatics Division and Director of the Pathology Informatics Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). He is also the Director of the Cytopathology Division at UPMC Shadyside. Dr. Pantanowitz is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pathology Informatics. He is a member of the board of directors for the Digital Pathology Association (DPA), executive board of the American Society of Cytopathology (ASC), serves as a council member for the Association for Pathology Informatics (API) and is a member of the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Digital Pathology committee. He is widely published in the field of pathology informatics including digital imaging and its application to pathology.

Professor and Founding Director, Institute of Tumor Biology
Prof Pantel is Chairman of the Institute of Tumour Biology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. The institute is part of the Centre of Experimental Medicine and the University Cancer Center Hamburg (UCCH). The pioneer work of Prof Pantel in the field of cancer micrometastasis, circulating tumor cells and circulating nucleic acids (ctDNA, microRNAs) is reflected by more than 400 publications in excellent high ranking biomedical and scientific journals (incl. NEJM, Lancet, Nature Journals, Cancer Cell, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Discovery, PNAS, JCO, JNCI, Cancer Res.) and has been awarded the AACR Outstanding Investigator Award 2010, German Cancer Award 2010, and ERC Advanced Investigator Grant 2011. Moreover, Prof Pantel coordinates the European TRANSCAN group “CTC-SCAN”, the European IMI consortium CANCER-ID (www.cancer-id.eu) on blood-based “Liquid Biopsies” and serves on the Editorial Boards of international cancer journals (e.g., Breast Cancer Res., Cancer Res.).

Associate Director, Translational Applications, Biopharma Services
Biography

Senior Director, Immunotherapy and Stem Cells
Biography

Director, Product Development
Dr. Parks is a 25 year veteran of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. He has served as the Director of Product Development since 2006, having joined Osel in 2002. He also oversees clinical operations and regulatory activities. ‘Prior to joining Osel, Dr. Parks served as the Director of Molecular Biology and Experimental Therapeutics at Cellegy Pharmaceuticals, where he established research and drug development programs in the areas of skin inflammation and gastrointestinal diseases, and at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, where he spearheaded drug discovery programs in inflammation and autoimmune diseases and served on a number of compound development teams. Dr. Parks received his doctorate in physiology and pharmacology from UCSD and was a research fellow at Yale University.

Team Lead, Product Development
Sonya Parpart-Li received her Ph.D. in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University as part of a Graduate Partnership Program with the National Institutes of Health. Her dissertation work focused on deciphering heterogeneity among hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients at the molecular level using microarrays, functional assays and bioinformatics analysis to assess gene expression and methylation status. In 2014 she joined Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx) as part of their R&D team where she has developed next-generation sequencing-based cancer diagnostics to address tumor heterogeneity and to detect clinically actionable genetic mutations in a multitude of cancer types. More recently, she helped launch a comprehensive noninvasive diagnostic test for detection of sequence mutations and structural alterations in circulating tumor DNA shed into the blood.

Professor and Vice Chair, Pathology
Dr. Anil Parwani is a Professor of Pathology at The Ohio State University. He serves as the Vice Chair and Director of Anatomical Pathology. Dr. Parwani is also the Director of Pathology Informatics and Director of the Digital Pathology Shared Resource at The James Cancer Hospital. His research is focused on diagnostic and prognostic markers in bladder and prostate cancer, and molecular classification of renal cell carcinoma. Dr. Parwani has expertise in the area of Anatomical Pathology Informatics including designing quality assurance tools, bio banking informatics, clinical and research data integration, applications of whole slide imaging, digital imaging, telepathology, image analysis and lab automation. Dr. Parwani has authored over 250 peer-reviewed articles in major scientific journals and several books and book chapters. Dr. Parwani is the Editor-in-chief of Diagnostic Pathology and one of the Editors of the Journal of Pathology Informatics.

Associate Professor
Biography

Vice President, Biomarker Sciences
Biography

Professor
Biography

Executive Director, Head of Molecular Invention
Biography

Managing Director
Jamie Platt has 15 years of leadership in NGS and Clinical Diagnostics. She has worked on the assay development & commercialization of more than 22 NGS & 35 high-complexity molecular LDTs. She propelled and directed a global $4.7B Fortune 500 diagnostics provider into the emerging genomics market through adoption of NGS technology (2005). She spearheaded development & validation of the first NGS-based HIV test for large commercial reference lab (secured NYS approval) and increased revenue by $1M within 6 months of launch. And has a strong track record of building NGS-based Genomics programs with FDA-aligned, design control development QMS and ISO 15189 readiness for growth from clinical into Pharma services markets.

Scientist, Microbiology and Immunology
Dr. Porpiglia is a Scientist in the field of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University. She holds a BS/MS degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Bologna Medical School, and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Porpiglia’s research focuses on investigating, at the single cell level, the transition of adult muscle stem cells from a healthy to a diseased state, and defining its molecular signature. During her postdoctoral training in the Dr. Blau laboratory, she capitalized on single cell mass cytometry (CyTOF) to identify novel progenitor cell populations in vivo in skeletal muscle, a critical missing link with which to study the control of stem cell fate. She is currently working on elucidating the signaling networks that are dysregulated in muscle stem cells in the context of aging and muscular dystrophy, with the ultimate goal to facilitate the development of targeted therapy.

President & CEO
Professor of Computer Science, University of Trento. Founder, President and CEO of The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology. Authored about 200 scientific papers, delivered about 100 invited presentations, designed about 20 innovative software tools in the field of computational systems biology.

Professor & Associate Director
Dr. Price is Professor & Associate Director of the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, WA. He is also Affiliate Faculty in the Departments of Bioengineering, Computer Science & Engineering, and Molecular & Cellular Biology at the University of Washington. He is Co-Founder and on the Board of Directors of Arivale (“Your Scientific Path to Wellness”), which was recently named as Geekwire‘s 2016 “Startup of the Year.” Nathan has won numerous awards for his scientific work, including a Howard Temin Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a young investigator award from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, and he was named as one of the inaugural “Tomorrow’s PIs” by Genome Technology and as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. Most recently, he received the 2016 Grace A. Goldsmith Award from the American College of Nutrition, given to a scientist under the age of 50 for significant achievements in the field of nutrition for his work in scientific wellness. Dr. Price has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and serves on editorial boards for many leading scientific journals including Science Translational Medicine and Cell Systems. Dr. Price served on the National Academy of Medicine committee to review omics-based tests to predict clinical outcome in clinical trials. Dr. Price also serves on scientific advisory boards for a number of companies and institutes including Habit (a personalized nutrition company), Trelys (a metabolic engineering company),Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, the P4 Medicine Institute, the University of Washington’s Public Health Genomics Institute, the UW Multidisciplinary Learning Disability Center, and the DOE ENIGMA program at UC Berkeley/LBNL/MIT. He is also a fellow of the European Society of Preventive Medicine.

Biostatistics, Investigator II/Lab Head
I have a Ph.D. in Bayesian statistics and machine learning from Duke University. I am currently working at Novartis, as an Investigator with a leading role across statistical efforts in CAR-T cell therapies. We apply bioinformatics models to improve upon and characterize patient cells in CAR-T trials. Besides using flow cytometry we are also working with other cytometry techniques for improved throughput and higher data dimensionality.

CEO
Biography

CMO and Clinical Laboratory Director
Girish Putcha is Director of Laboratory Science for Palmetto GBA’s MolDX program, and the founding Medical Director for Orion Genomics and TOMA Biosciences, personalized medicine companies focused in oncology. He has also joined Freenome as their CMO. Previously, Girish was the founding Medical/Laboratory Director or Chief Medical Officer at Ariosa Diagnostics, Crescendo Bioscience, Life Technologies, and VitaPath Genetics. He also focused on venture capital investments across healthcare, from biopharmaceuticals to medical devices to diagnostics, at Panorama Capital and RiverVest Venture Partners. Prior to this, he held various positions at VeraCyte, CardioDx, and Aviir, all venture-funded personalized medicine companies. Girish received a bachelor's degree from Rice University and two master's degrees from the University of London and the Welcome Institute as a Marshall Scholar. He holds medical and doctoral degrees from Washington University School of Medicine, where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular neuroscience. Girish completed his postgraduate medical training at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he also served as adjunct faculty, specializing in molecular genetic pathology.

Vice President, Global Market Access
Ammar Qadan is currently and since Nov 2016 the Vice President and Global Market Access Lead at Illumina. In his current job, Ammar is responsible for Health Economic Outcomes Research, Market Access/Pricing strategy, Field Market Access, Payer Policy and Advocacy. Through his career, Ammar has been distinguished as a passionate, patient-focused Biotech leader who worked on multiple disease areas and biotechnology- related strategic programs and major corporate initiatives across functions and geographies. Most recently, Ammar was the Vice President and Global Product Team Lead at Halozyme Therapeutics, a Biotech focused on Oncology development in San Diego. He was instrumental in revamping their lead biomarker-driven oncology program strategy, leading to new clinical development programs and major partnerships. Ammar & his team’s work on market access and health outcomes research and the continuous interaction with payers resulted in adding new endpoints in clinical development programs and the presentation of major outcomes data in major congresses where the data was used to update clinical guidelines around certain interventions in pancreatic cancer patients. Prior to joining Halozyme, Ammar spent nearly 20 years at Bristol Myers Squibb in roles of increasing complexity in areas like market access, marketing, country management and product development, where he worked & lived in 6 different countries across North America, Europe & the Middle East. Ammar is a Pharmacist by training.

Professor, Computational Biology & Bioinformatics
John Quackenbush received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UCLA in 1990. Following a postdoc in physics, he received an NIH fellowship work on the Human Genome Project. He spent two years at the Salk Institute and two years at Stanford University before moving to The Institute for Genomic Research in 1997. John joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in 2005, where he uses computational and systems biology to better understand the complexities of human disease. John has numerous awards including recognition as a 2013 White House Open Science Champion of Change.

Principal
Bruce Quinn MD PhD is a leading expert on federal health policy and how innovative technology companies can adapt for success. In addition to his early career as a medical researcher, Dr. Quinn has 15 years of experience as a physician executive working for Accenture, the Medicare agency, and two elite Washington healthcare policy firms. As a strategy consultant, he helps companies build solutions to Medicare-related business challenges both at federal and local levels. Since 2008, over half of his experience has been devoted to the diagnostics and genomics industries.

President & CEO
Sara Radcliffe was appointed the president and CEO of the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA) in December 2014. She formerly served as the Executive Vice President for Health at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Previously, Sara served as Senior Director, Biologics & Biotechnology at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). She also served in the Alliance and Technology Group at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals as a Research and Development Policy Analyst, working on evaluation and communication of the promise, ethics, and impact of rapidly-developing technologies in DNA research. In addition, she worked for the Core Services Committee of the New Zealand Ministry of Health. Sara holds a Master of Public Health and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College

Partner, Health Industry Advisory Practice Group
Paul is a Medicare law and policy authority who is board-certified in internal medicine and who helps clients navigate federal legislative and regulatory processes related to Medicare coverage, coding, reimbursement and compliance as well as regulatory and promotional compliance matters with the Food and Drug Administration. Paul represents several medical professional societies as well as some of the country’s most innovative developers of pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, and diagnostics before Congress, Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Food & Drug Administration, and other federal agencies.

Senior Scientific Director, Computational Biology, Target Sciences
Biography

C.H. Li Professor of Immunology and Pathogenesis; Co-Chair, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
Biography

CEO
Biography

President and CSO
Biography

Director, Immuno Oncology
Terence Rhodes is the Director of Immuno-Oncology for Intermountain Healthcare. In this role, he works to leverage the unique resources of Intermountain Healthcare and partner with academic institutions and industry to develop biomarkers for immunotherapies and increase access to immunotherapy clinic trials within the health system. His clinical practice includes treating a variety of malignancies, where he has gained an appreciation for cancer patients’ many struggles.

Chief Commercial Officer
Biography

Scientist, Respiratory Inflammation and Autoimmune
Dr. Sadiye Amcaoglu Rieder joined MedImmune/AstraZeneca in 2015, and is the scientific lead of two programs aimed at modulating T cell responses. Her research interest is focused on understanding human T cell biology, particularly the co-receptors of T cell activation. Sadiye has extensive experience in in-vitro and in-vivo models of disease, and in examining functional and molecular characteristics of T cells. She received her PhD in Biomedical Science from University of South Carolina, School of Medicine. She then did her postdoctoral training at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in which she worked on transcription factor biology of T cells.

Head, Cancer Immunotherapy I, Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED)
Biography

Senior Investigator, Biomarkers and Companion Diagnostics
Dr. Vicki Rimkunas joined H3 Biomedicine in 2016 as a Senior Investigator in the Biomarker and Companion Diagnostics Group. She is responsible for developing and executing the biomarker and CDx strategies for two clinical stage programs currently in Phase I/II clinical development in solid tumors. Prior to joining H3 Biomedicine, Vicki served as the Head of the Integrated Diagnostics Lab at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and was responsible for preclinical and clinical assay development across the Merrimack therapeutic portfolio focusing on developing novel, fit for purpose tissue diagnostics, multiplex assay development and digital pathology. Prior to joining Merrimack, Vicki was a Senior Scientist at Cell Signaling Technology where she developed clinical assays utilizing rabbit monoclonal antibodies focused in oncology with most notably, the ALK D5F3 rabbit monoclonal antibody currently being used to identify ALK positive NSCLC patients as a class III IVD. She earned a Ph.D. from Tufts University, Sackler School of Biomedical Research and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.

Assistant Professor of Pathology, Genomic and Molecular Pathology Division
Lauren Ritterhouse is a member of the Genomic and Molecular Pathology (GMP) division at the University of Chicago, where she is co-director of the clinical genomics and molecular diagnostic laboratories. Prior to this, she completed a Molecular Genetic Pathology Fellowship at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA) and Anatomic Pathology Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, MA). She earned her MD and PhD in Pathology from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (Oklahoma City, OK). Lauren is particularly interested in the translation of emerging molecular biomarkers into the clinical laboratory, including those evaluating hematologic malignancies, circulating tumor DNA, as well as solid tumor mutational signature profiling. Her research has been published in Modern Pathology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, JCI Insight, Thyroid, JAMA Oncology, Cancer Discovery, American Journal of Surgical Pathology, Oncoimmunology, and Oncotarget.

Senior Director, Early Development and Translational Oncology
Biography

President
Biography

Vice President
Peggy Robinson is leading relationships with US key opinion leaders and responsible for US sales and corporate deals with major pharmaceutical and medtech companies. Prior to joining ANGLE, Peggy was the principal of BioMark Consulting, LLC, a boutique consulting firm focused on business strategies, marketing, strategic alliances, KOL and product development of new technologies, with an emphasis on cancer diagnostics, chronic diseases and companion diagnostics.

Founder, Microbiome Meetup; Contributing Writer, Nature Research
Biography

Associate Professor, Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, Cancer Medicine
Jordi Rodón Ahnert, MD, PhD specializes in early drug development, biomarker discovery, personalized cancer medicine, and neuro-oncology. He is now at MD Anderson’s Investigational Cancer Therapeutics department after moving from Barcelona, where he has been the director and clinical head of the Research Unit for Molecular Therapy of Cancer at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain. Within this unit, he served as clinical head of the Early Clinical Drug Development Group, which aims to develop best-in-class targeted therapies, determine patient populations most likely to benefit using personalized molecular characterization, and identify biomarkers of response. At Vall d’Hebron University Hospital he was also in charge of the Neuroncology program, building it in collaboration with the Phase I Unit, the multidisciplinary clinic and the Gene Expression and Cancer Laboratory leaded by Joan Seoane. Rodón earned his medical and doctoral degrees at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and completed a doctorate the Universitat de Barcelona. He spent two years at the Advanced Drug Development program at the Institute for Drug Development (IDD) in San Antonio, Texas and completed his training in drug development at MD Anderson Cancer Center as a senior clinical research fellow. During this time at MDACC, Rodón also completed an internship at the Kleberg Center for Molecular Markers under the direction of Dr. Gordon Mills. Over the course of his career, Rodón has been the principal or co-principal investigator on over 30 early phase clinical trials focusing on a range of advanced solid malignancies, partnering with leaders in industry including Novartis, Merck, Eli Lilly, Genentech, Sanofi, and others. With this, he has contributed to about 60 peer-reviewed publications detailing both trial results and basic research findings. Dr. Rodón’s most significant contributions to the field include the development of PI3K, FGFR and TGFbeta inhibitors, pilot studies in Precision/Personalized Cancer Medicine and multiple translational collaborations in those fields.

Director, Precision Pathology Biobanking Center
Biography

Staff Clinician, Center for Cancer Research
Biography

Assistant Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Jason N. Rosenbaum is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Jason completed his fellowship in Molecular Genetic Pathology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and his residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. Jason is certified in anatomic pathology, clinical pathology, and molecular pathology by the American Board of Pathology. Jason maintains an active research program, with projects investigating the clinical application of next-generation sequencing (NGS), particularly in oncology. Jason also works on INSM1, as a novel immunohistochemical and molecular marker for neuroendocrine carcinoma.

Executive Director
Mollie Roth is the Executive Director of The Microbiome Coalition (TMBC). Representing a broad spectrum of companies, innovators and key thinkers in the microbiome space, TMBC promotes greater public understanding of the role of the microbiome in human health and wellness, in addition to advancing appropriate regulation, needed investment and required infrastructure. Concurrently, Ms. Roth is also the Founder and Chair of the Arrowhead Translational Microbiome Conference, which brings together leading companies in the microbiome space to discuss the hurdles to commercializing microbiome technologies and how those challenges can be successfully addressed and met. The author of numerous articles, Ms. Roth has been a speaker and presenter at numerous conferences in the U.S. and Europe on numerous topics raining from precision medicine to the microbiome. Ms. Roth holds a BA in neuropsychology from Rutgers University, a JD from Vermont Law School and anticipates completing an LLM in Genomics and Biotechnology from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where she has also held a position as Visiting Faculty Fellow and Board member of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation.

Director, Computational and Integrational Pathology; Associate Professor, Hematopathology; Medical Director, Laboratory Informatics, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center (AMP Informatics Subdivision Representative to the AMP 2017 Clinical Practice Committee; Member)
Biography

Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (AMP Informatics Subdivision Representative to the AMP 2018 Program Committee; Member)
Somak Roy, MD., is Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). He serves as the Director of Molecular Informatics and genetics Services at the Division of Molecular and Genomic Pathology at UPMC. Dr. Roy is a board-certified molecular and anatomic pathologist. His clinical and translational work focuses on the following; 1) Use of modern computational infrastructure and innovative software technology for high-throughput sequence analysis, genomic data visualization, and optimizing molecular laboratory workflow. 2) molecular characterization of urothelial carcinoma to identify clinically relevant, theranostic biomarkers. Since 2014, he has been a member of Informatics Subdivision in the Association of Molecular Pathology (AMP). He served as a representative to the Clinical Practice Committee from 2014-2016 and currently to the Program Committee. Dr. Roy is chaired the AMP workgroup that developed the guidelines for validation of clinical NGS bioinformatics pipeline.

Senior Principal Scientist, Head of Translational Pathology Group
Biography

Professor of Pediatrics, Hematology/Oncology, Genetics
Dr. Sage is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Genetics at Stanford University. Dr. Sage initially trained in France and then moved to the laboratory of Dr. Tyler Jacks at MIT for his post-doctoral studies where he developed genetic models to study the mechanisms of action of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor gene. Dr. Sage joined the faculty at Stanford in 2004; since then, the research program in his laboratory has focused on the mechanisms that control the proliferation of mammalian cells under normal and pathological conditions with a particular emphasis on stem cells and gene regulatory networks during cancer initiation and progression. In particular, Dr. Sage’s group has been working on lung cancer since 2005. His laboratory has developed novel mouse models for small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and has used mouse models of SCLC and lung adenocarcinoma to investigate key signaling pathways in lung cancer cells.

Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering & Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
Biography

Professor, Pathology, University of Utah; Chief, Hematopathology; Vice President, ARUP Reference Laboratory
Dr. Salama is a Professor of Pathology at the University of Utah and the Chief of hematopathology and Vice President of the Associated Regional University Pathologists (ARUP) national reference laboratory. Dr. Salama received his M.D. from Cairo University and completed a surgical pathology fellowship at Stanford University followed by a hematopathology fellowship at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Salama is certified by the American Board of Pathology in anatomic and clinical pathology as well as hematopathology. Dr. Salama areas of interest span all aspects of hematopathology, including morphology, flow cytometry, molecular, immunohistochemistry and other specialized studies of bone marrow and lymph nodes pathology. Dr. Salama research work has focused on characterization and correlation of genetic/molecular aberrations and protein expression in tissue as well as morphometry using whole slide digital scanning and image analysis tools. Dr. Salama have special interest in developing innovative technologies and bringing the applications of digital imaging into the clinical laboratory.

Scientific Leader, Cell & Gene Therapies
Biography

Professor, Chair, Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Saltz is Professor and Chair of Biomedical Informatics at Stony Brook University. He is an MD-PhD in Computer Science and a Boarded Clinical Pathologist with training at Duke and Johns Hopkins. He is a pioneer in digital Pathology with a 20 year history of research beginning with the developing of the first virtual microscope system at Johns Hopkins in 1997.

President
Nadeem Sarwar, Ph.D., specializes in strategies to integrate and apply several sciences to deliver novel, precision medicines from human genetic and related sources. He has established and serves as president of the AiM Institute, which currently has assets in early stage clinical trials, late stage pre-IND and early stage preclinical discovery. Nadeem has served as chair of a number of organizations, including the US National Academies Workshop on “Drug Discovery From Genetic Bioresources;” The 2015 World CNS Summit; The Drug Discovery and Development Stream of the 2016 Festival of Genomics; and The External Advisory Board of the US National Institute of Ageing Longevity Genomics Study. In addition, Nadeem is the Industry Lead for the ADNI Genetics Core; sits on the US National Academies Institute of Medicine Genomics Roundtable (and leads their “Discovery Working Group”); is a member of the Genetics Scientific Advisory Group of the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease Consortium; and facilitates the Industry Partnership for Human Genetics (for precompetitive opportunities in applied genetic research). Nadeem was previously vice president and global head of Genetics & Human Biology at Eisai Inc., responsible for establishing a new function in human genetic-related drug discovery and clinical research. He joined Eisai from Pfizer Inc., where he served as senior director and head of Population Research & Head of Cardiometabolic Genetics; served on the Atorvastatin Core Advisory Board; and sat on the Pfizer Post-Doctoral Program Governance Team. At Pfizer, Nadeem led the development and initiation of a new Cardiovascular Therapeutic Area Strategy; launched the University of Cambridge/Pfizer Center for CV Genomics; established a “genes to targets” strategy delivering novel targets into the exploratory cardiometabolic research portfolio; and served on the clinical design team for a Phase 3 outcome trial. Prior to working in the pharmaceutical industry, Nadeem was a tenured faculty member at the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where his research involved leading large-scale research consortia and the establishment of new bioresources to identify causal and predictive disease risk factors. Nadeem’s research has been published in a number of leading medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the Americam Medical Association (JAMA), and Lancet. He has presented at a variety of international scientific meetings, including the Prix Galien Foundation, American Diabetes Association and Hitachi Innovation. He has been invited to provide expert insights on the role of human genetics in drug discovery and precision medicine for several institutes globally. He obtained his doctorate in molecular & genetic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge (UK), where he studied with Professor John Danesh.

CTO
Biography

Chief & Medical Oncologist, Genitourinary Oncology Services
Howard I. Scher, M.D. is Chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College, and the D. Wayne Calloway Chair in Urologic Oncology. Dr. Scher’s research is focused on the co-development of targeted therapies and biomarkers such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) which can be used to guide treatment selection for the individual patient and improve the way drugs are evaluated in the clinic, accelerating regulatory approvals. Accordingly, he has led international efforts to standardize the design and analysis of Phase II prostate cancer trials (PCWG2, PCWG3) and helped elucidate key molecular and genetic features of prostate cancer, translating these insights into the clinic by leading early phase and Phase III registration trials of abiraterone acetate and enzalutamide which are now FDA approved. Dr. Scher serves as the principal investigator of the NIH Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Prostate Cancer at MSKCC and the Department of Defense-sponsored Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC), and has received the 2015 AACR Team Science Award for his multidisciplinary work developing AR inhibitors.

Vice President, Preclinical Pharmacology
Biography

Director, La Jolla Campus
Biography

Vice President, Government Affairs
Biography

Professor, Quantitative Medicine
Biography

Chief, Diagnostic and Detection, Chemical and Biological Technologies Department (J9CB)
Biography

Department of Radiology, Division of Abdominal Imaging; Chair, Department of Radiology, Service Chief and Attending Physician
Lawrence H. Schwartz, M.D. is the James Picker Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiology at Columbia University Medical Center and is also Radiologist-in-Chief at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. In his capacity as Chairman, Dr. Schwartz oversees a 75-clinical member department and directs its patient care, research and educational initiatives. Dr. Schwartz’s academic interests are in the development of novel imaging biomarkers in oncology, both clinical care and drug discovery; using quantitative imaging and Radiomics. He is an active member of the Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Alliance and the Oncology Biomarker Qualification Initiative.

Director
Biography

Director, Genomic and Molecular Pathology, Pathology
Jeremy Segal, MD, PhD is the Director of the Division of Genomic and Molecular Pathology (GMP) at the University of Chicago. Dr. Segal specializes in NGS oncology assay and bioinformatics development to support personalized medicine initiatives and translational research. Dr. Segal is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Molecular Genetic Pathology. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he was the Director of Clinical Development and Policy at the New York Genome Center. He received his MD from Cornell University and a PhD in Genetics from The Rockefeller University.

Staff Scientist, Lymphoid Malignancies Branch, National Cancer Institute
Arthur Shaffer has a fundamental interest in the application of basic immunology to problems involving the dysregulation of the immune system, especially with regard to cancer. He developed his abiding interest in basic immunology as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins under the tutelage of then new faculty member Mark Schlissel, studying the targeting and timing of V(D)J recombination during early B cell development. Continuing to pursue his interest in understanding the interplay of normal and pathological immune system development, he became a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Louis Staudt in the National Cancer Institute in 1996. His work has elucidated the action of several critical B cell differentiation-related transcription factors (BCL6, XBP1, PRDM1, IRF4), that are also critical for lymphomagenesis. As a result of these experimental successes as a post-doc, he was appointed as a Staff Scientist in 2001, and continues the application of genomic scale technologies to the understanding of normal and malignant B cell development.

Director, Research Informatics, Office of the Chief Informatics Officer
Biography

Associate Professor, Clinical Pathology, Keck School of Medicine
Biography

Microfluidics of Vortex Devices
Viktor Shkolnikov at HP labs leads a team of scientists and engineers to develop novel microfluidic and electrokinetic technology for solving valuable diagnostics problems, such as minimally invasive diagnosis of cancer (a project he conceived and initiated). His interests and expertise lie at the interface between medicine and fluid mechanics (and the associated physics, chemistry, and engineering) and he constantly seeks ways of how these can be leveraged to alleviate pain and improve health. Viktor Shkolnikov received his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. all in Mechanical Engineering and all from Stanford University.

Vice President of Science and Innovation
Martin Siaw is currently Vice President of Science and Innovation at BasePrime Genomics. He also serves as Senior Technical Consultant for BRIDGenomics. His previous positions include Global Director of Clinical Operations at LabPMM and Associate Director of Advanced Sequencing at Quest Diagnostics. He has many years of laboratory experience and technical expertise in assay development for the biotechnology and medical diagnostics industry. He was the technical co-lead for the development of the first NGS based test for HIV-1 Tropism that is being offered by Quest. He is focused on advancing the use of NGS for molecular diagnostic testing geared towards improving health care and wellness.

Assistant Professor, Surgery
Biography

Postdoctoral Scholar, Adam Abate Laboratory, Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco; Scientist, Scribe Biosciences
I joined the Abate Lab at UCSF as a postdoctoral scholar to develop Printed Droplet Microfluidics (PDM) for high-throughput single cell screening in synthetic biology. I am deeply interested in automation and miniaturization of molecular biology tools, with a particular focus on molecular barcoding workflows for high-throughput single cell analysis. I am also a senior employee of Scribe Biosciences, Inc., a startup spun out of the Abate Lab to commercialize our PDM technology. I completed my Ph.D. at UC Davis under Alexander Revzin, where I used microfluidics and biomaterials-based approaches to engineer 3D organoid models for primary cell culture and directed stem cell differentiation studies.

Director, Translational Science and Diagnostics
At Personal Genome Diagnostics, John focuses broadly on biomarker discovery and diagnostic development partnerships with pharma/biotech. Previously, John was at the National Cancer Institute where his research focused on identifying novel therapeutic strategies for multiple myeloma through chemical genomic approaches with a particular focus on drug combinations. He received his undergraduate degree in Biology with honors from American University and Ph.D. in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University as part of the NIH Graduate Partnership Program. As a post-doctoral fellow, he received the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) Research Fellow award to support his work in developing systems-level approaches for drug combination identification and prioritization.

Associate Professor, Pathology
Dr. Singh is an Associate Professor in Dermatology and Pathology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York. He directs the Immunodermatology Section and is also the Director for the Residency Training Program and fellowship program in Dermatopathology. He graduated from Baroda Medical College in India and completed his pathology residency both in India and at Wayne State University in the States. He completed his fellowship in dermatopathology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston in 2007. Dr. Singh has served on various committees both at the University of Pittsburgh and at Mt. Sinai as well as national societies such as the ASDP and CAP. Dr. Singh has delivered national and international invited presentations in his field. He is the author or coauthor of various book chapters, articles and abstracts published in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals, including The American Journal of Pathology, American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, and American Journal of Surgical Pathology. He is the Recipient of the ‘Teacher of the Year Award’ at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Singh is a member of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, College of American Pathologists, American Society of Dermatopathology, and is the Chair-Elect of the American Society of Dermatopathology Informatics Committee. He is a reviewer for Journal of Cutaneous Pathology, Journal of Investigative Dermatology Histopathology, and Pathology Research InternationalIn 2013, he was awarded the Sulzberger Grant from the American Academy of Dermatology for developing interactive tools for teaching of dermatology and dermatopathology. In 2013, he was awarded the Sulzberger Grant from the American Academy of Dermatology for developing interactive tools for teaching of dermatology and dermatopathology. He is the Editor and developer of the app, mydermpath+ and creator of two educational platforms-wiydx.com and PathPresenter.com.

Vice President, Corp. Development and Reimbursement
Stan Skrzypczak is a seasoned executive with 30 years of life science/pharma experience (Searle Laboratories, Genentech, Genomic Health, Invitae, and currently working for Guardant Health). His commercialization experience is in the therapeutic classes of oncology, immunology, cardiology, genetics, pulmonary diseases, and growth disorders. His experience ranges from commercializing drugs/biologics, tumor gene expression profiling assays, and NGS-based genetic laboratory tests to NGS liquid biopsy cancer diagnostics. Stan is currently the Vice President, Corporate Development and Reimbursement at Guardant Health. Guardant Health is a global leader in the field of liquid-based NGS somatic assays. He leads international commercialization and U.S reimbursement. Previously, Mr. Skrzypczak served as VP, Business Development at Invitae, a genetic testing and information services company for two years. Prior to Invitae, he was Senior Director, Marketing for a franchise product, Oncotype DX, and later he was promoted to Sr. Director, Global Strategy at Genomic Health. Genomic Health is one of the world's leading providers of genomic-based diagnostic tests that address both the over-treatment and optimal treatment of early stage cancer, one of the greatest issues in healthcare today. He was at Genentech for 18 years prior to Genomic Health working across clinical franchise areas that included oncology and immunology from a varied sales, marketing and reimbursement role and was a sales division manager for Searle Laboratories just prior to Genentech. He has specific experience in global business and corporate development, life cycle management, marketing, sales, reimbursement, and product development. Stan has an M.S. in Immunology and an M.B.A. in Marketing.

Associate Program Leader, Bioinformatics
Tom Slezak is a computer scientist who has been supporting biological research at LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) since 1978. He was part of the Human Genome Program for 14 years, and was a developer of the nation-wide BioWatch system. Since 2000 Tom’s pathogen bioinformatics team has developed PCR assays, pan-microbial microarrays (recently commercialized by Affymetrix), targeted sequencing panels and DNA sequence analysis software to support a broad range of pathogen detection and forensic programs in biodefense and human/animal health. Tom was the first computer scientist at LLNL to be named a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. In 2011 Tom co-chaired a Blue Ribbon Panel on bioinformatics for the CDC that led to new funding for the Advanced Molecular Detection program. Tom has chaired two major NIAID sequencing center and infectious disease center proposal reviews. He has served on four National Academy panels on biodefense topics and for 3 years on the NAS DoD Standing Committee on Biodefense programs.

Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Chairman of the Technology Assessment Group, Center for Individualized Medicine
Biography

Research Staff Member, Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology
Joshua Smith received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 2011 on a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award and joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member. With a background in low-dimensional nanoelectronics and semiconductor processing, Dr. Smith developed a growing interest in biomedical engineering and bionanotechnology, and in 2013 he helped establish the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology group at IBM Research. Within the group, he oversees R & D efforts and works to establish paths toward manufacturing for microfluidic devices aimed at separation and detection of single molecules for advanced biomedical diagnostics and preparative technologies. He is a sought-after speaker on the subject of lab-on-a-chip applications for healthcare and his work has been highlighted by Forbes, CNN Money, IEEE Spectrum, and Pharma Technology Focus. Dr. Smith holds an adjunct Assistant Professor position at Columbia University in the Department of Electrical Engineering and is an IBM Master Inventor.

New Business Development
Biography

Vice President, DPU Head, Immuno-Oncology & Combinations DPU, Oncology R&D
Biography

President & CEO
Biography

Chairman & Professor, Department of Genetics
Biography

Vice President, Genome Sciences & Technologies
Biography

Assistant Professor, Medicine; Staff, Hematology & Medical Oncology; Director, Clinical Genomics Program
Dr. Sohal is a board-certified medical oncologist. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, where he also serves as the Director of the Clinical Genomics Program. His primary clinical interest is caring for patients with gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies. His research focuses on clinical trials of new treatments for these patients, and the role of genomics in cancer treatment. He is the principal investigator of several clinical trials for patients with GI cancers, including cooperative group, investigator-initiated, and industry-sponsored studies. In addition to serving as the Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Medical Oncology Self-Assessment Committee, Dr. Sohal is the Co-Chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Clinical Practice Guidelines Panel for Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer; an Investigator of the Pancreas Task Force of the Gastrointestinal Steering Committee of the National Cancer Institute; and a Member of the Hepatobiliary Guidelines Committee of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). Dr. Sohal earned his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India. He completed residency training and a year as a Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the Jacobi Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY. Dr. Sohal completed a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Sohal has also completed graduate training in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and presented at various international meetings. In addition to teaching awards, Dr. Sohal received an American Society of Hematology (ASH) Trainee Research Award and an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Young Investigator Award.

CSO, Research and Development
Biography

Senior Research Scientist, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Erica Sonnenburg, PhD, is a senior research scientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology where she studies the role of diet on the human intestinal microbiota. She has published her ground breaking scientific findings related to the microbiota in prestigious journals such as The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell, and, Nature. She is the co-author, along with Justin Sonnenburg, of the book The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health.

Foundation Distinguished Professor, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering
Prof. Steven A. Soper received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1989 followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked on single-molecule detection for high speed sequencing of the human genome. In 1991, he joined the faculty at Louisiana State University (LSU) within the Department of Chemistry, where he filled the William H. Pryor Distinguished Chair of Chemistry. Prof. Soper also held joint appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Biological Sciences. While at LSU, he founded the Center of BioModular Multi-Scale Systems for Precision Medicine, which has as its primary charge to develop enabling and transformative tools for making health-related measurements from rare disease markers, such as liquid biopsy markers, with full process automation. This Center has recently been awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health as part of their Biotechnology Resource Center Program (funded through the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering). In 2011, Prof. Soper accepted a position within the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Prof. Soper is currently a Foundation Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Prof. Soper also holds an appointment at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea, where he is a World Class University Professor. He is also serving as a Science Advisor for a number of major worldwide companies. Prof. Soper is currently the Editor of the Americas for the Analyst and on the Editorial Board for Journal of Fluorescence and Journal of Micro- and Nanosystems. Prof. Soper is also serving as a permanent Member of the Nanotechnology study panel with the National Institutes of Health. As a result of his efforts, Prof. Soper has secured extramural funding totaling >$89M and has published over 315 manuscripts (h index = 62) and is the author of 14 patents. He is also the founder of a startup company, BioFluidica, which is marketing devices for the isolation and enumeration of circulating tumor cells. His list of awards includes Chemical Instrumentation by the American Chemical Society, the Benedetti-Pichler Award for Microchemistry, Fellow of the AAAS, Fellow of Applied Spectroscopy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, R&D 100 Award, Distinguished Masters Award at LSU and Outstanding Scientist/Engineer in the state of Louisiana in 2001.

Scientist II, Clinical Pharmacology and DMPK
Nathan Standifer received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in San Antonio, Texas. Afterwards, he performed his post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Gerald T Nepom MD, PhD at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason in Seattle, Washington. As a post-doctoral fellow, Nathan’s work focused on characterizing autoreactive T cell specificities in type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients and identifying predictive biomarkers of T1D development. After completing his post-doctoral fellowship, he worked in the Clinical Immunology department at Amgen and specialized in development of flow cytometry assays in trials of therapeutics for inflammation-mediated disease. Currently, Nathan is a Senior Scientist in the Clinical Pharmacology and DMPK department at MedImmune, the biologics development arm of AstraZeneca, at which he supervises development and implementation of flow cytometry-based biomarker assays and the analysis of resulting data in over 40 immune oncology trials. He has authored or co-authored articles in numerous journals including Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Journal of Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Clinical Cytometry.

Professor of Medicine and, Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development; Director, Molecular Gastroenterology Program
Clifford J. Steer is a Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development and a senior investigator at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. He has been active in the field of liver research for almost four decades. In that capacity, he has been a long-standing member of several National Institutes of Health Study Sections. He has been co-editor of a major scientific journal in liver diseases and presently serves on the editorial boards of three journals. He has published his work in top-ranking scientific journals and numerous textbooks. Steer’s areas of research over the last decade have included gene therapy, liver regeneration, and microRNA regulation of gene function. He has published over 250 scientific articles; and has organized and chaired many national and international scientific conferences. In recognition of his work he has received the Holloman Award in Biotechnology in 1998; the Thorne Stroke Award and Department of Medicine Faculty Award for Outstanding Research both in 2004; and the Senior Investigator Award from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2012. He was elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1991; and in 2014 was made an inaugural Fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. His work has been written up in newspapers around the world, Time magazine, and in 1998 was featured in the Village Voice. He was most recently appointed as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Medical School.

Director, Digital Medicine
Dr. Steinhubl is the Director of Digital Medicine at the Scripps Translational Science Institute and a clinical cardiologist at Scripps Health. He received his undergraduate training in engineering at Purdue University, graduate training in physiology at Georgetown University, and his medical degree at St. Louis University. Steve’s residency training was completed at David Grant USAF Medical Center and his cardiology fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. Prior to joining Scripps, Steve was the Director of Cardiovascular Wellness and the Medical Director for Employee Wellness for the Geisinger Healthcare System. As a clinician-scientist, Dr Steinhubl’s research activities have focused on clinical trials of novel therapeutic interventions to improve outcomes, ranging from the study of novel antithrombotic therapies to the application of an integrated systems-based approach for the optimal identification, communication and treatment of individual risk. He has been principal investigator or helped lead over a dozen large-scale, international randomized trials and has authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts as well as numerous book chapters, and abstracts. At Scripps, through the development and oversight of a portfolio of clinical trials, Steve is responsible for helping develop the evidence base necessary to establish the role of mobile health technologies in the transformation of healthcare.

Professor, Medicine, Hematology & Oncology
Biography

Managing Partner
Biography

Vice President of Marketing
Biography

Ruth L. Siteman Professor, Pediatrics
Dr. Storch is the Ruth L. Siteman Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Medicine and of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine and past Chief of the Divisions of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Pediatric Laboratory Medicine. He received his AB degree from Harvard College and his M.D. from NYU School of Medicine. He completed internship and residency in internal medicine at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for Disease Control in the Louisiana Department of Health in New Orleans, and an infectious disease fellow at Washington University. He joined the Washington University faculty in 1981. He is the Co-Medical Director of Project ARK, a pediatric HIV service organization affiliated with the Washington University Department of Pediatrics. Storch is past President of the Pan-American Society for Clinical Virology. He currently serves as Chair of the Finance Committee of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. Dr. Storch’s research interests are in molecular diagnosis of infectious diseases and infectious disease genomics. He is co-leader of the Microbial Genomics Unit of the Washington University Department of Pediatrics.

Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School; BioMEMS Resource Center, The MGH Cancer Center
Biography

Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
Biography

Expert in low-cost technologies for global development
Daktari Diagnostics & FIND Marta’s professional career reflects her expertise in low-cost technologies for global development, spanning more than 10 years of fieldwork experience. Her projects have included minimally-invasive protein fluorescent reporters to enable real time observation and manipulation of biological systems at the cellular level; the design and development of low-cost and appropriate water and sanitation technologies for implementation in Latin America and East Africa; and microfluidic devices for point-of-care diagnosis of tuberculosis. Marta obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at the Institut Quimic de Sarria (Barcelona, Spain) and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Director, Regulatory Affairs
Pamela Swatkowski is Director of Regulatory Affairs at Abbott Molecular responsible for strategic regulatory programs including companion diagnostics, oncology and infectious disease product regulatory and business development support, product lifecycle management, and global product registration for the molecular diagnostics product line. Notable are her twenty plus years and a regulatory and quality professional in the in vitro diagnostics and medical device industry. Pamela is the regulatory affairs lead, responsible for global regulatory strategy development and worldwide approval for the Abbott Vysis ALK FISH test used in identifying those non-small cell lung cancer patients eligible for treatment with the Pfizer drug XALKORI. She has a passion for personalized healthcare and works toward communication and conveying the importance of companion diagnostics products that are beneficial to patients. Pamela received a bachelors of science degree from Loyola University of Chicago and has worked in the Abbott Diagnostics group prior to joining Abbott Molecular in 2004.

Vice President & Head of Global Medical Affairs
As a physician executive with more than 15 years of experience, Dr. Su has strong clinical expertise in oncology, immuno-oncology and urology. He has held positions in academic and pharmaceutical medicine, including general management, clinical development, medical affairs and business development. Prior to EMD Serono, Dr. Su served as Associate Vice President and Global Head of Jevtana® (cabazitaxel) at Sanofi. Before joining industry, Dr. Su held several academic positions, including Assistant Professor of Surgery at Duke University, where he also received his post-doc fellowship in Immuno-Oncology. He has deep ties to the oncology community, having worked with leading oncologists at organizations globally. Dr. Su earned his MD degree from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany and completed his MBA training at the University of Toronto, Canada.

AGA Fellow, Associate Professor, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine
Dr. Jun Sun is a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Professor at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Chicago. She is a fellow of American Gastroenterological Associate. Her research interests are host-microbiome interactions in inflammation and cancer. Her key achievements include 1) characterization of vitamin D receptor regulation of gut microbiome in intestinal homeostasis and inflammation, 2) identification of dysbiosis and GI dysfunction in ALS mice, 3) characterization of bacteria in regulating intestinal stem cells, and 4) identification and characterization of the Salmonella effector protein AvrA in host-bacterial interactions. Dr. Sun has published over 120 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Gut, Cell Stem Cells, Nature Genetics, JBC, American Journal of Pathology, American Journal of Physiology-GI. She is on the editorial board of more than 10 peer-reviewed international scientific journals. She services study sections for the NIH, American Cancer Society, and other national and international research foundations. Her research is supported by the NIH, DOD, and other research awards.

Senior Scientist II, Functional Genomics
Biography

Associate Director for Special Initiatives
Danilo Tagle is Associate Director for Special Initiatives at NCATS (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences) at the NIH where he coordinates efforts towards developing microphysiological systems or organs on chips. He also coordinates efforts on 3D bioprinting, neuromodulation, and secreted RNA for biomarker and therapy development. Tagle obtained his Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1990. He was an NIH National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow in human genetics in the laboratory of Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Michigan. Tagle has authored more than 150 scientific publications and has garnered numerous awards and patents.

President and CEO
Biography

Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Experimental Therapeutics and Molecular Imaging Lab; Director, Interdepartmental Neuroscience Center; Director, MGH Viral Vector Development Facility, Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Bakhos Tannous is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director for the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a member of the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and also acts as Co-Director of the Molecular Neurogenetics Unit-East and Director of the MGH Viral Vector Production Facility. His research interest includes novel imaging and high throughput discovery of gene/cell/drug therapies for brain tumors, as well as blood-based platforms for cancer molecular diagnostics.

Herbert Irving Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Director of Clinical Informatics,
Biography

Ralph S. O’Connor Associate Professor, Biology; Associate Professor, Computer Science
James Taylor is the Ralph S. O'Connor Associate Professor of Biology and associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. Until 2014, he was an associate professor in the departments of biology and mathematics and computer science at Emory University. He is one of the original developers of the Galaxy platform for data analysis, and his group continues to work on extending the Galaxy platform. His group also works on understanding genomic and epigenomic regulation of gene transcription through integrated analysis of functional genomic data. James received a PhD in computer science from Penn State University, where he was involved in several vertebrate genome projects and the ENCODE project.

Managing Director
Dr. Mark Title has spent more than twenty years in advanced technology and team management supporting industry, health care, and the community. After completing his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics at Princeton University, Mark came to California for his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the University of California, San Diego. His doctoral work developed a new generation of photonic supercomputers. At the same time Mark worked for the America's Cup races in San Diego, coordinating with civic agencies and managing area directors and 550 personnel defending the Cup against New Zealand. After completing his doctorate, Mark established the San Diego office of the Schafer Corporation, providing evaluation and monitoring of classified projects in satellite and submarine laser communications. Later, at Innova Labs he developed novel technologies to shape microwaves and test superconductors. In the community Dr. Title worked with San Diego's Emergency Management Division in executing the inaugural International Airport Crash Disaster Drill, defining the model for subsequent emergency training across the country. More recently Dr. Title supported a revolution in medical instrumentation through his work at Biosite Diagnostics and Alere. There he led teams through multiple generations of diagnostic product development and advised sister companies on implementation of alternative technologies. Mark actively shaped the corporate culture, training hundreds of employees across the organization in achieving measurable results, accountability, and personal satisfaction in their work. In 2010 Mark founded Advanced Technology Leadership, a professional network of executives, managers and advisors in strategic areas of technology development and implementation. Mark makes his home in San Diego with his wife Claudia and their two standard poodles Harpo and Zeppo. In his leisure time he flies airplanes, collects short films, and creates art in wood, glass and stone in his home studio.