Speaker Biographies by Company

Associate Director, AMR Regional Marketing
No bio available

Director, Corporate Reimbursement, Government Affairs
No bio available

Senior Director, Data Science & Analytics
Nirav Dalal leads the Global Data Science and Analytics function at Abbott medical devices. He has more than twenty years of experience in the medical device industry. Nirav is interested in methods and tools to improve healthcare and create value using “Big Data” and machine learning. He received an MS in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and an MBA from Pepperdine University. He has published more than fifty peer-reviewed journal articles, conference abstracts, and US patents. He is a frequent speaker on medical devices, real-world evidence, digital health, health economics, and data science. His past speaking engagements include talks at the FDA, AdvaMed, Big Data in Healthcare, American Chamber of Commerce, Medical Design & Manufacturing, Global Cardiovascular Clinical Trialists Forum, and numerous other conferences.

Director, Exploratory Statistics
Dr. Jie Cheng received his PhD in Computer Science in 1998 and completed his postdoctoral training in AI & Machine Learning in 2000. He has more than 15 years of experience in applying machine learning and predictive modeling to clinical and biomarker data analysis. Dr. Cheng is a director at Abbvie, leading biomarker and exploratory analysis in immunology and neuroscience projects.

Director, Digital Health & Innovation
No bio available

ACOS Research Fellow, Director, Computational Genomics, Genomics Research Center (GRC)
Wade Davis is Director and Research Fellow in the Genomics Research Center at AbbVie, where he leads a group of computational scientists working to solve complex problems in genomics as it relates to pharmaceutical discovery and development. The team is responsible for analyzing genomic data from AbbVie clinical trials and external sources, such as Genomics Medicine Ireland, FinnGen, and UK Biobank. These data involved exceeds over 1 million subjects and provide a rich source of data for biopharma research. Wade holds undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Economics from Armstrong State University and PhD in Statistics from University of Missouri, where he also completed an NIH fellowship in Bioinformatics. He has been funded on dozens of federal research grants and served on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Statistical Association. After a 12 year career in academia at Baylor University and University of Missouri School of Medicine where he was an tenured Associated Professor, he joined the pharmaceutical industry.

Head, Development Design Center
A leader in the field of advanced analytics and data, Kyle helped create, and now heads, AbbVie’s Development Design Center where he works with teams all over the world to ensure innovation, health technologies, and data tools are incorporated into AbbVie’s clinical trials. Whether it’s using real-world evidence and machine learning or incorporating wearables, sensors, and other devices into clinical trials, Kyle’s goal is to bring new and better treatments to more patients, faster. Before coming to AbbVie, Kyle was a physician who treated cancer patients and saw first-hand patients battle some of the most devastating diseases.

Vice President and Head, Genomic Research, Drug Discovery Science & Technology, Distinguished Research Fellow
Howard J. Jacob, PhD, was a member of the first team ever to use genome sequencing to diagnose, treat and cure a patient. It was 2009, and the patient was a 6-year-old whose symptoms baffled doctors for years. Working with scientists and physicians, Dr. Jacob’s team sequenced the boy’s DNA and diagnosed his rare disease, which allowed him to undergo a successful bone marrow transplant. Almost a decade later, Dr. Jacob is using the same technology to potentially help millions of patients. As AbbVie’s new vice president and head of genomic research, he brings decades of genomic knowledge from academia and the clinic into the company’s labs. We spoke with Dr. Jacob about the current state of whole genome sequencing, and its potential for both patients and those simply interested in learning more about their “own personal blueprint.”

Head of AI in R&D Information Research, Senior Principal Data Scientist
No bio available

Digital Tech Arch Principal Director
Carl Dukatz, Digital Tech Arch Principal Director, Accenture Carl Dukatz leads the Quantum Computing Program at Accenture, focused on helping clients explore and seize the potential of quantum computing. As a part of this initiative, Carl directs quantum computing R&D, partnerships, and client pilots, including the design and development of applied quantum applications aimed at delivering near-team business value across a wide range of industries. Sample applications include pharmaceutical drug discovery, financial services portfolio analysis, supply chain optimization, and electrical grid load balancing.Carl has extensive research experience in the data platform space, including Big Data, modern data acceleration patterns, data processing pipelines / workflows, ingestion/munging/transformations, governance of data lakes, real rime analytical models, containerization and analytics at the edge. Prior to his work at Accenture Labs, Carl managed teams in Accenture’s Security Cyber Threat and Vulnerability Management group, testing for IT infrastructure weakness and creating protection strategies for large clients. Carl holds a Bachelor’s in Telecommunications from Michigan State University and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

President and Co-Founder
Dr. Season Wong is the President and Co-founder of AI Biosciences. The company aims to develop and commercialize molecular diagnostic technologies that can be truly afforded by those who use them in low-resource settings. Dr. Wong is currently leading efforts to develop modular units that can be integrated into a single low-cost device to perform sample preparation and molecular detection. He received his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Iowa State University and has over 20 years of R&D experience encompassing a broad range of disciplines, including analytical chemistry, electrochemistry, surface chemistry, and biosensors. He has led projects focused on the development of nucleic acid-based assays for infectious disease, homeland defense, environmental, and forensic applications.

No bio available

Associate Professor, Systems and Computational Biology
Dr. Parsa Mirhaji, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Systems and Computational Biology, the Director of Center for Health Data Innovations at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, and the Chief Technology Officer at the New York Clinical Data Research Network (NY-CDRN). Formerly, Dr. Mirhaji was the director of the Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Informatics Research at the University of Texas at Houston where he developed a real-time biosurveillance network in the metropolitan Houston area, for real-time outbreak and signal detection, and population health monitoring using clinical text understanding, semantic information integration, and EMR data. Dr. Mirhaji has been a member of W3C working groups for application of Semantic Technologies in Healthcare and Life Sciences, an acting committee member on the Texas Hospital Preparedness Program at the Texas State Department of Health Services and the Texas Institute for Health Policy Research, and a member of the Health Information Technology Advisory Commission for the Texas State Department of Health Services. Dr. Mirhaji is an inventor with several patents covering information integration, biomedical vocabularies and taxonomy services, clinical text understanding and natural language processing, electronic data capture, and knowledge-based information retrieval. Dr. Mirhaji and his fellow researchers were awarded “The Best Practice in Public Health Award-2002” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for establishing the Defense of Houston web-portal for community awareness and public readiness in the aftermath of September 11 attacks.

North Sector POCT Medical Lead
Anna Füzéry obtained her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and subsequently completed a 2-year postdoctoral training program in clinical chemistry at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes in Baltimore, MD. She accepted a position as clinical chemist for Alberta Health Services in 2013, where she oversaw high volume general chemistry testing at 11 laboratories in Edmonton, Alberta. She became medical lead of point-of-care testing (POCT) for Edmonton in 2017, and for the northern half of the province of Alberta in 2019. Her current interest is in enabling high quality, clinically relevant POCT in mobile health care environments.

Senior Director, R&D Strategy and Alliances, SPMD, Strategy, Program Management and Data Sciences
Tom received his PhD from the University of California San Francisco. He started his career in bioinformatics and data science, eventually leading teams in genomics, and molecular sciences. He then transitioned to project management, project leadership and portfolio management, ultimately taking on the role of chief of staff for the neuroscience research area. Two years ago, Tom joined Alexion to lead a number of alliances with the goal of increasing the ability to diagnose children with rare diseases. Recently, the alliance with the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine and CliniThink led to a record-setting patient diagnostic effort.

Principal Data Scientist, Childhood Cancer Data Lab
No bio available

Head, US Operations
Dr. Katarina Wikstrom (PhD) has worked for over 14 years in the field of translational molecular oncology and holds the position of Head of US Operations at Almac Diagnostics. Katarina has overall responsibility for all US laboratory technologies and services supporting biomarker discovery, assay development and validation, and product delivery.

Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley and Director, Innovative Genomics Institute
Dr. Urnov is a pioneer in the field of genome editing, with a diverse background in academia, industry and the nonprofit sector. He joined the IGI from Altius Institutes for Biomedical Sciences where he served as Associate Director. Prior, he was at Sangamo BioSciences from 2000 - 2016, where he co-developed and conamed human genome editing at native loci using engineered nucleases, and led the effort developing all major modalities of editing (correction, disruption, and integration). He also pioneered efforts to use engineered transcription factors for targeted epigenome engineering. As VP of Discovery and Translational Research, he shared leadership responsibilities for preclinical research for the first in vivo clinical trial of an engineered epigenome modulator; the first clinical trial for genome editing; and the first genome-edited crop. He’s authored more than 70 scientific publications and is an inventor of more than 130 issued and pending U.S. patents related to genome editing and targeted gene regulation technology. Dr. Urnov received his Bachelor’s Degree in Virology from Moscow State University, and his PhD in Biology from Brown University.

R&D Group Leader, Cell Biology, Imaging
No bio available

Clinical Variant Scientist & Genetic Counselor
Celeste Shelton, PhD, CGC, is a graduate of the MS in Genetic Counseling program at the University of Pittsburgh. She worked as a genetic counselor in the field of gastrointestinal diseases before returning for a PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research and contributions to the literature have focused on pancreatitis as a model for complex diseases, using a comprehensive approach of statistical, bioinformatics and qualitative methodologies. In 2019, Dr. Shelton joined Ariel Precision Medicine as a Clinical Variant Scientist. Her primary research interest is the use of genetic and other data to improve mechanistic subclassification and risk prediction for patients with complex disorders, to thereby improve clinical management and facilitate the identification of targeted therapies.

Assistant Professor, Pathology, Medical Director for Molecular Oncology
Dr. Coleman is an assistant professor of pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine and director of genomics for the Division of Anatomic Pathology at ARUP Laboratories. He earned his MD at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, OH, in 2007. Dr. Coleman subsequently completed his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the Cleveland Clinic (2011), followed by fellowships in hematopathology at the University of New Mexico (2012) and molecular genetic pathology at ARUP Laboratories/University of Utah (2013). He is board-certified in molecular genetic pathology, hematopathology, and anatomic and clinical pathology, practicing most recently at the Ohio State University (2013-16). Immediately prior to joining the University of Utah, Dr. Coleman served as the vice president of medical affairs with GenomOnocology, LLC, in Cleveland, Ohio. His academic interests include leveraging machine learning techniques to facilitate interpretation of genomic data.

Professor, Pathology, Medical Director for Genomics and Bioinformatics
Karl V. Voelkerding, MD, FCAP, received his Medical Degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1983. Subsequently, he completed postdoctoral research and clinical training in molecular biology and clinical pathology. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, where he developed and directed a molecular diagnostics laboratory while also practicing transfusion medicine. In 2001, Dr. Voelkerding served as President of the Association for Molecular Pathology, and in 2002 he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah to join the ARUP Laboratories. Currently, he is a Professor of Pathology at the University of Utah and a Medical Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the ARUP Laboratories. Dr. Voelkerding has a longstanding involvement in the translation of new technologies into molecular diagnostics, and this interest has focused over the past several years on next generation sequencing. He is currently the Chair of the College of American Pathologists Genomic Medicine Resource Committee.

Director, Strategy and Innovation
Michael is a seasoned strategy professional with a passion for advancing healthcare. He has focused his career on life sciences spanning 15 years in startups, management consulting, pharma, and currently leads Astellas US Corporate Strategy Team. As part of his current role at Astellas, he is interested in leveraging technology/digital health to improve outcomes, lower costs, and ultimately deliver more value in healthcare. He also leads Astellas Digital Health Incubator which is designed to enable better adoption of technology across the business.

Diagnostics Director, Precision Medicine Unit
No bio available

Director, Precision Medicine Quality Initiatives and Partnerships
As Director, Precision Medicine Quality Initiatives and Partnerships at AstraZeneca, Julie is currently working to expanding the company’s relationships with labs and professional organizations. She previously provided subject matter expertise to Pfizer’s growing portfolio of therapies with companion diagnostic activities. Julie has an expansive background in pathology, laboratory technologies, platforms, reimbursement and regulatory matters. Prior to joining pharma, she worked with large commercial references labs in sales management roles.

Executive Director, Translational Science, Oncology IMED
Brian is the Executive Director of Translational Genomics Oncology at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals in Boston, MA, leading AstraZeneca’s cancer genomics efforts. He oversees a team of lab scientists and computational biologists applying leading-edge genomic and advanced algorithmic technologies to deliver on Precision Medicine - matching the right patient with the right drug. This includes biomarker development, patient selection and monitoring strategies, identifying new tumor drug resistance mechanisms, researching genetics-based translational hypotheses, and delivering novel cancer targets. When he was previously at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, TIGR and Amgen, Brian led sequencing, genotyping, gene expression, high-content imaging, and functional genomics lab efforts, applying technologies to enable the discovery and development of medicines for diseases such as cancer, infectious diseases, chronic pain, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Brian holds a BA from the University of Delaware, a PhD from Wake Forest University Medical Center, an MBA from the University of New Haven, and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Hamilton O. Smith at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Senior Director, Advanced Analytics, Data Science and Bioinformatics
No bio available

Executive Director, Advanced Analytics and AI
Researcher in the applications of computational and statistical learning and analytical techniques for biomedical and other problems. Particularly in developing CLIA/LDT/IVD personalized molecular diagnostic assays, wearable devices and in drug development. Experienced in leading scientists and technical experts, and in representing technical issues and competencies to executive management and investors.

SVP, Operations and Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Andruss joined Asuragen since its founding in March 2006. Bernard has significant R&D experience from his increasing responsibilities at Asuragen's predecessor, Ambion, Inc., where he helped initiate new R&D projects and expanded its SBIR funding program. During his tenure at Asuragen, Bernard was responsible for leading many successful diagnostic product development programs. Prior to Ambion, he worked in progressive roles at Rice University and the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Co-Founder, CTO
David Deetz is a founder and CTO of Ativa Medical. Previously he founded two other medical device companies, one of which completed a successful IPO on NASDAQ and was identified by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing medical device companies in the nation. The other was acquired by Danaher/Radiometer and has become an important part of their POC product line. He also founded an artificial intelligence company which was the first AI application to get broad adoption by financial services companies. He has authored 11 U.S. patents and raised approximately $140 million in private and public capital for his companies.

Computational Scientist
Jonathan E. Allen has worked in bioinformatics research under the Science and Technology and Global Security programs for twelve years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He leads an informatics team focused on modeling and managing data for complex biomolecular processes. He has extensive experience developing new software tools for pathogen characterization from complex biological samples, transcript analysis in host response and machine learning for small molecule drug discovery. Dr. Allen received his PhD in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2006, after conducting his thesis work at The Institute for Genomic Research (now The J. Craig Venter Institute).

Head, Health Care and Life Sciences, Business Development
Dr. Lee provides physician leadership in business development for AWS Data Exchange, a new service that makes it easy to find and subscribe to third-party data in the cloud, in a regulatory compliant, ethically sound, economically sustainable, and secure cloud-native fashion. Fred’s personal passion is accelerating the digitally- driven transformation of healthcare to a predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory state.

Assistant Professor, Pathology & Immunology, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
Dr. Mamonkin is a faculty member at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine. The main research focus of his laboratory is studying the immunobiology of CAR-engineered T cells and developing adoptive cell therapies for hematologic malignancies. Dr. Mamonkin has developed and optimized for clinical evaluation CAR T cell platforms for T-cell malignancies and AML and serves as a PI on several clinical trials of CAR T cells at Baylor.

Head, Mobile
Neil Polwart combines 20 years' biosensor development experience with an interest in software to find mhealth solutions that help the diagnostics industry. He is an innovator, startup founder and commercially aware technologist operating with companies across the globe. Crossing the boundaries between biology, physics, chemistry and software engineering, he is an advocate for using connectivity to help patient care and accelerate diagnosis through the use of BBI Solutions’ Novarum™ mobile diagnostic platform.

Head, Product, Registry and Inventory
Ashoka Rajendra studied biology at UVA, working on small molecule drug combinations for melanoma and prostate cancer. He has since worked on software platforms for cancer genomics, healthcare, and life sciences. Ashoka is the Head of Product for Benchling's Registration and Inventory applications and works with leading biopharma organizations to optimize R&D processes on Benchling.

CEO
Kristen leads BIOAGE in its mission to develop a broad pipeline of therapies that target aging in order to increase healthspan and address chronic diseases. Kristen draws from a deep background in aging research and systems biology to develop BIOAGE’s data-driven approach to identify and target the molecular pathways that drive aging. Kristen received her PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto, followed by postdoctoral training at Stanford University where she was a fellow of the Ellison Medical Foundation / American Federation for Aging Research. She has over 10 years of experience developing novel bioinformatics approaches for data-driven investigation into the mechanisms of aging and age-related disease, with 18 published papers spanning computational drug discovery, biomarkers of aging, and the genetics of exceptional human longevity.

Chief Computational Biologist
Pankaj Agarwal has 22+ years of strategic and tactical experience utilizing bioinformatics to enable drug discovery and create pipeline value.  Dr. Agarwal has 50+ publications in top journals and multiple methodological and gene patents. Dr. Agarwal has served on NSF, NIH, FDA and PhRMA panels. He possesses a B.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT, Delhi and a PhD in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. He is a founding director and senior member of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). GSK Pharmaceuticals R&D appointed him a Senior Fellow in recognition of his internal and external achievements during his 22+ year tenure. At BioInfi, Dr. Agarwal serves as an advisor and strategic consultant to disease foundations and biotechnology companies including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Most importantly, Pankaj is passionate about drug discovery, data-driven solutions, and helping patients.

Director of Product Marketing, Marketing
After beginning her research career at the University of Michigan, Dr. Miller received her PhD at the University of Louisville School of Medicine before completing her post-doctoral fellowship at the Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania. With a career that spans over 20 years at the bench, as well as a Director and a Global Product Manager, all involving the use of biospecimens in the fields of cancer, immunology and virology, Dr. Miller is now Director of Product Marketing, Personalized Medicine, at BioIVT.

Application Consultant
BIOLYPH Lyophilization Technology and Services have been part of Meredith’s business and career experience since its founding in 1993. Global Strategic Marketing & Product Management / Beckman Coulter: 2009-2016. University of Southern California Marshall School of Business: MBA, 2018. Business Development Application Consultant / BIOLYPH 2016 -

Biotech Executive, Advisor, and Investor
Anne-Renee Hartman is the former acting CMO and VP of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs at GRAIL where she was responsible for the design and execution of clinical programs to discover and validate cell-free nucleic acid technology for early detection of cancer. Prior to GRAIL, Anne-Renee was the Senior Vice President of Clinical Development at Myriad Genetics, Inc. At Myriad, Anne-Renee led the development of several commercialized diagnostics in oncology, including hereditary cancer testing, companion diagnostics for PARP therapy, and diagnostic and prognostic assays for melanoma, lung, and prostate cancer. Anne-Renee was previously an Assistant Professor of Medicine at The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, specializing in breast cancer genetics. She completed her oncology fellowship at Stanford where she helped set up the cancer genetics clinic. Anne-Renee holds a BS in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, an MD from the University of Michigan, and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago.

President, CEO
No bio available

Senior Translational Medicine Expert
Ralph received his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Basel for his thesis on malarial CDK-like kinases. He continued to work on CDK-like kinases as a postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in the lab of Nobel laureate Prof. Tim Hunt. Still following his interest in protein kinases, he then joined ProQinase GmbH to support drug discovery and translational fee-for-service projects in Oncology. Applying his experience in oncology drug discovery/early development, he subsequently moved to Janssen and later Böhringer Ingelheim to support the translation of Oncology programs from Research to the clinic. In addition to working on biomarker strategies, he has been involved in several IMI-projects, including the PREDECT program, for which he acted as a co-coordinator, and CANCER-ID.

Director, Digital Health
No bio available

Director
Shivang Doshi has worked with a variety of pharmaceutical and diagnostics clients on issues related to market access, evidence development and reimbursement strategies of novel diagnostic technologies. His specific areas of expertise include value-based molecular assays, companion diagnostics, and informatics tools that support the delivery of precision medicine.

President & CEO
Joe Ferrara has over 20 years of experience in life sciences consulting, working with biopharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and informatics clients in market and business development strategy. Mr. Ferrara has extensive experience in the development of novel business approaches designed to capture evidence-based value for innovative healthcare technologies.

Senior Vice President
Mark Girardi has over 30 years of experience in life sciences, in vitro diagnostics, and medical devices commercialization and reimbursement. He has had roles in product management, sales and marketing, and most recently in strategy consulting. Mr. Girardi joins us from GfK Health, a global consultancy and market research firm, where he was Senior Vice President responsible for the MedTech consulting practice.

CEO
No bio available

Associate Professor, Pathology
Dr. Ligon is a Physician-Scientist with expertise in neuropathology and oncology focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He attended medical school and received his PhD at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School with joint appointments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is the Chief of Neuropathology at BWH/DFCI and the Director of the Center for Patient Derived Models (CPDM) at DFCI. His research and clinical activities have improved the scientific understanding of brain tumors. He is directly involved in the training of medical and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, residents, and faculty. Several of the methods he has developed in his research have been implemented in the clinical pathology lab to improve patient diagnosis. He has also led efforts to train neuropathologists in the utilization of genomic tests in practice and led genomically informed clinical trials development at the local and national consortium levels.

Director, Pharmacodiagnostics
Jonathan Baden is a Director, Pharmacodiagnostics in the Bristol-Myers Squibb Translational Medicine organization. He joined BMS in September 2017 and supports evaluation, strategy, development and execution of the companion/complementary biomarker diagnostic programs for BMS that enhance value of the pharmaceutical product profiles. Jon leads a PDx matrix subteam to execute upon solid tumor and liquid biopsy NGS related strategies pertaining to patient selection (TMB/HRD) and disease monitoring (ctDNA). He provides strategic direction to business development led searches, evaluations and transactions for diagnostic partnering. In addition, Jon coordinates activities between the Development, Commercial teams and external diagnostic partners and is responsible for delivery of diagnostic partner critical milestones. Prior to joining BMS, Jon led diagnostic strategies aligned with therapeutic disease areas for the development of stand-alone and companion diagnostic at Janssen Pharmaceuticals and J&J subsidiaries. Jon led matrix teams both internally and with external partners for the management, execution and resolution of assay process for all stages of the product development life cycle. Jon has expertise in oncology disease states (prostate, bladder, lung, breast, and colorectal cancers), autoimmune diseases (Crohn’s and lupus) and infectious diseases (HIV, HCV, IFV, RSV, Ebola) and managed an exploratory NGS team and a late stage development team accountability for products on a fully integrated MDx platform. Jon received his MS degree in Microbiology from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry working and also holds a BSc degree in Biotechnology from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Principal Scientist, Digital Pathology Lead, Translational Bioinformatics
Vipul Baxi is a scientific leader with more than 10 years of experience in the medical device and life science industry, with a specific concentration on technical and clinical aspects of computational pathology and tissue-based biomarkers in immuno-oncology. He is currently a Principal Scientist and Digital Pathology Group Lead in Translational Bioinformatics at Bristol-Myers Squibb. In this role, he leads the digital pathology technology platform team in developing a robust & scalable pathology informatics infrastructure to augment biomarker discovery within the drug development process, and partner with latest advances in immunohistochemistry and artificial intelligence to uncover the next generation of computational biomarkers. Prior to this role, Vipul spent 7.5 years at Omnyx LLC, a joint venture between GE Healthcare and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that developed and commercialized diagnostic pathology solutions, holding positions with increasing responsibility within R&D and Clinical Research organization. Vipul earned his BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University with a thesis focused on biomedical imaging instrumentation and image analysis.

Executive Director, Head Pharmacodiagnostics
George A. Green, IV PhD is Head, Pharmacodiagnostics in the Bristol-Myers Squibb Translational Medicine organization. He joined BMS in March 2010 and played a key role in establishing Pharmacodiagnostics as a core capability within BMS. In his role, George has been responsible for leading pharmacodiagnostic development programs in oncology, neuroscience, cardiovascular, and virology, as well as early diagnostic development programs in a number of therapeutic areas and across multiple technology platforms. In his current role, George heads the Pharmacodiagnostics team, providing strategic direction and support for all diagnostic platforms across the portfolio BMS Oncology and Innovative Medicine assets.

Associate Director, Clinical Genetics and Genomics
Mark Sausen joined Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2019 as an Associate Director within the Translational Medicine organization where he leads the development and implementation of genomic technologies in early- and late-stage oncology therapeutic programs. Mark was previously the Vice President of Research and Development at Personal Genome Diagnostics where he focused on the development and validation of next-generation sequencing-based approaches for noninvasive and solid tumor profiling, minimal residual disease detection, and disease monitoring. His prior research has focused on the development of novel tissue- and cell free DNA-based genomic technologies for the detection and analysis of cancer. Mark has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Science, Nature Genetics, and Science Translational Medicine on these topics. He received his BA from the University of Delaware in Biological Sciences and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University in Cellular and Molecular Medicine where he was honored with the Hans J. Prochaska Young Investigator’s Award.

Executive Director & Head of IT for Translational Medicine
Dr. Ajay Shah is Executive Director and Head of Translational Medicine IT at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), where his group provides technology platforms for Precision Medicine, Translational Bioinformatics and translational sciences laboratories. One of his current key initiatives is a R&D data integration, conformance and FAIR research eco-system, Sage. Prior to BMS, Dr. Shah headed Research Informatics and Systems at City of Hope and Beckman Research Center, a role that spanned Discovery, Clinical and Translational Research Informatics and Research IT. In past, he has worked at Elan Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer and Accelrys.

Lead IT Business Partner – Precision Medicine, Translational Medicine IT
No bio available

Vice President of Translational Bioinformatics, Informatics & Predictive Sciences
Dr. Joseph Szustakowski is the Vice President of Translational Bioinformatics at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) where he leads a large team of computational biologists. Their work spans all therapeutic areas from discovery through clinical development. Dr. Szustakowski received his undergraduate training in Physics (BS) and Mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Biomedical Engineering (PhD) at Boston University. While in graduate school, Joseph served as a member of the Human Genome Project’s annotation team. Following graduate school, Joseph joined Novartis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he held positions with increasing responsibility ending with service as Associate Director for marker data sciences at before joining BMS in 2015. During his time at BMS, he has built up the Translational Bioinformatics team, which has become a leader in the application of Next Generation Sequencing and related -omics technologies in clinical trials.

Schmidt Fellow, Principle Investigator
Juan Caicedo is a Schmidt Fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he investigates the use of deep learning to analyze biological data. Previous to this, he studied object detection problems in large scale image collections with deep reinforcement learning at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Juan received a PhD from the National University of Colombia and completed research internships in Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Queen Mary University of London as a grad student, working in problems related to large scale image classification, image enhancement, and medical image analysis. His research interest include computer vision, machine learning and computational biology.

Director of Outreach and Communications, Data Sciences Platform
Geraldine Van der Auwera directs outreach and communication efforts for the Data Sciences Platform at the Broad Institute. As part of that role, she serves as an educator and advocate for researchers who use DSP software and services including GATK, the Broad's industry-leading toolkit for variant discovery analysis; the Cromwell/WDL workflow management system; and Terra.bio, a cloud-based analysis platform that integrates computational resources, methods repository and data management in a user-friendly environment. Van der Auwera received her PhD in Biological Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium in 2007, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the Kolter lab at Harvard Medical School department of Microbiology.

Principal
Bruce Quinn, MD, PhD, is a professional strategy consultant helping innovative companies achieve their goals under U.S. federal health policies. His consulting practice, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, works with leading genomic, medical technology, and biopharma companies. Originally trained as a neuropathologist, earlier in his career he held tenure-track faculty positions at NYU Medical School and the Northwestern University School of Medicine. As a physician executive, he has held positions with Accenture’s healthcare strategies practice, the Medicare program, and with health policy groups in two law and lobbying firms. Recent publications have included articles on defining clinical utility for diagnostic tests and a review of the emerging digital genomics industry. In addition, his blog, www.DiscoveriesInHealthPolicy.com, covers innovative health care policy developments and receives over 100,000 hits per year. The website for Dr. Quinn’s firm is www.brucequinn.com.

President & CEO
As an engineer and data scientist, Adam’s passions include improving lives through implementing new technologies and rigorous analysis of impact. Prior to co-founding Canary Health, Adam was GM of Healthcare Services at dLife. He received his PhD in Health Economics from USC where he taught econometrics and health economics. He is also Board Chair of Mental Health America, Los Angeles

Field Application Specialist
J Spencer Schwarz benefits from over 15 years of industry experience. As a field application scientist for Canopy Biosciences, he assists in developing chip cytometry applications. He relies heavily on his time at Nikon Instruments supporting imaging from widefield fluorescence to confocal, multi-photon, and super resolution microscopy. His interest in method development and microscopy stems from experience as a formulation chemist at STERIS corporation. Spencer has a MS from Saint Louis University, St. Louis.

Senior Vice-President, Chief Operating Officer
Lorella Di Donato is leading the global scientific operations at Caprion Biosciences, Inc., overseeing the immune monitoring, proteomics, bioinformatics, and project management groups. Her scientific expertise includes assay development and validation for the analysis of biomarkers and drug products. She has validated over 200 assays and was instrumental in their deployment, from exploratory to primary endpoints, combining technical, scientific and regulatory requirements. She has been actively involved in regulatory audits for over twenty years.

Director, Science IP
Matthew is the Director of CAS Consulting Services, focusing on comprehensive chemical and pharmaceutical searching, technical analysis, competitive intelligence and drug discovery services. He holds a Master of Science degree in plant pathology from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology from Purdue University. In addition to his research experience at CAS, Matthew was an information consultant with Thomson Reuters and a biologist at Rohm and Haas.

Associate Professor, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences
Dr. Crawford’s laboratory accesses large-scale epidemiologic and clinical data in electronic health records to characterize common and rare genetic variants associated with human diseases. A particular interest is in identifying pleiotropy (when a single gene influences two or more seemingly unrelated physical traits) and environmental modifiers of genetic associations, including pharmacogenomics (the study of how genes affect a person’s response to drugs). She has published more than 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Among her accomplishments was serving as principal investigator of the NIH’s Electronic Medical Records & Genomics (eMERGE) Network Coordinating Center and co-chair of the eMERGE Network’s Genomics Working Group. She also played a leadership role in the NIH’s Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study. She is currently serving a three-year term as an elected member of the American Society of Human Genetics Board of Directors. In addition to her primary research, Dr. Crawford promotes the cultivation of women and minorities in STEM education and research by organizing and participating in national and international workshops and educational lectures, that emphasize participation and perspectives or women and minorities. She is an advocate for diversity in research design and cohort recruitment, recognizing that perspectives and findings from diverse studies can unlock why people with diverse genetic, behavioral, and environmental backgrounds can have varied outcomes to interventions or treatments. Her honors and awards include the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Faculty Diversity Award, Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science Distinguished Research Mentor Award, Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology Fellow, NCMHD/NIH Health Disparities Research Scholar, and the ASHG C.W. Cotterman Award. Before coming to CWRU, Dr. Craw­ford spent eight years as tenure-track faculty in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and Inves­ti­ga­tor in the Cen­ter for Human Genet­ics Research at Vanderbilt University.

Chief Science Officer
Kuan-Fu Ding is currently the Chief Science Officer at Catalytic Data Science. Until recently he was the Chief Technology Officer at Cubismi Inc. Earlier, as Chief Science Officer of Sapiens Data Science, Kuan led all aspects of the company’s science-related research, development, and solutions, including product strategy, bioinformatic and data analysis workflows, and technical support for commercial and operational functions. He worked closely with other company leaders to ensure effective use of diverse data sources, cost-effectiveness, and continuous improvement to achieve overall company success. Prior to joining Sapiens, Kuan was a Senior Data Scientist at Intrexon, where he pioneered data science and computational biology efforts in the health therapeutics division.  He successfully created a scientific team dedicated to the application of bioinformatics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence algorithms in health. Kuan received a PhD in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from the University of California, San Diego, a MSc in Biostatistics from the University of Virginia, and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin.

US Laboratory Head and Team Leader
Dr. Alexandre Juillerat, PhD, graduated in Chemistry from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. After receiving his PhD in 2006 in protein engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), he moved to the laboratory of Structural Immunology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. In 2010, he joined the R&D department of Cellectis in Paris, France, working on the development and implementation of sequence specific designer nucleases including the transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN®). He then joined the Cellectis facility based in New York, NY, USA, leading projects associated with the development of the T-cell chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology.

Director, R&D
Peggy Sotiropoulou joined Celyad in 2017. As Director of the R&D department, she leads a broad-ranging research program that aims to develop new strategies in CAR T cell design to target haematological and solid malignancies. Prior to Celyad, Peggy spent 17 years in Academic research in oncology and immunooncology. Before moving to industry, Peggy was associate Professor in the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Brussels, Belgium, leading research in fundamental oncology and publishing landmark papers in top tier scientific journals. The aim of Peggy in Celyad is to translate cutting-edge research and innovation into actual treatments for patients

Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, Regulatory Affairs
Elena Spanjaard is the Global Head of Regulatory Affairs at Celyad.  Elena is responsible for the global regulatory strategies for Celyad’s autologous and allogeneic CAR-T product pipeline in development for hematological malignancies and solid tumors.  Trained in immunology, she earned her PhD from Boston University School of Medicine and completed her post-doctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  Elena has developed regulatory strategies for cell and gene therapies, biologics, and small molecules in a wide range of disease indications with a special focus in immuno-oncology and T cell therapies.

CSO, Office of Advanced Molecular Detection
Duncan MacCannell is the chief science officer for the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection (OAMD), where he helps coordinate the implementation and support of pathogen genomics, bioinformatics, high-performance computing and other innovative laboratory technologies across the CDC’s four infectious disease centers. With a broad focus on public health laboratory science and strategic innovation, he manages the agency's high performance computing center of excellence, and works to integrate standardized, sustainable capacity for advanced laboratory technologies and scientific computing into routine public health practice. As a public health microbiologist and molecular epidemiologist, Duncan has worked with the PulseNet program on the development and validation of next-generation subtyping and characterization methods for Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC), as a general subject matter expert in bacterial molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance, and as the CDC laboratory surveillance lead for healthcare-associated pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile. His current research interests include the application of comparative pathogen genomics and metagenomics to public health microbiology, and the development, validation, and implementation of molecular diagnostics, next-generation straintyping and bioinformatics for pathogen identification, outbreak investigation and large-scale molecular surveillance.

Senior Director, Medical Affairs
Michael J. Loeffelholz, PhD, D(ABMM) is Senior Director, Medical Affairs at Cepheid, and Adjunct Professor of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston. He received a PhD in microbiology from Ohio University, Athens, OH in 1987. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship in medical and public health microbiology at the University of Rochester in 1990, he was a Senior Scientist at Roche Molecular Systems from 1990-1995. From 1995-2008 Dr. Loeffelholz held leadership positions in public health laboratories and private reference laboratories. From 2008-2018 he held the rank of Associate Professor, then Full Professor in the Pathology Department at UTMB, and Medical Director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Dr. Loeffelholz joined Cepheid in 2018. He is an editor of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. He currently serves as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology and is a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office of Infectious Diseases. He previously served on the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) Board of Directors. Dr. Loeffelholz has authored over 80 research and review papers and book chapters.

Director, Microbiology and Virology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Jennifer Dien Bard, PhD, D(ABMM) is the Director of the Clinical Microbiology and Virology Laboratory at Children¹s Hospital Los Angeles and an Associate Professor with Clinical Scholar designation at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Dien Bard’s research interest include studying the applications of rapid diagnostics in the clinical setting to determine clinical utility. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of rapid molecular diagnostics.

Senior Manager, Head of Applied AI and Data Science
Nasim is a Data Scientist leading predictive analytics and clinical decision support efforts at City of Hope Center for Informatics. Her area of focus is application of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to real-time monitoring, risk assessment and management of adverse events for oncology patient population. Outside City of Hope, Nasim advises many startup companies on technology and roadmap for successful implementation of AI solutions. Before joining City of Hope, Nasim co-founded Aistra Inc, an AI company that leveraged publically available social media, political and financial markets data to make predictions and recommendations regarding stock and commodity markets. Nasim holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering.

Assistant Professor, Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation
Dr. Priceman is a tumor immunologist with expertise in T cell biology and cancer immunotherapy. He is deeply committed to rapidly advancing innovative immunotherapy approaches on behalf of patients with cancer, in part because of personal experience with family and friends who have struggled with the disease. As an Assistant Professor in the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, Dr. Priceman is developing Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-based T cell immunotherapy for solid cancers, with a strong focus on metastatic disease in prostate, breast, and ovarian cancer. His current laboratory research focuses on clinically relevant metastatic cancer models to develop combination therapy strategies to improve the durability and potency of CAR T cells, and ultimately the overall immunotherapy response in solid tumors.

Senior Manager, Head of Applied AI and Data Science
No bio available

Chief Digital Officer
Mark Hulse is the Chief Digital Officer for City of Hope where he serves as a key member of the Executive Leadership Team and is responsible for fostering a transformative digital culture and leading digital solution development across City of Hope. In this role, Hulse is charged with solving key business challenges and leads a broad range of digital initiatives to support City of Hope's clinical, research, operations and administrative objectives. Prior to this, Hulse served as CEO of the THEO Executive Group, which provides leadership advisory services to healthcare enterprises nationally. Hulse also served as the Chief Administrative Officer at the Moffitt Cancer Center and, prior to that, was the Chief Information Officer at Moffitt. Prior to joining Moffitt, he was the VP and CIO for North Shore Medical Center, part of the Partners Healthcare System in Boston, Massachusetts. His health care background also includes 11 years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and 8 years with Stanford University Medical Center in California.

Principal
Charles Mathews has been a life science strategy consultant for 15+ years. He leads the Medtech practice at ClearView Healthcare Partners. He combines expertise in commercialization and reimbursement market access with a strong understanding of the scientific and technical aspects of innovative products. He often plays a key role in helping multi-national innovators determine the value of a potential M&A transaction and advises early stage start-ups.

Director, Medical Affairs
Dr. Schoolnik is Professor of Medicine (Emeritus, Active) in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Stanford Medical School. He is also Associate Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection at the university and is an Attending Physician in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Stanford University Hospital. Dr. Schoolnik attended Stanford University. He received his MD degree from the University of Washington in Seattle and was Intern, Resident and Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Schoolnik was an Associate Physician and Research Associate in microbial biochemistry and genetics at The Rockefeller University in Manhattan before joining the Stanford Medical School faculty. Dr. Schoolnik’s research has focused on the genetics, genomics and systems biology of pathogenic microbes. He led the Gates Foundation funded tuberculosis genome sequence and bioinformatics database, TBDB.org, and was PI of the NIH-funded Systems Biology of M. tuberculosis international consortium “TBSysBio”. He served on the NIAID National Advisory Council and co-chaired the NIH’s Blue Ribbon Committees on Bioterrorism as well as the commitee on the Human Microbiome. Dr. Schoolnik is the founding editor of the journal Molecular Microbiology. While at Stanford he served as Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, and as Associate Dean, office of Academic Affairs.

CEO & Founder
Ting Shih is the CEO and founder of ClickMedix, an award-winning healthcare technology social enterprise born out of MIT to enable health organizations to serve more patients through its mHealth platform. Her areas of expertise include health technology solution design, scale-up strategy, lean/Six Sigma process improvement and organization change management. She spent the last 10 years implementing mobile health programs across 20 countries serving 500,000+ patients in Asia, Africa, South America and North America to deliver financially sustainable health programs through ClickMedix platform. The programs enable health workers and nurses to manage low-cost clinics using an mHealth kiosk that integrates with point-of-care diagnostics devices to provide health services including maternal/child care, primary care, and chronic disease management. The program connects to a global network of remote specialists to provide further diagnosis and treatment advice. The system also enables home visits and community surveys to be conducted easily through mobile smartphones by health workers. Ting has worked with health systems, governments, research institutions, and private corporations to reduce costs of healthcare systematically, while reaching more underserved patients. Ting is Asian American Chamber of Commerce Young Professional of the Year (2018), winner of USAID / DAI Innovation into Action Challenge in 2016, Toyota Mother of Invention in 2015, and she is the Cartier Women’s Initiative Laureate 2012 for North America. She holds an MBA and MS in Systems Engineering from MIT. In addition, she has a BS in Computer Science and MS in Software Design and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Principal
Ms. Yanak is an award-winning, cross-functional Pharmaceutical and Central Lab executive who has held leadership positions in laboratory, technology, clinical operations, and innovation domains. Recognized in the industry as a subject matter expert in consent management, specimen management, and virtual specimen tracking, she has been responsible for enterprise wide specimen and technology strategy at more than one company. She was one of the first to pilot uses of artificial intelligence within clinical trials, and drove the operationalization of precision medicine at one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, enabling value capture of advancements in genetics and biomarkers. Brenda is often asked to speak at conferences and chair panels to discuss innovative ways to translate scientific strategy into clinical trial operations.

Head, Clinical Reporting
Dr. Annette Leon is a medical geneticist board certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics and Head of Clinical Reporting at Color. She completed her fellowship in Clinical Molecular Genetics and Genomics and Clinical Cytogenetics and Genomics at Harvard Medical School’s Genetics Training Program. Dr. Leon also received a PhD in BioPhysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Her clinical work currently focuses on improving access and utilization of genomic medicine at a population level, bringing more than 10 years of experience in medical genetics.

Co-Director Genomic Oncology, Laboratory of Personalized Genomic Medicine
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 focused on validation and implementation of clinical NGS assays and has inspected clinical laboratories nationally and internationally. Dr. Fernandes is involved in the training and education of molecular diagnosticians and has presented at meetings and webinars nationally and internationally. She is an active member of several organizations including, Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) and American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC).

Senior Manager, Assay Development, Research and Development
Melissa McConechy completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia investigating mutational profiles of gynecological cancers. Postdoctoral training was completed at McGill University with a focus on molecular mechanisms of pediatric glioblastoma. Throughout her career, Melissa has investigated the development of liquid biopsy assays for precision medicine.

Founder and CSO
Corrado Priami is professor of computer science at the University of Pisa, director of the Pisa node of the Stanford SPARK Global initiative, and has 20+ years of academic and industrial experience in the application of computational technology for pharma and food companies. He is the founder of COSBI, that he led 12+ years as President and CEO. He managed projects for over euro 30 million (about euro 16 million for industrial projects). He served in the Senate of the University of Verona, in the BoD of the University of Trento, in the BoD of the Trento School of Management and in the BoD of COSBI as chairman of the board. He published over 200 scientific papers, gave more than 110 invited talks and lectures, regularly serves in advisory and scientific boards (including the Stanford SPARK program) as well as in reviewing panels for international funding agencies and institutions. He supervised more than 100 people (students, PhD students, Post-Docs) of which about 40 are now in senior or research positions in academia and industry. He got a master and PhD in computer science from the University of Pisa. He was post-doc with a competitive EU Marie Curie Grant at the Ecole Normale Superiéure in Paris (1996-97), researcher and associate professor at the University of Verona (1997-2001), visiting scholar at Microsoft Corp (2004), visiting professor at Stanford University (2016-17), professor at the University of Trento (2001-2017).

Director, Clinical R&D
Daniel L. Adams is Director of Clinical R&D at Creatv MicroTech’s facility in NJ, focusing on development of custom assays and analysis of patient samples.  He is credited with the discovery and phenotyping of circulating cancer associated macrophage-like cells (CAMLs). He has written extensively on the isolation, identification and clinical utility of CTCs, CAMLs, EMTs and circulating endothelial cells.

Executive Editor
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 PhD 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.

Head, Precision Medicine, Clinical Biomarkers & Companion Diagnostics
No bio available

Senior Director, Companion Diagnostics
No bio available

Chief Commercial Officer & President
Olivier Jarry is President and Chief Commercial Officer of DarioHealth (www.dariohealth.com, Nasdaq: DRIO), a digital therapeutics company supporting people with diabetes and other chronic conditions with digitally-based, clinically-proven interventions. He has launched new products (digital and physical products) and new business models for fast-growing companies and large pharma such as Novartis, Bayer Diabetes Care or BMS, around the world. Olivier holds a TRIUM executive MBA (NYU Stern, LSE London, HEC Paris), a MEng from the French DOD and a MSc from Ecole Centrale de Paris.

Partner
David Cavanaugh is a partner at DeciBio with over 15 years of combined experience in life science business consulting and academic and corporate life science research and development. David has extensive experience assisting medical device clients with market assessments, opportunity identification, product / franchise expansion strategies, growth strategy development, and new product developments. A recent example included a WW market assessment in the medical diagnostics space where his VOC research and analysis identified key customer requirements and actions the client could take to better compete with existing and new product offerings. Prior to DeciBio, David worked for six years as a Senior Manager at L.E.K. Consulting where he managed multiple ongoing lifescience engagements at a time. Prior to that, David worked for seven years as a computational biologist at leading organizations, including Genentech and GlaxoSmithKline. David received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University with a focus in international strategy, biotechnology and healthcare and his BS in Chemical Engineering from UVA.

CSO
Nicholas (Nic) Dracopoli, PhD is Chief Scientific Officer at DELFI Diagnostics, a seed stage cancer diagnostics company based in Baltimore, MD. Previously he led oncology translational science teams at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Janssen. Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, he spent several years in the biotechnology industry at Sequana Therapeutics. Nic obtained his bachelor’s degree and doctorate from the University of London and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, NY and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA. 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 National Institutes of Health. Nic has authored more than 70 scientific publications and has extensive experience in the fields of genomics, molecular biology and cancer research.

Chief Health Informatics Officer, Principal
Asif is a principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP's Monitor Deloitte practice. He serves as Chief Health Informatics Officer (CHIO) and helps drive the Therapeutic Area Transformation Integrated offering. He is a thought leader on topics such as comparative and clinical effectiveness, exponentials and innovation, personalized medicine, informatics, and disease transformation. He has a deep understanding of the complexities of clinical data reuse for safety, quality, and outcomes.

Executive Vice President, IHC Services
For more than 30 years Frank Lynch has been a pioneer in immunohistochemistry applications in research & clinical studies. He co-founded QualTek Molecular Laboratories & developed an IHC services platform built around this powerful tool that allows for the understanding of expression & localization of specific proteins with cell & sub-cellular specific resolution. He received his PhD from Rutgers University/UMDNJ, where he researched dUTPase and its role in patient response to 5FU in colorectal cancer.

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 the Precision Medicine Academy (precisionmedicineacademy.org). She also designs and delivers custom workshops and courses to international audiences and advises companies on strategic and technical aspects of precision medicine. Jeanette is coauthor of the book, Precision Medicine: A Guide to Genomics in Clinical Practice (2016, McGraw Hill Education).

Chancellor Emeritus, Director, Duke Center for Personalized Health Care
Dr. Snyderman served as Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine at Duke University from 1989 to July 2004. During this time, he oversaw the development of the Duke University Health System and served as its first president and CEO. Dr. Snyderman’s current focus is personalized health care and he continues to lead these efforts nationally from his position as Director of the Duke Center for Research on Personalized Health Care. Areas of expertise and national recognition: Personalized Health Care, Immunology, Inflammation, Rheumatology and Medical Center Administration.

CEO & Co-Founder
Andy Coravos is a software engineer and the CEO/co-founder of Elektra Labs, which is building a pre-competitive digital biomarker consortium, and a Fellow at Boston Children’s Computation Health Informatics Program. Andy interned as a software engineer at Akili Interactive Labs, a leader in digital medicine and digital biomarkers while in grad school. Before grad school, she worked at KKR, a private equity firm, and McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, where she focused on the healthcare industry. She writes about healthcare, software/tech, digital biomarkers, the attention economy, and more on her blog.

Research Project Manager
Christine Manta (@christinemanta) is the Research Project Manager at Elektra Labs. Previously, Christine worked on research teams at Christiana Care’s Value Institute, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She was introduced to the digital medicine field via her work with Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI)’s systematic review of feasibility studies using mobile technologies in clinical research. She has a master’s in nutrition and is Registered Dietitian. Christine also serves as a Research Lead at Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), a 501(c)3 professional society for digital medicine practitioners.

Vice President
Mark Shervey (@markshervey) is VP of Engineering at Elektra Labs. Prior to joining Elektra Labs, Mark was the Chief Architect for the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (INGH), where he managed patient datasets, data integrations and led technology strategy at the institute. During his time at Mount Sinai, he represented INGH as their lead engineer for Lab100, a breakthrough project that is part clinic, part research lab, and uses precision diagnostics to empower patients and help scientists advance our understanding of human health.

Senior Director, Digital Health
A physician by training with extensive experience in R&D, medical and commercial areas, Dr. Yang has keen understanding of the issues, challenges and opportunities in healthcare system and pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Yang is passionate about leveraging digital technology to drive healthcare transformation and deliver better outcome. Currently, Dr. Yang leads teams that are composed of physicians, biomedical engineers and data scientists to develop Lilly’s capabilities in Digital Health across therapeutic areas. He has leadership oversight for digital biomarkers (dBMs), behavioral coaching and digital therapies.

Senior Director, Diagnostic and Experimental Pathology, Lilly Research Laboratories
Jeff Fill is the Senior Director in Diagnostic and Experimental Pathology at Eli Lilly. With over 25 years of experience in clinical biomarker laboratories Jeff has extensive experience developing and implementing biomarker solutions for clinical trial support. Spanning from research grade to IVD level development efforts, he utilizes a unique risk-based quality system to validate, verify or qualify assays and instruments to support Therapeutic Drug Team requirements. Jeff is a military veteran who received his BS in Medical Technology from Indiana University in 1993, MBA from Kelly School of Business (Indiana University) in 2011 and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in 2012.

Chief Medical Officer, Molecular Genetics and Personalized Medicine
Dr. Lon Castle is responsible for the clinical performance of the Laboratory Medicine and Specialty Drug programs at eviCore healthcare. He has been working in the genomic and molecular diagnostic field for over a decade, designing and implementing programs that support personalized medicine initiatives that bring additional precision to the healthcare decisions facing physicians and their patients. Previously, Dr. Castle worked as the Medical Director for Managed Care at CardioDx where he was responsible for discussing the science of their proprietary genomic test to detect coronary artery disease to payers. He also collaborated with payers on projects and program designs to demonstrate the clinical value of the test. As part of the Medical Affairs team, Dr. Castle was also involved in developing the clinical and health economic study designs. Before CardioDx, Dr. Castle was employed at Medco Health Solutions (now Express Scripts) as the Senior Director for Clinical Innovation. During his 12 years there he worked on numerous projects, including the initial development of the company’s personalized medicine testing programs, demonstration projects with pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish the value of genetic markers for novel medications and publication of the organization’s annual Drug Trend Report. Dr. Castle received his undergraduate degrees in Biology and English from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. He received his medical degree from the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. He completed his residency in Family and Community Medicine at the Medical Center of Delaware in Wilmington and his Sports Medicine fellowship at The Ohio State University in Columbus. Dr. Castle practiced sports medicine for over a decade at the Baylor College of Medicine and the Baylor Sports Medicine Institute in Houston, TX, serving as team physician for numerous professional, college and high school sports teams.

Director Gene Editing Research, Vertex Genetic Therapies
No bio available

Director
Peter Marks received his graduate degree in cell and molecular biology and his medical degree at New York University and completed Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Medical Oncology training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has worked in academic settings teaching and caring for patients and in industry on drug development. He joined the FDA in 2012 as Deputy Center Director for CBER and became Center Director in January 2016.

Professor, College of Pharmacy
Dr. Klepser received his Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy in 1992. He has also completed a pharmacy practice residency at Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center and a fellowship in infectious diseases at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Klepser has been a Professor of Pharmacy at Ferris State University. Dr. Klepser’s research interests include CLIA-waived point-of-care tests, influenza, and health economics. Dr. Klepser has published extensively on these topics and has more than 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts to his credit

CEO & Co-Founder
Howard has been a leader in the VR industry for over 20 years. From his early days in VR R&D for education, Howard has been breaking new ground and developing a vision for how VR can enhance people’s lives. His project portfolio includes immersive VR applications for therapy, augmented reality surgical training, mobiles and interactive museum exhibits. Howard is Co-Founder and CEO of Firsthand, trailblazing the future Virtual Reality for healthcare. Beyond having a deep understanding of the theory behind VR in healthcare, Howard also brings a unique, creative edge to craft powerful experiences that achieve meaningful measurable outcomes. Howard is a frequent invited speaker at conferences and in the media on virtual reality, healthcare and science.

Research Bioinformatician, Clinical Research Division
As a research bioinformatician investigating pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, I have discovered an area of research in high need for computational support. Childhood AML has a multitude of subtypes defined by cytogenetics, structure variations, and recurrent mutations. I have applied transcriptional profiling methods to further understand the pathogenesis and prognosis of AML variants and to reveal potential therapeutic targets, networks and pathways.

Vice President and Chief Data Officer Director
No bio available

CMO, Clinical Laboratory Director
As Freenome’s Chief Medical Officer and Clinical Laboratory Director, Girish oversees the development and validation of Freenome’s tests and helps navigate the regulatory and reimbursement complexities of the healthcare industry. He continues to serve as a member of CMS’ Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee. Previously, Girish was Director of Laboratory Science for Palmetto’s MolDX program, which oversees coverage and reimbursement for molecular testing for over half of the Medicare population. In prior leadership roles at Life Technologies, Ariosa Diagnostics, and Crescendo Bioscience, he oversaw the development, validation, launch, and commercialization of tests in oncology, fetal-maternal health, and rheumatology. In roles at Panorama Capital and RiverVest Venture Partners, Girish focused on life science investments, serving on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Presidio Pharmaceuticals, PowerVision, and Phenomix. Girish holds an MD, PhD in molecular neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis, and subspecialized in molecular genetic pathology at Stanford University, where he served as adjunct faculty. He completed undergraduate work at Rice University, and postgraduate studies at the University of London as a Marshall Scholar.

Practice Leader, TechVision, Innovation Services
Dr. Sudeep Basu is a member of the global consulting practice at Frost & Sullivan. His interests include intellectual property, technology management, and business strategy. He is an inventor on patents while having published several peer reviewed journal and conference articles. Dr. Basu volunteers for BayBio and is an active member of the Silicon Valley chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). He was an AHA Pre-doctoral fellow at the Brown Cancer Research Center and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

Venture Partner
Shrawan received his medical degree from Imperial College, London (ranked 2nd globally by QS 2015) with a distinction in General Practice. Thereafter he practiced both general medicine and general surgery in London for a number of years. Outside of Medicine his past positions include: Global Advisor for a US health benefits consulting firm, Executive Board member for an $11M charity, Corporate Strategy Intern at one of the world’s largest healthcare insurers, and project lead for a risk management assignment for the world’s second largest financial clearing house. He also has also been heavily involved in the London start-up scene focusing on health and education technologies.

System Director, Chemistry, Toxicology and Point-of-Care Testing
Dr. Elsie Yu is a Medical Laboratory Director at Geisinger Health System with a system leadership role in Clinical Chemistry, Immunology, Toxicology and Point-of-Care Testing. She is also a Clinical Associate Professor at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. In 2016, she was named “40 Under Forty Top Five” by American Society of Clinical Pathology. Since she joined Geisinger in 2010, Geisinger has grown from a two- to over ten-hospital system with over 80 clinics. During this rapid growth, she has integrated different hospitals and clinics to the Geisinger Health System through consolidation and standardization to enhance testing services. Her main interest is to improve laboratory test utilization and operational efficiency. Much of her work requires extensive collaboration with clinical providers to achieve system standardization and clinical effectiveness. She earned her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology at University of Wisconsin – Madison, completed her clinical fellowship at Boston’s Children Hospital. She is board-certified by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry.

Global Head, PHC Imaging
Thomas Bengtsson joined Genentech in 2009, supporting clinical imaging in the Statistical Methods Group. Since 2017 he has led the Imaging Group within Roche Personalized Healthcare, focusing on AI solutions for imaging in drug development. He completed his PhD in Statistics in 2000 (University of Missouri, MO). He was a postdoc at National Center for Atmospheric Research, CO (2000–2003), the Neyman Visiting Professor in Statistics at the University of California, CA (2003–2005) and has worked at Bell Labs, NJ (2005–2009)

Technical Development Engineer @ Genentech and Vice President of Startegy & Corporate Development @ Research to the People, my enjoyment and expertise lies at the intersection of biomedicine and computation. Currently focused on technology evaluation, CMC strategy and corporate development for multi-omic analytics and individualized therapeutics. My prior experience spans tissue engineering, biologics development and life science consulting. A proud first-generation college student, I am passionate about improving education outcomes, evolving diversity practices and reducing health inequities.

Senior Scientist, Oncology Biomarker Development
No bio available

Director, Senior Scientist, Oncology Bioinformatics
Richard is a Senior Scientist and is the Director for Oncology Bioinformatics at Genentech. He and his group pursue research in three major areas: (i) statistical and bioinformatics aspects of genomic data analysis, (ii) identification and application of genomic-assay biomarkers in the context of oncology clinical trials, and (iii) general characterization of the mechanisms of oncogenesis and drug resistance. A portion of the group specializes in problems in cancer immunology and immunotherapy, including molecular characterization of the tumor microenvironment and the use of tumor-specific neoantigens as biomarkers or as therapeutic targets. Richard obtained his PhD in Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. He spent four years as a Staff Scientist at the European Bioinformatics Institute before joining Genentech in 2010.

Global Head of Analytics, PHC Data Science, Personalized Healthcare (PHC), Product Development
No bio available

Head of Personalized Healthcare, Pharma Informatics
No bio available

Vice President, Oncology Biomarker Development & Companion Diagnostics
Abhijit “Ron” Mazumder obtained his BA from The Johns Hopkins University, his PhD from the University of Maryland, and his MBA from Lehigh University. After working in several biotech companies, he joined Johnson & Johnson in 2003 and led molecular diagnostics programs and biomarker collaborations. In 2008, he joined Merck as a Senior Director and Biomarker Leader in External Discovery where he was responsible for the development of pharmacodynamic and predictive biomarkers. Ron rejoined Johnson & Johnson in 2010 and led the development of companion and complementary diagnostics across the therapeutic pipeline and co-led several late stage oncology biomarker programs. In October 2016, he joined Genentech where he is currently Vice President and Global Head of Oncology Biomarker Development and Companion Diagnostics.

Head of Science Infrastructure
No bio available

Principal Project Manager, Knowledge Management, Pharma Technical Development
Alan Pruitt has over 20 years of experience implementing and managing automation and manufacturing execution systems in clinical and commercial biotech manufacturing. Currently Alan is a Knowledge Management Principal in the Pharma Technical Development division, focusing on building processes and tools for effective knowledge capture and reuse.

Senior Scientist, Departments of Molecular Oncology and Early Discovery Biochemistry
Dr. Wertz performed her graduate studies at Genentech via an NIH Biotechnology Training Grant. Here she learned that rigorous scientific experimentation is the foundation for rational drug design. Dr. Wertz continued her training in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis, where she witnessed the positive impact that effective medicines can have on patients. She chose to return to Genentech as a scientist in order to help patients through scientific discoveries. Her aims are to understand the molecular basis of disease and to translate those findings into novel therapeutics. Dr. Wertz is currently a Senior Scientist in the departments of Discovery Oncology and Early Discovery Biochemistry at Genentech, where she leads a research lab and directs drug discovery efforts focused on co-opting the ubiquitin/proteasome system.

Scientist, Oncology Biomarker Development
No bio available

Vice President, Global Head, Data Science
No bio available

Corporate Vice President, Head, Translational Research
Kate Sasser, PhD is Vice President, Oncology Translational Research, at Janssen Research & Development, LLC. She leads the translational research teams for the three oncology Disease Area Strongholds (DAS; lung, prostate and hematologic malignancies), as well as the Computational Biology and Operations teams. Kate joined Janssen Research & Development in 2012, as an Associate Director and was a member of the Oncology Translational Research group supporting the hematologic malignancy DAS. She led that team in 2014-16 and has made major contributions to many of our hematologic malignancy programs. She was honored with the 2016 Johnson Medal, the highest award across Johnson & Johnson’s R&D organizations. Prior to joining Janssen Research & Development, Kate led a new group at Lab Connect, LLC, focused on providing translational scientific services for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Kate earned her Bachelor of Science. in Microbiology and Chemistry from Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, and her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. She has worked in translational science for more than 15 years as an academic researcher and as a biotechnology and pharmaceutical scientist.

Managing Director
For over a decade, Genoa Ventures’ founder and managing director Dr. Jenny Rooke has been deploying capital at the frontiers of life sciences innovation, with a penchant for technology-fueled solutions and category-defying opportunities. Jenny got her start in venture at Fidelity Biosciences, a Cambridge-based healthcare VC, during their Fund I formation. Jenny then brought her unique toolkit of genetics domain expertise, strategic business acumen, and venture investing to the Gates Foundation, where she deployed and managed over $250M in funding in genetic engineering, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. She also played a key role in establishing the foundation’s investing function. In 2014, Dr. Rooke began independently investing under the brand 5 Prime Ventures, financing her investments using what has become the largest life sciences syndicate on AngelList, and one of the highest-performing AngelList syndicates of any sector. Jenny founded Genoa Ventures in 2018, building on the 5 Prime Ventures track record, in order to scale a proven, differentiated investing strategy, to ensure continued access to the very best deals, and to maximize portfolio returns.

CEO
Gentian’s CEO Dr. Hilja Ibert’s vision is to innovate diagnostic efficiency together with her inter-disciplinary and international team at Gentian. She is a hands-on CEO, driving development and commercialisation of product solutions for the clinical diagnostics market. Dr. Hilja Ibert has over 25 years’ experience from the international diagnostic industry, from which she has proved her extensive leadership skills. She has previously held the position as VP International Diagnostic Solutions at Hologic, and several senior positions within Becton Dickinson and bioMerieux. Dr. Hilja Ibert also has experience with early stage R&D companies, like her position as CEO for miDiagnostics in Belgium. Dr. Hilja Ibert holds a PhD degree in Nutrition Science from the University of Bonn, Germany.

Executive Director of Bioinformatics & Clinical Data Sciences
Over two decades of translational research experience in both clinical, academic and industrial settings, focus on genomics, clinical data sciences in the area of infectious disease, oncology, and inflammatory disease. Excellent understanding of current trends and technologies in bioinformatics and big data to support translational research. Extensive leadership experience in a cross-functional environment in pharmaceutical companies. Strong management experience in hiring, building and supervising a bioinformatics & clinical data sciences team.

Vice President, Biomarker Sciences
Dr. Patterson joined Gilead early in 2015 to lead biomarker discovery and development across all therapeutic areas (aside from direct acting antivirals), Inflammation, Oncology, Liver Fibrosis and host HBV/HIV Cure efforts; including responsibility for biomarkers which transition to in vitro diagnostics. From 1993-2000 and 2003-2015 he was at Amgen, Inc. initially leading their proteomics and apoptosis efforts and from 2003, as Executive Director, Medical Sciences, establishing and leading their biomarker and in vitro diagnostics programs across all therapeutic areas. From 2000-2003 he was Vice President, Proteomics at Celera Genomics Group where he established their protein-based therapeutic antibody target discovery program and Chief Scientific Officer at Farmal Biomedicines, LLC. He has served on multiple industry and professional groups associated with advancement of biomarkers and diagnostics. Dr. Patterson received his BSc and PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology at The University of Queensland, Australia where he also worked, ultimately as a Senior Research Officer in Dept Physiology and Pharmacology. He was a Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, received the Long island Biological Association, New Investigator award and was the 2002 Barnett Lecturer (Northeastern University). Dr. Patterson has authored over 110 publications, 25 book chapters and 9 patents.

Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs, Precision & Digital Medicine
Mike received his BA in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Princeton University. Mike continued his academic research career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School-Milwaukee Clinical Campus. Mike gained expertise in the preparation of FDA IDE and PMA medical device submissions for lasers used for vision correction surgery at Bio-Reg Associates. At QIAGEN (formerly Digene), Mike led the Regulatory /Clinical Affairs Group that prepared numerous FDA PMA submissions for the first FDA approved HPV DNA test for cervical cancer screening. Mike Benecky joined GSK in October 2011 as Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs in Precision and Digital Medicine located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Mike currently assists GSK Teams in regulatory strategy during use of digital health technology in both clinical trial and commercial settings. Recent projects include the commercial launch of the MyAsthma mobile medical app in the EU and inclusion of digital sensors and mobile apps within GSK clinical development programs.

Vice President, Technology
No bio available

Head, Precision Medicine and Diagnostics
No bio available

Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs
Lakshman leads the diagnostics global regulatory group at GSK, prior to which he was global regulatory lead at Foundation Medicine. He worked at the US FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), variously, as Senior Reviewer leading the FDA- CMS Parallel Review pilot project, Acting Associate Director, Policy Advisor to the Office of Center Director CDRH and finally as Legislative Analyst in the Office of Commissioner on issues pertaining to FDASIA and user fees. From 2014-16, he was appointed member of CMS' Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC). Lakshman has a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by post-doctoral training in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Senior Director, Companion Diagnostics
Mary graduated with a PhD in Pharmacology from Columbia University studying neuron injury and regeneration. She joined Cephalon, Inc. (now Teva Pharmaceuticals) to study Alzheimer's disease (AD) drug discovery and translational sciences research, including amyloid and secretase biology, with application to secretase inhibition, transgenic AD model development, and tau kinase inhibitor biology and drug discovery. Mary continued her study of Alzheimer’s disease at Merck, joining in 2006, where she led translational efforts on several amyloid beta-, apoE-, and tau-targeted drug discovery programs. In 2009, Mary shifted to become the lead for AD biomarker development, working with consortia including ADNI, ADNI PPSB and GBSC and leading to the application of patient enrollment biomarkers in two Phase III clinical trials of beta secretase inhibitor. In 2013, Mary joined the companion diagnostic group at Merck to develop biomarkers for Keytruda, including PD-L1 and Microsatellite Instability High (MSI-H) biomarkers. Her work has led to the US FDA approval of PD-L1 Agilent Pharm Dx IHC assay for selection of late line Gastric, Bladder and Esophageal cancer patients to receive Keytruda monotherapy, as well as the Japan PMDA approval of the FALCO PCR assay for MSI-H, also for patient selection to receive Keytruda monotherapy. Mary led Merck’s efforts to develop two companion diagnostic assays in the US for MSI-H (Next Generation Sequencing), and mismatch repair deficiency (Immunohistochemistry) prior to joining GlaxoSmithKline where she is leading companion diagnostic efforts for Zejula.

Senior Director, Head, Immuno-oncology Biomarkers, Experimental Medicine Unit
Mike Washburn, PhD received his BS in Microbiology from the University of Michigan. Next, he trained at the Gene Therapy Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill followed by PhD research at the Lineberger Cancer Center at UNC with a focus in Immunotherapy and Genetics. Mike joined GSK in 2010 and held various roles of increasing responsibility including leading several immunotherapy programs and novel approaches for treating infectious diseases, sepsis, and cancer immunotherapy. Mike is currently the Head of Immuno-Oncology Biomarkers within the Experimental Medicine Unit at GSK and was elected as a GSK Fellow in 2017.

Principal Consultant
Dr. Bert Gold is principal consultant at Gold Standard Genetics LLC, a firm he founded in March 2018 after 28 years of experience in genetics and genomics. Through this time, Dr. Gold has been evaluating, testing, mapping, developing, implementing and commercializing human molecular genetic diagnostics. Gold Standard Genetics LLC has provided laboratory compliance consulting services to a major pharmaceutical corporation and a K Street law firm partner, marketing consulting to major European and American diagnostics manufacturers, large references laboratories, and strategic advice to cancer diagnostics and perinatal diagnostics start-ups. Dr. Gold has held molecular genetics laboratory positions at UMDNJ, Temple, Jefferson Medical College, UCSF, SmithKline/Quest, NIH/NCI, Natera, Novogene and BillionToOne. He is board-certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics, a Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and is a licensed laboratory director in all 50 states. He is currently collaborating on standards for the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute on Liquid Biopsy in Cancer and Non-invasive prenatal testing.

Senior Vice President, Computational Discovery
Thomas Tibbitts comes to Goldfinch Bio from an immuno-oncology pharma company where he spent 11 years contributing to a wide range of drug discovery projects, leading structure-guided drug design as a co-inventor on a number of patents for small molecule therapeutics, two of which are currently in clinical development. As the genomics revolution took hold, he built out computational translational genomics to support clinical trials, and helped drive preclinical studies using transcriptomics to elucidate the mechanism of drug action in the tumor microenvironment and provide a basis for rational I/O drug combinations. He brings expertise in genomics, transcriptomics, informatics, software development, image analysis, protein crystallography and cloud computing. As leader of the patient registry at Goldfinch, he is passionate about leveraging his eclectic skill set and experience in genomics to bring new precision medicines to patients suffering from chronic kidney disease. Thomas holds a PhD in Biophysics and has co-authored recent papers in major journals including Nature and J. Medicinal Chemistry.

Associate Director, Product Management
Sonya Parpart-Li received her PhD 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. She helped launch the company’s first comprehensive noninvasive diagnostic test for detection of sequence mutations and structural alterations in circulating tumor DNA shed into the blood. Most recently, she led a product development team to create a class II device that detects microsatellite instability in CRC patients. Currently Sonya works as a Senior Staff Scientist in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering developing NGS based assays for variant detection in both cfDNA and tissue.

Former Vice President, Corporate 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 Vice President of 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 Senior 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 MS in Immunology and an MBA in Marketing.

Associate Member, Immunology; Co-Director, Center for Immunization and Infection Research in Cancer (CIIRC)
No bio available

Vice President, Clinical Affairs, Veritas Genetics; Associate Professor, Pathology
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.

Nils Gehlenborg received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a predoctoral fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). The goal of Gehlenborg’s research is to improve human health by developing computational techniques and interfaces that enable scientists and clinicians to efficiently interact with biomedical data. Tight integration of algorithmic approaches from biomedical informatics with advanced data visualization techniques is central to his efforts, as is close collaboration with clinicians and experimentalists. Currently, Gehlenborg is researching and developing novel tools to visualize heterogeneous data from large-scale cancer genomics studies such as The Cancer Genome Atlas, integrating visual and computational approaches to support sense-making in biology, and using software to support reproducible collaborative research in epigenomics and genomics. Gehlenborg is a co-founder and former general chair of BioVis, the Symposium on Biological Data Visualization, and co-founder of VIZBI, the annual workshop on Visualizing Biological Data. Occasionally, he contributes to the “Points of View” data visualization column in Nature Methods. Gehlenborg currently serves as the Director of the Master of Biomedical Informatics (MBI) program at Harvard Medical School.

Professor and Chair, Biostatistics
John Quackenbush is a recognized leader in computational and systems biology. He recently received a prestigious R35 grant from the National Cancer Institute for his methods development work. His research involves the use of biological “big data” to better understand the biological processes driving human health and disease and to identify potential therapeutic interventions. His work recognizes that it is not individual genes that drive biological systems, but rather complex networks of interacting genes that influence the development and progression of disease and its response to therapy. By modeling cellular networks in diseases ranging from breast, ovarian, colon, and lung cancer to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, John has gained insight into the link between genetics and the physical manifestation of traits and has opened up new avenues of investigation in network medicine. He and his research group are also actively involved in using statistical and machine learning methods with radiographic and histological imaging data to better predict disease risk and response to therapy. John earned a PhD and MS in theoretical physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the School’s faculty in 2005, following many years on the faculty of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Maryland. John has been extremely active at the School, including serving as the founding director of the Master of Science in Computational Biology and Quantitative Genetics. Additionally, he holds faculty appointments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Channing Division of Network Medicine.

Director, Precision Medicine
Arushi Agarwal joined the Health Advances team in 2011 and spends the majority of her time working in the Diagnostics and Life Sciences Practice. Her work focuses on global commercialization strategies for Precision Medicine diagnostics. Arushi’s specific areas of focus include companion diagnostics and liquid biopsy testing in oncology, as well as the intersection of Health IT solutions and diagnostic testing. Prior to joining Health Advances, Arushi received her Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University where her research focused on the use of microfluidic technologies for regenerative medicine applications. She received a Bachelors in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CEO
Dr. Karlin is the CEO at HealthMode.co, and Chief Medical Officer at NightWare. He was previously the Head of Clinical, Informatics, and Regulatory Strategy for Digital Medicine at Pfizer, having passed through a number of roles on the way to this position including Senior Director, Quantitative Medicine, Group Lead for Human Biology and Medical Informatics with Pfizer’s Neuroscience Research Unit in Cambridge, MA. He is an Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, and had been the Director of Psychiatry Informatics, and the Associate Training Director for Psychiatry. His primary research interests are neuropsychiatric drug development, medical informatics, cognition in clinical medicine, and methods for medical education, especially as these relate to decision-making strategies used by medical professionals. In addition, Dr Karlin is actively involved in designing and implementing information systems and resources for clinical and research use. Dr Karlin trained in Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, attended medical school at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and graduate school for Clinical Informatics and Cognitive Science as well as undergraduate studies in Neuroscience and Behavior at Columbia University. He is board certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Medicine, and Clinical Informatics.

Director
Dr. Michelucci directs the Human Computation institute. He received a joint-PhD from Indiana University in Cognitive Science and Mathematical Psychology and has been a science advisor to federal research agencies since 2006. He has supported the emergence of Human Computation as a formal discipline through a Springer handbook, an open-access scholarly journal, speaking engagements and workshops, interagency initiatives in Social Computing, and Citizen Science working groups. In 2014, he led the Human Computation Roadmap Summit, a CRA-funded 3-day workshop at the Wilson Center with input from the White House OSTP, toward a national initiative in Human Computation. As an Organismic Computing pioneer, he is interested in developing new methods for augmenting group efficacy, and developing related applications that will benefit humanity. He currently leads the EyesOnALZ project, which uses crowd-based methods to accelerate Alzheimer's research through an online game called Stall Catchers. Dr. Michelucci has been a visiting professor at Cornell University since 2016.

Former Corporate Medical Director
No bio available

Manager and Research Staff Member, Brain-Inspired Computing, IBM Research; Adjunct Professor, School of Engineering and Information Science, University of Technology Sydney
In 2015 Stefan founded the Brain-Inspired Computing Research program of IBM Research – Australia and now leads it as its Manager. His team spearheads an effort to develop AI-based technology for managing and treating epilepsy. Since joining IBM Research in 2008, Stefan has worked in the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology and healthcare analytics at IBM Albany Nanotech, and the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York as well as at IBM Research Australia. He has authored and co-authored over 40 technical publications and holds over 50 issued and over 60 pending patents. Stefan has been named IBM Master Inventor in 2017 and was elected into the IBM Academy of Technology in 2018. He holds an Adjunct Professor position in the School of Engineering and Information Science at the University of Technology Sydney. As a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and Senior Member of the IEEE he is part of the IEEE Computer Society Steering Committee and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience. Stefan has received a Research Scholarship from UC Berkeley, a Karl Chang Innovation Fund Grant from MIT, an Honorary Principal Research Fellowship from the University of Melbourne and several Research Grants from the NIH and the Australian Research Council. His work has been featured in WIRED Magazine, The World Economic Forum, ABC News, IEEE Spectrum, The Australian Academy of Science, Popular Science and R&D Magazine among others. He holds a PhD in EECS from the Technical University Munich and an Honours Master’s Degree in Technology Management from the Center for Digital Technology and Management.

Assistant Professor, Assistant Director of Single Cell Genomics Technology Development Icahn Institute, Dept. of Genetics & Genomic Sciences
Kristin received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Arizona State University and pursued postdoctoral training in Chemical Biology, first at the University of Chicago and then at Northwestern University, where she focused on understanding and visualizing cellular adhesion and migration heterogeneity at the single cell level, particularly in the context of cancer metastasis. In 2015, Kristin joined Berkeley Lights, Inc. as part of their single cell assay R&D effort where she helped to develop and apply novel single-cell phenotypic assays and informatic approaches for a variety of collaborative investigations, including those focused on tumor heterogeneity. She returned to academia in 2017 when she joined the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as an Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and the Assistant Director of Single Cell Genomics Technology Development. As part of this role, she leads a wide range of single-cell and spatial genomic research collaborations that leverage novel technology, including those that are a continuation of her interest in understanding the role of genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity in cancer.

Assistant Professor, Chief Innovation Officer, Medicine
Dr. Atreja is a healthcare executive with board certification in internal medicine, gastroenterology and clinical informatics. As Chief Innovation Officer, Medicine, he leads the Sinai AppLab (http://www.applab.nyc) that is one of the first collaborative hub within academic medical center to build and test disruptive mhealth technologies. As an intrapreneur, Dr. Atreja has won innovation awards at Cleveland Clinic and Mount Sinai, successfully licensed technologies from academic centers and advises startups, accelerators and Fortune 500 companies in digital medicine. Dr. Atreja serves as Scientific Founder for Mount Sinai Spinoff, Rx.Health that brings first enterprise-wide app curation, prescription and engagement platform to risk sharing hospitals and payers in an affordable and scalable manner. Recently, Dr. Atreja established non-profit Network of Digital Medicine (NODE.Health) to connect innovation centers worldwide and share best practices for digital medicine innovation and implementation between industry, payers and health systems. Dr. Atreja has published more than 60 papers, presented more than 200 abstracts and has been a keynote speaker globally on topics related to digital medicine evidence and health system transformation. Dr. Atreja was nominated among the Top 40 HealthCare Transformers in 2017.

Manager, Regulatory Affairs, Medical Device and Diagnostic Research
Ashleigh Dawley is an experienced Regulatory Professional specializing in in vitro diagnostic (IVD), companion diagnostic (CDx), and medical devices. Ashleigh’s expertise spans the complete product lifecycle including feasibility, R&D, study design, quality control, regulatory strategy of complex products through global submission preparation/approval, as well as marketing and commercialization strategies from a regulatory perspective.

Research Director, Life Sciences
Dr. Louie brings more than 32 years of technology, product and strategy development from across the life science industry. Previously, Dr. Louie led applied biotechnology programs as Senior Manager at Arthur D. Little, Inc. In this role, he managed laboratory-based technology development programs, as well as provided content expertise to life science and healthcare strategy projects. Over his career, Dr. Louie was responsible for the development and commercialization of more than 30 products for a variety of industries, including many first-in-class product offerings.

Vice President, Connected Health Solutions
Chris Van Hoof is Senior Director of Connected Health Solutions at imec, Leuven, Belgium and also imec Fellow. He has a track record of more than 25 years of initiating, executing, and leading national and international contract R&D with imec. His work resulted in five startups (four in the healthcare domain). He is also a Full Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

CSO
Dr Walter joined Immatics Biotechnologies GmbH in 2005 where he became VP Immunology. For over 17 years he has been active in the field of cancer immunotherapy and a leader in human T-cell biology. In addition to supporting the development of the XPRESIDENT® technology platform, under his leadership, Immatics developed its powerful Immunomonitoring and XCEPTOR® T-cell receptor (TCR) platforms to support the generation of safe and effective T-cell-based therapeutic modalities. In 2015, Dr Walter established operations of Immatics US, Inc. in Houston, Texas in close collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) as Chief Scientific Officer to develop next-generation adoptive cell therapies (ACT). Since then, he led the R&D team to the successful submission of 4 IND applications in cell and gene therapy within 3 years. Dr Walter leads a team that is responsible for Immunology, Process Development, Manufacturing, Quality Control, Program Management and Translational Development for Immatics’ cell therapy programs. Dr Walter is an inventor on numerous patents and patent applications and has co-authored more than 30 publications in prestigious peer-reviewed journals including Nature Medicine, Cell Reports, Lancet Oncology, Brain and Blood. Dr Walter gained his PhD in Immunology from the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Senior Technologist
Since 2017, Chris Dwan has been an independent consultant, technologist, and leader in scientific computing and data architecture for the life sciences. Since striking out on his own, he has worked with dozens of companies, including universities, research institutes, biotechs, pharmaceuticals, and government agencies. 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 Broad’s 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 dozens of customers, who were at all stages of adopting and leveraging technology for genomic science. Along the way, he helped to build BioTeam into one of the best known and most respected consulting organizations in the industry. By the end of his tenure, he was the manager of consulting services, and served on the Board of Directors alongside the founders. Chris’s academic background is in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning and artificial intelligence. His work with neural networks in the late ’90s contributed to a pragmatic and grounded skepticism that has served him well through wave after wave of emerging technologies.

Director, Pharmacogenomics and Molecular Genetics Laboratories, Medical and Molecular Genetics; President, Association of Molecular Pathology
Dr. Pratt is a Medical and Clinical Molecular Geneticist board-certified by the American College of Medical Genetics. She is the Director of the Pharmacogenomics Laboratory and Molecular Genetics Laboratory at Indiana University School of Medicine. Prior to joining Indiana University, she was Chief Director, Molecular Genetics, for Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute. Dr. Pratt is the President of Association of Molecular Pathology. Dr. Pratt is also the Past Chair of the Genetics, Clinical Practice and the Program committees and is currently a member of the Economic Affairs, Professional Relations committees for AMP. She is a former advisor of EurogenTest for genetic test validation. Dr. Pratt serves on the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Molecular Pathology Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Advisory committee. In addition to her work, Dr. Pratt served on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory Tests Advisory Panel. Dr. Pratt continues to serve on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) GeT-RM program for reference materials for Molecular Genetics. She is currently serving on the National Academy of Medicine’s (formerly Institute of Medicine) Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health. She also served on the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society for the Oversight of Genetic Testing and the Advisory Committee on Hereditary Disorders in Newborns and Children. She also participated in the preparation of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for Best Practices in Molecular Genetic Testing for the CDC and the National Academy of Medicine’s Committee on Policy Issues in the Clinical Development and Use of Biomarkers for Molecularly Targeted Therapies. Dr. Pratt has authored over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters. She is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. Dr. Pratt graduated with a PhD in Medical and Molecular Genetics from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN in 1994. Her fellowship training was in PhD Medical and Clinical Molecular Genetics at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit MI.

Senior Technologist
Since 2017, Chris Dwan has been an independent consultant, technologist, and leader in scientific computing and data architecture for the life sciences. Since striking out on his own, he has worked with dozens of companies, including universities, research institutes, biotechs, pharmaceuticals, and government agencies. 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 Broad’s 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 dozens of customers, who were at all stages of adopting and leveraging technology for genomic science. Along the way, he helped to build BioTeam into one of the best known and most respected consulting organizations in the industry. By the end of his tenure, he was the manager of consulting services, and served on the Board of Directors alongside the founders. Chris’s academic background is in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning and artificial intelligence. His work with neural networks in the late ’90s contributed to a pragmatic and grounded skepticism that has served him well through wave after wave of emerging technologies.

worked as data visualization designer at the New York Genome Center (NYGC). He is a designer and developer dedicated to making complex scientific issues understandable. For ten years he has developed software user interfaces and designed data visualizations in a scientific research environment, first at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, then at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia.

Research and Development Senior Manager
No bio available

Principal Scientist
Dr. Kai Wang is currently a principal scientist at Institute for Systems Biology, where he began in 2007 as a senior research scientist. He received his PhD in biochemistry from Oregon State University. He began his career in 1987 at Caltech as a research fellow in the Division of Biology. In 1992, he became the acting assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biotechnology, but left in 1995 to serve as a senior scientist and project leader for Darwin Molecular Corp/Celltech Group PLC. In 2001, he co-founded PhenoGenomics, serving as its president until he joined the Institute. His awards include first place in the psoriasis category of the 2012 Diagnostics Signature Challenge (sponsored by Philip Morris International and IBM Research), and a Northwest Cancer Partners award for the “development of a novel tubulin binding anticancer compound” in 2004. He received the Diplomate, General Toxicology certification from the American Board of Toxicology – a highly competitive certification program. He is the board director of The Chinese Institute of Engineers/USA-Seattle Chapter, as well as a national council member, a 100 year old non-profit organization. Dr. Wang’s research interest at ISB is studying the function, trafficking and application of extracellular RNAs, including RNAs of both endogenous and exogenous origins. He and his co-workers were one of the first groups to discover stable microRNAs in the extracellular environment, and found that they are packaged in lipid vesicles as well as complexed with proteins to escape RNase degradation. Using the next generation sequencing platforms, they made a significant discovery on the complexity of end region sequence length heterogeneity for microRNAs, which may significantly increase the repertoire of microRNAs. They have conducted a comprehensive survey of circulating RNAs through sequencing and observed a significant amount of exogenous RNAs in plasma and other body fluids. Like microRNA, some of the exogenous RNAs are packaged in lipid vesicles. The group’s studies also revealed that cells in culture may pick up exogenous RNAs, incorporate them onto the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), and affect the transcriptome of the cells. These findings raise the possibility that plasma RNAs of exogenous origin may be involved in human-environmental interactions, and may affect and/or indicate the state of human health. In addition to microRNA, his research also revealed a complex spectrum of large RNA including protein coding RNAs in the extracellular space, most of these RNAs are packaged in lipid vesicles.  This may suggest the RNAs, both small and large RNAs in lipid vesicles may participate in cell-cell communication.

General Manager, Health & Life Sciences
Chris Gough is Worldwide General Manager of Health and Life Sciences at Intel Corporation. In this role, Chris leads a team of technology leaders and subject matter experts to develop solutions that use information and communication technology to transform the health and life sciences industry. He works with companies, organizations and governments around the world to help make this digital transformation a reality. With over 15 years of industry experience, Chris brings deep healthcare and life sciences expertise along with a foundation in technology and its application to multiple industries. He has been with Intel for over 20 years and was formerly both product and security architect in Intel’s Digital Health division. In this role, he was the chief architect for several products including, Care Connect, and Integration Services for the Intel Health Guide. Mr. Gough has been an active member of the Continua Health Alliance and was one of the lead contributors to the end-to-end system architecture and interoperability guidelines. He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of California at San Diego..

President
Mr. Roberts is a senior strategic executive leading high performing teams of healthcare business and corporate development professionals, and passionate about enabling precision medicine for immuno-oncology and genomic medicine through molecular markers and diagnostics. Currently the CEO for Cancer Genetics and President of Interpace Pharma Solutions, Mr. Roberts is a member of several healthcare technology Boards and a recent Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Drug Information Association (DIA).

Global Director, Software Engineering
Christian leads the software, systems, and usability teams at Invetech, a global product realization consultancy specializing in the design and manufacturing of diagnostic devices. Over the last 25 years, he’s held leadership positions at Roche, Novartis, Nanomix and Nanogen where he was involved in the commercialization of several novel products.

Clinical Molecular Geneticist
Dr. McDonald Gibson is board-certified in clinical molecular genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Prior to joining Invitae, Dr. McDonald Gibson completed her clinical molecular genetics fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where she was part of the team that developed and launched the clinical exome sequencing test for the hospital. Dr. McDonald Gibson received her doctorate in genetics and genomics from Duke University in 2013. While at Duke, she established an analysis pipeline that used exome sequencing to identify mutations that cause limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, and she was a member of a neonatal genomics exome sequencing group that investigates the causes of unexplained medical conditions in children.

Global Director, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance
Jason Gerhold, Invivoscribe’s Global Director of RA & QA, has 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry, 15 of which while in regulatory affairs, quality, and clinical affairs positions. He joined Invivoscribe in 2012 to lead companion diagnostic regulatory development strategies resulting in international CDx approvals supporting multiple drugs. He was integral in implementing quality systems and obtaining regulatory approvals while with Millipore (Light Diagnostics) and Shire Regenerative Medicine.

President & CEO
Dr. Fardis has extensive experience in drug development and novel cancer treatments. Prior to joining Iovance Biotherapeutics, Dr. Fardis was chief operating officer at Acerta Pharma working on the development of CALQUENCE® (acalabrutinib), until the company’s acquisition by AstraZeneca. Before joining Acerta, Dr. Fardis held the position of chief of oncology operations and alliances at Pharmacyclics where she oversaw development of IMBRUVICA® (ibrutinib). She was a key contributor in the creation of a broad clinical program for ibrutinib, as well as NDA and MAA submissions. Previously, Dr. Fardis held a number of key scientific and management roles at Gilead Sciences. At Gilead, she was involved with multiple therapeutic areas including antivirals, oncology, and cardiovascular therapeutics and worked on the development and life cycle management of LETAIRIS® (ambrisentan). She received her PhD in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley and holds an MBA.

Managing Director
Michael N. Liebman, PhD, 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. Previously, he was Director, Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics, University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center 2000-2003. He served as Global Head of Computational Genomics, Roche Pharmaceuticals and Director, Bioinformatics and Pharmacogenomics, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Director of Genomics for Vysis, Inc. He is a co-founder of Prosanos, Inc (now United BioSource) (2000). He was Associate Professor of Pharmacology and of Physiology/Biophysics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He serves on 14 scientific advisory boards and the Board of Directors of the Nathaniel Adamczyk Foundation in Pediatric ARDS and Innovene Pharmaceuticals. Michael is Chair of the Informatics Program and also Chair of Translational Medicine and Therapeutics for the PhRMA Foundation and a member of their Scientific Advisory Board. His research focuses on computational models of disease progression that stress risk detection, disease processes and clinical pathway modeling, and disease stratification from the clinical perspective. He utilizes systems-based approaches and design thinking to represent and analyze risk/benefit analysis in pharmaceutical development and healthcare.

Larry is the Principal of IVD Logix, a full-service marketing research and consulting business for in vitro diagnostics he founded in 2017. Larry also co-founded and retains and ownership interest in Market Diagnostics International, where he was instrumental in developing the IVD Insights and IVD LabFile syndicated databases on in vitro diagnostic testing. He was also a senior consultant and co-founder at CaseBauer & Associates, an international business development and research firm exclusively focused on in vitro diagnostics and has held senior legislative/regulatory affairs and market research positions with Becton Dickinson and Company, AdvaMed and IMS Health (now IQVia). He has authored numerous regulatory compliance manuals for the diagnostic and medical device industries and is the most recent Past-President of the Diagnostics Marketing Association. He has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Maine.

Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs
Deb’s regulatory and quality career has spanned both large and small companies and both US and global programs. She has been in medical diagnostics for over 25 years and gained her experience working at Bio-Rad Laboratories, Roche Molecular Systems, Chiron Corporation, Applied Imaging Corporation, and Visible Genetics. She joined Johnson and Johnson and currently is the Global Regulatory Affairs Diagnostics (GRA Dx) leader at Janssen Pharmaceuticals. GRA Dx is integral in the companion and complementary diagnostic and digital product development programs. For Janssen, GRA Dx is responsible for development of regulatory strategy, policy, and registration.

Founder, Jeeva Informatics Solutions, Inc.; Founder and Chairman, IndoUSrare; Co-Director, Rare Diseases Systems Biology Initiative, George Mason University
Dr. Rajasimha has authored 15 high impact journal publications, 2 book chapters, and inventor on 2 patents. He is often a keynote speaker, convener of #DigitalOMICS meetup around the Capital Beltway and part of numerous conference organizing committees. Dr. Rajasimha has received numerous Awards for his work in genomics, precision medicine and rare diseases including a travel award to join the NGO Committee on Rare Diseases at the United Nations headquarters, New York City in Feb 2019, Lead India Foundation 2020 Award for leadership and outstanding achievement in rare diseases, NTT DATA Healthcare Life Sciences Silver award for outstanding achievement 2017, Sanofi Genzyme patient advocacy leadership award 2016, Bioscience company of the year 2014, NEI director’s innovation award 2012 for building their genomics cyber infrastructure. Harsha earned his M.S. in Computer Science (2004) and PhD in Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (2007) from Virginia Tech. Driven by a personal cause in 2012, Dr. Rajasimha decided to apply his years of post-doctoral clinical genomics data research experience at National Institutes of Health and industry product development experience to develop products and solutions to help accelerate clinical research.

Director, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Medicine
Dr. Fackler’s clinical work is pediatric critical care and anesthesiology at Hopkins. Before taking his current role at Hopkins in 1996, he was on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School where he co-founded the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program. He worked for the Cerner Corporation from 2002 to 2006 and was responsible for the development and deployment of their critical care solution suite. His academic interests are the harnessing of the data generated by, and about, critically ill children for use in identifying and reducing the clinician driven variability in the care of complex conditions (such as sepsis). He founded a startup, Rubicon Health, an early-stage startup and believes every child (or patient more broadly) deserves their health care (e.g., critical care) delivered with precision. We create and maintain clinical team support software, so the teams consistently deliver high value care. Our first solution provides Clinical Team Support Solution for sepsis* care assisting the bedside team from early detection through management. Rubicon, merges clinical expertise and AI in all processes to anticipate, treat and manage sepsis. As a platform built by clinicians for clinicians, we understand the needs of sepsis care.

Executive in Residence
Dr. Albine Martin brings more than 20 years of technology commercialization, portfolio management and corporate development experience with three public companies representing the biotechnology, diagnostics, genomics and life sciences sector. She also serves as a member of Active Angels, where she syndicated early stage investments and a member of the independent review panel for NSF Phase1/2. She currently serves as COO at Precision Biologics, a clinical development oncology company with a companion diagnostic program. Precision is a clinical stage oncology company and is advancing its first program for colorectal and pancreatic cancer following the acquisition of assets from Neogenix Oncology.

Former Worldwide Vice President, Global Head of Research and Development
Adrian Chernoff, BSM.E., MBA, M.E.M.E. is a visionary technologist and digital transformation executive who helps companies create and deliver what comes next. Honored with 20 awards and 90 patents, he routinely solves critical business problems to deliver game-changing products and first-to-market solutions. Distinguished career encompasses 20+ years of leading innovation, fostering collaboration, building new capabilities, leveraging insights from other industries, influencing change and introducing new products and services within companies, across industries and around the world. An experienced builder and strategist of new digital platforms, patient-centric mobile apps and smarter medical devices that empower millions of patients and improve patient outcomes. As Worldwide Vice President, Global Head of R&D, Digital and Innovation for the Johnson and Johnson $2B Diabetes Care Companies he launched IoT connected medical devices, deployed a digital health platform ecosystem and introduced the #1 diabetes app in the U.S. and available in 20 countries with over 1M downloads to help patients better manage their diabetes.

Chief Medical Information Officer, emeritus
John has dedicated his career to improving the health of all communities through clinical practice, public policy and health information technology. He has had extensive clinical practice in both fee-for-service (Scripps Clinic) and integrated care (Kaiser Permanente), led the largest civilian deployment of an EHR in the US, and co-founded the XML standard for interoperability (CDA, CCDA, CCD). He served on numerous policy committees at state, federal (FACA), and international levels, and is active globally as a keynote speaker and consultant in Health IT Policy. He currently co-chairs the eHealth Workgroup of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and is a senior advisor to the X-Prize for the Tricorder, and for the Rock Health incubator for digital startups. He has published extensively, including “Perspectives” in Nature Medicine, and written book chapters on issues as diverse as ‘Privacy and Genomics’, ‘Innovation and IOT’, and ‘Future Roles in Healthcare’. He has received various national awards for his work and is a vocal advocate for person-centered care and patient engagement.

CSO
Tim Blauwkamp is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Karius. Prior to Karius, he led research and lab operations for Moleculo until its acquisition by Illumina. Tim received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Michigan.

Assistant Professor, Medical Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Henry E. Riggs School of Applied Life Sciences
Kiana Aran received her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the City University of New York in 2007 and her PhD in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University in 2012. She then continued her postdoctoral studies in bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley and was a recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral training fellowship at the Buck Institute for Age Research in 2015. She joined KGI in January 2017 as an Assistant Professor. Since 2017, Aran has served as a Consultant for Drug Delivery and Medical Diagnostics for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is a cofounder of Nanosens Innovations Inc.

Director, Translational Medicine
John Rossi is currently a Director in the Department of Translational Medicine and leads all biomarker activities related to clinical development of Kite’s CAR T-cell pipeline. John joined Kite in February 2015, after spending 12 years at Amgen. At Amgen, John oversaw global biomarker development for a Phase III registrational trial in oncology (trebananib, AMG386) and other studies. At Kite, John has led the development of a biomarker strategy and has also built an effective translational team to support the clinical development of axicabtagene ciloleucel. John’s translational team has contributed directly to the US and European approval of this product.

Vice President, Business Development & Marketing
Kyle joined Klaris Diagnostics as VP of Business Development & Marketing in April 2018. He brings deep clinical diagnostics industry expertise and over 15 years of experience in health technology strategy and commercialization. Kyle comes to Klaris from Luminex Corporation where he most recently served as Sr. Director, Global Strategic Marketing. There he developed numerous key partnership and led many aspects of the company’s strategic investments into its high-growth molecular diagnostics franchise. Prior to joining Luminex, Kyle held marketing, sales and consulting positions with Abbott Laboratories and Cerner Corporation. Kyle holds a BS in Finance and a BA in Music from Truman State University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

CSO
Dr. Elena Izmailova is a clinical scientist with a unique background bridging technology innovation, scientific strategy, and business management. Her main interests lie in biomarker discovery, development, and utilization in the context of clinical trials. Elena is currently Chief Scientific Officer of Koneksa Health, an innovative technology company that accelerates development of new medicines by leveraging wearable technologies to collect real world data, enabling the biopharmaceutical industry to execute more efficient and successful clinical trials. Prior to her appointment with Koneksa Health, Elena led the wearable device clinical innovation group at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where she created a comprehensive digital roadmap for technology-enabled clinical development. Elena joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2003. At Millennium Pharmaceuticals she led cross-functional teams to develop and deploy clinical biomarker strategies and directed the bio-analysis function responsible for biomarker assay development, validation and implementation across multiple therapeutic areas and in global clinical trials. She additionally established fruitful collaborations with investigators at several major teaching hospitals, leading to discovery and characterization novel disease biomarkers, and resulting in multiple publications and conference presentations. Elena holds PhD in Biology. She completed postdoctoral training at Massey Cancer Center/MCV and at Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She has also held a visiting scientist position at the Whitehead Institute of MIT.

Pharmacy Manager, Delta Division
Dr. Hunter Hill, PharmD is a Pharmacy Manager for the Delta Division of Kroger Health located in Memphis, TN. Dr. Hill is a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee PGY1 Community-Based Residency Program after completing his PharmD from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. During his residency year, Dr. Hill implemented a pilot-program in which pharmacy technicians were trained to support pharmacists with the technical aspects, including sample collection, of point-of-care testing. This falls into his current interests of leveraging pharmacists to provide high-quality patient care. The results of his research were presented in poster format at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Annual Meeting & Exposition and a podium presentation at the Research in Education & Practice Symposium. Dr. Hill In addition to his research interests, he also serves as a preceptor for both the UTHSC PGY1 Community-Based Residency Program and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) students for the College of Pharmacy. He has also served as a guest lecturer for several courses within the College of Pharmacy.

President, CEO
Prior to L7 Informatics, Dr. Rangadass was the Chief Strategy Officer at NantHealth following its acquisition of Net.Orange, the company he founded to provide an enterprise-wide platform - Clinical Operating System (cOS) to simplify and optimize care delivery processes in health systems.

Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Director of Clinical Microbiology
Dr. Butler-Wu received her Doctorate of Philosophy in Molecular Microbiology from Tufts University in 2005. Following her completion of a postdoctoral fellowship in bacterial pathogenesis at NYU, she subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Medical and Public Health Microbiology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Butler-Wu continued her career at the University of Washington where she was Associate Director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine. She recently joined the faculty at the University of Southern California as an Associate Professor in Clinical Pathology and is also Director of Clinical Microbiology at LAC+USC Medical Center. Her research interests include the development and application of diagnostic methods for the rapid detection of infection and antimicrobial resistance, as well as improved diagnostic methods for the detection of prosthetic joint infections caused by Propionibacterium species. Dr. Butler-Wu is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.

Medical Director, Molecular Diagnostics, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Gyorgy Abel is the Medical Director of Molecular Diagnostics, Clinical Chemistry/Immunology, and Point of Care Testing at the Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts. He also serves as Instructor in Pathology, Part-time, at Harvard Medical School. Gyorgy received his MD, and a PhD degree in immunology in Hungary, completed post-doctoral fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and received board certifications in Clinical Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics. He made significant contributions to hepatitis C virus research by demonstrating the use of LDL receptor by the virus as a port of entry into hepatocytes. His professional interests include precision medicine and point of care testing. Gyorgy has held office in professional organizations such as the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), the College of American Pathologists, the American Association of Immunologists, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and currently he is President-Elect of the AACC Academy. He is also an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, U.K.

Director, Biomarker Operations
Narasimha Marella graduated in Jan 2009 with a PhD in Biological Sciences from University at Buffalo, Buffalo NY. He has a master’s degree in biotechnology and an undergraduate degree in microbiology from India. His previous research interests were in investigating the three dimensional structural and functional architecture of the human nucleus in normal and cancer cell types. Dr. Marella has authored six peer reviewed articles and serves a reviewer for a couple of scientific journals. Currently, Dr. Marella leads the biomarker operations across Loxo Oncology’s clinical trial portfolio and involved in diagnostic development. Prior to Loxo, Dr. Marella was at Cancer Genetics (CGI) for 10 years in various roles including leading lab operations, managing CGI’s Clinical trial initiative (SELECT ONE) along with members from the research and clinical lab departments.

Director of Engineering
Dr. Myers is the Director of Engineering at Lucira Health, Inc. Prior to joining Lucira in 2015, he was a Staff Research Scientist at UC Berkeley developing point-of-care diagnostic technologies for global health. He holds a PhD in Bioengineering, and is co-author on 13 peer-reviewed publications and 2 granted patents.

Lucy has been consulting to IVD test manufacturers since 2015 supporting more than 20 companies and providing a deep understanding of the road to market for IVD tests from product concept to launch. She also works for various organizations in the global public health sector where the emphasis is on building access to diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). She has 30 years of experience commercializing products in the Life Science Research and Diagnostics industries, with much of that time in molecular diagnostics. She managed sales and marketing teams for Roche Molecular Diagnostics in South Africa and Canada and has led marketing teams with global responsibility for various companies including Roche Molecular Diagnostics and Gen-Probe (now Hologic) for more than 10 years. She holds a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town Medical School, and an MBA from IMD in Switzerland.

Executive Vice President for Research
Dr. Restifo’s sole focus for over three decades is on the development of immunotherapeutic treatments for patients with cancer. He has focused his efforts on the goal of using T cells to eradicating advanced, metastatic cancer. He received in MD from New York University and post-doctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before spending 31 years at the National Cancer Institute. In 2019, he joined Lyell Immunopharma, a startup company based in South San Francisco that is focused on delivering curative cell-based treatments for patients with metastatic malignancies. His contributions to the field include: The molecular definition of the qualities of highly effective anti-tumor T cells; identification of the gene expression within tumors that is required for successful immunotherapy and that mediate ‘tumor escape’; elucidation of the mechanisms that enable the activation and inhibition of anti-tumor T cells; and an understanding the impact of host factors in cancer immunotherapy. His contributions toward understanding immune destruction of tumors now becoming cancer treatments worldwide. These efforts are documented in more than 325 papers (that have been cited over 75,000 times with an h-index of 139) and two dozen book chapters on cancer. His work has impacted on virtually every component of modern immunotherapy that is curative of metastatic cancer and has transformed cancer medicine. He has received many awards and was cited in 2019 by Thomson Reuters as one of the “World’s most influential scientific minds.”

Co-Founder and CEO
Dr. Trevor Martin, co-founder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, is leading the company on a mission to democratize access to the next generation of CRISPR tools for therapeutics and diagnostics. The Mammoth team, including fellow co-founder and CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna, has built the world’s broadest CRISPR platform and the world’s first CRISPR-based diagnostics platform capable of detecting any RNA or DNA biomarker. Trevor kicked off his career in science at Princeton as an undergraduate - in his time there, he conducted independent research in quantitative biology and was ultimately awarded the top honor for his senior thesis in molecular biology. After Princeton, Trevor went on to complete his PhD in Biology at Stanford University with a NSF fellowship, combining techniques from statistics and genetics and developing methods around mapping the determinants of quantitative traits in both humans and microbes. In addition to having developed and taught multiple graduate level courses in statistics at Stanford, Trevor has penned educational guides for university courses across the globe. His work has been featured in outlets like FiveThirtyEight and The Atlantic, and he has been the featured healthcare honoree on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2018.

Assistant Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Geneticist
Dr. Lawrence's research group focuses on understanding the many ways that cancer can arise from DNA mutations, using computation as a powerful microscope through which to study the processes of DNA damage and repair, gene expression and genome replication, and cancer driver genes. Over our lifetimes, DNA slowly accumulates mutations due to environmental toxins and radiation, as well as from natural occasional copying errors. The vast majority of mutations have little or no effect on a cell. But out of all possible mutations, a few may hit exactly the right place in the genome where they can act as a "driver mutation," pushing the cell toward aggressive growth and tumor formation. Sequencing the DNA in a tumor reveals not only its driver mutations, but also all the other "passenger mutations" that were present in the tumor-initiating cell. The Lawrence Lab integrates across data from clinical samples and laboratory models, seeking insights about cancer from both driver and passenger mutations.

Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School; BioMEMS Resource Center, MGH Cancer Center
Shannon Stott, PhD, is a Mechanical Engineer who has been working at the interface of technology, imaging and medicine. Dr. Stott has a broad background in microfluidics, optics, tissue engineering and cryopreservation, with a focus on their applications in clinical medicine and cell biology. As a postdoctoral fellow in Mehmet Toner’s laboratory, she co-invented the herringbone circulating tumor cell chip (HBCTC-Chip) a device that can successfully capture cancer cells circulating in the blood stream of localized and metastatic cancer patients. This technology has been used to explore the biology of these extremely rare cells, identifying novel pathways for metastasis and bringing us a small step closer to understanding how cancer spreads and kills. Recently, this device has been scaled for large scale production, enabling the distribution of the HBCTC-Chip to multiple cancer centers across the country. Additionally, Dr. Stott is an expert in high speed video microscopy, an imaging technique that has enabled the exploration of novel fluidic flow inside microfluidic devices and biological processes that occur at a micro-second time scale. Dr. Stott has authored over 30 publications and is frequently invited to speak at national conferences. In 2014, she received the American Cancer Society’s Women Leading the Way to Wellness Award.

Associate Director, Melanoma Program, MGH Cancer Center
Dr. Ryan Sullivan is board certified in Medical Oncology and an Attending Physician in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He attended Colby College for undergraduate studies and then matriculated to the University of Connecticut Medical School, graduating in 2001. He first trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA and then at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Hematology/Oncology. At the MGH, he is the Associate Director of the Melanoma Program in the MGH Cancer Center and a member of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy. Dr. Sullivan is an active clinical and translational investigator whose main areas of interest are the development of novel molecular targeted and immunotherapeutic combinations for malignant melanoma, the translation of promising preclinical findings into early stage clinical trials, and the development of predictive biomarkers for these investigational as well as standard treatment approaches. In addition, he has an active interest in improving the prediction, through the development of blood-based biomarkers, and management of immune checkpoint inhibitor toxicity.

Professor, Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
The primary research focus of Jin Jen, MD, PhD, is the molecular genetics of non-small cell lung cancer. Dr. Jen is an expert in next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based technologies and in using this platform to identify tumor-associated molecular alterations for cancer detection, prognosis and treatment stratification. Dr. Jen is co-director of the Genome Analysis Core of the Medical Genome Facility within the Center for Individualized Medicine (CIM) at Mayo Clinic. In this capacity, she leads the technology development operations and has enabled the optimization and implementation of NGS-based technologies for whole-transcriptome sequencing using a variety of sample types for research and clinical applications. Dr. Jen is also member of the Biomarker Discovery Program in CIM. She collaborates closely with both basic and clinical scientists using state-of-the-art technologies for biomarker and bioassay discoveries and test development to improve the ability to assess lung cancer progression, treatment response and outcome.

CEO
Dr. Myatt is Co-Founder and CEO of MBio Diagnostics, Inc. As an entrepreneur, he has built technology companies, secured patents, licensed technology, raised funds, and led through growth. MBio Diagnostics is a developer of point-of-care diagnostic technology, with the LightDeck platform currently entering commercialization. Prior to MBio Diagnostics, Chris successfully founded Precision Photonics Corporation. He graduated BA/BS from SMU and earned a PhD in Atomic Physics at the University of Colorado.

Assistant Professor, Melanoma Medical Oncology - Research, Cancer Medicine
My main interest is immunotherapy of cancer with a special emphasis on T cell therapy utilizing tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. My lab conducts translational research where human primary cells from cancer patients (tumors or immune cells) are interrogated to find markers of response to T cell therapy or other immunotherapies.

Director, McCombs Institute for Cancer Detection and Treatment
Dr Hanash was recruited to MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2011 to lead the Red and Charline McCombs Institute for Cancer Early Detection and Treatment. He was previously program head for Molecular Diagnosis at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Hanash’s interest and expertise are in the field of cancer diagnostics and the development of blood-based cancer biomarkers for risk assessment and cancer early detection. He is the inaugural president of the International Human Proteome Organization dedicated to the study of the human proteome, and a founder of the US Human Proteome Organization. Dr Hanash’s approaches to meet the challenge of developing markers that signal the presence of cancer at an early stage to allow detection and effective treatment have included a rigorous painstaking in-depth quantitative profiling of the various types of molecules in the blood to find those that are released early either from the cancer cells or from the host response to the developing cancer. The work emphasizes the need for rigor in experimental design, in data collection and statistical analysis and in developing a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between the identified cancer markers and the developing cancer. This work has sparked innovation in experimental design and statistical analysis of biomarker data aimed at minimizing biases in discovery studies through prospective sample collections that relate most directly to the intended clinical application(s) and at reducing the false discovery rate through integration of data from multiple sources to increase confidence in the significance of the markers.

Executive Director, Khalifa Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy
As the Executive Director of the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy at MD Anderson, I lead and oversee the development and growth of the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy including collaborative opportunities with the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with not-for-profit organizations. I manage all administrative, budgetary, financial and operational activities related to the IPCT.

Associate Director for Translational Research Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine
Dr. Rhim is Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine/Gastroenterology and Assistant Director for Translational Research at the University of Michigan Medical School and Comprehensive Cancer Center. His work focuses on understanding novel cancer-specific mechanisms for targeted mutagenesis and post-transcriptional alterations that affect cancer progression, evolution and resistance to therapies. This work requires the creation of novel molecular tools for sensitive genetic and genomic analysis which are being evaluated for the detection of biomarkers for early cancer diagnosis.

Joen is President of MDC Associates, Inc. a full-service RA/QA/CRO servicing diagnostic companies. Joen has more than 17 years of marketing, sales, business development and management experience in the IVD industry. Prior to MDC he was Head of Global Marketing for Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc. where he was responsible for the global launch of the Accelerate Pheno™ system. The system is the first rapid AST platform and was approved for use in the US via the FDA de novo process. Joen has helped to define, develop and commercially launch more than 16 FDA-cleared, CE-marked IVD products in the United States and Europe. Prior to joining the IVD industry Joen was a Healthcare Investment Banker with Lehman Brothers in London. Joen has degrees in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry and Economics from Wesleyan University.

Professor and Vice Chair, Pathology and Medical Director
Dr. Ledeboer received his BA Degree from Dordt College in 2000 and his PhD Degree in Microbiology from the University of Iowa in 2005. Following two years of fellowship training in clinical and public health microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, MO, he became an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Medical Director of Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics at Froedtert Hospital and Dynacare Laboratories in Milwaukee, WI where he has remained for more than 5 years. In addition to his service activities as director of clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics at a large academic medical center, Dr. Ledeboer continues to develop his research career. His research endeavors, particularly in the area developing diagnostic tools for infectious diseases, have led to numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has been Chairman of Public and Professional Affairs for the South Central Association for Clinical Microbiology and served on the American Society for Microbiology’s Clinical Microbiology Task Force. Dr. Ledeboer is currently a member of the American Board of Medical Microbiology Exam committee, a member of the Committee on Postgraduate Educational Programs through the American Society for Microbiology, and is the microbiology scientific program chair for The Association for Mass Spectrometry: Applications to the Clinical Laboratory. He is currently a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and serves as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous other journals in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology. He has delivered nearly 100 invited lectures in various medical-scientific educational forums worldwide and has served as an investigator on more than 75 funded research projects. In 2011, he received the distinguished Siemens Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Microbiology.

Vice President, Scientific Affairs
MeMed’s VP Scientific Affairs, Tanya cultivates strategic alliances with public and third sectors. She has extensive academia and biotech experience, specializing in international collaborations and non-dilutive financing. Before MeMed, Tanya was BD Director at BiondVax, a universal flu vaccine developer. Tanya conducted postdoc research at Weizmann Institute, Israel and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA and holds a BA in Natural Sciences and PhD from Cambridge University, UK and an MBA from the Technion, Israel.

Chief Business Development Officer
Fred has extensive experience in healthcare with senior leadership roles in strategy and corporate development, both in small and large organizations. Fred recently served as Vice President of Corporate Development and Head of Strategic Financing at bioMérieux, a world leader in-vitro diagnostic company, where he led all aspects of the company strategic investments, North American Corporate Development and partnerships. Before joining bioMérieux, Fred was Head of Business Development and Strategy at T2 Biosystems.

Chief Digital Officer & Head of Technology
Claus is the Chief Technology Officer for CVS Health, leading Technology Innovation, Business Transformation Incubation, Architecture Planning, Delivery and Forensics, Digital Integration and M&A activities across CVS Health. Plays a pivotal role in becoming a trusted health partner delivering a connected experience. Claus has been with CVS Health/Aetna since February 2015. His prior background spans 20 years of transformational leadership roles at Danske Bank and IBM. During his time at IBM he was a trusted advisor on business and IT transformation journeys for many of the Fortune 100 companies. Claus has a PhD in Computer Science from Aarhus University, Denmark. He is a thought leader in business and IT integration, holds 14 patents, and is a published author of five books and numerous articles.

Assistant Attending, Department of Pediatrics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Prachi Kothari, DO received her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University. After completing pediatric residency at the University of Connecticut and pediatric hematology oncology fellowship at the combined programs at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and New York Presbyterian-Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, she is presently a clinical instructor in the department of pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is also working in the Tsui Laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Dana Tsui on understanding the feasibility and utility of noninvasive molecular profiling with cfDNA in patients with pediatric solid tumors. Her research projects have allowed her to now work alongside the clinical teams to implement the use of cfDNA analysis into the routine workflow allowing for real-time molecular profiling.

Chief Industrial Operations, R&D Officer
No bio available

Director, Field Scientific Support
Dr. Jennifer Davids has a degree in Immunogenetics from the University of Florida and has spent recent years supporting molecular research in cancer and genetics.

Executive Director, Regulatory Affairs & Digital Health Solutions
Dr. Darin S. Oppenheimer is an Executive Director of the Drug Device Center of Excellence focusing on Medical Devices and Combination products at Merck, based in Upper Gwynedd, PA. Darin is involved in many facets of the Product Development Lifecycle including regulatory submissions, due dili­gence, and active participation on industry trade organizations and standards committees. His prior background as a Research and Development Scientist focused on pharmaceuticals and medical device diagnostic applications for biomarker and drug discovery. Darin’s undergraduate degree is in Molecular Biology from the University of Tampa. He also holds two master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Biotechnology and Regulatory Science as well as a graduate Certificate in Biotechnology Enterprise. Recently Darin has completed his Doctorate degree in Regu­latory Science from the University of Southern California.

Executive Medical Director, Companion Diagnostics & Translational Medicine
Ken led Merck’s translational program which developed the “PD-L1 test,” defined the “TPS 50” tumor, and revolutionized the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. The PD-L1 test, commercialized by Agilent, became the first FDA-approved companion diagnostic for immunotherapy, enabled Keytruda (pembrolizumab) to become “first to first line,” and thereby helped countless patients live longer. The translational program continued to advance cancer immunotherapy, and PD-L1 now is a companion diagnostic for Keytruda in six tumor types. Keytruda has become the foundation of Merck’s oncology program, Merck’s top-selling drug, and the leading anti-PD-1 drug in the industry (having begun 4-5 years behind its major competitor). In recognition of his contribution to patients and to the advancement of cancer immunotherapy, Dr. Emancipator received the 2019 Israel Davidsohn Distinguished Service Award and the 2017 Philip Levine Award for Outstanding Research from the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP). He was one of 6 individuals to receive, on behalf of Merck, the 2015 PhRMA Research and Hope Award for research by a biopharmaceutical company. Dr. Emancipator received his AB degree from Harvard University and his MD from St. Louis University. He completed his medical internship at Westchester County Medical Center and his pathology residency at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has held appointments at the US National Institutes of Health, the US Food and Drug Administration, Cornell University, Beth Israel Medical Center, Bayer Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, and Abbott Molecular prior to joining Merck. He also has held various leadership positions with ASCP, eventually becoming its Treasurer and serving on its Board of Directors. He is reviewer for the American Journal of Clinical Pathology.

Assistant Head, Clinical Biomarkers in Translational Oncology
Andrea Webber received her PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University and went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine before joining Merck & Co., Inc. Over the course of her pharmaceutical career, she has worked in biomarker discovery and development in support of both Discovery and Clinical Research. Currently, she is Assistant Head of Clinical Biomarkers in Merck’s Translational Oncology department, providing a key link between the Translational Sciences and Merck’s Clinical Development teams. The Translational Oncology Biomarkers Team supports early- and late-stage development and leverages multiple assays and platforms to inform on Keytruda mono and combination therapies. Specifically, Dr Webber leads the biomarker strategy for multiple product development teams including Melanoma, Head and Neck, and Liver cancers.

Manager, Research and Development
Gianpiero joined Meridian Life Science over 5 years ago and he leads the development of reagents for RT-qPCR based detection. His recent focus has been on lyo-compatible and ambient temperature stable products for diagnostic applications. He holds a PhD from the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) and has undertaken post-doctoral studies at University College of London Cancer Research, UK.

Director, Data Science Outreach
Vani Mandava is a Director of Data Science at Microsoft Research at Redmond with over a decade of experience in engineering teams designing and shipping software that in use by millions of users across the world. She is passionate about enabling academic researchers and institutions develop technologies that fuel data-intensive scientific research using advanced techniques in data management, data mining, especially leveraging Microsoft cloud and AI platform. She has enabled the adoption of data mining best practices in various v1 products across Microsoft client, server and services in MS-Office, Sharepoint, Online Services (Bing Ads) organizations and in the Academic Search service. She co-authored a book ‘Developing Solutions with Infopath’ and holds patents in service engineering. She leads Microsoft Research Outreach efforts at Data Science Institutions in US universities. She co-chaired KDD Cup 2013 and partners with many academic and government agencies including NSF supported Big Data Innovation hub effort, a consortia coordinated by top US data scientists and expected to advance data-driven innovation nationally in the US. She is currently leading the microsoftopendata.com project, a cloud based open data repository.

Healthcare Intelligence Lead, Senior Principal Researcher
I lead the Healthcare Intelligence group at Microsoft Research Cambridge. My research focuses on human-centred machine learning for healthcare. I have also led key research areas in ML-based productivity tools for cancer treatment (see The InnerEye Project). In the past, I have explored various synergies between programming languages and machine learning and my work has inspired new perspectives in formal verification, probabilistic programming, and reliable machine learning. I have developed several programmer productivity tools, including the next generation of the Static Driver Verifier toolkit for Microsoft Windows.

Marketing Manager, Dx Manufacturing & OEM
Lynn Stephenson joined MilliporeSigma, then Sigma-Aldrich, in 2005 after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Washington University in Immunology. She has a broad array of experience working with regulated markets including portfolio/product management and marketing. She currently supports the global marketing program for In Vitro Diagnostics Contract Manufacturing.

Head, Bioscience
As Head of Bioscience, Briony oversees the translation of biological assays and systems onto Minifab’s microfluidic platforms. Briony has over 11 years industry experience, with 4 years based in the USA working in the highly regulated medical device / in vitro diagnostic (IVD) field developing immunodiagnostics.

Instructor of Neurological Surgery
Eric Karl Oermann, MD (@ekoermann) is an Instructor of Neurological Surgery in the Mount Sinai Health System and the Director of AISINAI, Mount Sinai’s artificial intelligence research group. He studied mathematics at Georgetown University with a focus on differential geometry. Prior to attending medical school, Dr. Oermann spent six months with the President’s Council on Bioethics studying human dignity under the mentorship of physician-philosopher Edmund Pellegrino, MD. Dr. Oermann has won numerous awards for his scholarship including fellowships from the American Brain Tumor Association and Doris Duke Charitable Research Foundation where he was first exposed to neural networks and deep learning. He has published over eighty manuscripts spanning basic research on machine learning, deep learning, and the philosophy of medicine. As a resident Dr. Oermann was selected as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 for his work in using machine learning to develop prognostic models for cancer patients. Dr. Oermann completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Google (Google Health / Verily Life Sciences). He is interested in weakly supervised learning, reinforcement learning with imperfect information, and in building artificial neural networks that more accurately model biological neural networks (“machines that think like humans”). As a physician, he is also interested in the application of deep learning to solve a wide range of practical problems in the medical sciences for improving clinical care.

Chief, Structural Biology and Molecular Applications Brand, Division of Cancer Biology and Citizen Science Coordinator
Jennifer Couch, PhD, is the Chief of the Structural Biology and Molecular Applications Branch in the Division of Cancer Biology, NCI, NIH. Dr. Couch’s branch supports research and development of enabling technologies and methodologies including structural biology and biophysical characterization; bioinformatics, computational biology, mathematical modeling, data science, citizen science and crowdsourcing methods, and systems biology; molecular applications including synthetic biology; and bioengineering and biotechnology including biomimetics. Dr. Couch serves as the co-Lead for the Cancer Moonshot Technology Development Implementation Team which aims to accelerate basic, clinical and epidemiological cancer research through the development and validation of experimental and in silico technologies. Additionally, she as the NIH Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Coordinator which explores the use of and potential for citizen science approaches to biomedical research and provides resources to the research community. She leads efforts in data analysis, software development and novel approaches to Biocomputing for the NIH Big Data to Knowledge Program. She acts as the computational biology coordinator for the NCI Cancer Systems Biology Consortium, managing the mathematical modeling program and co-leads a program which bridges the gap between cancer mechanism and population out-comes. She works on several NIH Common Fund initiatives including Single Cell, Library of Integrated Cell Signatures, and Biocomputing. In addition, Dr. Couch participates in several trans-NIH and trans-agency efforts and has helped to organize workshops and programs in areas such as Quantitative Systems Pharmacology, Multi-Scale Modeling, and Games for Biomedical Research.

Principal Scientist, Pharma Services
Dr. Au is a Principal Scientist with the Pharma Services division at NeoGenomics, and has been working with the MultiOmyxTM platform for over 6 years. Prior to joining NeoGenomics she was a Staff Scientist at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, and previous to that was a Research Scientist at CytRx Corporation. Dr. Au earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California at Riverside, and she also holds Master’s degree in Genetics from Fudan University. Dr. Au has authored/co-authored over 20 scientific publications and is a named inventor on 2 issued patents.

Principal Scientist, Molecular
Dr. Xin-Xing Tan is currently a Principal Scientist with NeoGenomics, a premier cancer diagnostics and pharma service company. In this role Dr. Tan leads and oversees assay and technology development within the company as well as externally with customers and collaborators, guides and supervises project design, planning, execution and delivery. His appointments in past over ten years with NeoGenomics includes roles as Scientist, Project Manager, and NGS Team Manager, focusing on NGS and its applications in Oncology and Infectious Diseases, such as biomarker discovery and vaccine development. Prior to NeoGenomics, Dr. Tan was a Senior Scientist at CytoGenix where he co-invented the intra-cellular ssDNA expression system for anti-bacterial and anti-tumor applications. Dr. Tan received his PhD in Biochemistry from Chinese Academy of Science and Postdoc training in gene expression regulation at Rice University.

General Partner
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, 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 recently served as an Entrepreneur In Residence to GE Ventures – New Business Creation Group. He serves on the board of GeneNews Ltd. (a molecular diagnostic company). He also serves on the advisory board of Nucelis (a gene-editing industrial biotech company), 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.

Program Director, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis
Dr. Christopher M. Hartshorn serves as a program director at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health. In this role, he manages nano- and passive continuous monitoring-centric research projects, evaluates effectiveness of the programs, and maintains proper stewardship over federally funded research. Furthermore, he serves as a technical expert to extramural programs and participates in development and direction of new research initiatives within the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis. Prior to the NCI, Dr. Hartshorn worked for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Principal Scientist/PM, Team Leader PTO, Center for Advanced Preclinical Research, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (NCI)
Internationally recognized expert in advanced methodologies for developing genetically and biologically engineered preclinical murine disease models for studies of the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis, tumor immune response, immune surveillance, and inflammation, mechanisms of drug resistance, implication of cancer stem cells, etc.; and to explore such models for preclinical drug development, disease systems analyses and biomarker discovery. Initiated, supervised, and successfully conducted multiple research projects and independent large-scale research and development programs aimed at investigation of molecular mechanisms governing carcinogenesis, biomarker discovery and preclinical drug evaluation in various mouse models. Oversees the preclinical operations at the Frederick National Laboratory Center for Advanced Preclinical Research – an innovative preclinical cancer modeling and drug development initiative based on genetically engineered murine models – with senior management responsibilities. Co-authored over 60 scientific papers, book chapters and original works in peer-reviewed journals.

Scientific Lead, NCBI Hackathons Program, Computational Biology Branch
Generation of clustering algorithms for analysis of large gene families and whole genomes Phylomic Analysis of Gene Transfer Events

President and CEO
Paul Hastings was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Nkarta in February 2018. Mr. Hastings was recently the Chairman and CEO of OncoMed Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining OncoMed in 2006, Mr. Hastings was President and Chief Executive Officer of QLT, Inc. Previous to that, Mr. Hastings served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Axys Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Celera Corporation in 2001. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Hastings served as the President of Chiron BioPharmaceuticals, a division of Chiron Corporation. Prior to that, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of LXR Biotechnology. Mr. Hastings also held a series of management positions of increasing responsibility at Genzyme Corporation, including serving as President of Genzyme Therapeutics Europe as well as President, Genzyme Therapeutics. Mr. Hastings also served as Vice President, Marketing and Sales and General Manager, Europe for Synergen, Inc., and previously held a series of marketing and sales management positions with Hoffmann-La Roche. He is currently Lead Independent Director of Pacira Biosciences, Inc., Chairman of the Board at Proteon Therapeutics, and Director at ViaCyte. He also serves as Vice Chair and member of the Executive Committee of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO). Mr. Hastings was recently on the Board of Directors of Relypsa, Inc. (acquired by Galenica), was Chairman of the Board of Proteolix (sold to Onyx Pharmaceuticals in 2010) and served on the board of ViaCell (sold to Perkin-Elmer in 2007). Mr. Hastings received a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from the University of Rhode Island.

CSO
James Trager joined Nkarta Therapeutics, as Senior Vice President of R&D in 2016 and leads all discovery and development efforts. Nkarta is a South San Francisco based startup focused on the use of Natural Killer cells in the treatment of cancer. James is deeply versed in the development and application of cellular therapies for cancer, with broad exposure from discovery to development, quality control, manufacturing, clinical application and regulatory issues surrounding these complex therapies. He previously served as Vice President of Research and Development at Dendreon, where he was responsible for product development, clinical immunology, and analytical development, supporting the late stage development of sipuleucel-T through clinical study, approval, and commercialization. Prior to Dendreon, James was a Senior Scientist at Geron; he was part of the team that cloned human telomerase, and later established a Quality Control function for the manufacture and clinical development of a telomerase inhibitor. James is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe New Mexico; and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic. He received his doctorate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where he performed mechanistic studies on the src oncogene.

Director, Molecular Diagnostics, Assistant Director, Infectious Disease Diagnostics
Dr. Berry received his undergraduate degree in Biology from East Stroudsburg University in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He also completed a fellowship in Medical Microbiology and Public Health at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Dr. Berry is the Director of Molecular Diagnostics and an Assistant Director of Infectious Disease Diagnostics at Northwell Health Laboratories and is also the Director of Microbiology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. He is also a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology and an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. His interests include the optimization of current methodologies and the development of new technologies for patient-centered clinical testing.

Professor of Statistics, Adjunct Professor of Molecular BioSciences, Faculty Member, NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology
My research interests are in the statistical applications in biology and medical sciences. My recent work concerns developing statistical methods and tools for large-scale, high-dimensional genomic, genetic and human brain mapping data. Some working topics include species number estimation, nucleosome positioning mapping, next-generation sequencing analysis, RNA-seq normalization, fMRI data in human brain mapping, and Bayesian network with applications to The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data. My lab has developed a few software tools that have been frequently used by researchers, including NuPoP (for nucleosome positioning prediction, see bioconductor) and SPECIES (for species number estimation, see CRAN).

Director, Computer Aided Drug Design
Eric Martin has a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale University. He has worked in computational drug design and herbicide design for 35 years at Dow, DowElanco, Chiron and Novartis. He is currently developing novel methodologies for two areas of drug discovery: 1) Developing “Profile-QSAR”, a massively multitask machine learning method that builds experimental-quality virtual screening models for most Novartis IC50 assays, and 2) “rational oral bioavailability design” during lead optimization by applying global sensitivity analysis to physiologically-based pharmacokinetics simulations. Eric Martin has a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale University. He has worked in computational drug design and herbicide design for 35 years at Dow, DowElanco, Chiron and Novartis. He is currently developing novel methodologies for two areas of drug discovery: 1) Developing “Profile-QSAR”, a massively multitask machine learning method that builds experimental-quality virtual screening models for most Novartis IC50 assays, and 2) “rational oral bioavailability design” during lead optimization by applying global sensitivity analysis to physiologically-based pharmacokinetics simulations. Eric Martin has a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale University. He has worked in computational drug design and herbicide design for 35 years at Dow, DowElanco, Chiron and Novartis. He is currently developing novel methodologies for two areas of drug discovery: 1) Developing “Profile-QSAR”, a massively multitask machine learning method that builds experimental-quality virtual screening models for most Novartis IC50 assays, and 2) “rational oral bioavailability design” during lead optimization by applying global sensitivity analysis to physiologically-based pharmacokinetics simulations.

Global Head, Computer-Aided Drug Discovery
No bio available

Head, Digital Therapeutics
Joris van Dam is a Digital Health intrapreneur with 15 years’ experience in Pharmaceutical Research & Development, focusing on the innovative use of digital technologies to improve and transform therapeutic innovation, patient engagement, and clinical trial operations. Joris is currently leading the Digital Therapeutics initiative at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, including its collaboration with Pear Therapeutics on the development of novel digital therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis.

Executive Director, Enterprise Analytics & Data Science
Self motivated, committed, superior analytical and quantitative aptitudes combined with critical and strategic thinking, excellent communication and management skills, ability to convert analytics into business with high-level academic knowledge and training. Establishing priorities, ability to lead cross-functional teams, and work on multiple projects under tight timelines. Strong leader; results-driven, creative thinker with ability to address business needs with novel analytical methods.

Head, Precision Medicine Strategy, Oncology Business Unit
Cecilia Schott is VP, Precision Medicine for AstraZeneca Global Product & Portfolio Strategy. Cecilia and her team are responsible for establishing external global collaborations and partnerships for diagnostic development and commercialization alongside AstraZeneca’s portfolio. Prior to her current role Cecilia held positions Global Marketing and US Medical Affairs. Cecilia’s background, Includes roles in the biotech and device industries. Before joining AstraZeneca she was part of Biogen’s Drug Safety and Medical Information function, and at Boston Scientific she was responsible for establishing the drug eluting stent franchise Medical Publications and Medical Information groups as part of Medical Affairs. Cecilia holds a BS in Pharmacy from University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, Boston, and a MBA from Babson College, Boston.

Senior Scientist, Novartis Oncology Precision Medicine
Shruthi Bharadwaj is a Senior Scientist at Novartis within the Informatics and Analytics group. She received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Florida and continued her research as a post-doctoral fellow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Shruthi has been interested and involved in utilizing AI and machine learning approaches in Pharma. She has a patent that involves machine-learning approach to predict the onset of colon cancer in patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. She has won several NIH grants that supported her research in leveraging AI approaches in healthcare. She has published several research articles, book chapters and abstracts that focus on AI approaches in diagnosis and drug development.

Founder & CEO
A molecular biologist by training, Gini has more than 16 years of experience turning cutting-edge scientific concepts into products that benefit patients. As CEO of NuMedii, Gini structured the company’s critical partnerships with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies including Allergan, Astellas and Aptalis, and raised the initial rounds of financing. Before NuMedii, she helped companies identify optimal markets and whole-product solutions for their groundbreaking technologies, including Affymetrix and iPierian, and led innovation at Children’s Hospital Boston, where she focused on the creation of new devices for the tiniest of patients. Gini has helped commercialize early-stage technologies in research tools, diagnostics and therapeutics and has closed licensing deals worth several million. She received her MS from the University of Pune (India), her PhD in Biological Sciences from Purdue University, and did post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Senior Director
Dr. Chan is Senior Director, Medical Affairs for Digital Medicine, Otsuka. Dr. Chan was the principal investigator for the Mount Sinai Asthma Mobile Health Study using the Asthma Health app powered by Apple’s ResearchKit framework. This pioneering virtual study of >10,000 participants from 3 countries demonstrated that a broad scale clinical study could be conducted in its entirety via a smartphone application, including remote participant recruitment, consent, prospective collection of data including geolocation, environmental and device data, as well as secure bi-directional data exchange between participants and investigators. Recently, Dr. Chan and her digital health team created and deployed a digital platform to scale Mount Sinai’s recruitment and engagement of the institution’s DNA biobank research participants. Additionally, she is also the Mount Sinai principal investigator for the NIH U01 “Practice-Based Research to Improve Self-Management Support (PRISMS) Sensor Development Projects for Pediatric Asthma study”- an innovative smartphone and biosensor device research collaboration with the Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors at Arizona State University and University of Southern California.

Medical Director, Moldx
Dr. Bien-Willner is the Medical Director of the MolDX program at Palmetto GBA, a Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC). MolDX seeks to understand the molecular testing landscape to implement payer controls, coverage, and to set policy for affiliated MACs, which currently cover 28 states. He is a leader in the Precision Medicine space and practices as a Board-certified Anatomic Pathologist and Molecular Genetic Pathologist. Throughout his career, he has been active in research, development, and advancement of molecular diagnostic services, specifically next generation sequencing. He has worked closely with clinicians to develop clear clinical diagnostic and treatment pathways directing Precision Medicine programs for community cancer centers. Dr. Bien-Willner received his MD and PhD degrees from Baylor College of Medicine, with a PhD in Human Molecular Genetics. He completed his residency, fellowship, and attained a faculty appointment at Washington University in St. Louis prior to leadership roles in laboratory and biotech companies before joining Palmetto GBA.

Chief Strategy Officer
Alex is a senior level global bio/pharmaceutical business leader with 27+ years of experience with large pharmaceutical, fully integrated biopharmaceutical and startup organizations. He has a proven record of building and leading business strategy and operations. In his career, Alex has driven enterprise value from portfolio strategy through to commercial launch. In previous roles, Alex has architected the structure and growth of several divisions at Biogen and helped to shape the emerging biosimilar market at Epirus Biopharmaceuticals. Alex has also worked in numerous commercial and operations roles at Genzyme, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

John Simmons, PhD is the Vice President of Translational Medicine at PGDx. In this role, John focuses broadly on scientific strategy and biomarker discovery and diagnostics 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 PhD in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University as part of the NIH Graduate Partnership Program. As a postdoctoral 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.

Director, Translational Oncology, Global Product Department
No bio available

Vice President and Head, Diagnostics
Hakan Sakul is currently responsible for companion diagnostics (CDx) across Pfizer’s portfolio, and held positions of, increasing responsibility since 1999, most recently leading development and implementation of Pfizer’s diagnostics strategy. He led Pfizer’s flagship CDx program for Xalkori® and oversaw several others since then. Hakan’s pharma career started at Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals. He worked in biotech in statistical genetics, human genetics and pharmacogenomics before that. Hakan is a Board member of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, and on CA Gov. Brown’s Precision Medicine Advisory Committee. He holds a PhD in Quantitative Genetics from the University of Minnesota.

Director and Diagnostic Lead, Companion Diagnostics
Marielena Mata, PhD is Director and Diagnostic Lead at Pfizer, where she Leads the development and commercialization efforts of companion diagnostics for Oncology assets from Early to late development. Prior to Pfizer, Maty was Head of Personalized Medicine and Companion Diagnostics at GSK where she was responsible for implementation of the Precision Medicine strategy across the GSK portfolio encompassing technical, development, regulatory, commercial, IP and business development efforts. Previously, at Janssen R&D, Inc. Dr. Mata was responsible for the design and implementation of biomarker strategies for Oncology assets, where she led the development of Circulating Tumor Cell based assays as companion diagnostics as well as the development of next generation circulating tumor cell isolation technologies based on microfluidics. Earlier, she established and managed the Biomarkers biobank. Dr. Mata obtained a BA in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her PhD and postdoctoral training in Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Director, Computational Biology
No bio available

Vice President, Head of Translational Research
Paul joined Agouron Pharmaceuticals (now Pfizer) in 1994 as a computational chemist to build innovative tools for structure-enabled drug discovery, and supported projects in Oncology, Virology and CNS from 1998-2001. From 2001-2005, Paul formed a Bioinformatics Group and co-led Molecular Design, helped create the La Jolla Obesity & Diabetes organization and led a drug discovery team to nominate 3 clinical candidates. Starting in 2005, Paul built the Oncology Computational Biology group and led an interdisciplinary group of scientists focused on Oncology Pathways before assuming the role as Head of Precision Medicine in 2013. Following a brief interlude as interim CSO, Paul transitioned into Early Oncology Development and Clinical Research as Head of Translational Research with responsibility for Computational Biology, Translational Pharmacology, Translational Leads and Biomarker Assay Specialists. Dr. Rejto earned his AB in Chemistry & Physics from Harvard, PhD in Chemistry from Stanford, and completed a postdoc at UC Berkeley. Paul has co-authored more than 65 publications.

Kris Buchanan is the CEO and founder of Phase Three Product Development. He is a biomedical and systems engineer who has worked in all phases of product development for over 30 years. Kris is also the inventor or co-inventor of more than 75 USPTO and international patents. Kris has a history of building and leading product development teams and even R&D divisions of large companies and had an extensive network of engineers, assay developers, and other technical specialists. At Phase Three, he has assembled an all-star team of experienced engineers and scientists with pre-built communication systems and an understanding of competencies.

Head, Connected Sensing and Wearables Venture
Ravi heads the Connected Sensing and Wearables Venture (CSV) at Philips. Ravi is a medical industry entrepreneur, with over 20 years of experience in patient monitoring, and healthcare IT. Prior to CSV, Ravi co-founded multiple startup companies in remote and cloud computing-based wearables monitoring. Ravi also served as the Vice President of Research and Development at Draeger Medical, a global powerhouse in patient monitoring, anesthesia delivery, and respiration, and headed R&D efforts at SpaceLabs Medical, in Seattle, where he was instrumental in driving the development of key technologies and products in patient monitoring solutions and was the General Manager for their India operations. In addition, Ravi holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a PhD and MS in biomedical engineering from Louisiana Tech University and University of Miami respectively, and a BSEE from Bangalore University.

CEO
Pinpoint cofounder and CEO Lisa Diamond has a 40-year track record of technology innovation and senior engineering management, from pioneering development in molecular diagnostics and computational genomics to financial and trading applications, business intelligence and analytics, computer animation, digital video and more. She has collaborated with Dr. Pourmand over the last fifteen years to develop novel molecular diagnostics for pathogens including pandemic influenza, human papilloma virus, and drug-resistant TB, and holds two patents for novel molecular diagnostics. Diamond was principal software and systems architect with San Francisco non-profit Global Viral. As systems architect and developer at the Stanford Genome Technology Center for ten years, she built software to generate molecular probes for colon and esophageal cancer, pandemic influenza, drugresistant TB, and human papilloma virus, and developed novel software to analyze the vaginal microbiome. Other software innovation at startup Pathogenica focused on panels of multiplexed probes to identify pathogens and characterize resistance and virulence. As VP of Engineering at Black Pearl, she led development of innovative AI business applications. Lisa led streaming wireless and data visualization development for equity trading as VP of Technology Innovation at Reuters, and led the Market Data Engineering team at their Tibco Finance Technology division in Palo Alto. Prior to that, as vice president of Architecture and Strategy for Global Market Data Systems at Merrill Lynch, she was responsible for key trading floor infrastructure and applications in Tokyo and New York. Earlier in her career, Lisa pioneered groundbreaking real-time graphics, animation and digital video systems.

Founder & CEO
Shidong Jia, MD, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of Predicine. Prior to founding Predicine, Shidong spearheaded the oncology biomarker strategies and drug & diagnostics co-development at Genentech. He previously held various research positions focusing on translational and clinical cancer research at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and Harvard University.

Founder
Ephraim Tsalik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology. He also holds an appointment in the Emergency Department Service at the Durham VA Health Care System. He earned his MD and PhD from Columbia University followed by residency and fellowship training at Duke University. He also obtained a Masters in Health Services with a focus on Clinical Research. Through the Duke Center for Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine, Dr. Tsalik leads multiple translational research programs focused on the study of host-pathogen interactions using genomic medicine technologies. This information serves as a resource to develop novel diagnostic strategies, which Dr. Tsalik is pursuing through his company, Predigen, Inc.

President of Performance Services
As the President of Performance Services, Leigh Anderson has overall responsibility for Premier’s Performance Services segment, including the continued development and growth of the company’s enterprise-wide, cloud-based informatics business, as well as Premier’s Performance Partners consulting unit. Anderson, who has more than two decades of informatics experience in corporate and provider settings, joined Premier in 2013. In his previous role as Chief Operating Officer for Information and Technology Services at Premier, Anderson ran the day-to-day operations of the informatics business. Prior to joining Premier, he served in lead informatics roles at Hospital Corporation of America, Health Trust, Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) and AT&T. He received his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Hofstra University, and his MBA from Wake Forest University. In addition, Leigh Anderson formerly served on the U.S. governing board of GS1.

Radiation Oncologist, Radiation Medicine Program; Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network; Assistant Professor, Depts of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Dr. Scott Bratman is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto and serves as Clinician-Scientist and Staff Radiation Oncologist at The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Dr. Bratman was trained at Princeton University, Columbia University Medical Center, and Stanford Cancer Institute. Starting with his postdoctoral studies at Stanford, Dr. Bratman has developed cutting edge liquid biopsy technologies for detection and monitoring of cancer in the bloodstream. This work is revolutionizing cancer care by allowing cancer to be detected with a simple blood test. As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Bratman is at the front lines of translating liquid biopsies into improved health outcomes for patients. His research program has expanded to include lung cancer, cervix cancer, head and neck cancer, leukemia, among others. His work has been recognized through publication in high impact scientific journals such as Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and JAMA Oncology. The Bratman Lab strives to be a source of innovation and novel technologies for next-generation blood-based biomarkers.

President, Executive Director
Khosrow Shotorbani is the CEO and founder of the Lab 2.0 Strategic Services, LLC. He is a member of Project Santa Fe Clinical Laboratory 2.0 industry advocate. As the former President and Chief Executive Officer at TriCore Reference Laboratories, Mr. Shotorbani oversaw the corporate direction and strategy of TriCore, focusing on leadership and innovation, as well as operations, growth, and the financial health of the company. He led TriCore’s initiatives based on the premise to improve health outcomes and lower costs by utilization of laboratory data. Mr. Shotorbani was instrumental in the creation of Project Santa Fe—a recently launched initiative with like-minded executives—helping to forge new frontiers that will define future economic valuation and placement of diagnostic services. Before joining TriCore in 2014, Mr. Shotorbani served as Senior Vice President and Director of Business Development/Business Innovations at ARUP. He joined ARUP in 1984 as a medical technologist and while at ARUP advanced to positions with progressive responsibility over his 30-year tenure.

Vice President, Chief Product Officer, Digital Innovations
Maryam Gholami is vice president, head of product, design and development for digital innovations at Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH). She brings over 15 years of experience in building technology products and companies, leading multidisciplinary teams including product, design, and engineering, within well-established companies and start-ups such as Microsoft, Practice Fusion and Zoi Health. At PSJH, she is responsible for the incubation and growth of the consumer digital products portfolio and also applications of advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning to bring access and convenience to consumers, simplify caregiving and increase operational efficiency. With almost 10 years of experience in machine learning and artificial intelligence including information retrieval, recommendation engines, NLP, voice, and computer vision, Maryam has been instrumental in moving healthcare forward with AI. Some of her most recent work includes AI-enabled HIPAA compliant voice skills through partnership with Amazon Alexa, digital health assistant chatbot for navigation and triage, and applications of computer vision in digital payment and registration. Prior to PSJH, Maryam was the co-founder and CEO of Zoi Health, a start-up which combined the power of human coaches and AI to provide ongoing monitoring and health coaching to people with chronic conditions such as Diabetes and Hypertension.

Managing Director
No bio available

Senior Director, Head of Sample Technologies Product Development Life Sciences
Markus Sprenger-Haussels studied biology at the University of Cologne, did his PhD in Genetics, and held post-doctoral positions at Max-Planck Institutes in Cologne and Dortmund, before joining QIAGEN as a Laboratory Manager in 1999. Since then, he has held various positions within the R&D organization in the Business Areas “Molecular Diagnostics” and “Life Sciences” with increasing responsibilities and a focus on liquid biopsy application development. Today he is responsible for planning and execution of the Sample Technologies strategy within QIAGEN’s Life Science Business Area and leading the product development department.

Director, Strategy and Business Development
Bryan Bothwell is Qorvo’s Director of Strategy and Business Development - with responsibility for new market, technology and customer development worldwide. He received undergraduate degrees in Biology/ Biochemistry, and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Business Administration.

Associate Professor
Dr O'Grady gained his BSc in Microbiology, his MSc (Res) in infectious diseases diagnostics and his PhD in the molecular diagnosis of pathogens in food all at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). He remained at NUIG for his first post-doc, continuing his research in food microbiology. This was followed by a two-year stint in industry (Beckman Coulter) developing real-time PCR based tests for infectious diseases including tuberculosis (TB). Dr O’Grady then returned to academia, taking up a post-doc position at University College London on TB diagnostics. In January 2013 he was appointed Assistant Professor in Medical Microbiology at UEA, was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2016, and in April 2018 also took the role of Research Leader at Quadram Institute Bioscience. His research continues to focus on the rapid molecular diagnosis of pathogens with the aim of translating this research broadly, in different sectors and diseases, to maximise community/patient benefit.

General Partner, dRx Capital; Head, Healthcare Investing
Thomas is the head of health care investing at Qualcomm Ventures where he focuses on digital health care companies. Thomas is also a General Partner at dRx Capital, which is a joint venture investment company launched by Novartis and Qualcomm with a capital commitment up to $100M. As part of these roles, Thomas strives to catalyze the success of digital medicine products, services and business models by investing in high-growth, technology companies. Prior to Qualcomm Ventures, Thomas was an investment professional at Providence Ventures, the venture capital arm at one of the nation’s leading healthcare delivery networks, Providence St. Joseph Health. Prior to Providence Ventures, Thomas was part of the strategic finance / strategic investing team at Cambia Health Solutions, the private equity sponsor for Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, a nationally recognized health insurer committed to transforming healthcare. As part of his role at Cambia, Thomas had an observer seat on the Fund Management Team (FMT), the formal governing body established by the company to approve all VC, PE and M&A deals. Thomas was also a direct investment professional at Adams Street Partners where he supported the partnership on venture capital and growth equity opportunities. Thomas holds his Master of Science in Medical Informatics and a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University where he is a published author in the Journal of Surgical Oncology..

President/CEO, Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine
Dr. Stephen Kingsmore is President and CEO of Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, where he leads a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, physicians and researchers who are pioneering the use of rapid Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) to diagnose and guide precision medical care for critically-ill newborns. An expert in genomic and systems medicine research, Dr. Kingsmore holds the world speed record for achieving the fastest molecular diagnosis using whole genome sequencing in 19.5 hours. Following a nationwide search, he was selected as the founding President and CEO of the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine (RCIGM) in September 2015. The mission of the Institute is identifying the genetic cause of rare diseases in acutely ill newborns and children through rapid and ultra-rapid WGS. Dr. Kingsmore came to Rady Children’s from Children’s Mercy Kansas City, where he was the Founding Director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine. He also held the Dee Lyons/Missouri Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. In his distinguished career, Dr. Kingsmore has also served as President and CEO of the National Center for Genome Resources; COO 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 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 at Duke University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. He received the 2013 Scripps Genomic Medicine award for pioneering discoveries in neonatal care and TIME magazine ranked his rapid genome diagnosis method one of the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2012.

CEO
Richard Spero is co-founder and CEO of Redbud Labs, where he leads both commercial activities and the company’s systems engineering team. He is a co-inventor of Redbud Posts, a MEMS chip covered with biomimetic cilia. Redbud Posts enable novel methods for fluid processing at the microscale, including pumping, mixing, cell sorting, and analyte isolation. This technology is used by point-of-care diagnostic device developers to improve assay speed, reliability, and performance. Prior to founding Redbud Labs, Dr. Spero earned his PhD in Physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied blood clot rheology and developed novel systems for magnetic manipulation and time-dependent high content screening.

Vice President, Head, Global Research
Walter H. Koch, PhD is Vice President and Head of Global Research for Roche Molecular Systems. He is responsible for all research and early development activities, including biomarker discovery and validation, the development of new molecular technologies with diagnostics potential, and expanding the use of PCR for clinical applications in the areas of infectious diseases, genetics, Oncology companion diagnostics and “liquid biopsy” cancer tests. Prior to joining Roche he held several positions at the US FDA, including Acting Lab Chief of Immunochemistry in CBER’s Division of Transfusion Transmitted Disease. He received a BS in Chemistry from Memphis State University, a PhD in Toxicology and Pharmacology from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Senior Laboratory Directory, Ariosa Diagnostics
Junaid received his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Nottingham in the UK. He was awarded a fellowship from the American Heart Association at the University of Cincinnati to study cardiac gene regulation and helped establish a Marfan syndrome testing laboratory in London. After completing his training in clinical molecular genetics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, Junaid joined their faculty in the Department of Human Genetics to work primarily on Fabry disease. He went on to work at Celera and Qiagen Bioinformatics and has served as a Laboratory Director at Myriad Genetics, Guardant Health, Counsyl, and Ariosa Diagnostics. He currently serves as the Senior Laboratory Director at Ariosa, and his primary interests are in NIPT, molecular oncology, and inherited genetic disorders.

Senior Director, Global Market Access
No bio available

Manager, Biomedical Informatics Shared Resource, Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
No bio available

Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mehdi Javanmard joined Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers University in Fall 2014 as Assistant Professor. Before that he was Senior Research Engineer at the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC) in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He received his BS (2002) from Georgia Institute of Technology and the MS in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (2004). In 2008, he received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University working on development of electronic microfluidic platforms for low cost genomic and proteomic biomarker detection. At SGTC, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar from 2008-2009, and then as a staff engineering research associate from 2009 till 2014. In 2017 he was recipient of the Translational Medicine and Therapeutics Award by the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics for his group's work in point of care diagnostic tools for assessing patient response to cancer therapies. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2019. He has received various awards as Principal Investigator from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the PhRMA foundation to support his research. His interests lie in developing portable and wearable technologies for continuous health monitoring and understanding the effects of environment on health.

Staff Physician, Medicine
Teresa (Terry) Wright has diverse experiences in both academia and business. Terry was a Professor in the Department of Medicine at UCSF, and chief of gastroenterology at the UCSF-affiliated San Francisco Veterans hospital, where she still sees patients. Terry focused her academic career on translational research (bedside-to-bench) identifying clinical problems in patient care and collaborating with bench scientists both in academia and in industry to find solutions. Terry was the first woman president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the premier professional society in North America for the advancement of research, clinical practice, and guideline development for patients with liver disease. From 2006 to 2010, Terry was Chief Medical Officer of Roche Molecular Diagnostics where she led the team that conceived, designed and executed the ATHENA trial, the largest regulatory trial in cervical cancer screening ever performed. In 2011, Terry assumed global responsibilities for late stage clinical development for hepatitis C and Hepatology at Roche, based in South San Francisco. In the subsequent six years while at Genentech, she advised teams on clinical development of investigational therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis as well as immunotherapies for hepatitis B and hepatocellular carcinoma. Since leaving Roche in 2017, Terry has been advising pharma and biotech companies on clinical development of both diagnostics and therapeutics and has joined the boards of early stage companies.

Executive Vice President, R&D
Adrian Woolfson, BM, BCh, PhD, has over a decade of biopharmaceutical industry experience in drug discovery, medical affairs and early and late stage clinical development. Most recently, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Nouscom AG, a genetic cancer vaccine biotechnology company based in Basel, Switzerland, where he led the development of the company’s off-the-shelf and personalized neoantigen vaccine and oncolytic virus strategy. Dr. Woolfson previously worked at Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Woolfson completed post-graduate training in internal medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital Cambridge. He holds a BM BCh degree in Clinical Medicine from Oxford University and a PhD in molecular immunology from Cambridge University.

Head, Bioinformatics, Translational Sciences
Deepak Rajpal serves as head of bioinformatics, at Sanofi, delivering translational sciences research to therapeutic areas on target identification and validation, building and progressing drug discovery pipeline, biomarker discovery and patient selection.  Prior to Sanofi, at GSK, over the past 17 years, assumed increasing responsibilities by delivering on various aspects of drug discovery and development in multiple therapy areas. Served as domain expert of computational biology for various metabolic and immune-mediated dermatological conditions. Provided strategic research partnership in building drug discovery units and established external collaborations to bring in innovative research ideas.

Founder and Director
Dr. Eric Topol is one of the leading innovators in medicine today, specializing in the use of artificial intelligence, “deep” data, and smart technology in the practice of individualized medicine. Also called precision medicine, individualized medicine tailors diagnosis, prevention, and treatment to the full biological and social profile of the individual, rather than the “average” human of traditional medical science. Dr. Eric Topol is the Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute (SRTI). He also is Executive Vice President of Scripps Research and Professor of Molecular Medicine. Britain’s National Health Service has called on Dr. Topol to lead a review into how the NHS can pioneer new treatments and technologies to transform healthcare. Dr. Topol will look at technologies such as artificial intelligence (including robotics), genomics and digital medicine and how to train tens of thousands of staff at the NHS. Individualized medicine. Individualized medicine empowers the individual in the management of their care and uses their unique biology to guide that care. For the average human being does not exist and our current generalized approach to medicine is failing us in many important ways. Dr. Topol has led the effort to use the unique genetic makeup of patients to inform their treatment. He has led several groundbreaking research studies and innovations in individualized clinical practice. Technology and wireless medicine. Technologically, individual- ized medicine goes well beyond personal genetics. We now have sensors that can track basically every physiologic system in a human being. Many of these technologies are wearable, inexpensive, and capable of being integrated with your smart phone. Dr. Topol uses these digital technologies and genomics to understand each person; the goal is to practice high-definition medicine. Deep Medicine: Using Big – and Deep – data. Deep-learning uses artificial intelligence to analyze huge quantities of data to inform “deep medicine.” These algorithms are becoming as good at diagnosis as doctors in a field; they don’t get tired, don’t have bad days, are really cheap and fast. To advance this work, Dr. Topol is leading the largest aspect of the All of Us Precision Medicine Initiative begun by President Obama, the most ambitious medical research project in history. The Precision Medicine Initiative will track the medical profiles of one million Americans. The grant to Dr. Topol and Scripps Research is one of the largest grants in NIH history, and will use all the tools – genomics, sensors, smartphones – that Topol’s work has spearheaded and enhance the capabilities of individualized medicine. Dr. Topol’s new book on the subject is titled Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Revolutionize Health Care – and Make it More Humane (2019). Credentials. Before coming to Scripps to create its individualized medicine initiatives, Dr. Topol led the Cleveland Clinic to become the #1 center for heart care in the country and founded its medical school. He is one of the top ten cited researchers in medicine and a Modern Healthcare magazine poll voted him the most influential physician leader in the US. He has published several textbooks and is the author of two bestsellers on the future of healthcare, The Creative Destruction of Medicine and The Patient Will See You Now.

CEO & Co-Founder
Ardy Arianpour, CEO & Co-Founder of Seqster, is a visionary genomics executive and serial entrepreneur in the biotech industry. Prior to starting Seqster, Ardy launched several clinical and consumer-based genetic tests as CCO of Pathway Genomics and SVP of Ambry Genetics, which sold to Konica Minolta for $1B in 2017. He is one of the main architects in launching the first commercial clinical exome sequencing test in 2011, establishing the value of next-gen sequencing in the clinic. As a key player in the 2013 landmark SCOTUS decision scrapping gene patents, Ardy played an instrumental role in expanding genetic testing access with the launch of BRCA testing benefiting patients and family members across the country. Ardy received his BS in Biological Sciences from University of California Irvine and an MBA from Marshall Goldsmith School of Management.

CSO and Founder
Patrick Daugherty is the Chief Scientific Officer of Serimmune. Daugherty received his BS in Chemical Engineering from The University of Minnesota in 1993, and his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. He was a Research Fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle during 1999-2001, before joining the Chemical Engineering faculty at UCSB in 2001. At UCSB, Daugherty was promoted to Associate (2005) and full Professor (2008), and served on the faculty until 2015. He is the recipient of a National Sciences Foundation Career Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2006), and the Genentech Young Investigator Award from the ACS Division of Biochemical Technology (2007). Daugherty co-founded CytomX Therapeutics, Inc. (2008) – Nasdaq:CTMX serving as CSO from 2008-2010. Daugherty founded Serimmune Inc. in 2014, where he served as President and CEO from 2014-2019. Daugherty was elected to the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2011, honoring the top 2% of bioengineers. Daugherty’s research and work is focused on the development of methods to map serological antibody repertoires to their antigens.

CEO
No bio available

Medical Director, Molecular Pathology, Pathology
No bio available

Associate Professor of Medicine, Divisions of Oncology & Hematology, Stanford University School of Medicine
Dr. Alizadeh completed his PhD in Biophysics and MD at Stanford in 2003, under mentorship of Pat Brown (Stanford Biochemistry) and Lou Staudt (NCI/NIH). Supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and NIH Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), he built the Lymphochip DNA microarray platform. He and his colleagues used this platform to profile gene expression in diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and many other tumors. This work led to the discovery of DLBCL subtypes, and a framework for their cell of origin. Following his clinical subspecialty Hematology and Medical Oncology training at Stanford, he completed his postdoctoral studies with Ron Levy and Irv Weissman. During this time, he worked on molecular outcome prediction in DLBCL, developing a statistical framework for identification of small numbers of genes for robust risk stratification and prognosis. Working with Irv Weissman, he identified CD47 expression as an adverse prognostic factor in non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and a therapeutic target of novel monoclonal antibodies that synergize to eradicate tumors. The Alizadeh lab studies genomic biomarkers of tumors, whether detected through biopsy of primary tissues, or non-invasively through monitoring blood using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). His group developed Cancer Personalized Profiling by deep Sequencing (CAPP-Seq) as a novel method for ctDNA detection and developed a novel cell deconvolution framework (CIBERSORT). His group applies such genomic tools for early detection, diagnosis, and monitoring of diverse tumors. In this effort, his group builds and employ tools from functional genomics, computational biology, molecular genetics, and mouse models.

Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology, Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), Stanford University School of Medicine
Gozde Durmus is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University working with Prof. Ronald W. Davis and Prof. Lars Steinmetz at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. She received her PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University in May 2013, with a minor in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. She is also an alumna of the Ignite Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Boston University and received her MEng degree in Biomedical Engineering as a College of Engineering Fellow in 2009. She received her BS degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2007. She has been recently recognized among the "Top Innovators Under 35" (TR35) by the MIT Technology Review.

Professor by courtesy of Genetics, Stanford School of Medicine; Director, Center for Law and the Biosciences; Director, Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society; and Chair, Steering Committee of the Center for Biomedical Ethics
Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research. He is President of the International Neuroethics Society; directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program on Neuroscience in Society; chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; and serves on the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academy of Sciences; the National Academies’ Committee on Developing a Research Agenda and Research Governance Approaches for Climate Intervention Strategies that Reflect Sunlight to Cool Earth; and the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Multi-Council Working Group, whose Neuroethics Division he co-chairs. He published THE END OF SEX AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN REPRODUCTION in May 2016. Professor Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. After working during the Carter Administration in the Departments of Defense and Energy, he entered private law practice in Los Angeles in 1981. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1985.

John and Marva Warnock Professor, Surgery; Chief, Surgical Oncology Research, Stanford University School of Medicine
Stefanie Jeffrey, MD, is the John and Marva Warnock Professor and Chief of Surgical Oncology Research in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Physics and master’s degree in Chemistry from Harvard University. She graduated from medical school at University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she also completed her surgical residency. Her lab focuses on technology development and applications related to liquid biopsy (CTCs, ctDNA, extracellular vesicles), droplet-based microfluidic platforms, and preclinical models for testing new cancer therapies.

Vice Chief, Technology Innovation
Dr. Lin is an expert clinician, educator, researcher, and administrator in the specialty of family medicine. He earned his MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his medical training at Stanford’s family medicine residency program at O’Connor Hospital. Dr. Lin is certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and is an active member of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine. He has received numerous national awards and is recognized among the top family physicians in the United States. Dr. Lin is the Medical Director of Stanford Family Medicine and the Vice Chief for Technology Innovation in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford. Dr. Lin is the founder of the nationally recognized O’Connor-Stanford Leaders in Education Residency Program (OSLER), co-founder of the Stanford Healthcare Innovations and Experiential Learning Directive (SHIELD) and founding director of the Stanford Medical Scribe Fellowship (COMET). Dr. Lin is the author of over 200 scholarly works and conference presentations. His research covers a broad range of primary care topics. His current focus is on artificial intelligence in healthcare. Dr. Lin is an expert consultant and mentor to health technology companies in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Associate Director, Stanford Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging
Dr. Lungren serves as Assistant Professor of Radiology at Stanford University. The goal of his research is to advance both predictive imaging outcomes modeling and medical imaging machine vision through machine learning and other information technologies. As faculty in the Langlotz biomedical informatics research laboratory he collaborates on novel machine learning and natural language processing algorithms that provide intelligent assistance for comparitive effectiveness research, medical imaging utilization, and clinical medical imaging decision support.

Assistant Professor, Medicine
Mitchell (Mitch) R. Lunn, MD, MAS, FASN (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Nephrology of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. As an internist and nephrologist with a strong interest in technology and sexual and gender minority health, Mitch’s research is designed to characterize the health and well-being of these populations. Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people – which primarily includes members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities – face numerous health and healthcare disparities. Through the use of existing and emerging technologies, Mitch focuses on improving understanding of the factors that positively and negatively influence SGM health including research on SGM health disparities, SGM societal experiences (in and out of health care), provider education about SGM health, and institutional climate towards SGM people. As a gay man and active researcher in SGM health for over a decade, Mitch brings vital experience and scholarship in engaging diverse, vulnerable, and hard-to-reach populations using technology-based and traditional methodologies. Mitch is the co-director of PRIDEnet, a participant-powered research network of SGM people that engages SGM communities at all stages of the biomedical research process: research question generation and prioritization, study design, recruitment, participation, data analysis, and results dissemination. PRIDEnet accomplishes its goals through a highly active Participant Advisory Committee and a Community Partner Consortium comprised of 41 SGM-serving health centers, community centers, and service/advocacy organizations across the country. Mitch is also the co-director of The PRIDE Study, a national, online, prospective, longitudinal general health cohort study (launched May 2017) of over 13,200 SGM individuals that employs innovative technologies to bridge research gaps in the health of these medically underserved and vulnerable populations. The PRIDE Study’s state-of-the-art web-based research platform enables robust participant recruitment, cohort management, real-time cohort statistics, comprehensive survey administration, facile deployment of studies to cohort segments, and linkage with mHealth devices.

Professor, Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine
Matthew Porteus MD, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and the Child Health Research Institute at Stanford. He received his BA from Harvard University in history and science and his MD and PhD degrees at Stanford University. He completed his post-doctoral medical training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and his post-doctoral research training under the mentorship of Dr. David Baltimore. His primary research focus is on developing genome editing as an approach to cure disease, particularly those of the blood but also of other organ systems as well. His research program has made important discoveries in advancing the field of genome editing including the first use of genome editing using engineered nucleases in human cells and optimizing the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in primary human stem cells. He also works as an attending physician on the Pediatric Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant service at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital where he cares for children under going bone marrow transplantation for both malignant and non-malignant diseases. His goal is to combine his research and clinical interests to bring innovative curative therapies to patients. He served on the National Academy Study Committee of Human Genome Editing and as a History and Science major at Harvard he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the social interpretation of the recombinant DNA controversy in the early 1970s.

Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Radiology and Medicine, Director of Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Rubin is a tenured Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Radiology, and Medicine (Biomedical Informatics Research) at Stanford University and Director of Biomedical Informatics for the Stanford Cancer Institute. His NIH-funded research program focuses on artificial intelligence in medicine and quantitative imaging, integrating imaging with clinical and molecular data, and mining these Big Data to discover imaging phenotypes that can predict disease biology, define disease subtypes, and personalize treatment. Key contributions include discovering quantitative imaging phenotypes in radiology, pathology, and ophthalmology images that identify novel clinical subtypes of disease that help to determine treatments and improve clinical outcomes. He is a Fellow of the Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College, and Distinguished Investigator in the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging. Dr. Rubin has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific paper and pending patents on 10 inventions.

Stanford W. Ascherman Professor & Chair, Department of Genetics; Director, Center for Genomics & Personalized Medicine
Dr. Snyder received his PhD training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and they developed many technologies in genomics and proteomics. These including the development of proteome chips, high resolution tiling arrays for the entire human genome, methods for global mapping of transcription factor binding sites (ChIP-chip now replaced by ChIP-seq), paired end sequencing for mapping of structural variation in eukaryotes, de novo genome sequencing of genomes using high throughput technologies and RNA-Seq. Seminal findings from the Snyder laboratory include the discovery that much more of the human genome is transcribed and contains regulatory information than was previously appreciated, and a high diversity of transcription factor binding occurs both between and within species. He has also pioneered the use of different state-of-the-art "omics" technologies as well as wearable devices (smart watches and continuous glucose for managing human health. By longitudinal profiling a group of individuals, his laboratory demonstrated the value of using these big data approaches to assess disease risk and for early diagnosis of disease. Snyder is a cofounder of several biotechnology companies, including Personalis, SensOmics, Qbio, Fitricine, and January. Dr Snyder is the author of the book Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know

Clinical Assistant Professor, Pathology
Jillian is a board-certified Clinical Molecular Geneticist working in Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Genomics Program (CGP). She completed a research-based MS at University College Dublin in Ireland and later received her PhD in Molecular Genetics and Genomics in 2014 from Washington University in St. Louis. After her PhD, Jillian joined Harvard Medical School's Genetics Training Program and completed her fellowship in Clinical Molecular Genetics in 2016. Jillian then joined the Department of Pathology at Stanford School of Medicine and became board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics in 2017. Her focus is on molecular-based diagnostic testing, with the majority of her time spent in the CGP, where she oversees overall laboratory operations, development of new next-generation sequencing-based clinical assays, ensures CAP/CLIA regulatory compliance, and signs out clinical test reports. She and her team launched Stanford's first clinical exome sequencing test, and the first test for the newly created CGP, in early 2018.

Researcher
Łukasz Kidziński is a researcher in the Mobilize Center at Stanford, working on the intersection of computer science, statistics, and biomechanics. Previously a researcher in the CHILI group, Computer-Human Interaction in Learning and Instruction, at the EPFL. He obtain his PhD training at Université Libre de Bruxelles in mathematical statistics, working on time series analysis and functional data. He obtained two master degrees, in mathematics and in computer science, from the University of Warsaw.His research interest include machine learning, data mining, big data, time series analysis and applied statistics. His main area of applications are biomedical data science, biomechanics and computer-human interactions.

Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, and Electrical Engineering
Shan X. Wang currently serves as a Leland T. Edwards Professor and Associate Chair of Materials Science & Engineering and jointly Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and by courtesy, a Professor of Radiology at Stanford School of Medicine. He directs the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology, and is a co-Principal Investigator of the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence for Translational Diagnostics (CCNE-TD) at Stanford University. He has over 270 publications, and holds 56 issued or pending patents in the areas of magnetic nanotechnology, biosensors, nanofabrication, spintronics, power management and information storage. Dr. Wang was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, 2009) and a Fellow of American Physical Society (APS, 2012) for his seminal contributions to magnetic materials and nanosensors. He has received numerous other awards, including most recently the Bold Epic Innovator (BEI) Award in the XPRIZE Qualcomm Tricorder Competition (April, 2017). He obtained the PhD degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in 1993.

Director, R&D Molecular Biology
With a PhD in in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Allison pursued post-doctoral work on the function and developmental roles of microRNAs at the Whitehead Institute of MIT. After moving to France, she worked at both INRA and the Curie Institut investigating noncoding RNAs in both plants and vertebrates. After consulting at a Paris-based single-cell sequencing start-up, Allison joined Stilla Technologies early in 2019 as the director of the R&D Molecular Biology team, where she and the R&D team work to push the limits of digital PCR using NaicaTM Crystal™ Digital PCR technology.

Business Manager
VP, Stratec Consumables GmbH in Salzburg. Head of the Development teams for customers in the markets life-sciences, IVD und MedTech. Realization of customers projects from prototyping to mass-manufacturing.

Sales Specialist
Oct 2019 – Business Development and Sales – at STRATEC Consumables GmbH 2019 – Research Scientist – SMMRG, Clinical Research Center Salzburg 2015-2018 – Senior Scientist for Aging and Stem Cell Research – University of Salzburg 2014-2015 – Post-Doc – IBA, Innsbruck 2010-2014 – PhD Candidate – IBA, Innsbruck

Research & Development Scientific Manager, Research and Development
Nicholas (Nick) George received his PhD in Cancer Biology from the University Nebraska Medical Center, then joined Streck Inc. in 2015. His current research and development interests include liquid biopsy and the multitude of pre-analytical variables associated with sample collection, processing, and analysis.

Senior Director, Product Management Precision Medicine
Nabil brings extensive experience to Sunquest. Prior, he was Product Director, Neurology, Quest Diagnostics; Director, Clinical Strategy, GenomeQuest; Founder, SeqWise, an NGS consultancy; and began his career at Broad Institute. Nabil holds an MBA from Duke, an MS in Bioinformatics from Brandeis, and a BS in Biology from Binghamton.

Lead Data Engineer, Data Engineering & Artificial Intelligence
Rajesh Mikkilineni is a Data Engineer who works with Genetic Statisticians and Data scientists to handle their data and computational needs, which enables them to bring actional insights out of their big datasets using the cloud technologies. Rajesh has experience building software systems for data management and data analysis specializing in the pharmaceutical R&D space. He has experience building on premise and in the cloud data lakes and developing pipelines to wrangle and analyze data at scale. Rajesh is currently working at Takeda pharmaceutical as Lead Data Engineer in the R&D VBU IT Data Engineering and Artificial Intelligence team.

Bio-Lab
Roberta Carbone graduated in Pharmacy, then spent two years at the NIH (USA); she attained a PhD in Forensic Medicine and worked as Researcher at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan, where she focused her research in innovation in the biomedical field. She is author of more than 30 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and several patent applications. She joined Tethis for the development of innovative diagnostic approaches in oncology based on Tethis proprietary nanomaterials.

Associate Director, Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Samir Shah has 17 years of regulatory, clinical, and formulation experience with pMDI’s, DPI’s, Nebulizers, and nasal sprays. In his current role, he leads the regulatory strategy for digital combination products including the regulatory approval of ProAir Digihaler, the first FDA approved digital inhaler with built-in sensors which connects to a mobile application. He earned his bachelors degree from Case Western Reserve University in Polymer Science & Engineering and his PhD from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Biomedical Engineering.

Vice President, Public Policy & Academic Affairs, Medical Oncologist
Dr. Debra Patt is a practicing oncologist and breast cancer specialist in Austin, Texas, and an executive vice president of Texas Oncology with responsibilities in healthcare policy and strategic initiatives. She is an active leader in breast cancer research, serves on the US Oncology Research breast cancer committee, and chairs the breast cancer subsection of the pathways task force for The US Oncology Network as well as the leader locally for breast cancer research. She has expertise in healthcare policy and has testified before Congress to protect access to care for Medicare beneficiaries. She is a leader in clinical cancer informatics, and is involved in system innovations to enhance care delivery across a national network of oncology practices. She is the Editor In Chief of the Journal of Clinical Oncology- Clinical Cancer Informatics. Her clinical informatics research focuses in imaging informatics for breast cancer, clinical decision support systems, predictive analytics to reduce risk in patients with advanced cancer, and quality improvement.

Deputy Director of Quantitative Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Medicine
Nicholas J. Schork is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Quantitative Medicine and Systems Biology Division at TGen. In addition, he is a Professor and Director of Human Biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), and an adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Family and Preventive Medicine in the Division of Biostatistics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Schork’s interests and expertise are in quantitative translational biomedical science and integrated approaches to complex biological and medical problems, especially the design and implementation of studies to dissect the determinants of complex traits and diseases. He has published over 500 scientific articles and book chapters on the analysis of complex, multifactorial traits and diseases, including clinical trials methodology. A member of several scientific journal editorial boards, Dr. Schork is a frequent participant in U.S. National Institutes of Health-related steering committees and review boards, has mentored over 50 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and has founded or served on the advisory boards of ten companies. In addition, he is currently director of the quantitative components of a number of national research consortia, including the NIA-sponsored Longevity Consortium. Dr. Schork earned a BA in Philosophy, MA in Philosophy, MA in Statistics, and PhD in Epidemiology, all from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Schork was from 2007-2013, a Professor in Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, Director of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Scripps Translational Science Institute, and Director of Research at Scripps Genomic Medicine, a division of Scripps Health. From 2001-2007, Dr. Schork was a Professor of Biostatistics and Psychiatry, and Co-Director of the Center for Human Genetics and Genomics at UCSD. From 1994-2000, he was an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University. During 1999 and 2000, Dr. Schork took a sponsored leave of absence from CWRU to conduct research as the Vice President of Statistical Genomics at the French biotechnology company, Genset, where he helped guide efforts to construct the first high-density map of the human genome.

Co-founder, Convenor and former President; Co-founder, Mawambo Lifesciences
Dr. Mhaka is an experienced lifesciences executive, investment professional, and biotech entrepreneur with a passion for global health. Leveraging expertise in biomedical discovery, technology development, healthcare delivery, and fundraising she creates transformative healthcare advances impactful on a global scale. Utilizing her experience in cross-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches, Dr. Mhaka has co-founded the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in (AAIH), a global organization of 30+ organisations dedicated to resolving the myriad challenges facing the growing field of AI and Machine Learning based life sciences and healthcare solutions. In addition to her proven track record of over 50+ cross-industry deals in both the private and public sector, Dr. Mhaka has worked for a leading management consultant firm, and co-founded four companies within the drug development and nanotechnology sectors. This includes a mid-stage AI supported nanotechnology platform for Dx, disease management, therapeutic monitoring, data processing & transmission at the point-of-need. Dr. Mhaka received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from Johns Hopkins Medicine where she developed a clinical phase oncology drug and attained her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry [Highest Honors, Summa Cum Laude] from the University of Pittsburgh.

Head, Division of Biochemistry and Director of Point-of-Care Testing, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Julie Shaw is the Division Head for Biochemistry and Director of POCT at The Ottawa Hospital and is the Regional Lead for Biochemistry and POCT for the Eastern Ontario Regional Laboratories Association.  Dr. Shaw is also an Assistant Professor at The University of Ottawa.  Dr. Shaw chairs the POCT Interest group for the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists and is the Canadian representative on the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry POCT working group.

Scientific Outreach Project Manager, Department of Integrative, Structural and Computational Biology
No bio available

Manager Reimbursement Strategy, Clinical Next-Generation Sequencing Division
Rob leads reimbursement strategy for Thermo Fisher’s Oncomine™ Dx Target Test: the first FDA-approved next-generation sequencing (NGS) in vitro diagnostic test for non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). This companion diagnostic, now covered by Medicare’s NCD and dozens of commercial payers, was developed with Pfizer and Novartis. Prior to joining Thermo Fisher in 2012, Rob played key payer and commercial roles with Navigenics, RelayHealth, and UnitedHealthcare.

Founder and Chairman
Robin Toft is the founder and CEO of Toft Group Executive Search, where she combines a deep inside knowledge of the life science industry with a passion for building game-changing management teams. Robin has placed more than 500 executives at innovation-led companies in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, life science tools and digital health. A champion of diverse executive teams, Robin has built a reputation for recruiting women and minorities into top roles and helping the life science industry overcome unconscious bias in hiring. Prior to founding Toft Group in 2010, Robin served 20+ years as a biotech executive. In 2019, Robin authored her first book, “WE CAN: The Executive Woman’s Guide to Career Advancement,” available on Amazon. WE CAN offers practical insight, wisdom and encouragement for women to realize the career of their dreams. It is recognized within the list of 100 Best CEO Books of All Time by BookAuthority. Robin serves on multiple non-profit boards, is an inaugural member of the Susan G. Komen San Diego Advisory Council, was awarded Woman of the Year in San Diego in 2017, and a finalist in Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year awards in 2018 and 2019. She has been honored as a finalist for San Diego Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” and “Most Admired CEO” awards in multiple years.

Commercial Director
Dr. Vanessa Tumilasci holds an MSc degree in Biotechnology from Sao Paulo University (Brazil) and a PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University (Montreal, Canada).  Vanessa joined THB in 2016 to manage biospecimen procurement and is instrumental in the formation of new partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and biorepositories and plays an active role in corporate development initiatives

Founder and CEO
Clifford Reid is the founding CEO of Travera. Previously, Dr. Reid was the founding Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Complete Genomics (NASDAQ:GNOM), a leading developer of whole human genome DNA sequencing technologies and services. Prior to Complete Genomics he founded two enterprise software companies: Eloquent (NASDAQ:ELOQ), an internet video company, and Verity (NASDAQ:VRTY), an enterprise search engine company. Dr. Reid is on the Visiting Committee of the Biological Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a member of the MIT Corporation Development Committee, and an advisor to Warburg Pincus.  He earned a S.B. in Physics from MIT, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Senior Vice President, Science, Systems, and Engineering
Dr. Roger Tang has spent his entire career bridging the disciplines of biology and engineering in both industrial and academic environments. Currently, he leads science, systems, and engineering functions at Triple Ring Technologies, an innovative research and development company that, in collaboration with clients and partners, develops technical solutions to critical, typically complex, challenges. Triple Ring's team of over 100 scientists and engineers provides leading edge, integrated science, design, engineering, innovation, regulatory strategy, and business services. Previously, Roger managed the Research Group and Ideation activities at Molecular Devices, LLC. His industrial career started in 2001 at a biotechnology startup, Signature Bioscience, Inc., which developed some of the first label-free assay technologies based on bioimpedance. Signature's technologies were eventually commercialized as the CellKey™ System. Before his industrial career, he was an Assistant Adjunct Professor in Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, where his research focused on cancer imaging (primarily using X-Ray CT, and molecular imaging). Roger received his PhD in Bioengineering from the Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. He also holds an MS in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona and a BS in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Senior Engineer
Dr. Zhou leverages experience in systems engineering, microfluidics and medical imaging for groundbreaking life sciences instrumentation. Before joining Triple Ring Technologies, Dr. Zhou was a pioneer in the development of a novel medical imaging modality, magnetic particle imaging. she received a PhD from the UC Berkeley-UCSF joint graduate group in bioengineering, and a BS in bioengineering from University of Maryland, during which she coauthored 10 publications with over 160 citations.

President
Katherine is a seasoned biotechnology entrepreneur with a focus on business development, startup entrepreneurship, fundraising and strategic business planning for clinical diagnostic companies and investors. She has a breadth of experience in development and commercialization of new technologies for clinical diagnostics, including diagnostic reimbursement, financial analysis, operations, and product development. Katherine has served on and continues to work closely with the economic advisory committee for the Association of Molecular Pathology (AMP). She is actively sought after to speak and moderate sessions at industry meetings on the topics of reimbursement, new technologies and commercial challenges for emerging diagnostic tests. As a consultant, Katherine has worked with a number of early stage and established diagnostic companies guiding them through product development choices, market entry strategies, funding ($21M raised) and a diverse range of business development transactions. Prior to consulting, Katherine was at Vitra Bioscience (VP of Strategic Marketing), a venture-backed biotechnology tools company, where she managed a broad range of functional areas, including marketing, business development, operations, finance, legal, IP and participated in raising over $15M in capital. Previously, Katherine worked at Applied Biosystems in strategic planning (including Celera and Celera Diagnostics), business development, research management and product development roles. Prior to Applied Biosystems, Katherine directed the Molecular Genetics Department for Oncogenetics/Datagenetics, a start-up esoteric diagnostic services company (acquired by Impath and subsequently by Genzyme). Katherine also conducted postdoctoral studies on Marfan Syndrome at Stanford University and in conjunction with the Human Genome Project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She was board-certified by the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) in Clinical Molecular Genetics from 1993 through 2003. Katherine holds a PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Calgary, Canada and a BS (Hons) in Microbiology from University College Galway, Ireland.

Chairman & CEO
Paul is Chairman and CEO of Ubiquitome, a developer of mobile molecular detection systems designed for dynamic deployment and rapid reporting. Prior to Ubiquitome, Paul held various general management roles with Thermo Fisher. Paul holds a PhD in Biochemical Engineering from Bath University and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Professor and Director of ED and Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship, Emergency Medicine
Larissa May, MD, MSPH, MSHS - Dr. Larissa May is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Emergency Department and Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship at the University of California-Davis. She is a national expert in antibiotic stewardship in the emergency department (ED). Dr. May received her MD (2002), her MSPH in Public Health Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Diseases (2008), and her MSHS in Clinical and Translational Research (2013) from The George Washington University. She completed her residency training at the George Washington University in 2006, where she served as a chief resident. Dr. May’s research interests center on the application of rapid molecular diagnostic assays, behavioral economics and clinical guidelines to improve antibiotic stewardship and other patient safety and quality improvement efforts in the ED and urgent care setting. Dr. May has served as an investigator on multiple federally-funded and industry-funded trials evaluating antimicrobial stewardship strategies in the ED and has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in her field. She has also served on numerous committees and task forces focused on antibiotic stewardship, emergency preparedness, and infectious diseases surveillance for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and professional organizations including the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Professor, Laboratory Medicine and Medicine/Infectious Diseases, Director, UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, Associate Director, UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory
Dr. Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, is a Professor in Laboratory Medicine and Medicine, Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also the Director of UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center (VDDC) at China Basin and Associate Director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Charles is an expert in the emerging field of clinical metagenomics, and his research is focused on the development and validation of microarray and next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies for viral discovery and pathogen diagnostics, with over 20 patents and peer-reviewed publications on these topics. In addition, he is the principal investigator of a 5-year R01 grant from the NIH on multiplexed blood bank pathogen screening, California Discovery, UC-MEXUS, and National Research Fund for Tickborne Diseases (NRFTD) grants on the microbial epidemiology of encephalitis, diarrhea, and Lyme disease, a QB3 Rogers Family Foundation Award in translational diagnostics, and a UCSF-Abbott Viral Discovery Award. Charles is also an active practicing infectious diseases physician at UCSF. Charles has active collaborations with research groups and public health agencies worldwide, including Abbott Diagnostics, Inc., Blood Systems Research Institute, the California Department of Public Health, the United States CDC, the American Red Cross, and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.

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). Prof Pantel graduated in 1986 from Cologne University in Germany and completed his thesis on mathematical modelling of haematopoiesis in 1987. After his postdoctoral period in the USA on hematopoietic stem cell regulation (Wayne State University, Detroit), he performed research at the Institute of Immunology, University of Munich for 10 years. 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 500 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 two ERC Advanced Investigator Grants 2011 and 2019. Moreover, Prof Pantel coordinates the European IMI consortium CANCER-ID (www.cancer-id.eu) on blood-based “Liquid Biopsies” in lung and breast cancer comprising 37 partner institutions from academia, non-profit organizations and industry.

Director, Genomic Medicine, University of Alabama, Birmingham School of Medicine
Experienced leader with broad expertise in Human Genetics, Genomics, Data science, and Informatics gained in basic and translational science, pharmaceutical, and clinical settings. Expert in: software design and development including expertise in delivery in a compliant environment; development of methods for integration and analysis of omic and associated datasets; analysis of human disease associated datasets; data science; identification of functional variation underpinning human disease; pathway analyses; structural genomics; metagenomics; pharmacogenomics; biomarker discovery; project and program management; team leadership; global team management; and inter and intra organisational collaboration. Education and training in leadership, project management, genomics, informatics, genetics, molecular biology, immunology, and parasitology.

Professor, Josephine T. McGill Chair in Cancer Research; Director, Arkansas Nanomedicine Center, Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; CSO, Cytoastra LLC
Vladimir Zharov is the director of the Arkansas Nanomedicine Center, Professor of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Josephine T. McGill Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cytoastra LLC. He received his PhD and DSc degrees from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU), completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the University of California and served as the Chairman of the BME department at BMSTU. He was a President of “Yaninvest” (closed Joint Stock Company) in Moscow with a track-record of commercialization of hybrid electro-laser and laser–magnetic therapeutic devices for urology used in more than 300 Russian clinics. He has unique interdisciplinary skills in biomedical engineering, biology, and clinical trials (LED phototherapy of postmastectomy lymphedema, laser interstitial therapy guided by MRI and microwave radiometry, ultrasound-guided laser treatment of tumor margins, and in vivo detection of CTCs). He is the author of 5 books, 55 patents, and more than 200 papers in the field of laser spectroscopy, biophotonics, and nanomedicine (10 in the Nature journals). He is a pioneer of photoacoustic spectroscopy, photoacoustic tweezers, pulse photothermolysis of infections and cancer, in vivo flow cytometry, super-resolution photothermal microscopy, discovered ultrasharp plasmon resonances named Zharov Splitting, and first demonstrated biomedical application of smallest laser called spaser. Dr. Zharov is the State Prize Winner in Russia, the most prestigious national award in Russia, and the first recipient of the US Maiman Award named after the inventor of the first laser.

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Biomedicine
Prior to joining Nicola Aceto’s Lab, I have been PhD student and post-doc in the laboratories of Andreas Trumpp (DKFZ, Heidelberg) and Christina Scheel (HMGU, Munich) where I have worked to elucidate the importance of the Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) in primary CTCs as well as in clinical samples of metastatic cancers (e.g. see Lorentzen et al., Nature comm, 2018; Magnani et al., Nature Genetics 2017; Baccelli et al., Nature Biotech 2013). Previously I have worked as pre-doctoral fellow and master student in the lab of Luigi Naldini (Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, Milan) (e.g. see Lechman et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2012, Zonari et al., Blood, 2013). I have received my education in medical biotechnology from the San Raffaele University of Milan (MSc) and from the University of Brescia (BSc) in Italy.

Hubbard Howe Jr. Distinguished Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, Molecular and Cell Biology, and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley; Director, Berkeley Stem Cell Center
David Schaffer is the Hubbard Howe Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. He received a BS from Stanford University in 1993 and a PhD from MIT in 1998. He then conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before joining the Berkeley in 1999. There, he applies engineering principles to enhance stem cell and gene therapies, work that includes novel approaches for molecular engineering and evolution of new viral vectors as well as new technologies to investigate and control stem cell fate decisions. He has published >200 papers, is an inventor on >50 patents, and has received recognitions including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award, the American Chemical Society Marvin Johnson Award, the ACS BIOT Division Young Investigator Award, and the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Shaffer Young Investigator Award.

Project Scientist and Principal Investigator, The Innovative Genomics Institute
Ross Wilson is a principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, leading a team at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Dr. Wilson is working to enable widespread clinical use of genome-editing enzymes, which is currently limited by the challenge of delivering enzyme therapeutics to the cells in need of correction. To address this need, the Wilson lab relies on protein/RNA engineering to create safe, effective methods of administration, as well as targeting delivery to specific cells, tissues, or organs. These tools will help genome editing make the leap from the lab to the clinic.

Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Professor Lee joined UCI from the National Cancer Institute, where he served as Senior Technology Advisor in the Office of Technology and Industry Relations (OTIR) (4/2001-12/2001). Specifically, Dr. Lee was responsible for identifying new opportunities in interagency collaborations, new strategies to promote technology maturation, and provide expert advice on promoting technology development within NIH. Before joining NCI, Dr. Lee was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (1999-2001) in the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). At DARPA, he started the $59M BioFlips (Bio-Fluidic Chips) Program and was one of three founding program managers managing the "Fundamental Research at the Bio:Info:Micro Intersection" program. During this tenure, he gave invited talks extensively and was instrumental in shaping the nation’s technical directions in micro-fluidics and BioMEMS.

Principle Investigator, Orthopaedic Surgery
No bio available

Associate Dean of Research and Felix & Mildred Yip Endowed Distinguished Professor, UCLA School of Dentistry
David T.W. Wong; DMD, DMSc is Felix & Mildred Yip Distinguished Professor, Associate Dean of Research and Director of the Oral/Head and Neck Oncology Research Center at UCLA. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), past member of the ADA Council of Scientific Affairs and the past president of American Association of Dental Research (AADR). He is current chair of the NCI Liquid Biopsy Consortium.

Associate Dean, Informatics and Technology
Dr. Ohno-Machado is a biomedical engineer and the chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and associate dean for informatics and technology at UC San Diego. She is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the National Academy of Medicine.

riscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor; Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco; Chief Data Scientist
Atul Butte, MD, PhD is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor and inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (bchsi.ucsf.edu) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Butte is also the Chief Data Scientist for the entire University of California Health System, with 17 health professional schools, 6 medical centers, and 10 hospitals. Dr. Butte has been continually funded by NIH for 20 years, is an inventor on 24 patents, and has authored over 200 publications, with research repeatedly featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wired Magazine. Dr. Butte was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, and in 2013, he was recognized by the Obama Administration as a White House Champion of Change in Open Science for promoting science through publicly available data.

Program Director, Smarter Health Artifical Intelligence Initiative
Rachael A. Callcut, MD, MSPH is an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of California San Francisco. She also is the Director of Data Science for the UCSF Center for Digital Health and the Program Director of the UCSF SmarterHealth Artificial Intelligence Initiative. Dr. Callcut is double board certified in General Surgery and Critical Care maintaining an active clinical practice in trauma and critical care at UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Callcut’s efforts with the Center for Digital Health Innovation are focused on leading a multi-disciplinary team working at the intersection of artificial intelligence to drive change in the delivery of healthcare for both patients and providers. Dr. Callcut also directs a multidisciplinary NIH and DOD funded research lab focused on integration of data science into critical care for improved clinical decision support. In addition to her active clinical practice, she is the founder and director of the Trauma, Injury Science, and Critical Care Collaborative (TRISECT) research group at UCSF.

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 PhD 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.

Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Leidong Mao is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Yale University. He is interested in developing new microfluidic technologies for biological or biomedical applications.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Alexander Statsyuk is an assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. He obtained his PhD degree at the University of Chicago in 2006, where he synthesized natural product Bistramide A and established its mode of action in cells. He then completed his postdoctoral work at UCSF, where he was working on the development of chemical cross-linkers to identify upstream kinases of protein phosphorylation sites. Since 2010 he has been running his independent research program aimed at discovering drug leads targeting degradation pathways such as ubiquitin proteasome system and autophagy. He is an author of 32 manuscripts, he filed 10 patent applications, and he is a recipient of Pew Scholar Award. Some of the technologies that he and his group have developed and patented include covalent fragments, novel probes UbFluor to conduct HTS screens to discover E3 ligase inhibitors, activators, and hijackers, and E3-Substrate cross-linkers useful to study E3-Substrate interactions in vitro and to validate E3-Substrate hijackers in vitro.

Professor, Micro and Nanofabricated Tools for Biological Discovery and Medical Diagnostics
Prof. Steven A. Soper received his PhD 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.

Professor, Physiology, Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Dr. Martin received his PhD 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.

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Rob Patro is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science with a joint appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. Patro’s main research focus is in the design of algorithms and data structures for processing, organizing, indexing and querying high-throughput genomics data. He also investigates topics at the intersection of efficient algorithms and statistical inference. More broadly, Patro’s interests extend to programming languages, computer graphics, scientific visualization, parallel computation and machine learning. His research group will be working in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB). Prior to coming to UMD, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. Patro received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Maryland in 2012.

Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Dr. Keeler-Klunk holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School from the laboratory of Terence Flotte studying on AAV gene therapy for fatty acid oxidation. She went on to complete three postdoctoral fellowships focusing on AAV gene therapy for neurological, neuromuscular and respiratory diseases. The main focus of her lab is focused on modulating immune responses to AAV gene therapy, and genome editing of immune and stem cells for different therapeutic applications.

Associate Professor, Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics
Arvind Rao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. His group uses image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e., single cell, tissue and radiology data). Such methods have found application in radiogenomics and drug repurposing based on phenotypic screens. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics, and was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics.

Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry; Co-Director, Molecular Therapeutics Program and Director, Cancer Drug Discovery Program
Dr. Shaomeng Wang obtained his chemistry BS degree from Peking University in 1986 and his PhD in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1992. Dr. Wang did his postdoctoral training at NIH before becoming an assistant professor in Georgetown University in 1996. Dr. Wang is currently the Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Professor in Medicine in the University of Michigan Medical School and professor of medicine, pharmacology and medicinal chemistry. Dr. Wang is the Director of University of Michigan Center for Therapeutic Innovation and Cancer Drug Discovery Program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Wang has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, American Chemical Society since 2012. Dr. Wang has co-founded 5 biotech companies to develop novel small-molecule drugs invented from his laboratory and has advanced 7 compounds into clinical development. Dr. Wang has published >300 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor of 54 issued US patents and hundreds of international patents. Dr. Wang was elected as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2014 and was the 2014 University of Michigan Distinguished Innovator.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology and Oncology
Dr. Beau Webber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse in 2007 with a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology and conducted his PhD studies at the University of Minnesota where he studied the embryonic development of hematopoietic stem cells. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation training program at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Webber developed advanced strategies for genetic modification of human lymphohematopoietic and pluripotent stem cells for cancer immunotherapy and targeted correction of disease causing genetic mutations. Dr. Webber joined the Department of Pediatrics Faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2017. The Webber lab is focused on synergizing genome engineering, stem cell biology, and adoptive cellular therapy to develop novel treatments for inherited diseases and cancer. Research projects in the lab currently fall into two broad areas: translational application of genome engineering to develop improved cell-based immune and gene therapies, and the development of “bottom-up” cancer models using human pluripotent stem cells.

Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development
Clifford J. Steer is a Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. He has been active in the field of liver research for more than 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. Steer’s areas of research over the past decade have included gene therapy, liver regeneration, neurodegeneration and microRNA regulation of gene function. He has published over 300 articles; and has organized and chaired many national and international scientific conferences. In recognition of his work, he was made an inaugural Fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in 2014.

Director, Laboratory of Rare Human Circulating Cells (LCCRH), Pathology and Onco-Biology Department
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.

Bayer Corporation Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Prof Chia Chang, the Bayer Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Microfluidics and Medical Diagnostics, is a leading researcher in micro/nanofluidics, particularly in the area of nano-electrokinetics. He has just published a Cambridge Univ Press book on the subject. His group combines analysis and physical insight to discover new physical phenomena and to develop patented devices for technology transfer. More than 20 of his former PhD students are now teaching in leading academic universities throughout the world. Prof Chang is the founding Editor of Biomicrofluidics, an American Institute of Physics journal. He has received many awards including the Frankiel Award from the American Physical Society and the Presidential Young Investigator Award from NSF. A fellow of APS, he has delivered more than 20 keynote/plenary lectures and has more than 200 publications with over 3000 citations.

Professor, Jim and Christy Everest Endowed Chair in Cancer Developmental Therapeutics, Oklahoma TSET Cancer Research Scholar, Department of Pathology; Director, Experimental Therapeutics and Translational Cancer Medicine; Chair, Fellowship Training and Mentoring Program; Member, Stephenson Cancer Center, Stanton L. Young Biomedical Research Center
Professor, Jim and Christy Everest Endowed Chair in Cancer Developmental Therapeutics, Co-Program Leader in Cancer Biology, Co-Director in Nanomedicine Program, Department of Pathology & Stephenson Cancer Center, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. Dr. Rajagopal Ramesh received his PhD from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India, followed by Post-doctoral training at Tulane Medical Center, New Orleans, Lousiana, USA. He subsequently joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, USA where he rose from the rank of research instructor to Associate Professor. He currently is a full Professor of Pathology and Co-Program Leader of Cancer Biology Program at the NCI-Designated Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), Oklahoma City, OK, USA. He Co-leads the Nanomedicine Program at his university and serves as the Director for the Small Animal Bioluminescence Imaging Core at OUHSC. Dr. Ramesh’s research is focused in cancer biology, and gene and drug delivery for lung cancer with emphasis on translational cancer research. Nanoformulations using lipids, biodegradable polymers and gold are being developed and tested for gene and drug delivery. Another area of research is in testing the antitumor activities of tumor suppressor genes and small molecule inhibitors. His laboratory has also been studying immune-modulation in cancer. More recently, research on exosomes as a source of biomarker and as drug delivery vehicle is under investigation. He has successfully translated his laboratory studies to the clinic for lung cancer treatment. Dr. Ramesh has published over 125 peer-reviewed articles and has contributed 25 book chapters. He serves as an editorial board member and as ad-hoc reviewer for numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals. He has served as a Chairman or as member on several grant study sections for NIH, DOD, Komen, and Wellcome Trust. He is currently a chartered member for the “NANOTECHNOLOGY” study section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is an active member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) and International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV). He enjoys listening to Bollywood and Jazz music and is an avid runner completing three half-marathon. His goal is to complete the OKC memorial marathon in 2020.

No bio available

Assistant Professor, Bioengineering & Electrical & Systems Engineering
David Issadore's research focus is on microelectronics, microfluidics, nanomaterials and molecular targeting, and their application to medicine. These multidisciplinary skills enable him to explore new technologies that can bring medical diagnostics from expensive, centralized facilities, directly to clinical and resource-limited settings. He has developed hybrid chip designs, a portable NMR system and the micro Hall detector.

Professor of Genetics, Director, Center for Translational Bioinformatics
Marylyn D. Ritchie, PhD, is a Professor of Genetics, Director of the Center for Translational Bioinformatics, Associate Director for Bioinformatics in the Institute for Biomedical Informatics, and Associate director of the Center for Precision Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Ritchie is a statistical and computational geneticist with a focus on understanding genetic architecture of complex human disease. She has expertise in developing novel bioinformatics tools for complex analysis of big data in genetics, genomics, and clinical databases, in particular in the area of Pharmacogenomics. Some of her methods include Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR), the Analysis Tool for Heritable and Environmental Network Associations (ATHENA), and the Biosoftware suite for annotating/ filtering variants and genomic regions as well as building models of biological relevance for gene-gene interactions and rare-variant burden/dispersion tests. Dr. Ritchie has over 15 years of experience in the analysis of complex data and has authored over 250 publications. Dr. Ritchie has received several awards and honors, including selection as a Genome Technology Rising Young Investigator in 2006, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2010, a KAVLI Frontiers of Science fellow by the National Academy of Science from 2011-2014, and she was named one of the most highly cited researchers in her field by Thomson Reuters in 2014. Dr. Ritchie has extensive experience in all aspects of genetic epidemiology and translational bioinformatics as it relates to human genomics. She also has extensive expertise in dealing with big data and complex analysis including GWAS, next-generation sequencing, data integration of meta-dimensional omics data, Phenome-wide Association Studies (PheWAS), and development of data visualization approaches.

avid M. Levy Professor, Neurology; Director, CHeT
Dr. Ray Dorsey is the David M. Levy Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for Health + Technology at the University of Rochester. Through creative use of technology, he and his colleagues seek to enable anyone anywhere to receive care, participate in research, and benefit from therapeutic advances. Dr. Dorsey previously directed the movement disorders division and neurology telemedicine at Johns Hopkins and worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. His research has been published in leading medical, neurology, and economic journals and has been featured on National Public Radio, in The New York Times, and in The Wall Street Journal. In 2015, the White House recognized him as a “Champion for Change” for Parkinson’s disease.

Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy
Dr. Shana Kelley is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biochemistry, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Kelley received her PhD from the California Institute of Technology and was a NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute. The Kelley research group works in a variety of areas spanning biophysical/bioanalytical chemistry, chemical biology and nanotechnology, and have pioneered new methods for tracking molecular and cellular analytes with unprecedented sensitivity. Dr. Kelley’s work has been recognized with a variety of distinctions, including being named one of “Canada’s Top 40 under 40”, a NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellow, the 2011 Steacie Prize, and the 2016 NSERC Brockhouse Prize. She has also been recognized with the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, a NSF CAREER Award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and was also named a “Top 100 Innovator” by MIT’s Technology Review. Shana is a founder of two molecular diagnostics companies, GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2005) and Xagenic Inc. (acquired by General Atomics in 2017), and sits on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Genomics Institute and the Fight Against Cancer Trust. She is an Associate Editor for ACS Sensors, and an Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Journal of the American Chemical Society and ACS Chemical Biology.

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute and the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Together with Miriah Meyer, I run the Visualization Design Lab where we develop visualization methods and systems to help solve today’s scientific problems. Before joining the University of Utah, I was a lecturer and post-doctoral visualization researcher at Harvard University. I received my PhD, master’s, and undergraduate degrees from Graz University of Technology. In 2011 I was a visiting researcher at Harvard Medical School. I am the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and multiple best paper awards or honorable mentions at IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, and other conferences. I also received a best dissertation award from my alma mater. I co-founded Datavisyn, a startup company developing visual analytics solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, and the Caleydo project, an open source visualization framework for biomolecular data.

Associate Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Prof. Su-In Lee is an Associate Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Departments of Genome Sciences, Electrical Engineering, and Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education at the University of Washington. She completed her PhD in 2009 at Stanford University with Prof. Daphne Koller in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Before joining the UW in 2010, Lee was a visiting Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. She has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and been named an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. She has received generous grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.

Director, Point-of-Care Testing Center for Teaching and Research (POCT•CTR), Emeritus Professor, School of Medicine
Dr. Kost studied Engineering at Stanford University (BS, 1967) and in Venezuela, then received the Master’s degree in Engineering-Economic Systems (EEP) from Stanford prior to entering Medical Scientist MD-PhD training at the University of California (UC). He received his PhD in Bioengineering (NIH Bioengineering Traineeship) from UC San Diego and his MD from UC San Francisco. He was elected to Mu Alpha Theta (mathematics), Phi Kappa Phi (scholarship), and Sigma Xi (science) Honor Societies. Dr. Kost’s clinical residency included Internal Medicine and Neurology at UCLA, and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he was Chief Resident and a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Jim Bassingwaighte in Bioengineering. Dr. Kost was boarded in Clinical Pathology by the American Board of Pathology. At UC Davis for nearly 30 years, Dr. Kost is Director of Point-of-Care Testing and Clinical Chemistry for the UCD Health System. He is a tenured Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the Quality Program Chair, and faculty in Biomedical Engineering and Comparative Pathology.

Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Chemistry, Special Chemistry/Toxicology, and Point-of-Care Testing, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Tran is Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He completed his doctoral training (PhD) at UC Davis in 2008. Thereafter, Dr. Tran completed a postdoctoral training scholarship under the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering funded Point-of-Care Technologies Center at UC Davis – focusing on the development of point-of-care molecular pathogen detection systems for critical, emergency, and disaster settings. In 2009, he was awarded a $1.8M Department of Defense grant to determine the clinical impact of near patient molecular pathogen detection in burn sepsis patients. Presently, Dr. Tran is a Board-Certified Clinical Chemist, and serves as and Director of Clinical Chemistry, Special Chemistry/Toxicology, and Point-of-Care Testing at UC Davis Health. His work has expanded to involve artificial intelligence and machine learning for acute kidney injury and sepsis in at risk populations.

Professor of Medicine and Public Health, David Geffen School of Medicine
Jeffrey Klausner, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the David Geffen School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology in the Fielding School of Public Health. Dr. Klausner earned his Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical College with Honors in Research. He completed his Residency in Internal Medicine at the New York University—Bellevue Hospital Center. Dr. Klausner earned his Master’s in Public Health with a focus on International Health and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. After that training, Dr. Klausner was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Dr. Klausner completed his Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Klausner’s research interests are in applied epidemiology and the prevention and control of infectious disease s of public health importance like HIV, STDs, TB and cryptococcal infections. Dr. Klausner has a particular interest in the use of technology—information, digital, and laboratory—to facilitate access to treatment for disadvantaged populations. Dr. Klausner has been funded by the NIH, CDC, private pharmaceutical and test manufacturers to study the benefits of new ways to find and treat infectious diseases. Dr. Klausner is a frequent advisor to the CDC, NIH and WHO and a popular public speaker. Dr. Klausner is a highly sought after mentor who has trained dozens of fellows, residents and students of medicine and public health.

Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Department of Laboratory Medicine
Denise Wolf, PhD, is a senior Bioinformatics Scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Wolf has over 18 years of experience as a computational biologist, and now functions as a lead bioinformatician in Dr. Laura van ‘t Veer’s breast cancer biomarkers group supporting the adaptive I-SPY 2 TRIAL for high-risk, early-stage breast cancer. Together with Dr. Christina Yau, she developed the analytical approach for I-SPY 2 TRIAL biomarker evaluation; and contributes to trial design evolution/simulation as a member of the Statistics Core. In addition, she has participated in numerous TCGA pan-cancer analyses, including a large pan-immune study across 32 cancer types. In the I-SPY 2 TRIAL, she combines her experience in comparative cancer immunology with her background in next-Gen molecular analysis to investigate the relative contributions of the systemic immune state and tumor-immune microenvironment to targeted/chemo-therapy response. Her commitment to making highly effective, personalized breast oncology a reality is informed by her experience as a breast cancer patient and (informal) patient adviser.

Doctor, Physics
Dr. Alpha Lee is the Winton Advanced Fellow in Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is focused on integrating physics, statistics and machine learning.  Before Cambridge, Alpha was the George F. Carrier Fellow in Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. He has a PhD in mathematics, an MS in mathematical modeling and scientific computing from Oxford and a BS in Chemistry from Imperial College London.

Associate Professor and Vice Chair, Pharmacy Practice
Donald G. Klepser, PhD, MBA, is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy. He has PhD in Pharmaceutical Socioeconomics from the University of Iowa, an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Michigan. He has studied the use of POC testing in community pharmacies for the past 11 years and is currently the primary investigator on grants to develop community pharmacy practice models for managing diseases such as HIV, diabetes, hypertension, influenza, and group A Streptococcus. Dr. Klepser serves as a consultant to both diagnostic test manufacturers and pharmacies seeking to implement POC testing in pharmacies.He is also the primary investigator on grants to better understand how state and local health departments perceive the role of pharmacists conducting POC tests.

Professor, Department of Epidemiology
Dr. North is a professor of epidemiology in the UNC Department of Epidemiology and has developed a strong multidisciplinary research program evaluating the genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and associated risk factors. Dr. North leads the UNC Department of Epidemiology’s CVD Genetic Epidemiology Computational Laboratory, a collaborative assembly of faculty members, pre- and post-doctoral fellows, and staff members spanning UNC departments with collective expertise in both family- and population-based genetic epidemiological research. At the national level, Dr. North chairs the National Institutes of Heatlh CHSA study section, is an editorial board member of multiple prominent journals and serves in several elected leadership roles in The Obesity Society and in the American Heart Association Epidemiology Council. At UNC, Dr. North has been engaged with several interdisciplinary centers that foster collaborative research in genetics.

Chief of Clinical Chemistry and Core Laboratory, Pathology and Lab Medicine
Ping Wang, PhD, D(ABCC), FAACC is currently Chief of Clinical Chemistry and Director of Core Laboratory at Hospital of University of Pennsylvania (HUP), and Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wang oversees clinical testing in the core laboratory at HUP, and has a research interest developing next-generation diagnostic assays, including POCT. Her research is funded by multiple government and private sources. She also works with both major and startup diagnostic companies on sponsored research studies and clinical trials.

Associate Professor, Director of Community Affairs, Clinical Pharmacy & Translational Science
Dr. Kenneth Hohmeier, PharmD is Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy & Translational Science at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Nashville, TN. Dr. Hohmeier engages in a variety of community pharmacy scholarship, mainly in the fields of effectiveness and implementation science research. His currently funded research projects include investigating a new model of medication therapy management (MTM) delivery and implementation for Tennessee’s Medicaid population, point-of-care testing (POCT) implementation and consumer perceptions, use of pharmacist-extenders to improve pharmacy care quality and delivery, and interventions and implementation strategies to reduce vaccine hesitancy. In addition to his research interests, he maintains an active practice site at a community pharmacy in Nashville, TN. He also serves as Residency Program Director (RPD) for the UTHSC PGY1 community-based residency program, is Director of Community Affairs for the College of Pharmacy, and serves as a course director and lecturer for several courses within the College of Pharmacy.

Associate Professor, Microbiology and Internal Medicine
Dr. Greenberg is a physician-scientist who completed his Infectious Diseases training at the National Institutes of Health. He was recruited to UT Southwestern in 2010. He is currently an Associate Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor as well as the Director of Microbial Genomics in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Greenberg’s research focuses on antimicrobial resistance both from the therapeutic as well as the diagnostic domains. His therapeutic work involves the development of pathogen-specific antimicrobials utilizing an antisense approach. In addition, David is involved in developing new tools to predict antibiotic resistance from next-generation sequencing data. This includes using machine learning approaches to predict antibiotic resistance without the need for phenotypic testing.

Professor & Health Care Tech Industry Lead
Raj is a trained Medical Doctor from Australia & Health Care Entrepreneur with close to 2 decades of experience in Strategies & Partnerships, Technologies and Product Management. He had the pleasure of working with tens of Global Enterprises in the space of Consumer Health Care, Device manufacturing, Precision Health, Tele-Medicine, Wireless technology firms along with Startup’s and Venture Capitalist firms.

Professor, Department of Bioengineering
A native of Manhattan, Professor Yager received his AB in Biochemistry from Princeton in 1975, and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oregon in 1980, specializing in vibrational spectroscopy of biomolecules and biomembrane biophysics. After an NRC Fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory (1980-1982), he joined the NRL staff as a Research Chemist.  He moved to the Center (now Department) of Bioengineering at the University of Washington as Associate Professor in 1987, advancing to Professor in 1995; he served as Chair of the department from 2007 to 2013.  Initially working on both self-organizing lipid microstructure and optically-based biomedical sensors, since 1992 his lab has focused primarily on development of microfluidics for the analysis of biological fluids for use in low-cost point-of-care biomedical diagnostics for the developed and developing worlds.  From 2005-2010 a team led by Yager was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a low-cost rugged point-of-care system for pathogen identification.  Since 2008, most lab activity (with several close partners) has focused on developing two-dimensional porous (paper) networks for ultra-low-cost instrument-free point-of-care pathogen identification for human diagnosis through proteins and nucleic acids. Temperature control and switching is often aided by chemical or electrical support systems; readout is often coupled with cell phones for quantitative analysis and data transmission. This recent work has been under support of NIH, NSF, DARPA and DTRA. He has authored 156 research publications in refereed journals, and has 40 issued US patents. Specifics are at http://faculty.washington.edu/yagerp/.

Section Head, Surface Nanoscience and Sensor Technology, Chemistry Division
Dr. Mulvaney is the Section Head for the Surface Nanoscience and Sensor Technology Section in the Chemistry Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He brings decades of experience in both analytical chemistry and materials science to solve issues facing the field of biosensors. Dr. Mulvaney has worked on field deployed technologies ranging from environmental to disease diagnostic applications. Dr. Mulvaney has interacted with military, government, academic, and industrial partners in field tests across the globe, putting prototype technologies to the test in real world settings.

Assistant Professor, Immunology
I am Assistant Professor of Immunology and Director of Microbiome Research Laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center. My basic training is in human genetics & genomics, where I have investigated role genetic variations in susceptibility to infectious and autoimmune diseases. Currently, my lab is working on understanding the role of microbiome in susceptibility to infectious diseases in pediatric populations.

Medical Director, Clinical Chemistry and Point-of-Care Testing, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology
James H. Nichols, PhD, DABCC, FAACC is a Professor of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology, Medical Director of Clinical Chemistry and Point-of-Care Testing at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Nichols received his BA in General Biology/Premedicine from Revelle College, University of California at San Diego. He went on to complete a Masters and Doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Jim was a fellow in the Postdoctoral Training Program in Clinical Chemistry at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. He is board certified in both Clinical Chemistry and Toxicological Chemistry by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Nichols spent several years as Associate Director of Clinical Chemistry, Director of Point-of-Care Testing, and an Associate Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Jim later served as Medical Director of Clinical Chemistry for Baystate Health in Springfield, MA and was a Professor of Pathology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Nichols’ research interests span evidence-based medicine, information management, laboratory automation, point-of-care testing and toxicology.

Partner
Cami Samuels focuses on healthcare with an emphasis on biotech, medical devices, and consumer health. She currently serves on the board of Unity (UBX), Biolux, Corvidia, and recently stepped off the board of REGENXBIO (RGNX). Prior to Venrock, Cami was a Managing Director at Versant Ventures where she served on the board of many companies including Kythera (KYTH), Novacardia (acquired by Merck), and ParAllele (acquired by Affymetrix). She was also a board observer at several companies including Genomic Health (GHDX), Jazz (JAZZ), Fluidigm (FLDM), and Syrrx (acquired by Takeda). Before Versant, she was responsible for business development at Tularik (acquired by Amgen). During her early career, Cami worked in corporate development at Genzyme and Millennium Predictive Medicine, and was a management consultant at LEK Consulting. Cami earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar.

CEO
Dudley Tabakin, MSc, is CEO and co-founder of VivoSense with over 20 years of management and product development experience in clinical research industries. Dudley is a fervent believer in “good data” over “big data” and passionately promotes wearable sensor technology combined with robust data analytics as a tool to discover novel digital biomarkers, transform clinical trials and propel drug discovery.

CEO
Ming Tan is the founder of Wainamics, specializing in point of care microfluidic cartridge product development. She has over 20 years of experience developing diagnostic devices and life science tools for many startups and government labs like NASA Ames. Ming received her PhD in electrochemistry from California Institute of Technology

CEO
Mike McSherry is currently CEO of Xealth, which spun out of Providence St. Joseph Health in 2017, to help health systems organize, integrate and deploy digital health initiatives that achieve measurable results. Prior to Xealth, McSherry was CEO of Swype, an innovative touchscreen keyboard which made communication easier, faster and more inclusive. Swype was installed on over one billion smartphones and tablets and sold to Nuance. At Nuance, McSherry led the team that managed Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and other early mobile voice recognition platforms using the company’s Dragon technology. McSherry brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry, co-founding several other consumer electronics businesses including Boost Mobile, which is now Sprint’s pre-paid service. Drawing from his background in consumer engagement with electronic devices, McSherry mission to make digital health tools an integrated part of health care delivery.

Director, Engineering
No bio available

Director, IBM Watson AI XPRIZE
Devin Krotman serves as the Director of both the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and Global Learning XPRIZE. In this capacity for the last three years, Mr. Krotman oversees all complex operational aspects of these large programs - including, but not limited to project management, fiscal management, knowledge management, and risk management. Mr. Krotman is passionate about tackling the world’s grandest challenges from education to disaster prediction and firmly believes technology will help humanity get there. With nearly a decade of experience in management consulting prior to XPRIZE, Devin focuses on leveraging his problem-solving experience when it comes to helping run XPRIZE’s large scale competitions focused on innovative technology. Mr. Krotman holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute. He also holds Bachelor of Science in Public Administration and Master of Public Administration degrees, both from James Madison University.

Chief Digital Officer, Digital Solutions
Paul has worked at Zifo since late 2019 and is helping to define new service offerings, customer solutions, and partners. Prior to this, he joined IDBS in 2005 as part of acquisition of his ELN company and where he spearheaded the drive to make E‑WorkBook Suite the market leader. Prior to this, Paul founded a number of companies focused on combining science, technology, and business. Paul obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Biology from Essex University.