Speaker Biographies by Company

Senior Vice President and Head, Global Clinical Development, Chief Medical Officer
Roy Baynes is Senior Vice President Global Clinical Development at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey. He was previously Senior Vice President of Oncology, Inflammation and Respiratory Therapeutics at Gilead Sciences and prior to that was Vice President Global Clinical Development, and Therapeutic Area (TA) Head for Hematology / Oncology, at Amgen Inc. He graduated as a Medical Doctor and obtained a Master of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has had a long and distinguished career in the haematology-oncology-and stem cell transplantation fields, including drug development, basic research, clinical practice, clinical research, teaching and administration. He is a member of many international societies, including the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and has authored some 150 publications. He has been recurrently named among America’s top physicians. Before joining Amgen in 2002, he was the Charles Martin Professor of Cancer Research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Principal Investigator
No bio available

Head, HTS & Molecular Characterization
Sujatha Gopalakrishnan is leading the centralized Molecular Screening and Characterization group at Abbvie. Her team supports various therapeutic areas in assay development, screening and advancing compounds including elucidation of the SAR and mechanistic studies for early stage drug discovery efforts. She joined Abbott/Abbvie in 1995, and since then held positions of increasing responsibility leading highly productive scientific teams. With early Discovery, she has been advancing a range of assay platforms/technologies for target based and phenotypic screens that impacted Abbvie pipeline. Sujatha is an author of over 35 peer-reviewed manuscripts and as well as a co-inventor on two patents.

Principal Research Scientist I, Translational Immunology
Vanessa Marie Morales-Tirado, MS, PhD, is a Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Translational Immunology at AbbVie. For the past year and a half, she has focused on Biomarkers within the Dermatology and Fibrosis research areas and the management of the Biorepository of Immunology. She earned her Immunology MS and PhD at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, followed by post-doctoral training in human immunology and Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Prior to her time at AbbVie, Dr. Morales-Tirado was an Assistant Professor and the Leader of the Ocular Oncology and Translational Immunology Unit at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. When not working, Vanessa enjoys going on road trips and visiting her native Puerto Rico to enjoy the beautiful scenery the Island offers.

Data Scientist, R&D
Pradeep is a Data Scientist working in collaboration with R&D scientists at AbbVie Inc. His interests are machine learning, deep learning for computer vision and data engineering. He has over 10 years of experience in delivering data products, primarily in the health care sector. He obtained his Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northern Illinois University with multi-faceted research on Alternative Energy using Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

Senior Scientist III, Discovery Chemistry & Toxicology
Justin Dietrich received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2008 from the University of Arizona, College of Pharmacy in the lab of Dr. Laurence Hurley and Dr. Gary Flynn where efforts were focused on traditional small molecule drug discovery in an academic setting.  After a short post-doc in Dr. Christopher Hulme’s lab studying multicomponent reactions and developing enabling chemistry technologies, he joined as a research scientist and was instrumental in building a state-of-the-art high-throughput medicinal chemistry facility.  In 2011, he joined Abbvie in the Discovery and Chemistry Technology department, first working in the scaffold oriented synthesis and high-throughput chemistry groups.  He is currently a senior scientist in the fragment-based drug discovery group and serves as the chair of Abbvie’s proprietary monomer acquisition program.

Senior Research Fellow, Integrated Sciences & Technology
Gary Gintant is a Senior Research Fellow in the Dept. of Integrative Pharmacology, Integrated Science and Technology, at AbbVie. He is involved in multiple drug discovery and safety activities and initiatives internally; external activities include various cardiac safety initiatives (such as ILSI/HESI Proarrhythmia Models Project, the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium, and the Comprehensive in Vitro Proarrhythmia Assay Initiative) while serving on various journal editorial boards, NIH study sections, and Safety Pharm. Society committees. His research interests include cardiovascular pharmacology, cellular electrophysiology/ion channels, arrhythmias, stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes and tissues, and biomarkers-translational medicine. He gained his MA., M.Phil. and PhD. degrees from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, NY, and was on faculty at Wayne State Univ. School of Medicine in Detroit MI prior to joining Abbott/AbbVie.

Head, Fragment Based Drug Design Group
Chaohong Sun is a Research Fellow and Director in Discovery Research organization at Abbvie, where she leads the small molecule Protein Sciences group and also heads up the lead discovery strategy team that is responsible to set and execute integrated lead generation strategies (including fragment-based approach, DEL and HTS) for Abbvie’s early portfolio targets. She received her Ph.D. from Dartmouth College in biophysical chemistry and then joined Abbott as a postdoctoral research fellow to study structures and functions of proteins involved in apoptosis pathway before becoming a staff scientist. She is coauthor of over 50 peer reviewed scientific publications and patents.

Head of Molecular & Computational Toxicology, Investigative Toxicology & Pathology
Dr. Van Vleet received a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Weber State University and a doctorate in Toxicology studying mechanisms of carcinogenesis and metabolic activation of carcinogens, at Utah State University. His postdoctoral training was at the Medical University of South Carolina, studying mechanisms of renal toxicity with an emphasis in mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction. Dr. Van Vleet is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology. He worked at Bristol Myers Squibb in Mt Vernon, Indiana, for 11 years in positions of increasing importance culminating as the Head of the Molecular and In Vitro Toxicology Group. Currently he works at Abbvie in Investigative Toxicology and Pathology (Preclinical Safety) where he is responsible for the Molecular, Genetic, and Computational Toxicology groups. During his career in industry, he has served as a Drug Safety Project Representative, Study Director, and Study Monitor for numerous toxicology programs. He has also identified/characterized numerous mechanisms of toxicity and has been responsible for developing novel molecular assays for evaluating potential mechanisms of toxicity using a number of computational, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry techniques.

Director, Pharmacology
Josh Murtie received his PhD in molecular biology from the Uniformed Services University, then moved on to begin working as a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston. Josh started his career in industry at NIBR Cambridge in the oncology division as a pharmacologist where he supported both small molecule and biologic drug discovery programs. From there, he moved on to a pharmacologist role in the oncology division at Sanofi where he continued supporting a number of drug discovery efforts. Josh is currently at Agios Pharmaceuticals where he began as the head of their pharmacology group. Most recently, Josh transitioned to a new role at Agios where he is currently the head of cancer biology with strategic oversight of the company’s oncology discovery efforts.

Director Medicinal Chemistry
No bio available

Partner
Dr. Traber is president emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine, where he was chief executive officer from 2003 to 2008. From 2000 to 2003, he was senior vice president of clinical development and medical affairs and chief medical officer of GlaxoSmithKline plc. Dr. Traber served as chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and was chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and chief of gastroenterology for the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Traber has also managed a molecular biology research laboratory and published over 100 articles of original research, reviews and book chapters. Dr. Traber received his M.D. from Wayne State School of Medicine, a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, and a certificate in medical leadership from Wharton Business School.

Global Lead, Life Sciences Business Development
No bio available

Executive Director Research Amgen, CBSS
Dr. Rattel is Executive Director at Amgen Research Munich and he has been working on bispecific BiTE antibodies since 2008. Formerly, he was Vice President of Nonclinical Development and DMPK at GPC Biotech AG., and before that Director of Toxicology and Pharmacology at Fujisawa. He also consulted various European Biotech Companies as well Scientific Societies in nonclinical drug development. Dr. Rattel has more than 25 years of drug development experience and is board-certified in pharmacology, toxicology and animal welfare and a European-Registered Toxicologist. He is member of a number of professional societies and has studied veterinary medicine at the LMU Munich, where he was granted his doctorate.

CSO
Michael Sofia, PhD is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Arbutus Biopharma. He has also held research and research management positions at Gilead Sciences, Pharmasset, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Transcell Technologies and Eli Lilly. Mike received his BA in chemistry from Cornell University, his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Mike has introduced numerous drugs into clinical development and is the principle inventor of sofosbuvir currently marketed as the backbone of HCV curative therapies Sovaldiâ, Harvoniâ, Epclusaâ and Voseviâ. Mike has received numerous awards for his work on hepatitis C including the 2015 Economist Innovation Award, the 2015 ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award, and the 2016 Lasker-Debakey Award in Clinical Medical Research. In 2017 he was inducted into the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.

Founder & CSO
No bio available

Senior Research Associate, Molecular Science
No bio available

Associate Director
No bio available

Senior Scientist, Oncology Target Discovery
His main professional interests are focused on innovative approaches to improve the efficiency of the drug discovery and development process and to reduce compound attrition with an emphasis on the use of in silico tools, artificial intelligence, and more comprehensive ways to predicted human pharmacokinetics and dose, including modeling & simulation.

Associate Director
Bino John, PhD, currently leads a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Initiatives at AstraZeneca (AZ). As an Associate Director at AZ, he is leveraging Deep learning and other advanced AI approaches to accelerate Drug development. Before joining AZ in 2018, Bino led a variety of computational biology initiatives and teams at Dow and then Dow-DuPont. In those roles, his efforts included enabling machine learning/AI and integrative big-data informatics capabilities for genomics research for the Agricultural Sector. He earned an Integrated Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai) in 2000 and subsequently received his PhD from The Rockefeller University in Biomedical Sciences in 2003. His thesis research in computational structural biology with Dr. Andrej Sali was followed by postdoctoral studies in computational genomics with Dr. Chris Sander at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre. In 2005, Bino joined the University of Pittsburgh as a faculty, where he focused on using high-throughput methods for cancer biomarker discovery, resulting in the discovery of novel molecules and molecular pathways.

Team Leader, Proteomics Chemical Biology
Eric Miele has over 15 years of mass spectrometry experience in the pharmaceutical industry supporting small molecule programs in the areas of DMPK and quantitative proteomics. His experience spans across contract research organization and large pharmaceutical companies conducting GLP and discovery programs. As principal scientist in the chemical biology group at AstraZeneca, Eric developed targeted and discovery LC-MS based chemoproteomics methods supporting target identification and mechanism of action studies. His current role is team leader for a proteomics group whose remit is to deliver large scale quantitative proteomics information for biomarker discovery, mechanism of action, target engagement, identification of disease signatures and patient stratification and other systems based multi-omics analyses.

Scientist Translational Medicine, R&D Oncology
No bio available

Co Founder & CEO & Director
No bio available

Director Oncology Biomarker Strategy
No bio available

Associate Director, Immuno-Oncology
Dr. Sailaja Battula obtained her PhD in Pharmacology from New York Medical College, NY. Her postdoctoral training at UCSF focused on understanding the role of macrophages in mesothelioma chemoresistance. She is currently an Associate Director, Immuno-Oncology (IO) at Bicycle Therapeutics in Lexington, MA involved in exploring the unique potential of Bicycles® as immune modulators. Prior to joining Bicycle, Sailaja worked at FORMA Therapeutics and contributed extensively in building innovative pipeline for inflammatory indications and cancer immunotherapy.

Principal Scientist, Drug Discovery
In the past 21 years Istvan J Enyedy has been involved in new target evaluation, in hit finding, in structure- and ligand-based hit-to-lead optimization, and in building machine learning models for predicting ADMET properties of compounds. He is coauthor on more than 50 publications and 14 patents/applications. He received his PhD in 1998 at Catholic University of America, Washington DC, and did postdoctoral training in Dr. Shaomeng Wang's group at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC. Between 2001 and 2008 he worked at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, West Haven CT and Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge MA.

Director Chemical Biology & Proteomics
Douglas Johnson is a Senior Director of Chemical Biology & Proteomics at Biogen in Cambridge, MA. Prior to moving to Biogen, Doug was at Pfizer for 18 years where his most recent position was Senior Scientific Director and Head of Chemical Biology in Cambridge, MA.  Prior to Pfizer, Doug was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the laboratory of Professor David A. Evans. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute under the guidance of Professor Dale L. Boger and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a BS in chemistry. He is an author or inventor on more than 90 publications and patents.

Director, Toxicology
Dr. Loveday has over 20 years of experience as a toxicologist in the biopharmaceutical industry. He has worked on the development of a range of compounds that have advanced treatment options for patients with severe diseases such as cystic fibrosis, lysosomal storage diseases, hemophilia, cancer, and muscular dystrophies. Nine of these programs have culminated in world-wide registration of drug products. Ken began his career in toxicology in the contracting and consulting industry, and over the course of 16 years, he directed laboratories to investigate mechanisms and refine tests to evaluate genotoxicity, phototoxicity, and carcinogenicity. Ken received his BS in physics from Yale and MS and PhD in microbiology from MIT. He has been a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology since 1992.

Senior Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry
Bin Ma is a senior scientist in the department of medicinal chemistry at Biogen. Bin received his BS and MS degree in chemistry from Lanzhou University and a PhD degree in organic chemistry from Boston University. Bin gained his postdoc training at Harvard University in Professor Kishi’s labs. In 2007, Bin moved to Biogen as a medicinal chemist and started his industrial career. Bin contributed multiple development candidates in multiple therapeutic areas at Biogen including BIIB068, gained extensive experience on target validation, hit ID, lead optimization, candidate selection and preclinical development, served as a leader for chemistry teams and project teams. Bin’s current efforts focus on the drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases.

Scientist I, Translational Cell Sciences
No bio available

Associate Director Clinical Pharmacology & Pharmacometric, Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics
Dr Penner provides strategic leadership and execution of clinical pharmacology plans for oligonucleotides (ASOs), small molecules and biologics; Integrate knowledge of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, patient characteristics and disease states to optimize doses, dosage regimens and study designs throughout clinical drug development; Lead dose finding strategies that will help defining optimal dose and schedule requirements from FIH to Ph2/3; perform PK, population PK and PK/PD analysis and modeling and simulation as needed

Vice President Translational Neuroscience, Translational Neuroscience
Stefan Irion, M.D., joined BlueRock bringing deep knowledge of cell therapies from his research experience in both academia and industry. Dr. Irion has been working on the development team for BlueRock’s lead cellular therapeutic candidate targeting Parkinson’s disease since 2013, when he served as program manager at Memorial Sloane Kettering. He transitioned to BlueRock in 2017, assuming management of the neurology program in house. Prior to Memorial Sloane Kettering, Dr. Irion worked as a senior scientist and project team leader at iPierian, a role in which he developed an induced pluripotent stem cell model of Alzheimer’s disease that led to the discovery of a novel anti-tau antibody. Bristol-Myers Squibb acquired iPierian in a $725M deal in 2014. Dr. Irion was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University Health Network, specializing in cell biology and gene targeting, and at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He holds an M.D. from the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Postdoc Associate c, Biomedical Engineering
Richie Kohman, PhD is a senior research scientist and the Lead of the Synthetic Biology Platform at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. He received his BS from Santa Clara University and PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, both in chemistry. Subsequently he was postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, an affiliate of the MIT Media Lab, and Group Leader at Expansion Technologies, Inc. Currently, he oversees all research conducted by the Synthetic Biology Platform including advances in nucleic acid synthesis, in situ sequencing, gene editing, genome recoding, neurotechnology, gene therapy, stem cell therapy, anti-aging, and all aspects relating to the intersection of synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry.

Senior Principal Scientist, DMPK & Oncology Drug Development
Jinping Gan is currently a Senior Principal Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb working on the ADME aspects of drug discovery and development.  Dr. Gan’s research interests include biochemical mechanisms of drug induced toxicity, imaging techniques for drug disposition, human relevant tissue model development, and mechanistic models of drug-drug interactions.  Dr. Gan has authored and co-authored over 40 publications, multiple patents and book chapters. Dr. Gan obtained his bachelor’s degree in Analytical Chemistry from Univ. of Science and Technology of China, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from MIT under Prof. Steven Tannenbaum.

Principal Scientist, Translational Res for Fibrosis Discovery Biology
No bio available

Associate Director, Genetic Perturbation Platform
Since joining the Broad Institute in 2009, I have engaged in dozens of collaborations centered on functional genomics. As Associate Director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform, my role is to provide expert guidance on the design, execution, and analysis of genetic screens, and have done so with a wide variety of research groups across many areas of biology. Additionally, I have many years of experience in the development and use of functional genomic techniques, first with RNAi and more recently with CRISPR technology for genome-wide loss-of-function screening. As leader of research and development in the Platform, I have stayed on the cutting-edge of newest techniques while also focusing on the reduction-to-practice that is critical for enabling collaboration with a broader community of researchers. Prior to joining the Broad, I received my Ph.D. in biology, training with Phil Sharp, and performed postdoctoral work with Ed Harlow at Harvard Medical School.

Chief Data Officer, Data Sciences & Data Engineering
Anthony Philippakis is the Chief Data Officer of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is also an institute scientist. Philippakis is committed to bridging the gap between data sciences and medicine. He is a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where his primary focus is caring for patients with rare genetic cardiovascular diseases. At the Broad Institute he directs the Data Sciences Platform, an organization of over 100 software engineers and computational biologists that develops software for analyzing genomic and clinical data. In addition to his roles at the Broad Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Philippakis is a Venture Partner at GV, focusing on machine learning, distributed computing, and genomics. Philippakis received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed a Ph.D. in biophysics at Harvard. As an undergraduate, he studied mathematics at Yale University, and later completed the Part III (equivalent to M.Phil) in mathematics at Cambridge University.

Group Leader, Cellular Pharmacology
Tom Sundberg has expertise in chemical biology and translational immunology in the Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The focus of his work at CDoT is developing approaches to enhance anti-inflammatory functions of immune cells. As part of these efforts, he serves as a project lead for a collaboration with a biopharmaceutical industry partner developing first-in-class therapies for autoimmune/auto-inflammatory disorders. Tom received a PhD in chemical biology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and upon its completion in 2010 was awarded the American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University; in the course of the fellowship, he studied new chemical biology approaches to targeted protein degradation.

Senior Computational Biologist I, Diabetes
Marcin von Grotthuss is a Senior Computational Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He earned the Ph.D. in bioinformatics at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands and gained his professional experiences at: Sanford-Burnham Institute (La Jolla), University of Washington (Seattle), Harvard University, University of Cambridge, University of California Irvine, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. In his work, initially, he applied machine-learning technics to estimate biomedical properties of small molecules. Next, he worked on distant sequence-structure-function relationships in proteins. After that, he was focused on genomics of model organisms and human genetics (1000 Genomes Project). Currently, he develops knowledge portals for complex traits like type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases. And he is one of the instrumental scientists in the consortium that builds a Biomedical Data Translator.

Director Structural Biology
After completing graduate studies in protein crystallography at Cambridge University, I joined Astex Pharmaceuticals to focus on the early development of small molecules using fragment-based drug discovery.  I continued a hit identification focus at AstraZeneca both in the UK and Boston research hubs before joining C4 Therapeutics in 2016.  I currently lead the Biochemistry, Biophysics and Crystallography team at C4T tasked with the in vitro evaluation of targeted protein degraders and structural and biophysical characterization to support medicinal chemistry design.

PostDoc Scholar Physiology & Biophysics
I did my bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. During my Master-Thesis, I worked with Prof. Biswajit Mukherjee. I have been involved in ‘Developing and characterizing didanosine loaded poly (lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticulate drug delivery system for treating HIV at early stage. Later, I joined the School of Biological Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), where I worked on my PhD-Thesis with Prof. Gerhard Grüber. I finished my Ph.D. in structural biology from Nanyang Technological University on 2014. Then, I moved to National Institutes of Health, USA where I worked as a visiting research fellow. After a brief postdoctoral experience, I gained my interest in membrane protein biology. I started postdoctoral work with Dr. Sudha Chakrapani in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio. In my postdoctoral training, I investigated the structure and dynamics of pentameric ligand gated ion channels (pLGICs) starting with the simpler prokaryotic homologs of the family to the more complex eukaryotic channels. I established an insect cell expression system for expressing eukaryotic membrane proteins as well as protocols for membrane protein purification. Through collaborative research I received comprehensive training in single particle cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM), from sample freezing and screening to data collection and processing. With this knowledge, I employed the technology to understand the general mechanism underlying activation and inhibition of the serotonin receptor (5-HT3AR) a eukaryotic member of pLGICs (Basak et al, Nature Communications, 2018; Basak et al, Nature, 2018, Basak et al, Nature Communications, 2019) and this work was partly funded by my American Heart Association Fellowship.

Assistant Professor Biomedical Sciences & Director, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Core Facility
No bio available

COO
No bio available

Global Head, Statistics & Data Sciences
Dr. Devanarayan has 23 years of pharmaceutical research experience from Eli Lilly, Merck, and AbbVie. In addition to leading global teams for over 15 years, his scientific contributions cover a wide variety of statistical methods and applications across basic science, drug discovery and clinical research. He has filed ten patent applications, given over 100 invited talks, and co-authored over 65 manuscripts, which include several white papers with regulatory, academic and industry scientists on compound screening, genomics, predictive modeling, machine learning, bioanalytical methods, and clinical biomarker qualification. He was inducted as a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in 2014. He is currently employed at Charles River Laboratories and is also serving as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Billy & Audrey L Wilder Professor, Cancer Immunotherapeutics & Tumor Immunology
Dr. Hua Yu is Billy Wilder Endowed Professor, Co-Leader of Cancer Immunotherapeutics Program, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Yu is a noted expert and pioneer on the cancer-promoting protein STAT3 and was the first to uncover and define the protein’s effect on the immune system. Dr. Yu’s studies have laid the foundation for a new generation of molecular targeted cancer therapy approaches that disable both tumor cells and the tumor stromal cells, which are critical for tumor growth. She has developed potentially paradigm-shifting novel siRNA and antibody delivery technology platforms to inhibit STAT3 and other challenging targets.

Principal Investigator
Dr. Sheltzer is an independent fellow and PI at CSHL, where his lab uses a variety of techniques to investigate chromosomal alterations and other changes found in cancer cells.

Founder & CEO
Sean is founder and CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. which is focused on using machine learning approaches for rare and neglected disease drug discovery. He is also the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, UNC. Since 2005 he has been awarded over 20 NIH and DOD grants (STTR/SBIR grants, R21, UH2 and R01) as well as performs as a consultant on many others.

Greenberg Starr Professor, Pharmacology
No bio available

Scientist, Cancer Biology
Katherine Donovan is a Scientist in the Fischer Lab where she works on the development of molecular-glues and PROTAC molecules for targeted protein degradation. She completed her PhD training in protein biochemistry and structural biology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. After joining the Fischer Lab as a postdoc she developed an interest in proteomics and now leads the proteomics-based screening of novel small molecule degraders in the Fischer Lab.

Professor Pathology, Medical Oncology
Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, is Professor of Pathology and Epidemiology at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH); Chief of Program in MPE Molecular Pathological Epidemiology, BWH; and Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Ogino has been developing the integrative science of molecular pathological epidemiology (MPE), and serving as the chairperson of the International MPE Meeting Series since 2013. He has created novel paradigms, concepts, and research frontiers, including “GWAS-MPE approach”, “unique disease principle”, “colorectal continuum model”, “etiologic field effect model”, “lifecourse-MPE”, “social MPE”, “causal inference-MPE”, “pharmaco-MPE”, and “immuno-MPE”. He has received numerous awards and honors, including Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award (2011) from United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP); Executive Officer’s Award (2004) and Meritorious Service Award (2012) from Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP); elected membership of American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI); recognition as “The Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014” and “Highly Cited Researcher” in 2015, 2016, and 2017 by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science); Outstanding Investigator Award (since 2015) from National Cancer Institute, NIH; and Outstanding Investigator Award (2018) from American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP).

Research Fellow, Medicine
Emily Thrash leads the clinical trial immunophenotyping team at the Center for Immuno-Oncology Immune Assessment Lab (CIO-IAL) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She received her Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences from The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Her expertise in immuno-oncology and translational research has made significant impact on patient care and has led to multiple publications on understanding of pre-clinical drug mechanisms of action and immunophenotyping methodology. In the CIO-IAL Emily manages 15+ ongoing clinical trials by collaborating with clinicians and project managers to design correlative studies and analyze immunophenotyping data from patient samples. She has optimized custom mass cytometry panels and novel workflows for multiple cancers and tissue types to allow for high-throughput acquisition with superior robustness and reproducibility.

Chemical & Structural Biology Lead
No bio available

Senior Director & Head, Data Science & Scientific Infrastructure
No bio available

Founder & President, Ctr for Genetics Guided Dementia Discovery
Nadeem’s expertise stems from the intersection of genomics and data sciences with collaborative business models for therapeutic discovery. He is Founder and President of the Eisai Center for Genetics Guided Dementia Discovery (G2D2), with past experience in academia (Tenured Faculty, University of Cambridge), big-pharma (Senior Director, Pfizer), mid-sized pharma (VP, Eisai), and Biotech (G2D2). Nadeem’s research has been published in leading medical journals (eg, NEJM, Lancet, JAMA), presented at international meetings (eg, National Academies of Science, Hitachi Innovation, Prix Galien Foundation), and profiled by international media (eg, BBC, Forbes, Nature). He has provided insights on drug discovery for: The World Dementia Envoy; Scottish Enterprise; UK Minster for Life Sciences; UK Under Secretary of State, Department of Health; and UK Trades and Investment. He sits on the US National Academies of Sciences Roundtable on Genomics & Precision Health (and co-leads their Precision Therapeutics working group). In Apr 2019, he received the Alzheimer’s Association Champion Award. Within Eisai, Nadeem has established three incremental new organizations: First, as VP and Global Head of Genetics & Human Biology, he created the Integrated Human Genomics (IHGx) department, to provide human genetics support to all programs across Eisai’s pipeline. Second, as President of the Eisai AiM Institute (Andover, MA), he reorganized eight previously disparate groups into one new integrated drug discovery organization focused on leveraging human genetics. Finally, built upon the success of AiM, he is Founder and President of G2D2: a “spin-in” biotech focused on harnessing human genetics, data sciences and precision chemistry. Eisai made an initial >$120 million 3-yr investment to establish G2D2, as part of a broader 10-yr commitment. G2D2’s focus is immunodementia: genetically validated immune targets for dementia. It is located at a 50,000 Sqft facility in Cambridge (MA), designed and constructed under Nadeem’s leadership, and includes the Eisai Incubator for NeuroDiscovery.

Director, Translational in vivo Pharmacology, Translational Innovation Platform, Oncology
No bio available

Assistant Professor & Associate Director, Pharmacology & Assay Development & HTS Emory Chemical
No bio available

Program Lead Research Governance Council, Ofc of Translational Sciences
Madhu Lal-Nag is the Program Lead, Research Governance Council, Office of Translational Sciences, Center for Drug Evaluation & Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Principal Scientist, Biology
No bio available

Industry Consultant, Transformational Health
Amol Jadhav has spent the last decade gaining rich experience across Diagnostics Devices, Biopharmaceutical discovery & Bioengineering sectors working with leading research institutions such as University College London, UC Berkeley and Scripps Research Institute. Amol has extensively interacted with pharma industry, academia and startups on AI and digital transformation consulting projects in his capacity as Industry Consultant within Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health business unit. Prior to that his experience includes working with Innoplexus AG, an emerging European AI champion that develops AI/Big Data, Blockchain products and solutions for the life sciences industry. Amol holds an MS in Business Analytics from The University of Cincinnati (USA), MSc in Biomedical Nanotechnology and PhD Engineering from Newcastle University (UK).

Director Pharmacology
Rob Slack is currently Director of Pharmacology at Galecto, Inc. in London, UK where he oversees the company’s research activities. Prior to joining Galecto, Rob served as Head of Translational Pharmacology within the Respiratory Therapy Area at GlaxoSmithKline where he led a number of inhaled and oral programmes through lead optimisation to clinical studies in fibrotic and inflammatory diseases during his 17 years at the company. Rob received his BSc and MSc from the University of Bath, UK and his PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. His research has included a focus on the translational pharmacological characterisation of αv integrins, GPCRs and galectins in the context of lead optimisation and drug discovery for fibrotic and inflammatory diseases.

Scientist, Biochemical & Cellular Pharmacology
Christopher Kemball received a B.A. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Immunology & Microbial Pathogenesis from Emory University. He conducted postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute and investigated how coxsackievirus impairs antiviral T cell immunity and modifies cellular autophagy. Chris joined Agensys, Inc. in 2011 as a scientist and led preclinical research programs focused on bispecific antibodies and next-generation antibody drug conjugates. Chris joined Genentech, Inc. in 2018 and is a scientist in the Department of Biochemical & Cellular Pharmacology, supporting biochemical and cellular characterization of protein therapeutics for immuno-oncology.

Director & Senior Staff Scientist, Early Discovery Biochemistry
Wayne Fairbrother received a B.Sc.(Hons) in Chemistry from the University of Otago, NZ, in 1984, and a D.Phil. in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, UK, in 1989. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute, where he worked on protein structure determination using NMR methods, he joined the Protein Engineering Department at Genentech in 1992, and established a protein NMR group; he is currently a Senior Staff Scientist and Director of the Department of Early Discovery Biochemistry at Genentech. His research has focused on the use structure-based design methods to identify small molecule antagonists of protein-protein interactions, most notably the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family and the Bcl-2 family, for the treatment of cancer. He is currently focused on the development of technologies and modalities to target challenging proteins. He has authored >100 publications and >10 US patents.

Senior Director Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics
Dr. Cornelis “Marcel” E.C.A. Hop is Vice-President at Genentech (South San Francisco) and supervising the Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics Department. He leads a team of about 75 scientists involved in acquisition and interpretation of ADME data in support of drug discovery and development ranging from early stage research to NDA and beyond. He is also a member of the Small Molecule Leadership Team and the Development Review Committee. Before that he was a Senior Director at Pfizer and a Senior Research Fellow at Merck. He has extensive experience in ADME sciences with a particular focus on PK optimization, human PK prediction, biotransformation, and bioanalysis. He has authored more than 180 publications in refereed journals and several book chapters and made more than 75 external oral presentations at conferences and universities. Recently, he co-authored one of the best-selling books in the ADME field: Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Quick Guide.

Scientist, Biochemical & Cellular Pharmacology
No bio available

Senior Scientific Researcher, Oncology Biomarker Dev
No bio available

Senior Scientist, Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics
Zhengyin Yan is currently leading the in vitro DMPK group to support small molecule drug discovery at Genentech. Previously, he had been responsible for in vitro ADME support for nearly 17 years at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Discovery in Spring House, PA. His main scientific interest includes in vitro assay development, drug metabolism, and ADME-guided lead optimization in drug discovery.

Principal Scientist
Donglu Zhang received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Utah. His current studies focus on soft-spot metabolite identification to support drug designs and to discovery ADCs. He previously worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. He edited two books ‘Drug metabolism in drug design and development’, and ‘ADME-enabling technologies in drug design and development’. The mass defect filter (MDF) methodologies he co-invented have been widely used in high resolution mass spectrometry for metabolite identification

Scientific Leader
No bio available

Manager, Molecular Discovery Research
Chris Arico-Muendel received his doctorate in chemistry from MIT.  Following postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford and Brandeis, Chris joined Praecis Pharmaceuticals where he co-developed DNA Encoded Library Technologies (ELT).  He joined GSK in 2007 as part of the leadership team that integrated ELT within GSK’s NCE discovery platforms.  Since that time, he led ELT efforts on many small molecule therapeutic programs as well as ongoing development of DEL technology and its uses outside lead discovery.

Scientific Leader
Svetlana Belyanskaya is Scientific Leader at Encoded Library Technology (ELT) group at GlaxoSmithKline. Svetlana has been involved in the development of DNA-encoded technology at Praecis Pharmaceutical and significantly contributed in designing and adapting the DNA tagging strategies for DNA- Encoded Libraries. She led biochemistry and affinity based selection effort for several targets, partnered between GSK and Praecis Pharmaceutical. This effort resulted in the discovery of a series of potent and selective inhibitors, one of which is currently undergoing clinical trials. Post GSK acquisition, Svetlana led a team of scientists in the ELT Lead Discovery group and was responsible for ELT selections against multiple targets. Her team discovered multiple target specific small molecules with different MOAs, several of which were the first known small molecule inhibitors for novel targets.

Investigator, Systems Modeling & Translational Biology
Paul Michalski, Ph.D. is an Investigator in the Systems Modeling and Translational Biology group at GlaxoSmithKline. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a post-doctoral position at Washington University in St. Louis studying the biophysics of cell motility. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling, where he studied the systems biology of learning and memory and developed novel computational approaches to study meso-scale systems such as membrane-receptor clusters. He was an Associate Computational Scientist at The Jackson Laboratory, where he used computational methods to study the three-dimensional structure of the human genome. He has been at GSK since 2017, where his primary focus is on quantitative systems toxicology (QST) models of hepatotoxicity.

Group Leader, Functional Genomics
No bio available

Investigator, Biopharm Molecular Discovery
I obtained my BSc(Hons) in Biology from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2002 and then immediately started my biopharmaceutical career by joining Cambridge Antibody Technology where I worked in a GMP laboratory supporting regulated stability and batch release studies. In 2005 I joined the biology group at Domantis (subsequently acquired by GSK in 2007) where I developed cell and protein-based assays to support the identification of therapeutic domain antibodies and bispecifics. I also led the development of methods and studies to understand the PK, PD and immunogenicity of these molecules. After several internal moves within Biopharm Discovery at GSK, I am now a team leader within Antibody Pharmacology, working within matrix teams for early antibody discovery efforts and acting as the translational science contact within my department. I am also leading a new capability to embed a suite of new in vitro methods evaluating the in vivo suitability of our antibody candidates.

Investigator, R&D Medicinal Science & Technology
Dr. Bing XIA received his Ph. D. in chemistry from Boston University. In 2008, Bing joined Encoded Library Technologies (ELTs) at GSK where he has played a key role in a variety of projects across wide range of therapeutic areas. Bing then focused on development of on-DNA chemistry, design and synthesis of on-DNA library, and High Throughput Binder Confirmation (HTBC), meanwhile Bing coinvented novel cleavable linkers for the platform. While with GSK, Bing has already won 3 Exceptional Science Awards, 2 Cool Chemistry Finalists, 5 Silver awards and numerous Bronze Awards. Bing published about 20 articles and patents in various fields in esteemed journals, such as Nature Comm., JACS, J. Med. Chem., Organic Letters, J. Clinical Microbiology, J. Biological Chemistry and J. Physical chemistry

Faculty and Principal Investigator, Goldman Laboratory Drug Resistance Group
Aaron is a faculty member and Principal Investigator at Harvard Medical School where he is Director of the Drug Resistance Group and Associate Bioengineer in the Division of Engineering in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His group uses multiple scientific disciplines to study cancer drug resistance including mathematical modeling, computational biology and nanomedicine and human-derived tumor models. Aaron is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Xontogeny, an investment group focused on early stage companies. Prior to that, he held leadership roles in industry as the Director of R&D and Head of Immuno-Oncology at Farcast Biosciences, a company focused on personalized cancer medicine.

Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center; Assistant Professor of Medicine
Dr. Jenkins obtained his bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Virginia in 2002 and his MD/PhD at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2012. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2014 and his clinical oncology training in the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in 2017.  He conducted his post-doctoral research in David Barbie's lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where he developed a novel platform to study ex vivo response to PD1- blockade using organotypic tumor spheroids.  In 2018 he joined the faculty at the MGH Cancer Center in the Center for Melanoma and Center for Cancer Research. Dr. Jenkins is the inaugural Termeer Early Career Investigator in Systems Pharmacology and a member of the Laboratory for Systems Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School.  The Jenkins laboratory studies mechanisms of response and resistance to PD-1 blockade with a focus on developing rational combination therapies to overcome resistance to cancer immunotherapy.

Associate Chief of Research and Director of Molecular Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor, Pathology
Dr. David Langenau is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Associate Chief of Research in Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.  His work is focused on using zebrafish as a discovery tool for uncovering important biology and new therapies for the treatment of cancer.

Head of Life Sciences Strategy and R&D
Anita Rogacs has done extensive work in the field of microfluidics, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, nanotechnology, plasmonics, and Raman spectroscopy, authoring over 30 publications. Anita received her M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and has studied business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a National Science Foundation (NSF) and Sandia National Laboratories Fellow.  After receiving her PhD, she joined HP’s CTO office and Labs, where she leads strategy and the technology development of a broad array of Life Sciences platforms.

Professor, Molecular Genetics
Hans Clevers obtained his MD degree in 1984 and his PhD degree in 1985 from the University Utrecht, the Netherlands. His postdoctoral work (1986-1989) was done with Cox Terhorst at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of the Harvard University, Boston, USA. From 1991-2002 Hans Clevers was Professor in Immunology at the University Utrecht and, since 2002, Professor in Molecular Genetics. From 2002-2012 he was director of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. From 2012-2015 he was President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). From June 2015-2019 he was director Research of the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology.

Managing Director
No bio available

Professor, Pharmacological & Oncological Sciences
Dr. Jian Jin is an internationally recognized medicinal chemist with more than 20 years of experience in small-molecule drug discovery. He is currently the Mount Sinai Endowed Professor in Therapeutics Discovery, Professor in Departments of Pharmacological Sciences and Oncological Sciences, and the Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Mount Sinai). Dr. Jin’s laboratory is a leader in discovering selective inhibitors of histone methyltransferases, biased ligands of G protein-coupled receptors, and novel degraders targeting oncogenic proteins. Dr. Jin was an Associate Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry in the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at UNC from 2008 to 2014. Dr. Jin was recruited to Mount Sinai as a professor with tenure in 2014. Dr. Jin has published >150 peer-reviewed papers and delivered >100 invited talks. He is also an inventor of >50 issued U.S. patents and published PCT patent applications. As the Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery, Dr. Jin is leading research effort on discovering novel therapeutics for the treatment of human diseases including cancer and brain disorders.

Associate Professor, Genetics & Genomic Sciences
Dr. Bin Zhang is a Professor at the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and the Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transformative Disease Modeling at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His expertise lies in machine learning, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, systems biology and with applications to disease modeling and drug discovery. In the past 15 years, he has developed a series of influential gene network inference and analysis algorithms which have been extensively used for identification of novel pathways and gene targets, as well as development of drugs for a variety of human diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's, obesity and diabetes. Currently his research is focused on integration of large scale bulk and single cell RNA-seq data as well as other Omics data into multiscale network models for discovering novel mechanisms of human diseases and developing novel therapeutics.

Vice President Biomarker Services, Biomarker Services
John Allinson, Leads the Biomarker Services at Immunologix in Tampa Bay, Florida. He was previously the Head of Biomarker Strategy of LGC and brings over 40 years of experience in developing and working with biomarkers including their use in drug development across all therapeutic categories and phases of development. Before joining LGC, Mr. Allinson spent 22 years in NHS Clinical Pathology services before moving into the CRO industry where he managed Central, Bioanalytical and Biomarker Laboratories at a number of CRO’s. Mr. Allinson was part of the AAPS Ligand Binding Assay Bioanalytical Focus Group (LBABFG) Biomarker Committee which published the first consensus white paper on biomarker assay validation requirements in Drug Development, and was also co-author of the first white paper on the Validation of Multiplexed Biomarker assays as well as other leading Biomarker white papers on the subject.

Chemistry
Scott Cowen is Medicinal Chemistry Professional with over 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development. He currently an independent consultant, and was previously a Medicinal Chemistry Director at Nimbus Therapeutics. Prior to that Scott held leadership positions at Astrazeneca, Array BioPharma, and Novartis. Scott is passionate about drug discovery and has a particular interest in Epigenetics, Fragment-based lead generation, Virtual screening, and Cheminformatics.

President & Chief Drug Hunter, Maestro Therapeutics
Tomi K. Sawyer, PhD, recently retired from his position as Distinguished Scientist, Peptide Drug Discovery & Innovative Technologies, Merck & Co., Inc.  At Merck, Dr. Sawyer leads a Peptide Drug Hunter Network of more than 300 scientists who are actively engaged in peptide drug discovery programs, core capabilities and a knowledge engine. Prior to joining Merck & Company, Inc., Tomi was the founding Chief Scientific Officer at Aileron Therapeutics and Senior Vice-President of Drug Discovery at Ariad Pharmaceuticals (recently acquired by Takeda). He is credited with pioneering work across receptors, proteases, kinases and protein–protein interaction target space that has resulted in novel peptides, peptidomimetics, small-molecules and natural products that have advanced into the clinic and are now marketed drugs. Tomi is credited with more than 550 scientific publications, patents, and presentations. He holds Adjunct Professorship and Scientific Advisory Board appointments at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Northeastern University Center for Drug Discovery. Tomi is past-President of the American Peptide Society, was co-Chair of the Eighteenth American Peptide Symposium and is a recipient of the DuVigneud Award for his peptide scientific achievements.

Team Lead & Senior Medical Writer
No bio available

Medical Director
No bio available

Assistant Professor, Pathology
Elizabeth Thompson, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She received her B.S. from the College of William and Mary and went on to graduate from the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Virginia. There Dr. Thompson received her MD and PhD degrees in Microbiology and Immunology, completing her graduate thesis work studying the development of CD8+ T cell responses to melanoma, focusing on the activation and migration of T cells to the tumor microenvironment. She then completed residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Thompson currently practices general surgical pathology at Johns Hopkins with a focus on pancreatic pathology. She is an associate member of the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and her ongoing research focuses on the tumor immune microenvironment of pancreatic malignancies.

Vice President Discovery Biology
Dr. Poyurovsky leads the Discovery Biology group at Kadmon, bridging early discovery studies and nonclinical development of small molecules and biologics, with emphasis on fibrosis and inflammation. She is the leading scientist on the ROCK inhibitor program and multiple other early stage discovery programs. Along with drug discovery efforts, Dr. Poyurovsky works closely with Kadmon’s Business Development team as a scientific liaison. She has authored numerous patents, papers and reviews, along with several book chapters on cellular metabolism and cancer. Prior to joining Kadmon 8 years ago, Dr. Poyurovsky spent more than ten years studying cellular and molecular mechanisms of cancer in an academic setting. Dr. Poyurovsky received her B.S. in biology from the University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University. Dr. Poyurovsky continued her postgraduate work at Columbia, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then independently, as a staff scientist.

Director Medicinal Chemistry
No bio available

Head, R&D
After receiving his PhD on membrane biology and biophysics, he did a post-doc on mass spectrometry-based lipidomics. Christian published numerous papers in the field of membrane biology and lipidomics. In his role as Head of R&D Christian enjoys developing novel technology and putting it into action for routine use.

Chief Business Officer
John Hallinan joined MassBio in 2012 as the Chief Business Officer and oversees the MassBio Innovation Services programs. John’s fiscal experience in the life sciences and software industries reflect positions of increasing responsibility across a broad range of strategic and operational disciplines. His background encompasses venture financings, corporate development, technology licensing, and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to MassBio, John was the Chief Financial Officer at Cytel, a leader in the design and implementation of adaptive clinical trials, and he had been active with MassBio—serving on the Economic Development Advisory Group and as co-chair of the Finance Committee & Entrepreneur’s University. Before joining Cytel, John served as CFO at Signet Laboratories, a leading supplier of diagnostic assays to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Prior to Signet, John was interim CFO at Cambium Learning, a private equity-backed publishing company that completed two acquisitions during his tenure. John was the Chief Financial Officer of AnVil, Inc. a venture-funded silico drug discovery company, where he led the company’s healthcare market business development efforts. At CambridgeSoft Corporation, John rose to CFO of that leading pharma/bio applications and enterprise solutions supplier. As Animation Technologies’ CFO, he guided the company’s first and second rounds of venture funding. John currently sits on the Advisory Board of MTTC (the MA Technology Transfer Center), Charité BIH Entrepreneurship Summit, and New Frontier Bio. John holds a BBA from St. Bonaventure University and is a certified public accountant. He lives with his wife Denise in Marlborough, MA.

Associate Professor, Pathology
Dr. Mino-Kenudson is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Pulmonary Pathology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been conducting translational research on lung cancer in collaboration with molecular pathologists, thoracic oncologists, and basic scientists. She and her team have described the morphology of molecularly annotated and/or biologically aggressive lung adenocarcinomas. They were the first group to report the signet ring cell morphology associated with ALK rearranged lung adenocarcinoma, as well as tumor islands, which associate with KRAS mutations and unfavorable patient outcomes, and are now considered to represent airspace invasion. They also documented the utility of clinical testing to identify molecularly defined lung adenocarcinomas. The ALK and ROS1 FISH as well as ALK immunohistochemistry (IHC: the clone D5F3) that they reported have significantly facilitated the detection of patients with actionable gene arrangements (game-changing innovations). She and her collaborators have also been actively investigating resistant mechanisms for EGFR, ALK, ROS1 and other tyrosin kinase inhibitors that will aid in identifying appropriate treatment for those patients after development of resistance to the inhibitors. More recently, Dr. Mino-Kenudson and her team have been studying and have reported predictive biomarkers for immune checkpoint blockade in non-small cell lung cancer. She is a member of the Pathology Panel of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and co-chairs the biomarkers working group, the main goal of which is to improve biomarker testing for immunotherapy (including PD-L1 IHC) globally.

Associate Director Neurosurgery Residency Program, Brain Tumor Ctr & Pappas Ctr for Neurooncology
Dr. Brian Nahed is a neurosurgeon specializing in brain tumors (glioblastoma, gliomas (low grade and high grade), metastatic brain tumors, and meningiomas) as well as Spinal Disorders. Dr. Nahed specializes in brain tumors of the eloquent cortex (language and motor areas of the brain) which require awake surgery, language and motor mapping, and subcortical stimulation. Born in New York, Dr. Nahed attended UCLA where he majored in Neuroscience, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and with the department's Highest Honors. He attended the Yale School of Medicine where he was awarded the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship and graduated with honors. Dr. Nahed completed his internship and neurosurgery residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital; where Dr. Nahed also completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Daniel Haber and Shyamala Maheswaran in the MGH Cancer Center. Dr. Brian Nahed was recruited to the MGH Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Tumor Center in 2011. As an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Brian Nahed's research focuses on developing the first blood-based test to diagnose and monitor brain tumors. In collaboration with Drs. Haber, Maheswaran, and Stott, Dr. Nahed recently published the first evidence of circulating tumor cells in the blood of patients with glioma. Dr. Nahed is actively enrolling patients into his translational clinical research study. Dr. Brian Nahed serves as the Associate Director of the MGH Neurosurgery Residency Program. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the CNS/AANS section on Tumors. He is an active member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Council State Neurological Societies. Dr. Nahed is focused on education and socioeconomic issues in neurosurgery. He also serves as a neurotrauma consultant for the National Football League (NFL).

PostDoc Research Fellow, Neurology
No bio available

Assistant Professor, Radiology
Dr. Changning Wang is an Assistant Professor of Radiology, at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is trained with a broad background in chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and neuroscience, specialized in conducting research in developing and applying novel imaging probes for preclinical and clinical application for neuroimaging to investigate the human disease mechanism. Dr. Wang has developed several novel PET imaging probes for brain research, and some of them have been used in human, including [11C]Martinostat for HDACs, [11C]CW22 for bromodomains, [11C]CWL-1 for sirtuin 1, [18F]CNY-05 for sigma 1 receptor. These probes are under evaluation in neurodegenerative disease, drug addictions and cancer.

Postdoc Associate
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Professor, Biological Engineering & Teaching Innovation
No bio available

Cecil & Ida Green Distinguished Professor, Mechanical Engineering
No bio available

Postdoc Fellow, Mechanical Engineering
No bio available

Banting Fellow, Biological Engineering
Jonathan Stokes is a Banting Fellow in the laboratory of James Collins at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He received his BHSc in 2011, graduating summa cum laude, and his PhD in antimicrobial chemical biology in 2016, both from McMaster University. His research applies a combination of chemical biology, systems biology, and machine learning approaches to develop novel antibacterial therapies with expanded capabilities over conventional antibiotics. Dr. Stokes is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Master’s Award, the Colin James Lyne Lock Doctoral Award, and was ranked first of just 23 elite postdoctoral scholars to be awarded the prestigious Banting Fellowship.

PostDoc Associate, Biological Engineering
Jianbo completed a B.Eng. in Bioengineering in 2011 at Tianjin Agricultural University, M.S. in Biophysics in 2014 at Zhejiang University, and PhD in Health Sciences and Technology in 2018 at ETH Zurich. He is currently a postdoc associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on host-microbe-immune interactions using primary human cell-derived microphysiological systems (organ-on-chips).

Professor, Clinical Cancer Prevention Research
No bio available

Assistant Professor, Translational Molecular Pathology
I’m currently Assistant Professor, Director of the Multiplex Immunofluorescence and Image Analysis Laboratory at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, Houston, Texas. I am a pathologist with strong background in surgical pathology and research, author and co-author of more than 100 paper in Lung cancer, interstitial lung diseases and other tumors. I am particularly interested in the characterization of immune response of cancer and the development of novel biomarkers for immunotherapy by applying, immunohistochemistry, multiplex IF, Multiplex RNAscope, histomorphometry and digital image analysis. I received my MD from the University Mayor of San Andrés, Bolivia, following by my Pathology Residency at the Clinicas Hospital of University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil, Doctorate in Sciences at the University of São Paulo Medical School (FMUSP, 2006), Postdoctoral in lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis at the same University (FMUSP, 2008), young researcher supported by the Foundation for the Support of Research of the State of São Paulo (FMUSP 2008 - 2012) and Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, M.D. Cancer Center, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology (UTMDACC 2013-2017), and Research Scientists in the same institution (UTMDACC 2017-2018).

Assistant Professor, Hematology & Oncology Medicine
M. Bilal Abid, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine jointly with the divisions of Hematology/Oncology and Infectious Diseases at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Abid’s clinical and translational research interests include hematological malignancies, stem cell transplantation, immunotherapy, CAR T-cells, and transplant infectious diseases. Along with his team, he is currently exploring the potential of the gut microbiome in enhancing the responses to engineered T-cell cancer therapy. Dr. Abid is also involved in several research studies and clinical trials related to infections that develop after bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy.

Director, Precision Pathology Biobanking Ctr
No bio available

Postdoctoral Fellow, CSC Informatics
I received my bachelor’s degree in Biology from Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA in 2013. For my doctorate, I returned to my home state of Wisconsin where I pursued my PhD in Cellular and Molecular Pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2018). There, my graduate work with Dr. Federico Rey focused on deciphering interactions among gut microbes, host genetics, and metabolic disease. At the end of 2018, I started my postdoc at Merck in the Cheminformatics characterizing microbiome metabolism of small molecules.

Senior Scientist, Structural Chemistry
No bio available

Senior Scientist, Quantitative Biosciences
Dr. Gottfried Schroeder joined the Biochemistry and Biophysics group at Merck-Boston in 2012.  Since that time Gottfried has applied a wide range of biophysical techniques coupled with automation to projects in multiple disease areas from the early discovery through pre-clinical candidate space.  These efforts encompassed small scale screening to in-depth mechanism of action studies, including several clinical assets.  In 2015, Gottfried assumed a leadership role in surface plasmon resonance (SPR) at the Boston site providing continued support for multiple pre-clinical and clinical programs spanning small molecule, peptide, and oligonucleotide modalities.  Dr. Schroeder received his doctorate (UNC-Chapel Hill) under Richard Wolfenden with a focus on enzymology and biophysics.  His post-doctoral work at UT-Austin with Chris Whitman and Kenneth Johnson (collaboration) centered on advanced transient state kinetics methods and enzyme mechanism.  Gottfried’s current interests include further integration and application of SPR data to the drug discovery process.

Associate Principal Scientist, Neurodegeneration Grp
Yinghui Hu is an associate principal scientist at Neuroscience Department, Merck Research Laboratory. She is an accomplished scientist with 14 peer-reviewed publications. She got her Ph.D from Neuroscience Program Boston University. Her training was completed in a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine focused on the regulation of GABA A receptor in Epilepsy. Prior to joining Merck, she worked as a senior scientist at Biogen for four years where she led early discovery projects for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis. Since 2015, she has worked at Merck and played a key role in establishing several in vitro and in vivo platforms to support new drug discovery projects against ALS. Currently, she is a project leader for early discovery projects against neurodegeneration diseases at Merck.

Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry
David Tellers received his PhD from Berkeley under the guidance of Professor Robert G. Bergman.  In 2001, he joined Merck working in both the Department of Chemical Engineering and Process Research where he focused on route development, catalysis, and automation.  He made contributions to multiple programs, including Emend ™, Januvia ™, Cordaptive ™, and Vaniprevir ™. In 2008, he transferred to the Department of Medicinal Chemistry where he has had the opportunity to lead groups focused on oligonucleotide delivery, early and late stage neuroscience and infectious disease programs, and chemical biology.  David is currently focused on developing macrocyclic peptides against challenging targets.  David is an alumnus of UC Irvine.

Associate Principal Scientist
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Director, Translational Imaging Biomarkers
No bio available

Principal Scientist
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Principal Scientist & Program Leader, Exploratory Science Ctr
No bio available

Senior Principal Scientist, Translational Molecular Biomarkers
Xuemei is currently a Senior Principal Scientist in the Translational Molecular Biomarkers Department at Merck & Co., Inc. in Rahway, NJ. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University and performed her postdoctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Afterwards, Xuemei joined the Proteomics Department in Molecular Profiling at Merck in 2004. She led the biochemistry group focusing on sample preparation for LC-MS based proteomics profiling for biomarker discovery and new target identification. In 2012, Xuemei transitioned to clinical biomarker development. Currently, she leads the immunoassay group focusing on clinical biomarker assay development, validation, and implementation to support drug development clinical studies across all disease areas at Merck.

Principal Consultant
Dr. Michael W. Dong is a principal consultant in MWD Consulting, focusing on CMC consulting and training services on HPLC, pharmaceutical analysis, and drug quality. He was formerly Senior Scientist at Genentech and Research Fellow/Group Leader at Purdue Pharma. He holds a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the City University of New York and has 130+ publications, including a bestselling book on chromatography (HPLC and UHPLC for Practicing Scientists, 2nd Ed., Wiley, 2019).

CSO
Dr. Geisse is the Chief Science Officer at NanoSurface Biomedical. He graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Cambridge University. His postdoctoral fellowship was in cardiac cell and tissue engineering at Harvard University. At NanoSurface, he guides the company’s overall scientific strategy and develops NanoSurface’s next generation of innovative products aimed at increasing the predictive power of in vitro cell-based assays.

Senior Director, Genomics Biomarker
No bio available

CEO
Stefan Braam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ncardia. Earlier in his career, Stefan obtained a Ph.D. in stem cell biology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mummery and obtained international experience in labs in the UK and Australia. Stefan won the NGI venture challenge (2009), the Niaba biobusiness Masterclass (2010), published in multiple leading scientific journals, is an inventor on multiple patent families, and secured multiple grants and commercial research collaborations.

Associate Professor Pathology, Isaac & Laura Perlmutter Cancer Ctr
No bio available

Team Leader & Director, Pre Clinical Innovation
No bio available

Senior Scientist, Preclinical Innovation
Dr. Ruili Huang is the informatics group leader on the toxicity profiling team at the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Dr. Huang and her group contribute to quantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) data processing and interpretation and development and implementation of software tools and algorithms that facilitate NCATS’ data pipeline. As part of the Tox21 program, her group focuses on evaluating qHTS assay performance for prioritization and analyzing compound toxicity profiling data to generate hypotheses on compound mechanisms of toxicity and to build predictive models for in vivo toxicity. Dr. Huang received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Iowa State University, trained as a computational biologist at the National Cancer Institute, and joined NCATS in 2006.

Associate Director Special Initiatives, Ofc of the Director
Dan Tagle is associate director for special initiatives at NCATS. He also recently served as acting director of the NCATS Office of Grants Management and Scientific Review and as executive secretary to the NCATS Advisory Council and Cures Acceleration Network Review Board. Prior to joining NCATS, Tagle was a program director for neurogenetics at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), where he was involved in developing programs concerning genomics-based approaches for basic and translational research in inherited brain disorders. Prior to joining NINDS in 2001, Tagle was an investigator and section head of molecular neurogenetics at the National Human Genome Research Institute and has been involved in the highly collaborative effort toward the positional cloning of genes for Huntington’s disease, ataxia-telangiectasia and Niemann-Pick disease type C. Tagle obtained his Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1990. He was an NIH National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow in human genetics in the laboratory of Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Michigan. Tagle has authored more than 150 scientific publications and has garnered numerous awards and patents.

Earl Stadtman Investigator, Lab of Cell & Developmental Signaling
John Brognard obtained his PhD from University of California, San Diego in Dr. Alexandra Newton’s laboratory, where he discovered a novel class of phosphatases that directly regulate AKT. John then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Tony Hunter’s laboratory at the Salk Institute. He joined the CRUK Manchester Institute as a group leader where his lab focused on identifying mechanisms to promote lung tumorigenesis. John then moved to the NCI and his research is focused on defining novel enzymes that act to suppress or promote tumorigenesis and in some cases can serve as novel targets for therapeutic intervention. The lab has several ongoing collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to investigate novel inhibitors targeting newly identified kinases implicated in cancer.

Assistant Clinical Investigator, Molecular Immunogenetics & Vaccine Research
Dr. Jones received her MD and PhD from Stanford University. She is a board-certified radiation oncologist specialized training in radiosurgery, with graduate and postdoctoral training in both cancer biology and general immunology.

Deputy Associate Director, Cancer Diagnosis Program
Dr. Tracy Lively joined the NIH in 1996 as a program director in the Cancer Diagnosis Program of the National Cancer Institute. Prior to coming to the NIH she had been an assistant professor in the Division of Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, and had completed post-doctoral fellowships in cancer biology and human genetics. As a program director, and later as Deputy Associate Director of the Cancer Diagnosis Program and Chief of its Diagnostics Evaluation Branch, Dr. Lively has been responsible for the scientific oversight of a portfolio of investigator-initiated research grants and for the review of correlative science aspects of protocols for clinical trials supported by NCI’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program. She has developed and implemented targeted research initiatives for exploratory research, for technology development and for patient-oriented research in cancer diagnostics.

Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Viviana grew up in the north of Italy and received her master’s degree in medical biotechnology from the University of Milan. In 2007, she moved to Washington University in St. Louis, MO for her PhD training, where her studies focused on the characterization of the signaling pathways activated downstream of ITAM-associated receptors in myeloid cells and osteoclasts during rheumatoid arthritis and bone metastasis. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Shannon Turley at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for her post-doctoral training, where her research addressed the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing stroma-immune cell cross talk in lymphoid organs. Viviana moved to Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research as an independent investigator in 2015, in the department of Immuno-Oncology. Work in her lab aims at broadening our current understanding of stroma-immune interactions, with particular emphasis on stromal-imposed immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment.

Head, Emerging Technologies
No bio available

Senior Investigator I, Exploratory Immuno Oncology
Dr. Pushpa Jayaraman is a Senior Investigator within Immuno Oncology at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research where she leads a research team responsible for the evaluation of novel immunotherapeutics targeting tumor promoting inflammation within the tumor microenvironment. Prior to NIBR, she worked as an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital on dissecting the role of TIM-3, an immune checkpoint molecule in regulating innate and adaptive immunity during chronic bacterial infection. Dr. Jayaraman earned her doctorate in Pathobiology at the University of Washington, Seattle where she evaluated the role of neutralizing antibodies in modulating HIV disease course in elite controllers, and mother-to-child transmission. At NIBR, Dr. Jayaraman continues to work on TIM-3 and IL-1b and her team is involved in various stages of drug development, ranging from target discovery and validation to supporting translational efforts in the clinic.

Principal Scientist II, Immuno-Oncology
Xiaomo Jiang completed her PhD training at UT Southwestern, and postdoctoral training at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Currently she is a Principal Scientist at Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Her team focus on two areas, 1) biological understanding of immune checkpoints to support clinical development of immune checkpoint antibodies, and 2) investigating novel immuno-oncology targets and small molecule drug discovery.

Director & Lead, Disruptive Technologies
Jonathan Beer has been with the Novartis Oncology Precision Medicine team since 2011 and has supported multiple investigational new drug Phase III clinical trials which employed diagnostic assays across technology and sample types, including Liquid Biopsies, to select patients for enrollment. Through these trials he has contributed to 7 Pre-Market Approval submissions to the US FDA for Companion Diagnostic Assays and was the Lead for the therascreen PIK3CA RGQ PCR Kit, the CDx assay for alpelisib. In addition to clinical support, Jonathan is the leader of the Disruptive Technologies Team, which identifies new and emerging technologies, performs feasibility testing of selected platforms or vendors, and makes recommendations on which assays will provide the highest impact exploratory biomarker data from precious clinical trial samples to Novartis drug development teams.

Investigator
Dr. Bhhatarai joined Novartis (NIBR) since Nov 2015 to support computational ADME projects using machine learning, data integration, ADME modeling and MedChem based approaches. Before, Novartis, he worked in the Predictive Safety Assessment Center at The Dow Chemical Company, Michigan, where he contributed to the development, assessment and implementation of novel in-silico approaches aimed at predicting potential mammalian and environmental health effects. His graduate and post-doctoral research focused on cheminformatics, bio-assay/chemical ontology and computer-aided drug design at Clarkson University, New York and Center for Computational Science at University of Miami, Florida. After obtaining his PhD, he joined the University of Insubria, Italy where he performed Predictive Toxicology research and Risk Assessment of emerging pollutants for EU – FP7 project. He is a member of the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT) and the American Chemical Society (ACS - COMP, CINF). He has authored 25+ peer-reviewed publications and several presentations.

Director Global Discovery Chemistry
No bio available

Senior Investigator II & Group Leader Translational Immuno Oncology
No bio available

Computational Chemist, Global Discovery Chemistry
Dr. Clayton Springer is affiliated to Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Dr. Clayton Springer is currently providing services as Professor. Dr. Clayton Springer has authored and co-authored multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers and presented works at many national and International conferences. Dr. Clayton Springer contributions have acclaimed recognition from honourable subject experts around the world. Dr. Clayton Springer is actively associated with different societies and academies. Dr. Clayton Springer academic career is decorated with several reputed awards and funding. Dr. Clayton Springer research interests include Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Zhao earned his PhD from Dartmouth College. He was a translational oncologist specialized in developing and utilizing murine cancer models to better understand tumorigenesis and treatment mechanisms. Zhao is currently leading the mouse modeling efforts to dissect the tumor microenvironment in the Exploratory Oncology Program at Novartis.

Head, Search & Evaluation, Immuno-Oncology, Business Development & Licensing
Michael Woo, PharmD, is Head, Search & Evaluation, Immunology and Business Development & Licensing at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.  He is responsible for S&E for Immuno-Oncology.  Dr. Woo has broad experiences in business development and drug development.  Prior to re-joining Novartis, Dr. Woo was leading S&E in IO and also a member of the IO Leadership Team responsible for the IO strategy at EMD Serono.  Before EMD Serono, Dr. Woo had increasing responsibilities in Business Development & Licensing in Novartis Oncology, leading Due Diligence and participating in S&E for oncology and IO opportunities.  Prior to his initial engagement at Novartis, Dr. Woo was leading Due Diligence in a number of therapeutic areas including Oncology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, and Neurosciences at Roche.  Dr. Woo has also served on global program teams responsible for the development of small molecules and biologics in Oncology from Phase 1 through Regulatory filing at Bristol-Myers Squibb and at Roche.  Dr. Woo received a BScPhm from the University of Toronto, an MSCI from Vanderbilt University, an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business, and a Doctor of Pharmacy from Wayne State University.  Dr. Woo completed his residency at MD Anderson Cancer Center and post-doctoral fellowships at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Senior Scientist, Future Precision Medicine
Shruthi Bharadwaj is a Senior Scientist at Novartis within the Informatics and Analytics group. She received her Ph.D 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.

Developer Relations Manager, Healthcare & Life Sciences
No bio available

CEO
Leo Price is the CEO of OcellO and he developed automated 3D culture-based screening technology, applying this to genetic and compound screens. In 2011 he founded the CRO, OcellO, which provides compound testing services using spheroids, organoids and ex vivo cultured patient tissues.

Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dehua Pei is the Charles H. Kimberly Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University. He received his PhD degree in organic chemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and was a Damon Runyon-Winchell Walter Cancer Fund postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty at The Ohio State University. His research group is currently developing new methodologies for combinatorial synthesis and screening of macrocyclic peptides/peptidomimetcis, cyclic cell-penetrating peptides for drug delivery, and macrocyclic inhibitors against previously undruggable targets, such as intracellular protein-protein interactions.

Head, Applications
no bio available

Business Development
Valerio's experience spans the engineering and biomedical fields, with particular emphasis on targeted drug delivery. At ONI, Valerio focuses on identifying new growth opportunities, and establishing collaborations with academia and industry. He obtained his DPhil (Ph.D) and MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Oxford and MEng in Mechatronics from King's College London.

General Manager
Todd Ringhouse, owner of Wapiti Trading Company, Triple L Land &Ranch LP and Ringhouse Holdings General Manager of PepGel, and CEO of Vision Processing Technologies (now a Division of Kerry NA), is an entrepreneur and investor in various business. He earned BS in Economics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CTO
Xiuzhi Susan Sun, Distinguished Professor of KSU, Adjunct Professor of WFIRM at WFU, a founder of PepGel LLC and PG BioTech LLC companies, a Fellow of NAI and ASABE, is specialized in biomaterials design and fabrication for environmental and biomedical applications. She earned PhD from University of Illinois, Urbana, IL.

Associate Research Fellow, Biomedicines Design
Lindsay King is currently an Associate Research Fellow in the BioMedicines Design department at Pfizer, in Andover, MA. He leads a team within the Translation Sciences Biomarker and Biomeasures group which primarily focuses on using conventional, imaging and mass cytometry to support mechanistic modelling and simulation and early biotherapeutics portfolio progression. He has held roles in Pfizer as scientific leader in the GLP Biotherapeutics Bioanalytical Centre of Emphasis supporting the global portfolio, as a leader of a non-regulated group responsible for LBA based bioanalysis of biotherapeutics, immunogenicity and biomarker/biomeasures and as a full-time large molecule DMPK departmental project team representative. Lindsay received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and his Honors B.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario (Ontario, Canada).

Senior Director, Global Microscopic Imaging Lead, Global Pathology & Investigative Toxicology, Drug Safety R&D
I am a veterinary pathologist currently serving as Senior Director in Drug Safety Research & Development at Pfizer. I received a Bachelor of Science degree from RIT in Rochester, NY and a Veterinary Medical Degree (DVM) from Cornell University. After several years of mixed veterinary practice, I completed a residency in Veterinary Anatomic Pathology and received a PhD in Pathology from the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Before joining Pfizer, I was a Research Assistant Professor at Emory University and Director of the Molecular Pathology Core at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, prior to becoming Assistant Professor of Pathology and Chair of the Division of Comparative Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the New England Primate Research Center. I joined Pfizer in 2008, first as Head of Investigative Pathology for Drug Safety in St. Louis, MO and Andover MA, before my current role as Global Microscopic Imaging Lead for Pfizer Global Pathology & Investigative Toxicology in Cambridge, MA.

Biomarker Assay Specialist & Senior Manager, Oncology Clinical Assay Grp
Amber Donahue, PhD is a Senior Manager, Biomarker Clinical Assay Lead in the Oncology Clinical Assay Group in Global Product Development at Pfizer. She is responsible for scientific technical oversight and operational management of external and internal partners performing clinical trial biomarker sample analyses aligned with translational oncology strategies. Prior to joining Pfizer in early 2015, she developed and validated esoteric testing assays for the Hematology/Oncology R&D group at Quest Diagnostics-San Juan Capistrano. Amber holds a PhD in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, with a focus in Immunology, from the University of California, Irvine.

Senior Principal Scientist, Neurosciences Medicinal Chemistry
Christopher W. am Ende is the Chemical Biology and Exploratory Project Synthesis lead in the Internal Medicine group at Pfizer. Chris received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Delaware, conducting undergraduate research with Professor Neal J. Zondlo designing lanthanide-binding peptides. He then pursued his graduate studies at Stony Brook University working with Professor Peter J. Tonge where he developed slow, tight binding inhibitors of InhA, the enoyl reductase from M. tuberculosis and under the direction of Kathlyn A. Parker, completed the first total synthesis of the natural product bisabosqual A. He has published >50 journal articles and patents, serves as a steering committee member for the New York Academy of Sciences Chemical Biology Discussion Group and was named American Chemical Society Young Investigator. Additionally, Chris is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Connecticut College.

Associate Research Fellow, Structure Biology & Biophysics
Seungil Han is currently an associate research fellow and a cryo-EM lab head at Pfizer Worldwide Research & Development at their Groton, Connecticut campus. Seungil was trained as a protein X-ray crystallographer in the laboratory of Professor Jeffrey Bolin at Purdue University where he worked on crystallographic studies of dioxygenase. Following this, Seungil joined the lab of Professor John Tainer at the Scripps Research Institute as a post-doctoral fellow and solved the structures of ADP-ribosylating bacterial toxins and DNA-repair enzyme. Seungil then moved to Berkeley where he spent 3 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a research assistant professor to work on structure of DNA repair enzyme. Seungil then moved to Connecticut where he spent the next 17 years at Pfizer. Over the years,  Seungil’s research interests have been kinases, proteases and hydrolases and have been actively pursuing structure-based drug design. Over the past 5 years, Seungil has expanded his research into single-particle cryo-electron microscopy and vaccines and is a currently a lab head in the cryo-EM lab and have been studying several challenging targets to support the discovery of new drugs and vaccines.

Lead, Biomarker Operations
No bio available

Research Fellow, Pharmacokinetics Dynamics & Metabolism
Li Di has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical indus­try including Pfizer, Wyeth and Syntex. She is currently a research fellow at Pfizer, Groton, CT. Her research interests include the areas of drug metabo­lism, pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, absorption, transporters, and blood–brain barrier. She has over 130 publications including two books and presented over 80 invited lectures. She is a recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research Outstanding Woman in Science Award, the Wyeth President’s Award and Peer Award for Excellence.

Principal Scientist, Inflammation
No bio available

Senior Scientist, Chemical Biology
Jaimeen Majmudar is a Principal Scientist in the Chemical Biology group at Pfizer, Cambridge, MA. Jaimeen joined Pfizer in 2016. Prior to joining Pfizer, Jaimeen was the American Heart Association postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, where he developed novel chemo-proteomic methods for the detection of redox-mediated PTMs in the laboratory of Prof. Brent Martin. Jaimeen obtained his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2012 from the laboratory of Prof. Richard A. Gibbs, where he developed inhibitors of Kras modifying enzymes. Jaimeen has published >20 research papers and has contributed to 3 patents. Jaimeen is the 2020 Chair of “Chemical Biology in the Hub” and is a Board member on the organizing committee.

Vice President & Head, Emerging Science & Innovation Leads & WWRDM
Barbara Sosnowski is Vice President and ERDI Head, Cambridge Research Units.   Barbara has had multiple expanding roles within Pfizer since her arrival to Pfizer 8 years ago.  She is currently Vice President and External Science & innovation (ES&I) Head, Cambridge Research Units; Global Head, WRD External Partnerships, Worldwide Research & Development.  This role oversees identifiying external opportunities from discovery to Phase 2b in the areas of Inflammation and Immunology, Cardiovascular, Neuro-inflammation, Rare Disease, Gene Therapy, Genonme Science and Technology, Platform technologies and Vaccine R&D.  Barbara oversees a group of scientists that are experts in each of these areas. Prior to joining Pfizer Barbara was Vice President, Biologics Development of Cardium Therapeutics and was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Tissue Repair Company following Cardium’s acquisition of Tissue Repair Company in August 2006. Prior to the acquisition, Dr. Sosnowski served as President and CEO of Tissue Repair Company. Dr. Sosnowski has more than 25 years in the health care industry. From June 2001 to December 2004 she served as Vice President Research and Development of Selective Genetics Inc. a tissue repair company that developed wound repair, orthopedic and cardiovascular products. At Selective Genetics, she co-invented and helped develop the targeted gene therapy program, both viral and non-viral. Prior to Selective Genetics she was employed by Prizm Pharmaceuticals from October 1992. Prior to joining Prizm, Dr. Sosnowski was at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, where her efforts were focused on identification of small molecule inhibitors of osteoporosis. Dr. Sosnowski received her BA in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and PhD in Biological Sciences from Johns Hopkins University. She is also a registered patent agent.

Vice President Translational Sciences, Translational Sciences
Scott Turner, Ph.D. is a leader in the field of stable isotope research and development of novel tools for drug discovery and development. Prior to joining Pliant as senior director of technology, Dr. Turner was the vice president of research and development at KineMed Inc. where he led the technology development and biomarker discovery efforts in fibrosis, atherosclerosis and metabolic disease. He has co-authored more than 50 publications and holds several patents in the areas of metabolic fluxes and stable isotopes methods. Dr. Turner has been awarded three NIH grants to fund his research into novel in vivo biomarker discovery and serves on the editorial board of Biomarker Insights. Dr. Turner received his Ph.D. in 2002 in Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology from the University of California at Berkeley. His graduate research focused on the development and application of stable isotope methodology to the study of adipose tissue dynamics in the ob/ob mouse.

Senior Director R&D
Dr. Suresh Kumar is a cell biologist and biochemist with several years of specific expertise in ubiquitin research. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Serge Fuchs, a pioneer ubiquitin scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied the role of ubiquitin in regulating key cytokine receptors. He discovered that the E3 ubiquitin ligase SCFβ-TrCP degrades the IFNalpha receptor, reducing the efficacy of IFNalpha in treating malignant melanoma. Dr. Kumar was also instrumental in establishing the roles of kinases in ubiquitin pathway mechanisms. In addition, he has contributed to the fields of immunology and antiviral therapeutics. In his current role as Senior Director of R&D at Progenra, Dr. Kumar has responsibilities in lead discovery and lead optimization. A major focus of Dr. Kumar is the development of small molecule immune-oncology drugs targeting the ubiquitin pathway enzymes.

Vice President Pharmacology
No bio available

CSO
Dirk Brockstedt is Chief Scientific Officer at RAPT Therapeutics and brings over 20 years of experience through all stages of discovery, translational and clinical development, as well as a deep knowledge of immunology and the tumor microenvironment. He joined RAPT from Aduro Biotech, where he served as Executive Vice President of Research and Development. Prior to Aduro, Dirk held positions of increasing responsibility within the immunology department of Cerus Corporation, most recently serving as Director of Immunology. Prior to Cerus, he served as a scientist at Aventis in the immunotherapy and anti-angiogenesis group, developing novel therapies against cancer. Dirk holds an M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Kiel, and he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel (graduate work performed at Stanford University). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Stanford School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology. He has co-authored 40 scientific papers and is a named inventor on seven issued patents and several pending applications.

Senior Vice President Computation
Pat Walters heads the Computation & Informatics group at Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. His group focuses on novel applications of computational methods that integrate computer simulations and experimental data to provide insights that drive drug discovery programs. Pat is coauthor of the book “Deep Learning for the Life Sciences”, published by O’Reilly and Associates. His work in AI began with expert systems in the late 1980s, moved to machine learning in the 1990s, and has continued through 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Relay, Pat spent more than 20 years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where he was Global Head of Modeling & Informatics. He is a member of the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and previously held similar roles with Molecular Informatics, and Letters in Drug Design & Discovery. Pat received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Arizona where he studied the application of artificial intelligence in conformational analysis. Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., he worked at Varian Instruments as both a chemist and a software developer. Pat received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara

Lab Head, Senior Scientist, Oncology-Pharmacology
No bio available

Senior Director R&D, Rare & Neurological Diseases
Dr. Pablo Sardi is an R&D director in the Neurobiology Unit at Sanofi. He started his career in Boston doing post-doctoral research at Harvard and moved to Genzyme in 2007 to pursue his interest in investigating disease mechanism to develop therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

Global Head, Immuno-Oncology Research Therapeutic Area
In his role of Global Head of Immuno-Oncology Research Therapeutic Area, Dmitri Wiederschain is responsible for devising strategy and managing execution of Sanofi’s entire pre-clinical portfolio focused on immuno-oncology, including immuno-modulatory antibodies, small molecules, antibody-drug conjugates, immune cell engagers and synthetic mRNA.  During his tenure at Sanofi, Dmitri has directly contributed to the advancement of a number of immuno-oncology assets into clinical development and played an integral role in establishing impactful external partnerships in this area. Prior to joining Sanofi, Dmitri spent 6 years at the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research in Cambridge, USA, and before that a number of years conducting cancer research in academia.  Dmitri holds an undergraduate and a PhD degree in Cancer Biology from Harvard University.  He is a co-author of 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and co-inventor on a number of patents.

Senior Director & Head, Proteogenomics
Katherine M. Call has focused in translational sciences and biologics, having identified and validated disease genes/drug targets and advanced biologics into development. She is Senior Director and Head, Proteogenomics in Translational Sciences at Sanofi. Dr. Call led the global establishment of Sanofi Discovery Biotherapeutics and was Head, US Biologics Research. As a co-founder of the Cambridge Genomics Research Center in 1997, Dr. Call’s team established molecular genomic platforms and applied these to identify and validate bone and cancer therapeutic targets. This joint venture demonstrated strong value and was acquired by Sanofi in 2000. She joined Sanofi as Head of Molecular Genomics. She went onto be Global Head, Genomics Technology Management. She initiated Sanofi’s External Research Strategy and Innovation in Boston and led large strategic alliances. Dr. Call holds a bachelor’s degree in biology with highest honors from UC Santa Cruz. At MIT, she earned a Ph.D. in Applied Biology and did postdoctoral training in human genetics/genomics at the Koch Center where cloned a Wilms’ tumor gene. This landmark was the second tumor suppressor gene and one of the first disease genes isolated based on genetic and genomics. She was a faculty at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, a key investigator on NIH Human Genome grants, has published 35 scientific papers and holds technology and therapeutic patents. Dr. Call has served extensively in external scientific communities - on grant review panels, as a committee member and Deputy Editor for human chromosome 10 and in a consultant and advisory board capacity to life sciences companies & organizations and pharma consortia.

Professor
John Nolan is a Professor at The Scintillon Institute, where his research group develops and applies new technologies for cytometry. Current projects in his lab include spectral flow cytometry, single particle analysis of natural and synthetic nanoparticles, and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) in cytometry. He is on the Editorial Boards of Cytometry and Current Protocols in Cytometry, a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and Past-president of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC).

Research Assistant IV & Scientist, HTS Assay Dev
No bio available

Professor & Chair, Chemistry & Cancer Biology
Thomas Kodadek received his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Miami (FL) in 1981 and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985. He then pursued post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Bruce Alberts at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School from 1985-1987. In the fall of 1987 he joined the faculty of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, rising to the rank of full professor. In 1998, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where he served as Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Biology as well as the Director of the Division of Translational Research. In June, 2009, Prof. Kodadek moved to the Scripps Research Institute campus in Jupiter, FL where he is currently Chairman of Cancer Biology and Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Kodadek works in the field of chemical biology, which involves the development of chemical tools to monitor and manipulate important processes in biology and medicine. His laboratory has also made important contributions to our understanding of how genes are rearranged and expressed. Recently, Prof. Kodadek has focused on the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools for the treatment of immune diseases and cancers. This work was recognized in 2006 by a prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for “exceptionally creative research”. Opko, a Miami biotechnology company, has established a laboratory in Jupiter for the discovery of novel diagnostic markers for cancer, autoimmune and neurological diseases using the methods developed in the Kodadek laboratory.

Scientist, R&D, Intestinal
Martin received a PhD in Microbiology at the University of Ottawa and conducted his postdoctoral research with Dr. Bruce Vallance at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Martin now works with STEMCELL Technologies developing applications and assays for intestinal organoid cultures.

Product Manager, Epithelial Cell Biology
No bio available

Vice President, Business Operations
Blake Anson, VP of Business Operations at StemoniX, is working to further implement higher-order human iPSC-based platforms. Previous efforts have brought a variety of iPSC-based solutions to Drug Discovery, Academic, and Government sectors. He has authored over two dozen manuscripts and led courses, workshops, and webinars on applying iPSC technology.

Director Medicinal Chemistry
Dario earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. He conducted postdoctoral studies with Sir Derek Barton at Texas A&M University. His industrial career includes Rohm & Haas, Schering-Plough Research Institute, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Gliatech, Neurogen, Lundbeck, CoNCERT, Sage and Sunovion, where he currently works in teams aiming at the discovery of new treatments for brain diseases. Dario contributed to the discovery of the PAR-1 antagonist vorapaxar and the clinical compounds NGD-4715 (anti-obesity), Lu AF09535 (anxiolytic), and CTP-692 (currently in Phase 2 studies in schizophrenia). Dario coauthored over 100 articles, patents or patent applications, and book chapters, and edited the book Allosterism in Drug Discovery. Current interests include molecular concepts at the chemistry/biology interface to enhance the translatability of preclinical research.

President & CEO
Dr. Peterson is CEO and co-founder of Symberix, Inc. He is an entrepreneur, scientist and industry leader with over 20 years of R&D experience in small-to-midsize biotech companies. He was formerly with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Inspire Pharmaceuticals. He has led cross-functional teams in the discovery and development of new therapeutics based on a wide range of biological and molecular targets from early drug discovery to Phase 3 clinical trials. He is a co-inventor of 12 issued U.S. patents. Dr. Peterson received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Head, Quantitative Biology
Mark Charbonneau is the Head of Quantitative Biology at Synlogic, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing Synthetic Biotic™ medicines which are designed using synthetic biology to genetically reprogram beneficial microbes to treat metabolic and inflammatory diseases and cancer. Dr. Charbonneau’s team develops tools to characterize engineered strain activity in the human gastrointestinal environment, as well as analytical methods to measure products and biomarkers of synthetic pathway activity. Dr. Charbonneau received his B.S. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in Computational and Systems Biology from Washington University in St. Louis in the laboratory of Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD. His work has been published in journals including Cell, Nature, and Science.

Director Early Target Discovery, Early Target Discovery
No bio available

Associate c Director, Translational Sciences & ODDU
No bio available

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

Director, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Drug Discovery
No bio available

Principal Scientist, Neuroscience Drug Discovery Unit
Principal scientist of Neuroscience Drug Discovery Unit, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Japan. Expertise in molecular pharmacology of cardiovascular/metabolic, and neuroscience diseases. Currently leading early drug discovery programs by high-content phenotypic screening with human iPSC-based disease models for CNS diseases.

Scientific Director, Quantitative & Translational Science, Imaging
Charles Glaus, PhD is a Director in the Translational Research and Early Clinical development organization at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. He leads the identification and application of translational quantitative imaging biomarkers to support the discovery and development of novel immuno-oncology and rare disease therapeutics. Charles collaborates across functions and with external research partners to implement preclinical, translational, and early clinical imaging biomarkers to advance Takeda’s innovative pipeline. Prior to joining Takeda, Charles was the Head of the Research Imaging Sciences department at Amgen: an advanced, multimodal imaging laboratory utilizing the latest in imaging technology (MRI, PET, SPECT, CT, optical imaging, radiochemistry, and cutting-edge medical imaging analytics and informatics) to support all Therapeutic Areas, Drug Delivery Devices, DMPK, and Biologics. Prior to joining Amgen, Charles was a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University School of Medicine where he designed probes and methods for PET imaging of cancer and cardiovascular disease and helped establish cGMP production of an immuno-PET radiopharmaceutical at the Siteman Cancer Center. He earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine, and a BS in Physics from the University of Missouri.

Scientific Director & Chief of Staff, Clinical Biomarker Dev & Innovation
Michael Baratta currently serves as a Scientific Director/Chief of Staff for the Clinical Biomarker Innovation and Development group at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. He received his B.A. from Loyola University of Chicago and a Masters Certificate in Applied Healthcare Project Management from Villanova University. Mike began his career as a member of the Global Drug Metabolism group at Pharmacia/G.D. Searle and transitioned to a Principal Scientist role with Pfizer after the closure of the merger. Prior to joining Takeda in 2013, he served as a Director on Nonclinical Development, Pharmacokinetics and Biometrics with Duck Flats Pharma. Mike is a member of several FNIH biomarker consortia, industry committees and serves as a NIH/NINDS translational research funding application reviewer. Mike’s research focus is mass spectrometry focused analytical assay development and clinical validation of post translation biomarkers supporting patient characterization/stratification strategies.

Director Neuroscience External Research
Gabriele Proetzel, PhD is Director, External Neuroscience Innovation in the Neuroscience Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, MA. In her current role, she focuses on cell and gene therapy therapeutic approaches for neurological disorders. Prior industry appointments include Scil Proteins, Halle Germany, Deltagen Inc., San Carlos, California and Boehringer Mannheim/Roche Penzberg, Germany.

Associate c Director Mechanistic Toxicology
No bio available

Vice President Translational Biology, Translational Biology
Jonathan Levenson is the Vice President of Translational Biology at Tiaki Therapeutics. Prior to joining Tiaki, he was the head of preclinical and nonclinical research and development at Proclara where he was key in moving two assets into the clinic, one for Alzheimer's disease and one for systemic amyloidosis. Before that, Jonathan worked at Galenea where he held positions of increasing responsibility, culminating in the role of senior scientist. Jonathan was an assistant professor and the director of the rodent behavioral core at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was previously a consultant at Saegis Pharmaceuticals and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine. He earned his doctorate in Biology from the University of Houston and did his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Neuroscience. He has authored or co-authored over 70 research publications focused on neuropharmacology and the treatment of neurological diseases.

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.

Director, R&D and Head, Platform Development
Christopher Helsen holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from the Technical University Munich, Germany and a doctorate from the University of Toronto in biochemistry. He is the primary inventor of the T-cell Antigen Coupler (TAC) technology and founding scientist of Triumvira. Chris has in-depth experience in biochemistry, cell biology and protein science. He has worked so far on a variety of research topics such as spider silks, chaperones and yeast prions. As Director of Research and Development at Triumvira, Chris is now managing the development of new TAC products and ancillary technologies.

Field Applications Manager
Dr. Patel is the Field Applications Manager at Ultivue. Prior to Ultivue, Katir was a Product Manager at PerkinElmer for the Quantitative Pathology Solutions group where he managed their multiplex IHC portfolio. He has extensive experience developing reagent-driven solutions for high-definition biological imaging in the field of immuno-oncology.

PostDoc, Molecular & Cell Biology
Kimberly Tsui received her bachelor’s degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from UCLA and her PhD in Genetics from Stanford University. In graduate school, she worked in Michael Bassik’s lab, where she used CRISPR screens to understand how antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are internalized and processed within cells in linker-dependent manners, revealing novel insights that may guide the future ADC designs. Currently, Dr. Tsui is a postdoc in Andrew Dillin’s lab at UC Berkeley, where she is studying the role of protein glycosylation in aging and proteostasis.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Pathology
No bio available

Specialist, Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Dr. Sarine Markossian is a specialist in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. Michelle Arkin. She is currently co-leading the Drug-Induced Liver Injury (DILI) team at the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and received her Ph.D. in molecular genetics from The Ohio State University.

Graduate Student, Computational Biotechnology
Arash Keshavarzi's fields of researches are mostly focused on non-target based approaches using DL for discovering potent small molecules and peptides. They already provisionally patented DeepMalaria and AMPDeep which are the state of art models for discovering potent complex macrocycles as antimalarials and linear short peptides as antimicrobial peptides. Mentioned models were developed at the University of Central Florida at Dr. Yuan's lab.

Professor, NanoScience Technology Ctr
James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he held the position of the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry, as well as BS and MS from Penn State University in Chemistry. For the past twenty-five years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in the latter years in academia. While in industry he established one of the first bioelectronics labs in the country that focused on cell-based sensors and their integration with electronic devices. He has extensive experience in surface modification and surface analysis for biological and neuroscience applications, and the integration of these systems with MEMS devices and components. He is interested in creating hybrid systems for biosensor and biological computation applications and the creation of functional in vitro systems for human body-on-a-chip applications. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the co-founder with Mike Shuler and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 123 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 19 issued patents out of 42 total patent applications.

Associate Professor, Medicinal Chemistry
Dr. Guangrong Zheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Florida. His group focuses on the development of senolytic agents as potential treatments of age-related diseases, ligands for novel E3 ligases, and small-molecule targeted protein degraders. Dr. Zheng received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and B.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from Fudan University.

Assistant Professor, Institute of Molecular Cardiology
Dr. Tamer Mohamed has completed his PhD at the age of 30 years from University of Manchester (UK). He has done his postdoctoral training at the Gladstone Institute, San Francisco, USA. He is currently an assistant professor of cardiology at the University of Louisville, Louisville, USA. He has published more than 25 papers in the field of heart failure and cardiac regeneration in renowned journals. Recently, Dr. Mohamed laboratory has developed and optimized a new culture system for human heart slices to be used as a platform for reliable cardiotoxicity testing.

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
No bio available

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

Associate Professor, Chemistry
William C. K. Pomerantz obtained his B.S. in chemistry from Ithaca College in 2002 prior to traveling to Zürich where he worked as a Fulbright fellow in the laboratory of François Diederich and was co-mentored by Jack Dunitz at the ETH. In 2008, Prof. Pomerantz obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry working jointly with Sam Gellman and Nick Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prof. Pomerantz was an NIH postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Anna Mapp at the University of Michigan before starting his independent career at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Chemistry in 2012. Prof. Pomerantz’s research focuses on modulation of transcription factor-protein interactions using small molecules and peptidomimetics, and implementation of 19F NMR methods for small molecule discovery.

Clinical Director & Associate c Professor, Ctr for Personalized Diagnostics
Jennifer Morrissette, Ph.D. is the Scientific Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory, the Clinical Director of the Center for Personalized Diagnostics (CPD) and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA. She is certified in Clinical Molecular Diagnostics and Clinical Cytogenetics through the American Board of Medical Genetics and has been a clinical laboratory director for 10 years. Dr. Morrissette joined the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Pathology as the Scientific Director of Clinical Cancer Cytogenetics in 2010. Previous to the University of Pennsylvania, she was an Assistant Professor at Drexel University and Director of Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetic Diagnosis at St Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Dr. Morrissette was a founding member of the Center for Personalized Diagnostics, a joint initiative between the Department of Pathology and the Abramson Cancer Center.

Molecular Development Assistant, Director Precision & Computational, Pathology & Lab Medicine
No bio available

CEO
Cameron Pye got his PhD in Chemistry from UC Santa Cruz where he worked on developing cell permeable cyclic peptides in the lab of Scott Lokey. During the final year of his PhD program, he and a fellow graduate student, Joshua Schwochert, founded Unnatural Products, a macrocycle discovery platform company focused on solving the hit-to-lead challenge associated with cyclic peptide drug discovery.

Senior Medical Director
Glen J. Weiss, MD, MBA, is the Senior Medical Director at Unum Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing curative cell therapies to treat a broad range of cancer patients. Prior to this, Dr. Weiss was the Director of Phase I Clinical Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and faculty at Harvard Medical School. Board certified in medical oncology, Dr. Weiss has completed numerous clinical trials with investigational agents, of which many have gone on to receive FDA approval for a variety of cancers. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and abstracts in journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, and Cancer Cell.

Professor & Orrin H Ingram II Chair, Biochemistry & Pharmacology & Chemistry
Dr. Fesik’s research focus is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott (2000-2009) where he built a pipeline of compounds that are showing promising anti-cancer activities in early stage clinical trials. While at Abbott, he also developed new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of several proteins and protein/ligand complexes, pioneered a method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to identify and optimize ligands for binding to many protein drug targets. Dr. Fesik has published more than 285 papers, trained 59 postdoctoral fellows, has been a reviewer for several government funding agencies and has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of many peer-reviewed journals. He won numerous awards including the Life Time Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from Eastern Analytical Society (2003), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2010), and the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012).

Assistant Professor, Neurology
Dr. Gallardo received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas C. Südhof, where his thesis focused on studying α-synuclein a presynaptic protein involved in Parkinson's disease. His studies demonstrated that α-synuclein-induced neurodegeneration involves central pathological mechanisms implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, signifying parallels in the pathogenesis for these degenerative diseases. Dr. Gallardo next performed his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he discovered the enrichment of the ion pump α2-Na/K ATPase in astrocytes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). An in-depth biochemical and molecular characterization revealed the chronic activation of the α2-Na/K ATPase mediates the non-cell autonomous motor neuron neurodegeneration in an ALS mouse model. Upon joining the laboratory of Dr. David M. Holtzman at Washington University School Medicine, he obtained his NIH-K01 Career Development Award and was appointed to the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Neurology in 2017. His laboratory focuses on understanding astrocytes and their cellular mechanisms of neuroinflammation and in the development of immunotherapeutic approaches for potential therapeutic intervention of neurodegenerative diseases.

Associate Professor, Pathology & Immunology
Joshua Swamidass MD PhD is a physician scientist and professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. His group is funded by the NIH to model bioactivation pathways in order to understand drug toxicity, and how alterations these pathways increase the risk of children to some medicines. http://swami.wustl.edu/

Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Aranda is an expert in in-vitro and in-vivo cancer models. She has published extensively in the areas of cancer, angiogenesis, metastasis. Dr. Aranda has done extensive work on investigating target for new drug development.

CSO
Dr. O’Neill is an expert on tissue- and disease-specific models. He has published extensively in the areas of extracellular matrix (ECM), biomaterials, stem cell research, cell and tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, whole organ recovery and bioengineering, and the use of biomaterials in drug discovery and clinical applications.

Research Scientist; Executive Director, Center for Precision Cancer Modeling
Vish Muthusamy is a cancer biologist with expertise in the field of cancer genetics, epigenetics, immunobiology and pharmacology. In his early works, he has published several papers describing genetic alterations that lead to formation and progression of cancer. He has used these alterations to develop in vivo tumor models to better understand the disease. More recently, Dr. Muthusamy has worked in close collaboration with medicinal chemists and helped develop several therapeutic agents targeting cancer, infectious pathogens and immune disorders. Dr. Muthusamy's current interests lie in discovery and pharmacological development of anti-cancer drugs particularly, designing and carrying out preclinical studies and advancing candidate drugs to clinic. He has experience working in collaboration with big and small pharma companies towards drug development and as the Director of the Yale Center for Precision Cancer Modeling, he helps Yale investigators advance their candidate therapeutic agents towards approval for clinical application.

Assistant Professor, Genetics
No bio available