LEADERSHIP

David Baltimore, PhD

President Emeritus and Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology

David Baltimore is President Emeritus and Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine as a co-recipient in 1975. Dr. Baltimore has been a director of Regulus Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, since 2007, serving on its Compensation Committee and chairing its Nominating and Governance Committee, and is a member of its scientific advisory board. Dr. Baltimore has also been a member of the board of directors of Immune Design Corp. (formerly Vaccsys), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company, since 2008, chairing its Nominating and Governance Committee, and is a member of its scientific advisory board. He was a director of BB Biotech, AG, a Swiss investment company, from 1994 to March 2011 and served as a director of MedImmune, Inc., a privately-held antibody formulation company, from 2003 to 2007. In 2008, Dr. Baltimore became a founder of Calimmune, Inc., a privately-held clinical-stage gene therapy company, and served as Chairman of the board of directors until November 2015. 

Dr. Baltimore was President of Caltech from 1997 to 2006. Prior to this, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, and at The Rockefeller University where he also served as the President. During this time he was also the Chairman of the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, a director and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and a professor of microbiology and research professor of the American Cancer Society. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and on the staff of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dr. Baltimore has been awarded honorary degrees from numerous institutions, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia.

Dr. Baltimore holds leadership roles in a number of scientific and philanthropic non-profit organizations, currently serving as a director and member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a director of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, and a member of the Human Genome Organisation. Dr. Baltimore received an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and a doctorate from The Rockefeller University.

Elliott Sigal, MD, PhD

Former Chief Scientific Officer, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Elliott Sigal, M.D., Ph.D. is a former Executive Vice President and Director of Bristol-Myers Squibb. He joined BMS in 1997 and held positions of increasing responsibility in both Discovery Research and Clinical Development before serving as Chief Scientific Officer and head of R&D for Bristol-Myers Squibb from 2004 until 2013. He was a principal architect of the successful Biopharma Transformation Strategy of the company and was instrumental in increasing R&D productivity, developing the company's strategy in biologics and acquiring external innovation. He is known for building BMS research into a lead position in the promising area of immuno-oncology.

Dr. Sigal received his M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981 and trained in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He served on the faculty of UCSF Medical School from 1988 until 1992. Prior to medical school he studied engineering at Purdue University, where he received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. Dr. Sigal serves as a senior advisor to the healthcare team of New Enterprise Associates and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Mead Johnson Nutrition Company, Spark Therapeutics and Adaptimmune Therapeutics.

David J. Anderson, PhD

California Institute of Technology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Dr. Anderson is the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  He received his A.B. from Harvard University (Biochemical Sciences, Summa Cum Laude), his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Rockefeller University, where he trained with Nobel Laureate Guenter Blobel, and his postdoctoral training at Columbia University with Nobel Laureate Richard Axel.  For the first 20 years of his career, Dr. Anderson's research focused on the biology of neural stem cells and their role in brain development; he was the first to isolate a multipotential neural stem cell from the mammalian nervous system.  Over the last 15 years, Dr. Anderson has switched his research focus to the study of neural circuits that control emotional behaviors in animal models.  He has been at the forefront of developing and applying new technologies for neural circuit manipulation, such as optogenetics and pharmacogenetics, to the study of emotional behaviors such as fear, anxiety and aggression, in both mice and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.  His work in mice is currently focused on limbic circuits, including the amygdala and hypothalamus, and their role in aggression. Anderson has trained over 50 postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D. students in his 30 years on the faculty at Caltech.  He has been a recipient of continuous research support from the NIH since 1986, and an HHMI Investigator since 1989 and a Paul G. Allen Distinguished Investigator.  He has received additional funding from agencies and foundations such as NARSAD, the Pew Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation. Dr. Anderson's awards include an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Searle Scholars Award, the Charles Judson Herrick Award in Comparative Neurology, the Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University, the Perl-UNC Prize in Neuroscience and the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience from MIT.  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. 

Ron Evans, PhD

Salk Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine

Ron Evans is Director of the Gene Expression Laboratory and Metabolic Engineering Program and Co-Director of the Helmsley Center for Genomic Medicine at the Salk Institute.  He is known for pioneering studies on hormones' normal activities and their roles in disease. A major discovery was nuclear hormone receptors, which respond to steroid hormones, vitamin A, vitamin D, thyroid hormones and bile acids. These receptors help control sugar, salt, calcium, cholesterol and fat metabolism.  They are primary targets in breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers, and leukemia treatment and have therapeutic roles in chronic inflammation, osteoporosis and asthma.  His muscle metabolism studies led to the discovery of exercise mimetics, which promote the benefits of fitness without training. Exercise mimetics will help battle the obesity epidemic, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and cancer.  Evans is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the recipient of multiple awards, including the Albert Lasker Award (2004) and the Wolf Prize (2012), and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

Richard O. Hynes, PhD, FRS

Koch Institute and Department of Biology at MIT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Broad Institute

Richard Hynes is the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Koch Institute and Department of Biology at MIT, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute.  He was formerly Associate Head and then Head of the Biology department and was Director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute) for 10 years.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) of London and a Member of the US National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the AACR Academy.

Dr. Hynes did his undergraduate work in Biochemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, and his PhD in Biology at MIT on the segregation of maternal mRNAs in early sea urchin embryos.  He then returned to the UK as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London.  By investigating the molecular changes on cell surfaces that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells, he discovered fibronectin, a cell adhesion protein present on normal cells but noticeably absent on cancer cells.

Dr. Hynes returned to MIT in 1975 as an Assistant Professor and one of the founding members of the MIT Cancer Center.  There he continued to work out the biology of fibronectin, showing that fibronectin affects cellular adhesion, migration, morphology and cytoskeleton and that fibronectin and actin fibrils coalign across the cell surface.  These discoveries established the extracellular matrix (ECM), previously viewed largely as a structural entity, as having a vital role in controlling cell adhesion, morphology and migration.  Dr. Hynes also made major contributions to the discovery and first cloning of integrins, a family of receptors that bind fibronectin and other cell adhesion molecules and form transmembrane links to the cytoskeleton.  He and his colleagues also discovered the activation of FAK through integrins, thereby establishing integrins as true signaling receptors.  The Hynes laboratory cloned and analyzed many of the key molecules involved in cell adhesion (e.g., fibronectin, thrombospondin, integrins, talin, plakoglobin) and generated the first knockout mice lacking adhesion molecules (fibronectin, a5 integrin, P-selectin) and subsequently many others (e.g., other integrins and selectins, cadherins and multiple ECM proteins) and exploited them to dissect the roles of cell adhesion in normal development, hemostasis, thrombosis, leukocyte traffic and inflammation, angiogenesis and cancer.  Most recently the Hynes laboratory has focused on metastasis, particularly contributions of platelet-tumor cell interactions and ECM in promoting metastasis and has developed methods for systematic characterization and analysis of ECM changes in vivo. 

Dr. Hynes' work over the past 40 years has played a major role in establishing the molecular basis of cell adhesion and its many diverse and important effects on cells both in vitro and in vivo.  This molecular understanding has formed the basis for development of antibodies and drugs that modulate cell adhesion and are in clinical use against thrombosis, inflammation and autoimmune diseases and under investigation for efficacy against cancers.  Molecular understanding of cell-ECM interactions is also being exploited in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Hynes' awards include the Gairdner International Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pasarow Award and the E.B. Wilson medal of the American Society for Cell Biology, in recognition of his research on extracellular matrix, integrins and cell adhesion.  He has served as President of the American Society for Cell Biology, chaired the NAS committees that established Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and currently the NAS/NAM Committee on Human Genome Editing.  He is a Governor of the Wellcome Trust, UK.

John Kuriyan, PhD

University of California, Berkeley, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Dr. Kuriyan earned his PhD in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a post-doctoral fellow with Professors Martin Karplus (Harvard) and Gregory A. Petsko (MIT). From 1987 to 2001 he was on the faculty of The Rockefeller University, New York, where he was promoted to full Professor in 1993. He is a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and also of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he has held since 2001. Dr. Kuriyan is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, having been appointed in 1990.

Dr. Kuriyan's research concerns the atomic-level structure and mechanism of the enzymes and molecular switches that carry out cellular signal transduction. His laboratory uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins involved in signaling, as well as biochemical, biophysical, and cell biological analyses to elucidate mechanisms. Breakthroughs from the lab have included determining the auto-inhibited structures of several tyrosine kinases, including Src family kinases and elucidating the mechanism of allosteric activation of the kinase domains of the EGF receptor. His laboratory has provided a fundamental understanding of the structure and regulation several other signaling proteins, including STATs, the Ras activator SOS, and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase-II. Their structural insights have helped understand how the misregulation of these enzymes is often coupled to cancer and immune diseases and has implications for the development of kinase-targeted drugs to treat these diseases. His lab has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the structural basis for high-speed DNA replication.

Dr. Kuriyan's achievements in science have been recognized by numerous honors:

• Foreign Member of The Royal Society, London. Elected April 2015.
• Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, Juniata College, Huntington, PA. May 2014.
• Merck Award, American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2009.
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected 2008.
• Richard Lounsbery Award, US National Academy of Sciences, 2005.
• Member, US National Academy of Sciences, Elected 2001.
• Cornelius Rhoads Memorial Award, American Association for Cancer Research, 1999.
• Eli Lilly Award of the American Chemical Society, 1998.
• DuPont-Merck Award of the Protein Society, 1997.
• Schering-Plough Award of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 1994.
• Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, 1989-1993.

Diane Mathis, PhD

Harvard Medical School

Dr. Mathis obtained a PhD from the University of Rochester, and performed postdoctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes in Strasbourg, France and at Stanford University Medical Center. She returned to Strasbourg at the end of 1983, establishing a laboratory at the LGME [later the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculare et Cellulaire (IGBMC)] in conjunction with Dr. Christophe Benoist. The lab moved to the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston in 1999. Through 2008, Dr. Mathis was a Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Associate Research Director and Head of the Section on Immunology and Immunogenetics at Joslin. Dr. Mathis is currently a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at HMS, and holder of the Morton Grove-Rasmussen Chair in Immunohematology. She is also an Associate Faculty Member of the Broad Institute. She presently serves on Advisory Boards of the HHMI, Genentech, Pfizer and Amgen (amongst others) and of several research institutes worldwide. Dr. Mathis was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003, the German Academy in 2007, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. She received the FASEB Excellence in Science Award in 2016.

Her lab works in the fields of T cell differentiation, autoimmunity and inflammation. She has trained over 150 students and postdoctoral fellows.

Frank McCormick

University California San Francisco, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center

Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, is a Professor at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. McCormick pursued cancer-related work with several Bay Area biotechnology firms and held positions with Cetus Corporation (Director of Molecular Biology, 1981-1990; Vice President of Research, 1990-1991) and Chiron Corporation, where he was Vice President of Research from 1991 to 1992. In 1992 he founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals, a company dedicated to developing new cancer therapies, and served as its Chief Scientific Officer until 1996. At Onyx Pharmaceuticals, he initiated and led drug discovery efforts that led to the approval of Sorafenib in 2005 for treatment of renal cell cancer, and for liver cancer in 2007, and the approval of ONYX-015 in 2006 in China for treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer. Sorafenib is being tested in multiple indications worldwide. In addition, Dr. McCormick's group led to the identification of the CDK4 kinase inhibitor, palbociclib, approved for treating advanced breast cancer. Dr. McCormick's current research interests center on the fundamental differences between normal and cancer cells that can allow the discovery of novel therapeutic strategies.

Dr. McCormick holds the David A. Wood Chair of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research at UCSF. Dr. McCormick is the author of over 285 scientific publications and holds 20 issued patents. He was Director of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1997 to 2014. He also served as President, 2012-2013, for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Since 2013 he has taken a leadership role at the Frederick National Lab for Cancer Research, overseeing an NCI supported national effort to develop therapies against Ras-driven cancers. These cancers include most pancreatic cancers, and many colorectal and lung cancers, and are amongst the most difficult cancers to treat.

Ruslan Medzhitov, PhD

Yale University School of Medicine

Ruslan Medzhitov obtained his PhD from Moscow State University in 1993. After postdoctoral training with Charles A. Janeway Jr., Medzhitov became an assistant professor in 1999 at Yale University School of Medicine in the Department of Immunobiology. He is currently the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research interests include biology of inflammation, mechanisms of disease, innate immunity, infection biology, allergy, cell signaling and gene regulation.  Medzhitov is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and European Molecular Biology Organization, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

His awards include William B. Coley Award "For Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology", Cancer Research Institute, 2003; Emil von Behring Award, 2004; AAI –BD Biosciences Investigator Award, 2006; Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, 2007; Howard Taylor Ricketts Award, The University of Chicago, 2008; Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award, Brandeis University, 2010; The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, 2011; Vilcek Foundation Prize, New York, 2013; Lurie Prize, Chicago, 2013; Else Kröner Fresenius Stiftung Prize, Germany, 2013; Charles W. Bohmfalk Teaching prize, 2015.

Robert Tjian, PhD

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California

Dr. Robert Tjian, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology since 1979, recently also served as President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2009-2016.

Trained as a biochemist at Cal and Harvard, he was a pioneer in studying how genetic information in our DNA is decoded to sustain life.  During nearly 4 decades on the faculty here at Cal, he taught 1000's of undergrads while doing biomedical discovery research. He has received many scientific awards including election to the US National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, was California Scientist of the Year and he has been an HHMI investigator since 1987.

Dr. Tjian's research aims to understanding how the molecular machinery that reads DNA operates to drive gene expression in human cells.  His recent work focuses on deciphering how regulatory genes control the ability of embryonic stem cells to self-renew and differentiate into various cell lineages such as muscle, fat, neurons, etc. 

He has also co-founded biotech companies and a venture capital fund and now serves as scientific advisor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in biomedical sciences.

Jonathan S. Weissman, PhD

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco

Jonathan Weissman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. With Jennifer Doudna, he is co-director of the Innovative Genomics Institute of Berkeley and UCSF. His development of the technique of Ribosome Profiling, as well as CRISPRi and CRISPRa, giving us the ability to turn on and off any desired gene, are revolutionizing both basic science and medical research.

Dr. Weissman received his undergraduate physics degree from Harvard College. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Peter Kim, Dr. Weissman pursued postdoctoral fellowship training in Arthur Horwich's laboratory at Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Weissman's numerous honors include the 2008 Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2010, the 2015 Keith R Porter Lecture Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, and the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery.

Alfred L. George, Jr., MD

Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Dr. George is the Magerstadt Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, and Director of the Center for Pharmacogenomics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Dr. George received his medical education at The University of Rochester (M.D. 1982) then trained in Internal Medicine at Vanderbilt University and in Nephrology at University of Pennsylvania. He developed expertise in the molecular genetics of ion channels initially as a research fellow at the Institut Suisse de Recherches Experimentales sur le Cancer in Lausanne, Switzerland, then later as a fellow in the Departments of Medicine, Biochemistry & Biophysics and Institute for Neurological Sciences at University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. George joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1992, and was promoted to the rank of full Professor 6 years later. In 1999, he established the Division of Genetic Medicine and served as Division Chief until 2014. He was named the Grant W. Liddle Professor of Medicine in 1999. In 2004, he became the founding Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Genomics. In addition to his administrative duties, Dr. George was the Scientific Director of theVanderbilt DNA Sequencing Facility from 2001 to 2011 and led efforts to implement next-generation sequencing resources. Dr. George was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 1998 and to the Association of American Physicians in 2001. He served as ASCI Councilor from 2000 to 2003. Dr. George was a recipient of the Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award in Biomedical Sciences, American Heart Association Established Investigato rAward, the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, and he was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. George has been a pioneer in elucidating the genetics and pathogenesis o fchannelopathies - disorders caused by mutations in ion channel genes. His work focuses on genetic disorders caused by voltage-gated ion channel mutations that are responsible for disorders of membrane excitability including diseases affecting muscle, heart and brain. Dr. George has been involved from the beginning of the channelopathy field making enduring contributions to revealing the molecular genetic basis for several disorders, elucidating the functional consequences of dozens of mutant ion channels and helping to translate discoveries into new therapeutic strategies for these orphan diseases.   

Daniel P. Kelly, MD

Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Kelly obtained his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago in 1982. He was an Intern (1982-1983) and an Assistant Resident in Medicine (1983-1985) at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Thereafter, he did a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Department of Biological Chemistry (1985-1987) followed by Clinical Cardiology Fellowship training (1987-1989) at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Kelly joined the Washington University School of Medicine faculty in 1989 and rapidly moved up the ranks to Professor of Medicine, Molecular Biology & Pharmacology, and Pediatrics (1999). While at Washington University School of Medicine, Dr. Kelly held the Tobias and Hortense Lewin Professorship and served as Chief of the Cardiovascular Division (2006-2008). He launched the Center for Cardiovascular Research at Washington University in 1996. In 2008, Dr. Kelly assumed the role of founding Scientific Director for Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute located in Lake Nona, Florida. In August 2017, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he was named Director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute.

Dr. Kelly's research interests stem from an early fascination with rare inborn errors in mitochondrial metabolism in children which cause sudden death and heart failure. As a young researcher at Washington University, Dr. Kelly defined the genetic basis for a common inborn error in mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation, work that led to the development of practical screening tests for newborns. Thereafter, he became interested in how similar derangements in cardiac energy metabolism contribute to heart failure and sudden death in common acquired forms of mitochondrial diseases caused by hypertension, ischemic injury, and diabetes. His work defined the transcriptional regulatory axis involved in the control of cardiac fuel and energy metabolism through pioneering fundamental work on nuclear receptors including the PPARs, estrogen-related receptors (ERRs), and their transcriptional coactivator PGC-1. The Kelly laboratory has identified molecular "switches" in this regulatory pathway that potentially define distinct forms of heart failure, an important step towards identifying therapeutic targets for phenotype-specific treatment of heart failure. More recently, the Kelly laboratory has applied proteomic and metabolomic approaches to investigating the metabolic origins of heart failure.

Dr. Kelly has made significant contributions to biomedical research beyond his discoveries. He is an Associate Editor for The Journal of Clinical Investigation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology-Basic to Translational Science. He serves, or has served, on the Editorial Boards of Genes & Development, Nuclear Receptor Signaling, Circulation, and Circulation Research. He has held leadership advisory roles for the American Heart Association (AHA), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Pfizer and Eli Lilly. Dr. Kelly is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and is a recipient of the AHA Basic Research Prize.

Elizabeth McNally, MD, PhD

Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Elizabeth McNally MD PhD is the Elizabeth J. Ward Professor of Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.  Dr. McNally uses genetics to define pathways that mediate heart and muscle degeneration leading to cardiomyopathy, heart failure and skeletal myopathies.  Dr. McNally received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College of Columbia University, majoring in Biology and Philosophy.  She completed her MD and PhD degrees through the NIH supported Medical Scientist Training Program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  She trained in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School and then was postdoctoral fellow in human genetics at Children’s Hospital in Boston.  She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1996 and has been continuously funded by the NIH since that time.  Her research has also been supported by the Department of Defense and as well as private foundations.   She joined Northwestern University in 2014 to lead the Center for Genetic Medicine.

Her work focuses on elucidating genetic mechanisms that underlie human myopathic processes.  Her laboratory developed the first genetically modified mouse model of muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy.  Using quantitative trait locus mapping, her group identified a series of genetic modifiers of myopathy.  These genetic signals are being used to develop novel therapies to treat these disorders.  She has a special interest in neuromuscular genetic diseases like muscular dystrophy and inherited cardiomyopathies.  Her translational work was recognized by an award from the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation and as a recipient of a Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.  She serves on the Advisory Boards for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, and serves on the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Council of the American Heart Association.  She is a past president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a member of the Association of American Physicians.   She is the founder of Ikaika Therapeutics.

https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=31091

Thomas Quertermous, MD

William G. Irwin Professor of Medicine, Stanford University

Dr. Thomas Quertermous is currently the William G. Irwin Professor of Medicine and Director of the Research in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Quertermous completed clinical training in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and research training in molecular genetics in the Department of Genetics at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quertermous established an independent laboratory in the Cardiac Unit at the Mass General in 1987. He was recruited to Vanderbilt University in 1991 as Chief of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. Dr. Quertermous moved to Stanford University in 1997 where he assumed leadership of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. Research in the Quertermous laboratory has employed genetic approaches for the study of vascular disease as a primary research focus. Currently, research in the Quertermous laboratory employs large-scale human genetics studies to better understand the genetic basis of atherosclerosis, and related risk factors such as hypertension and insulin resistance. Ongoing efforts include genome-wide association studies in multiethnic cohorts with coronary heart disease, and these efforts are integrated with other worldwide efforts aimed at conducting definitive association based analyses. Variation identified through these studies is further investigated at the molecular level to better understand the basic mechanisms of atherosclerotic heart disease.
https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/thomas-quertermous?tab=research-and-scholarship

Marlene Rabinovitch, MD

Stanford School of Medicine

Dr. Rabinovitch joined Stanford University School of Medicine Faculty in the summer of 2002 as the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, and Scientist at the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease. In 2018, she became the Director of the Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative in Stanford Children's Health of the Betty Irene Moore Children's Heart Center. She is also the Associated Director in Basic Research at Stanford’s Cardiovascular Institute. From 2002-2013, she was appointed as Professor (by courtesy) of Developmental Biology. Dr. Rabinovitch is a graduate of McGill University Medical School and completed her pediatrics training at the University of Colorado and sub-specialty training in cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She was Assistant Professor at Harvard and then moved back to Canada where she became Associate and later Professor of Pediatrics, Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Hospital for Sick Children.  There, she was the Director of Cardiovascular Research and held the Robert M. Freedom/Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair.

Dr. Rabinovitch has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring over the years, the most recent being in 2017 from the American Heart Association, the Distinguished Scientist Lecturer at the Scientific Sessions. In 2016, she was named the J. Burns Amberson Lecturer at the ATS International Conference in San Francisco.  ATS also gave her the Robert F Grover Prize for the Assembly on Pulmonary Circulation.  In 2015, she was presented with the Mentor Award for Excellence from the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2012, she received the Judith Pool Award from the Northern California Chapter of the Association for Women in Science. In 2010, she received the Louis and Artur Lucian Award for Research in Circulatory Diseases from McGill University.  Then, the American Thoracic Society Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment in 2008. She is the recipient of the 2006 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award, and in 2005 she was the American Heart Association Dickinson Richards Lecturer. Previous awards include the 2004 Canadian Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH) Distinguished Lecture and Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences; the 2004 AHA Basic Research Prize; the University of Kentucky Gill Heart Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cardiovascular Research (2003); the AHA Paul Dudley White International Lectureship (2002); a Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (1994); the Julius Comroe Lectureship from the American Physiological Society (1996), an Endowed Research Chair from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (1997); the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Award of Merit (1999); the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2000), and the McGill University Cushing Memorial Award in Pediatrics (1971). She has given numerous named lectureships in North America and served as a Visiting Professor in many countries in Europe, the UK, Australia and Asia. She has more than 185 peer-reviewed publications and 120+ invited reviews, articles, and book chapters. 

Dr. Rabinovitch completed a five-year term in 2016 on the External Advisory Board of the NHLBI Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium (LRRC), and also she completed a four-year term on the NIH/NHLBI Scientific Advisory Council in 2011. She is currently on the Executive Committee of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute and has served on the Executive Council of the American Pediatric Society and Scientific Advisory Boards of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, the MPI for Heart and Lung Research Board of the Max Planck Society, the Children’s Discovery Institute of Washington University, the Doris Duke and Burroughs Wellcome Foundations, and numerous NIH Training Grants. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in addition to the Association of American Physicians, and has been Associate Editor of Circulation Research and the Annual Reviews of Physiology. The main focus of her research program is on uncovering molecular pathways that lead to developmental and inflammatory mechanisms of vascular pathobiology, particularly pulmonary hypertension.  

https://profiles.stanford.edu/marlene-rabinovitch

Alan R. Tall MB, BS

Tilden-Weger-Bieler Professor of Medicine
Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine, Columbia University

Alan R. Tall MB, BS is the Tilden-Weger-Bieler Professor of Medicine and head of the Division of Molecular Medicine in the Department of Medicine of Columbia University. Dr. Tall is internationally recognized for his work on plasma lipoproteins and atherosclerosis, especially regarding the regulation and metabolism of plasma high density lipoproteins (HDL). Dr. Tall discovered mutations in the cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) gene that are associated with dramatically increased HDL levels and reduced LDL levels, establishing the role of CETP in the regulation of lipoproteins and identifying CETP as a potential therapeutic target. Dr. Tall has done research on the ATP binding cassette transporters ABCA1 and ABCG1 that promote cholesterol efflux from macrophage foam cells to apoA-1 and HDL particles, respectively. This work has also identified a key role of cholesterol efflux pathways in regulating the proliferation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells and thus the production of inflammatory cells and platelets. Recently the Tall laboratory has focused efforts on understanding the mechanisms underlying the association of human GWAS variants with plasma lipoproteins and coronary heart disease. This has led to an elucidation of the role of a scaffolding protein TTC39B in the ubiquitination and turnover of LXR, with impact on HDL levels, steato-hepatitis and atherosclerosis. Dr. Tall is a member of the Association of American Physicians and has served on the Board of Scientific Councilors of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the Research Committee and the ATVB Council of the American Heart Association. Dr Tall is an Associate Editor of Circulation Research and has been an Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and the ATVB journal. In recognition of his work, Dr Tall was the recipient of the Irvine Page Award, the Robert I. Levy Lectureship and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Heart Association.

Gordon F. Tomaselli, M.D., FAHA, FACC, FHRS

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Dr. Gordon Tomaselli is the chief of the Johns Hopkins Division of Cardiology. He is an expert in the fields of sudden cardiac death and arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms). Specifically, Dr. Tomaselli focuses on ion channels, the movement of molecules in and out of heart cells, which generates the electrical impulses that cause the heart to beat. He holds several patents on methods to improve heart function and prevent arrhythmias, including an implantable device for the delivery of cell-derived biomolecules.

Dr. Tomaselli earned his undergraduate degree in biochemistry and chemistry in 1977 from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his medical degree in 1982 from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed his medical training and residency at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) in 1985. He served as a research fellow at the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute and then a clinical and research fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine before joining the faculty three years later. Since then, he has received numerous awards and served on a variety of boards and committees. Dr. Tomaselli was president of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society from 2003 to 2005 and president of the American Heart Association from 2011 to 2012.

The Tomaselli laboratory studies cardiac electrophysiology at multiple levels of integration from molecules and cells to abnormalities of heart rhythm in patients.

1. At a molecular level, they seek to understand how ion channel proteins perform their essential tasks, in particular they are interested in a key paradox how these channels permit the flow of millions of ions a second, yet do this with exquisite selectivity (sodium channels allow sodium ions but not similarly sized and charged potassium ions).
2. Altered regulation of sodium, calcium and potassium channels by important cellular signaling systems which are involved in not only in how the heart conducts electricity but also the force with which it contracts and underlie important heritable and acquired diseases of the heart and skeletal muscle
3. Modeling diseases of ion channels (channelopathies) by using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and differentiating them in heart and skeletal muscle cells. These cells are used to create cardiospheres that are used to "print" three dimensional tissues with a 3D Bioprinter and reseed decellularized tissue matrices with the differentiated stem cells. This will allow us to 3D human tissue models of disease without having to surgically remove biopsies of heart or muscle.  
4. At the ultimate level of integration they have an ongoing study of the role of implanted defibrillators (ICDs) in patients with diseased, remodeled hearts. The study is referred to as PROSe-ICD (PRospective Observational Study of the ICD in the prevention of sudden death). PROSe-ICD has enrolled nearly 1200 patients all have undergone detailed clinical and electrocardiographic studies as well as having blood collected for performing genetic and proteomic analyses. Over 25% of this cohort has undergone detailed cardiac imaging (MR and CT) and spectroscopy to identify imaging based markers of risk of sudden death. The overarching goal is to better understand the mechanisms of sudden arrhythmic death and to develop better predictors of risk of this devastating outcome.

The Tomaselli lab has been continuously funded by the NIH for over 25 years.

James P Allison, PhD

MD Anderson Cancer Center

As an immunologist, Dr. James Allison's fundamental discoveries include the definition of the structure of the T cell antigen receptor, demonstration that the T cell  molecule CD28 provides costimulatory signals necessary for full T cells activation, and that the molecule CTLA-4 is an inhibitory checkpoint which inhibits activated T cells. He proposed that immune checkpoint blockade might be a powerful strategy for therapy of many cancer types, and conducted preclinical experiments showing its potential. He was involved in the development of ipilimumab, which was approved by the FDA for treatment of metastatic melanoma in 2011. His development of the concept of immune checkpoint blockade has transformed cancer therapy and saved thousands of lives.

Dr. Allison is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. He has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Immunologists, the Lloyd J. Old Award and Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, the Novartis Award for Clinical Immunology, the Medal of Honor in Basic Research from the American Cancer Society, the Harvey prize in Human Health from the Israeli Insitute of Technology, the Economist Magazine Innovation Prize for Biomedicine, the Breakthrough Prize in Biosciences, the Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research, and Lasker-Debakey Clinical Medical Research Award, and the Wolf Prize in Medicine.

Siwen Hu-Lieskovan, MD, PhD

University of Utah, School of Medicine

Dr. Siwen Hu-Lieskovan is an Assistant Professor of Medicine on tenure track, and director of Solid Tumor Immunotherapy at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah. She was recently recruited from UCLA, where she received her hematology/oncology fellowship and junior faculty training under the mentorship of Dr. Antoni Ribas. She is a board-certified oncologist with clinical focus on melanoma and early phase testing ofcancer immunotherapies in solid tumors. Dr. Hu-Lieskovan is Study Chair and Translational Lead of several trials initiated by the SWOG melanoma committee, and a consultant for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Her research focuses on the mechanisms of response and resistance to immunotherapies, and provides rationale for combination strategies, by studying immunecompetent (syngeneic) animal models and patient-derived clinical samples. She has authored/coauthored research articles, reviews, editorials and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals including Science Translational Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine. She has numerous awards, including: American Society of Clinical Oncologist(ASCO) Young Investigator Award (YIA) and Career Development Award, Stand Up To Cancer(SU2C)/ American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Sharp Award, Daniel VonHoff Innovative Protocol Award, ASCO Merit Award, and many more. She also serves as a co-chair of the SITC Biomarker Taskforce Resources and Useful Tool Subcommittee since 2018, and a co-chair of the academic committee of the Chinese-American Hematologist and Oncologist Network (CAHON) since 2016. 

Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Jedd Wolchok received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and both M.D and Ph.D. from New York University, where he also fulfilled his residency program.  He completed his fellowship at MSK and remained on faculty with an appointment in the Melanoma Immunotherapeutics Service.

Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD is the Lloyd J. Old and Daniel K. Ludwig Chair in Clinical Investigation, Chief of the Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with an expertise in the treatment of metastatic melanoma. He has been at the forefront of cancer immunotherapy, as an active clinician scientist exploring immunotherapy and as a principal investigator in several pivotal clinical trials, including the phase III trial that led to the FDA approval of ipilimumab + nivolumab as a treatment for patients with advanced melanoma.

Dr. Wolchok has been recognized for his career throughout the years and has received several of awards including the Melanoma Research Foundation – Humanitarian Award in 2010, the Melanoma International Foundation's Doctor of the Year award in 2012, and the Live, Love, Laugh Foundation and was named the Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Chair for Clinical Investigation in 2013. He has been recognized with the American Association for Cancer Research Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award, the Giants of Cancer Care in Melanoma Award and received the AICF Prize for Scientific excellence in Medicine.   Most recently, he has received the Melvin and Sylvia Griem Lectureship in Molecular and Cellular Oncology; the Alumni Achievement Award in Clinical and Translational Science from NYU and the Alfred Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Research.