CanceRx 2016

A conference of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering
In collaboration with the National Cancer Institute
and with the participation of the American Cancer Society

October 26-28, 2016
Cambridge, MA

CanceRx 2016 is an invitation-only conference hosted by MIT in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute and with the participation of the American Cancer Society, focusing on new approaches to financing biomedical innovation in oncology and other areas. Although we are seeing incredible scientific advancements on a near-daily basis, there are still a number of challenges facing the biopharma industry and the drug development process. To explore these challenges and potential solutions for addressing them, the conference will bring together representatives from key stakeholder communities including academia and medical research centers, community hospitals, the biopharma industry, health plans, NIH/NCI, the FDA, patient advocacy groups, investment banks, hedge funds, biotech VCs, and institutional and retail investors.

The conference will be organized as a series of panel discussions with substantial audience participation, focused on topics that will include:

• Updates on successful fundraising initiatives and their business models
• Potential business implications of scientific and clinical breakthroughs
• Prioritizing and evaluating scientific research
• Clinical trial design, big data, and implications for commercialization
• Drug pricing and patient access to transformative therapies
• The changing role of policymakers, the public sector, and venture philanthropy
• Innovations in intellectual property rights management and licensing structures

In addition, an optional executive education program, “Basic Financial Analysis for Life Sciences Professionals,” will be offered from 12:00 to 4:00pm on Wednesday, October 26, followed by the welcome dinner at 6:00pm. Space for this educational program is limited to 100 participants on a first-come-first-served basis.

• David B. Agus, University of Southern California
• Margaret Anderson, FasterCures
• Anna Barker, Arizona State University
• Douglas A. Dachille, AIG
• Jacob Goldfield
• Robert Langer, MIT
• Pablo Legorreta, Royalty Pharma
• Judy Lewent
• J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society
• Frank McCormick, University of California San Francisco
• Terry McGuire, Polaris Partners
• Robert C. Merton, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Lita Nelsen
• Larry Norton, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Phillip A. Sharp, MIT
• Stephen Kennedy Smith, Park Agency
• Marty Tenenbaum, Cancer Commons
• Jake Xia, Harvard Management Company

David B. Agus is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering. He is the founding director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC. A medical oncologist, Dr. Agus leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers dedicated to the development and use of technologies to guide doctors in making health-care decisions tailored to individual needs, and directs a National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences in Oncology Center at USC. An international leader in new technologies and approaches for personalized healthcare, Dr. Agus serves in leadership roles at the World Economic Forum and other prestigious organizations. He is also a CBS News contributor. Dr. Agus’ three books “The End of Illness”, “A Short Guide to a Long Life” and “The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health” are all New York Times and international bestsellers.

Christopher P. Austin, M.D., is director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Austin leads the Center’s work to improve the translation of observations in the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that reach and benefit patients—from diagnostics and therapeutics to medical procedures and behavioral changes. Under his direction, NCATS researchers and collaborators are developing new technologies, resources and collaborative research models; demonstrating their usefulness; and disseminating the data, analysis and methodologies for use by the worldwide research community.

Dr. Austin’s career has spanned the spectrum of translational research, in the public and private sectors. He joined NIH in 2002 as the senior advisor to the director for translational research at the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he was responsible for conceptualizing and implementing research programs to derive scientific insights and therapeutic benefit from the newly completed Human Genome Project. While at NHGRI, he founded and directed the NIH Chemical Genomics Center, Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program, Toxicology in the 21st Century initiative, and NIH Center for Translational Therapeutics. Upon creation of NCATS in 2011, he became the inaugural director of the NCATS Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation, and was appointed NCATS director in 2012. Prior to joining NIH, Dr. Austin worked at the pharmaceutical company Merck, where he directed programs on genome-based discovery of novel targets and drugs, with a particular focus on schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Christiana Bardon, M.D., MBA, joined MPM in 2015 as a managing director of the Oncology Impact Fund (OIF). Dr. Bardon is also the founder and managing member of Burrage Capital, a long short hedge fund in biotechnology and healthcare. Previously, she was a health care analyst at Fidelity Investments covering biotechnology, life science tools and diagnostics. She started her career as an analyst at MPM. Dr. Bardon will focus on the public equity component of the OIF.

Dr. Bardon earned her MS/BS from MIT, her MD magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School, and her MBA from Harvard Business School. While at Harvard Medical School, Chris was the recipient of a Howard Hughes fellowship. She also completed a residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Chris currently serves on the Board of Fellows at Harvard Medical School.

Anna D. Barker, Ph.D., is currently Co-Director of theComplex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Initiative, Director of the National Biomarker Development Alliance (NBDA), and a Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU). CAS at ASU creates knowledge networks to solve complex systems problems in biomedicine. These networks leverage transdisciplinary knowledge, innovative teams, and novel funding approaches to prevent and treat acute and chronic diseases Examples of current programs include the NBDA, a non-profit think tank that addresses major barriers in biomarker discovery and development, and the first global adaptive clinical trial for glioblastoma (GBM AGILE). Prior to ASU, Dr. Barker served as the deputy director of the National Cancer Institute(NCI) where she developed and led the: Nanotechnology Alliance for Cancer; The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA); Clinical Proteomics Technologies Initiative for Cancer; Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers; and national programs in biospecimens and bioinformatics. She oversaw the NCI’s international cancer research programs, including pilot programs in Latin America and China, founding co-chair of the NCI-FDA Interagency Task Force, founding co-chair of the Cancer Steering Committee of the FNIH Biomarker Consortium, and founding director of the NBDA. Prior to NCI, Dr. Barker served as a research scientist and senior executive at Battelle Memorial Institute and as the CEO of a public biotechnology company. Her research interests include CAS, biomarker discovery and development, innovative clinical trials and free-radical biochemistry in disease. Dr. Barker has received a number of wards for her work and service. She completed her Ph.D. degree at The Ohio State University.

Robert J. Beall, Ph.D., is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Under his leadership, the CF Foundation achieved unprecedented gains in research, treatment and care, and as a result, people with CF are living longer, healthier lives than ever before.

Dr. Beall began his tenure at the CF Foundation in 1980 as Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and served as President and Chief Executive Officer from 1994 to 2015. Prior to joining the CF Foundation, Dr. Beall was on the medical school faculty of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and worked at the National Institutes of Health, where he managed a large portion of NIH’s cystic fibrosis program.

During Dr. Beall’s tenure, the CF Foundation became one of the most respected voluntary health organizations in the country. The CF Foundation’s venture philanthropy model, pioneered by Dr. Beall, has raised and invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help develop nearly every CF drug available today including Kalydeco and Orkambi, the first two drugs to treat the underlying cause of the disease. This strategy has led to tremendous advances in life expectancy, which has doubled in the last 30 years.

Dr. Beall created the Foundation’s long-standing Research Development Program, a dynamic, interdisciplinary network responsible for first identifying the CF gene in 1989. In 1998, he established the Foundation’s Therapeutics Development Program, a unique coalition directed at speeding the CF drug development process through a centralized clinical trials network and alliances with biotech companies.

Under Dr. Beall’s direction, the CF Foundation has achieved unparalleled progress in understanding and treating cystic fibrosis and improved the lives of countless people living with cystic fibrosis.

Jonathan E. Benjamin, M.D., Ph.D., is a medical director at Amgen. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University followed by an MD/PhD degree at New York University. His doctoral research, in the lab of Dan Littman, focused on the role of cytoplasmic tyrosine kinases in T cell development. Subsequently, he completed his residency and hematology/oncology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. His post‐doctoral research, under the mentorship of Lewis Lanier, focused on the role of Natural Killer cells in bone marrow transplantation. In 2008, Dr. Benjamin joined the faculty of Stanford University in the division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He was the principal investigator of both investigator initiated as well as cooperative group trials. He joined Amgen in 2014 to work on the clinical development of bispecific T cell engagers (BiTEs) for the treatment of hematologic malignancies.

Scott Berry, Ph.D., is President and a Senior Statistical Scientist at Berry Consultants, LLC. He earned his PhD in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University and was an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University before co-founding Berry Consultants in 2000. He is adjunct faculty in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Since 2000, he has been involved in the design of hundreds of Bayesian adaptive clinical trials of pharmaceuticals and medical devices and has become an opinion leader in the field of Bayesian adaptive clinical trials. Some of these trials have been groundbreaking trial designs, setting new standards for innovation and flexibility in trial design. These include the trials supporting the first fully Bayesian approval by CDER of the United States FDA (Pravastatin-Aspirin combination) and the statistical design for Time Magazine’s #2 Medical Breakthrough of 2007 (Veridex’s GeneSearch BLN Assay), and an adaptive phase II/III seamless trial for Dulaglutide leading to FDA approval in September 2014. Recently he has been involved in the design of the IMI Funded platform trial for prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (EPAD) and the EU funded platform trial for the treatment of severe community acquired pneumonia (AD-SCAP) in a preparedness setting (PREPARE). Dr. Berry was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2013.

In addition to his work in biostatistics, Dr. Berry has been recognized as an expert in statistical analyses in sports, with over 40 publications of sports papers. He was a an author on the 1999 Applications and Case Studies Invited Paper Award from the American Statistical Association for his paper on Bridging different eras in sports and won the 2007 Statistics in Sports Award, from the Section on Statistics in Sports of the American Statistical Association.

Ronald S. Borod, J.D., LL.M., Senior Counsel at DLA Piper, has worked extensively in securitization and structured finance for over two decades and has established a reputation as a thought leader in the creation of innovative structures and financial products. Mr. Borod focuses his practice on assisting issuers and underwriters in designing and implementing securitization programs involving non-traditional asset classes.

For example, in the 1990s he developed the first national credit tenant lease finance program and the first CTL-only conduit, and designed and executed securitized credit lease programs to provide construction and permanent financing for two national retail companies.

Mr. Borod was the architect of and served as Issuer’s Counsel and Program Advisor for a national program to securitize legal fees awarded as a result of the 1998 settlement of the states’ litigation against the tobacco industry. The first of the transactions under this program, Litigation Settlement Monetized Fee Trust I™ US$308.1 Million Pass Through Certificates, Series 2001-1, was named US Asset-Backed Deal of the Year by the International Securitisation Report. To date, Mr. Borod has served as lead counsel on more than US$1 billion of securities backed by over $3 billion of tobacco fee revenues.

Mr. Borod also has significant experience in the renewable energy sector in creating capital market structures for wind, solar and energy efficiency projects, as well as carbon emissions allowances and offsets, and has assumed a leadership position in the development of a solar and energy efficiency ABS market He also has been active in the securitization of intellectual property and in whole business securitization.

He received his LL.M. in Taxation from New York University in 1967, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1966, and a B.A. from Princeton University in 1963.

Winston W. Chang, J.D., is a Managing Director in Structured Finance Ratings. As Lead Analytical Manager (LAM) within U.S. Commercial Credit, he is co-head of the group responsible for rating a diverse group of transactions including collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS), market value securities, hedge fund / private equity collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) and structured counterparties. The group also rates non-traditional asset securitizations backed by an array of assets including aircraft, container and railcar leases; small business, timeshare and franchise loans; tobacco settlement funds and others.

Before joining Standard & Poor’s in 1999, Mr. Chang was at the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and worked on a variety of corporate transactions and securities offerings through the 144(a) market. Mr. Chang began his career at Chase Manhattan Bank (originally Chemical Bank). During his eight years at Chase, he was a lending officer in the Asset Based Lending Region of the Middle Market Division. As a member of the Asset Based Lending Region, he specialized in secured lending for working capital purposes and acquisition financing to manufacturers, distributors and retailers in a variety of industries.

Mr. Chang received a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 1997 and a B.A. in Economics from Williams College in 1989.

Terrance Coyne, MBA, joined Royalty Pharma in 2010 and is a Vice President on the Research & Investments team. At Royalty Pharma, Mr. Coyne is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and structuring new investments. Prior to joining Royalty Pharma, Mr. Coyne worked as a biotechnology equity research associate, and most recently as a senior analyst at JP Morgan from 2007 to 2010. From 2006 to 2007, he worked as a biotechnology equity research associate at Rodman & Renshaw. Prior to this, Mr. Coyne worked in various commercial roles at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Coyne received a BS in business administration from La Salle University and an MBA from La Salle University.

Laura Esserman, M.D., MBA, is Professor of Surgery and Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and director of the UCSF Breast Care Clinic. Her work in breast cancer spans the spectrum from basic science to public policy issues, and the impact of both on the delivery of clinical care. Dr. Esserman is recognized as a thought leader in cancer screening and over-diagnosis, as well as innovative clinical trial design. She led the creation of the University of California-wide Athena Breast Health Network, a learning system designed to integrate clinical care and research as it follows 150,000 women from screening through treatment and outcomes. She is also a leader of the innovative I-SPY TRIAL model, designed to accelerate the identification and approval of effective new agents for women with high risk breast cancers.

Jose Maria Fernandez, MBA, is the Director General of the Treasury (CFO and Treasurer) at Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. His responsibilities include the issuance and management of Spain’s Central Government Debt, its risk and liability management, the treasury and cash operations, the coordination of Spain’s regional government public issuers and their financing mechanisms, the Treasury’s IT and Resources management and a multiplicity of other public sector related financing programs. He is also a Director at the Board of the European Investment Bank and a Board member at CESCE (Spain’s Export Credit Agency).

Prior to his current position, Jose-Maria worked at MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering developing securitization models for biotech R&D portfolios and for Kendall Rho LLC, a financial innovation firm.

In addition to this, he has substantial experience in financial markets. He ran the Debt Capital Markets Global Origination department for Sovereigns, Supranational and Development Agencies at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank and he worked in, and led for three years, the Funding and Debt Management Department at the Spanish Treasury. Jose-Maria has also worked for the World Bank as a securities and debt capital markets expert, consulting for emerging governments on topics related to public debt issuance and management strategy.

Jose-Maria holds an MBA degree from MIT Sloan (Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership), a Masters in Finance degree from the London Business School, a Masters in Portfolio Management degree from I.E.B. and Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Business from CUNEF (Madrid). He was appointed State Economist and Trade Expert of the Spanish General Government in 1997.

Howard Fingert, M.D., FACP, is senior director for Clinical Intelligence, Takeda Pharmaceuticals. In his current role, Dr. Fingert is responsible for internal and external innovation and public-private partnerships with academic, government, and regulatory organizations. He was Industry Representative to the US FDA Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee, and currently serves on NCI – Clinical and Translational Research Advisory Committee and the Regulatory Science and Policy Committee of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In prior roles at Takeda, he was global clinical lead for both early and late-stage Oncology development programs for adult and pediatric populations with hematologic or solid tumors. Prior to Takeda, Dr. Fingert worked at Pfizer as Senior Director in Oncology Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs serving as Therapeutic Area Head for Clinical Safety Risk Management and Medical & Scientific Analysis, managing Business Development/Licensing and clinical/regulatory strategies for oncology and other products.

For over 20 years, Dr. Fingert has worked in biopharma industry with responsibilities in Clinical Development, Medical and Regulatory Affairs, and Safety Risk-Management. He has managed Phases 1-3 development programs and NDA/BLA submissions in multiple therapeutic areas including Immunology, Neurology, Women’s Health, HIV and diverse adult and pediatric cancer indications. He received MD from Univ. Illinois School of Medicine and trained at the National Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He held conducted laboratory and clinical research as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical and Tufts Medical Schools.

Martin Friedman, MBA, is a Managing Member of Pharmakon Advisors, a New York Based Healthcare royalty fund. Martin has spent the past 20 years in various positions in the Health Care Finance industry.

Before joining Pharmakon in 2011, Mr Friedman was the Co-Head of US Life Sciences banking at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. He has worked very closely with both large cap and emerging Pharma, Biotech, Specialty Pharma, Device and Diagnostic companies having advised on M&A transactions and raised equity and debt capital. Martin prior experience also includes 12 years at JP Morgan including 4 years at JP Morgan Partners and several years as the Head of M&A and Collaborations at Novartis AG based in Switzerland.

Martin earned a B.A. in English and History from Columbia College and an M.B.A. (Honors) in Finance and Accounting from Columbia Business School.

Ansbert Gadicke, M.D., co-founded MPM in 1997 with his partner Luke Evnin. Over many years the MPM team they have led has been the inspiration and driving force behind building leading biopharmaceutical companies such as Biomarin (BMRN), CoStim Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Novartis:NVS), Epizyme (EPZM), Idenix (acquired by Merck:MRK), Pacira (PCRX), Pharmasset (acquired by Gilead:GILD) and Radius (RDUS). MPM believes that these companies are some of the biggest successes in biotech history-companies that ultimately resulted in helping thousands of patients live longer and with vastly improved lives. Dr. Gadicke was the lead investor and has served on the boards of several of MPM’s most successful investments including BioMarin, Pharmasset and Radius.

Prior to the launching of MPM’s venture investing activities, Dr. Gadicke led MPM’s Advisory and Investment Banking business, and prior to that he was at The Boston Consulting Group in their Boston office in the Health Care Group. Dr. Gadicke was the first to study expression of HPV 16 and 18 in human cancer cells and to characterize their cDNAs (which were then used by Pharma for vaccine developments) while under the leadership of Professor Harald zur Hausen, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008.

Dr. Gadicke’s commitment to drug discovery and curing disease inspires his work and that of his team in building leading biotechnology companies at MPM, as well as his commitments outside of MPM. He is a member of the Board of Fellows of Harvard Medical School and the Research Advisory Council of Massachusetts General Hospital.
Dr. Gadicke received an M.D. from J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt. He held research positions in biochemistry and molecular biology at the Whitehead Institute at MIT and the Biochemistry Department at Harvard University, and has published in leading scientific journals such as Nature and Cell.

Marc Goldberg, J.D., MBA, co-founded BioVentures Investors and currently serves as its Managing Partner. BioVentures, based in Wellesley, MA is a premier private company investment firm which invests in advanced technologies for the healthcare sector with a specific focus on medical devices, diagnostic products, and similar technology-based healthcare solutions commonly referred to as “Medtech.” Founded in 1998, it has four funds under management.
Mr. Goldberg currently serves on the Board of Directors of Endotronix, Verax Biomedical, Cardiosolutions, HydroCision, sGC Pharma, Rachiotek, Bessor Pharma, Vital Sensors and CohBar.

Previously, Mr. Goldberg served as President and CEO of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Institute, was Vice President, Finance and Corporate Development, CFO, and Treasurer at Safer, Inc. (a developer and manufacturer of novel biopesticides and related products) and started his career at Genetics Institute, one of the earliest biotechnology companies.

Mr. Goldberg co-founded and served as founding president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council in 1985, served four terms as its President, and was a Director from its inception in 1985 until 1997. On his retirement from the Board, Governor Weld proclaimed March 18, 1997 as “Marc Goldberg Day” in Massachusetts.

Mr. Goldberg is a member of the Harvard Medical School Advisory Council on Discovery and serves as Chairman Emeritus of the Harvard Varsity Club. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mark Gordon heads Product Strategy and Product Management for Informa’s Pharma and TMT business intelligence units. For much of the past 18 years, he has been helping biopharma companies apply industry drug development and and drug funding intelligence to assess opportunities to expand their drug portfolios organically and via partnerships and acquisition.

Mr. Gordon began working with Biopharma companies in 1998, working as a part of Lilly’s search and evaluate team and later Roche’s global partnering group. At Thomson Reuters mark championed Thomson reuters life sciences dealmaking strategy, including work on acquiring several companies to expand the life sciences business. At Informa he has led the investment in the next generation of business intelligence systems, championing the use of Informa data to create risk assessment and predictive analytics.

Mr. Gordon holds a computer science degree from Purdue University.

Kevin Grimes, M.D., MBA, is the Co-director of the SPARK Program in Translational Research and an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his MD from Brown University and completed his residency in internal medicine at Stanford University. He became a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford, where his primary duties included the teaching and practice of internal medicine. Dr. Grimes received a Hartford Foundation Fellowship to study health economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and obtained an MBA. He was subsequently selected as a White House Fellow and assigned to the Department of Defense, where he served as Special Assistant to the Secretary. He spent fifteen years in industry, working in the medical device, life science consulting, and biotechnology sectors prior to returning to Stanford to co-direct SPARK. In addition to SPARK, Dr. Grimes teaches graduate student courses on drug discovery and development and continues to teach and practice internal medicine. He has received the David Rytand Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

SPARK’s two-fold mission is to advance promising research discoveries into the clinic as new therapeutics and diagnostics, and to educate faculty, post-doctoral fellows and students regarding the translational process. SPARK participants receive modest funding, education regarding translational research, and targeted mentorship on their specific projects. Over sixty volunteers from the local biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and health care investment community serve as advisors and mentors. SPARK is now entering its 11th year. Approximately 62% of projects completing the program have been licensed and/or advanced to clinical trials.

JC Gutiérrez-Ramos, Ph.D., has over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience from leading global biopharmaceutical companies. He is the CEO of Synlogic Inc. Previously Group SVP of BioTherapeutics R&D at Pfizer, he Lead more than 25 programs to clinic, launched Rare Disease R&D Unit and founded the Centers for Therapeutic Innovation. Before, he was Global SVP of Immuno-Inflammation Center for Drug Discovery at GSK, where he founded entrepreneurial R&D units such as Epinova and Tempero focused in translating novel areas of science into therapeutics. Before he held Head of R&D/CSO positions at Avidia Inc, Peptimmune Inc. and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. During his tenure at Biotech as Pharma he oversaw two drugs to commercial launch, two to phase 3 and multiple ones to phase 2. During his academic career as Faculty at the Genetics Department of Harvard Medical School in Boston and at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland, he co-authored more than 150 peer reviewed publications.

Jonathan Hirsch, M.Sci., is the Founder and President of Syapse, enabling the transformation of healthcare through precision medicine. At Syapse, Mr. Hirsch works closely with healthcare providers, creating software that integrates complex genomic and clinical data to provide physicians with actionable insights at point of care. Mr. Hirsch is the Chair of the Data Committee for GBM AGILE, a global initiative to find a cure for brain cancer, a member of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health Clinical Working Group, and a member of the UCSF Technology Advisory Group. Earlier in his career, Mr. Hirsch worked in Neuroscience Commercial Development at Abbott Laboratories, where he developed strategies to fund drug development through partnerships and private equity financing. His research at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago helped establish the effect of exercise on promoting hippocampal neurogenesis and combating Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Hirsch received an M.Sci. in Neuroscience from Stanford University, and an A.B. in Biology and Political Philosophy from the University of Chicago.

Sean Khozin, M.D., MPH, is a thoracic oncologist and Senior Medical Officer at FDA’s Office of Hematology and Oncology Products. He is the founder of Information Exchange and Data Transformation (INFORMED), an FDA Oncology initiative designed to advance regulatory science by building organizational and technical infrastructure for analysis of aggregated clinical trial datasets and emerging pipelines of data from sources such as electronic health records and mobile sensor technologies. Previously, Dr. Khozin was in private practice in New York City, an attending physician at New York Medical College St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, and an entrepreneur specializing in building health information technology systems with virtual patient management (e.g., video, structured email, and Short Message Service [SMS]), remote biometric monitoring, and point-of-care data visualization/analytics capabilities. Dr. Khozin received his doctor of medicine degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and master of public health from George Washington University. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at New York Medical College and medical oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. Twitter @SeanKhozin

Neil Kumar, Ph.D., is the CEO and Founder of BridgeBio Pharma, LLC, a company focused on the development of novel therapies for rare genetic disorders. Prior to that, he was a principal at Third Rock Ventures where he supported and managed various portfolio companies in addition to focusing on new company formation and due diligence. He also held the role of Vice President, Business Development and Operations for MyoKardia. Prior to joining Third Rock, Dr. Kumar was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company, where he developed strategies for pharmaceutical and medical device companies and helped lead McKinsey’s personalized medicine efforts. Before joining McKinsey, Dr. Kumar was involved in the formation of a gene chip startup and was a technical consultant for AstraZeneca’s pathway signaling group. Dr. Kumar is the author of several peer-reviewed papers in the fields of oncology and systems biology. Dr. Kumar holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Andrew Lee, MBA, joined UBS WM’s Chief Investment Office in July 2012 and is currently Deputy Global Head of the CIO UHNW / Alternatives / SI & Impact team in the Global Investment Office. He also leads the Impact Investing and Private Markets team which supports clients with investment strategy and advice in these areas. Andrew is a Managing Director based in New York.

Prior to joining CIO WM, Mr. Lee was Managing Director overseeing investments for a private New York based single family office. In this capacity, he was responsible for managing asset allocation, theme development, due diligence and execution of all direct and indirect investments for the family investment vehicles. Previously, Mr. Lee was part of a long/short equity hedge fund team at Deutsche Asset Management. Before this, he worked at Lazard in the banking (M&A) and real estate private equity groups.

Andrew has a MBA from the Wharton School and an A.B. from Harvard College.

Neil Littman, M.S., is the Director of Business Development and Strategic Infrastructure at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). MR. Littman is responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with pharma and biotech companies and investors. Mr. Littman is also responsible for managing CIRM’s strategic infrastructure programs, including the Alpha Clinics, Accelerating Center, Translating Center, iPSC Bank, Stem Cell Genomics Center of Excellence, and CIRM’s new $150 million Accelerating Therapies Public-Private Partnership.

Prior to joining CIRM in 2012, Mr. Littman was a Senior Associate at Burrill & Company, a life sciences venture capital firm and investment bank with over $1 billion of assets under management. Prior to joining Burrill & Company, Mr. Littman worked in the Healthcare Investment Banking groups at Thomas Weisel Partners and Deutsche Bank where he focused on strategic advisory and public and private financings, including: M&A, in-licensing, out-licensing, IPOs, follow-ons, registered directs, and private placements.

Mr. Littman received a Master of Science in Biotechnology with a concentration in Biotechnology Enterprise from The Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Molecular, Cellular and Development Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering. He joined CSAIL as a principal investigator in 2011, and became an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the same year. He received an A.B. in economics from Yale University in 1980, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1984. He began his academic career at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he was W.P. Carey Assistant Professor from 1984 to 1987 and W.P. Carey Associate Professor from 1987 to 1988.

is research spans several fields including financial asset-pricing models; derivatives and risk management; hedge funds; systemic risk, financial regulation, and government policy; computational algorithms, machine learning, and secure multi-party computation; evolutionary, neurobiological, and computational models of risk preferences, economic behavior, and intelligence; and most recently, new financing models for funding translational medicine in cancer, Alzheimer’s, and rare diseases.

He has published numerous articles in academic journals and trade publications, and has authored several books including The Econometrics of Financial Markets, A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street, and Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective. He is currently co-editor of the Annual Review of Financial Economics and an associate editor of the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, and the Journal of Investment Management. He serves on advisory committees for the CFTC, NY Fed, and SEC; on the board of directors for Roivant Sciences and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; and is founder, chairman, and chief investment strategist of AlphaSimplex Group, LLC, an investment advisory firm.

Parag Mallick, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. Originally trained as an engineer and biochemist, his research spans computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology and nanotechnology. Dr. Mallick received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in Chemistry & Biochemistry, where he worked with Dr. David Eisenberg. He completed Post-Doctoral studies at The Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, WA with Dr. Ruedi Aebersold. Beyond studying fundamental disease mechanisms, his group has been pioneering novel approaches for enabling personalized and predictive medicine. This work has led to the creation of several successful companies. In addition, he is actively advising dozens of companies at various stages and working with venture funds on both scientific and fiscal evaluation of potential investments. Recently, he has been working to develop new funding vehicles to bring innovative, world changing advances to market.

Monique K. Mansoura, Ph.D., MBA, is leading the Global Health Security megafund project with Professor Andrew Lo in the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering.

She has spent the past 15 years driving strategy, operations and policy on both sides of the public-private partnerships that are vital to the medical countermeasure (MCM) mission in support of its critical role in national and global health security. She has led high-performing, cross-functional teams in the US Government and with Novartis. She has been an active member in leading multi-stakeholder coalitions working to strengthen these public-private partnerships, including as a Board member of the Alliance for Biosecurity, and co-chair of a 2015 IOM Workshop on MCMs for Infectious Diseases which examined Pandemic Influenza, Ebola, and SARS/MERS as case studies.

She trained under Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the peak of activity for the Human Genome Project (1996-2001) and following 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001, took on leadership roles in National Health Security for the U.S. Government (USG) under D.A. Henderson and Major General (retired) Philip Russell. From 2002-2010 she drove strategic policy, programming and budgeting for a pioneering multibillion dollar medical countermeasure (MCM) development and acquisition program under the authorities of the Project BioShield Act of 2004 and the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006. She led development of the inaugural Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasure (PHEMCE) Strategy and Implementation Plan which provided the framework for priority-setting and a roadmap for the allocation of the $5.6 billion fund to enhance preparedness against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats during the first decade of the program. From 2012-2016, she led efforts at Novartis Vaccines (“Seqirus” following a 2015 acquisition by CSL) to build the medical countermeasures franchise and manage one of the leading pandemic influenza partnerships in the world.

Dr. Mansoura earned a Ph.D. in Bioengineering and M.S. in Human Genetics from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University. During a recent sabbatical, she earned an MBA in the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership, served as a consultant to the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation and supported program and planning efforts for the NIH Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program, now a part of the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) at NIH.

Nicholas Marko, M.D., Director of Neurosurgical Oncology at Geisinger Health System, is a clinical neurosurgeon subspecializing in neurosurgical oncology, a data scientist with expertise in predictive analytics and high-performance computing, and a healthcare executive focusing on enterprise data strategy, data management, data integration, data governance, and data-driven innovation.

Until recently, he served as the first chief data officer at Geisinger Health System, where he founded and led the Department of Data Science, supervised the effort to develop and manage a comprehensive enterprise data strategy, directed the design and implementation of the organization’s first enterprise big data platform, and built a comprehensive strategy for modern data governance. He speaks nationally and internationally on these topics, and advises venture capital, startups, established businesses, and large enterprises on issues relating to healthcare data, data strategy and complex analytics.

Lita Nelsen, M.S., is the former Director of the Technology Licensing Office at MIT, where she had been since 1986. This office manages over 800 new inventions per year, negotiating over 100 licenses per year, and helping to start 25 new startups.

Ms. Nelsen earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and an M.S. in Management from MIT as a Sloan Fellow. Prior to joining the MIT TLO she spent 20 years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology.

Ms. Nelsen was the 1992 President of the Association of University Technology and was a founding board member of MIHR, an organization concerned with the use of IP in medical research for developing country diseases.

Ms. Nelsen is widely published in the field of technology transfer and university/industry collaborations. She is a co-founder of Praxis, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme for which she was made a Member of the British Empire. She is currently a consultant in technology transfer and university entrepreneurship.

Larry Norton, M.D., Sarofim Chair of Clinical Oncology and Director, Lauder Breast Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is Professor of Medicine, Weill-Cornell Medical College. He has served on the NCI’s National Cancer Advisory Board and as President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology among other leadership roles including Scientific Director of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. His research is broad but he is best known for mathematical modeling in therapeutic development. Among many honors, he received ASCO’s Karnofsky and Bonadonna Awards, the McGuire Lectureship at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, MSKCC’s Whitmore Award for Clinical Excellence, the Associations Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Research as well as the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher Certificate.

Tomas J. Philipson, Ph.D., is an economist who holds the Daniel Levin Chair in Public Policy at The University of Chicago and directs The Becker Friedman Institute’s health care research program. In addition, he is a co-founder of the health care consulting firm Precision Health Economics, a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute. Dr. Philipson has served in the U.S. government as a senior economic adviser to the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a senior economic adviser to the head of The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), and a senior health care adviser to Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from The Wharton School and The University of Pennsylvania.

Chandra Ramanathan, Ph.D., MBA, is the Vice President and Head of East Coast Innovation Center at Bayer. In his current role, Dr. Ramanathan is responsible for establishing the innovation center, building an innovative product portfolio with key academic partners, driving external scientific leadership and engaging/collaborating with members of the local innovation ecosystem. In his earlier role, he was with the corporate innovation strategy as the global lead for External Innovation – Life Sciences with focus on new sourcing models (open innovation), venture capital strategy and engagement strategies at global innovation hotspots.

Prior to this role, Dr. Ramanathan was the Global Launch Team leader of Copanlisib and Head of Pipeline Marketing. He was the co-chair of the Value Strategy Team to ensure customer insights (physicians, payer and patients) are incorporated as part of development strategies. He also developed the commercial foundation for companion diagnostics development.

Before joining Bayer he has worked in different roles at Wyeth (Pfizer) and Bristol-Myers Squibb such as Global Brand Team Leader, Licensing/Business Development, Neuroscience Strategy, Drug discovery and Applied Genomics.

Dr. Ramanathan has worked across the pharmaceutical product development and commercialization spectrum for more than 20 years. He has broad commercial and research backgrounds with an MBA from the Columbia Business School, Ph.D. in Genomics/Bioinformatics, M.S. in Medicinal Chemistry and B.S. in Pharmacy.

Julien de Salaberry is the co-founder of The Global Cancer Research and Commercialisation Fund which an impact investment fund focused on fostering a collaboration between leading global research institutes and relevant research foundations, joined with investment capital. Its mission is to harness this new business model for a more informed allocation of research funding and investment capital around important cancer inflection points.

After many years as a senior executive in the healthcare industry, Mr. de Salaberry founded The Propell Group, which is the leading healthtech boutique investment and venture building firm, based in Singapore. More recently, Mr. de Salaberry also co-founded Galen Growth Asia, with fellow healthtech entrepreneurs and investors, to accelerate the building of the Asia ecosystem, which is fast becoming the Asia healthtech catalyst.

Mr. de Salaberry believes strongly in the value of collaboration as a catalyst for the growth and transformation of healthcare. He therefore contributes regularly to the space as an advisor to early stage companies and a mentor to incubators/accelerators. Mr. de Salaberry is a thought leader and regular speaker on the topics of healthcare disruption and innovation.

He has over 19 years of experience in healthcare with leading brands including Eli Lilly, Boston Scientific, Baxter, GSK, Merck&Co focusing on growth strategy and execution.

Ted Schenkelberg, MBA, MPH, brings 15+ years’ experience applying business management principles to solve central issues in global health and biotech bridging both nonprofit and for-profit sectors. He serves as chief operating officer of the Human Vaccines Project, and as a consultant helped design and implement the organization’s unique business model.

Previously, Mr. Schenkelberg worked as a strategic consultant in the global health and drug development space for for-profit and non-profit organizations, including work for a leading Indian drug developer and as an advisor for a major new initiative on antibiotic resistance. He also served for seven+ years at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative where as a business and R&D director he played a key role in the building a $50 million global vaccine design program.

Mr. Schenkelberg brings strong private sector experience, having worked as a technology and health equity analyst at Carnegie Capital, a boutique investment firm. He also has served on the board of directors as chair of the Audit Finance Committee for the African Services Committee in New York City, the largest U.S. organization supporting African immigrants and asylum seekers. Mr. Schenkelberg has an MPH. in infectious disease from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an MBA in finance and marketing from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA (honors) from Grinnell College.

Amy Schulman, J.D., is an accomplished business leader, widely recognized for growing global businesses, demonstrating a commitment to people, and fostering inclusive workplace cultures. Ms. Schulman joined Polaris Partner’s Boston office as a healthcare Venture Partner in 2014, simultaneously assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer of Arsia Therapeutics, a Polaris-backed company. In July 2015 Ms. Schulman co-founded Lyndra where she is CEO and President. She serves on the Boards of Directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Blue Buffalo, and Whitehead Institute.

Prior to these roles, Ms. Schulman was responsible for leading Pfizer Inc.’s $4 billion Consumer Healthcare business, which operates in 90 countries and includes well-known brands such as Advil, Centrum, and Chapstick. She also served concurrently as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Pfizer Inc. Previously at Pfizer, Ms. Schulman was SVP, President & General Manager of the infant formula and nutrition business where she drove increased profitability and renewed attention to R&D, and was instrumental in the unit’s sale to Nestle for a record $11.85 billion in 2012.

Before joining Pfizer, Ms. Schulman was a Partner at DLA Piper, where she was a member of the Board and Executive Policy Committees, and built and led the international law firm’s mass tort and class-action practice.
Ms. Schulman is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions including: Scientific American’s 2015 Worldview 100 List, Fierce Biotech’s 2014 Top 15 Women in Biotech, Fortune Magazine’s 2013 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, The American Lawyer’s 2013 Top 50 Innovators, and The National Law Journal’s 2013 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.

Ms. Schulman is a member of Harvard Business School’s Faculty where she serves as a Senior Lecturer. She has also served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Ms. Schulman is a Trustee Emeritus at Wesleyan University. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University, Ms. Schulman earned her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989.

Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., is Institute Professor (highest academic rank) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He joined the Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute) in 1974 and served as its director for six years, from 1985 to 1991, before taking over as head of the Department of Biology, a position he held for the next eight years. More recently, he was founding director of the McGovern Institute, a position he held from 2000 to 2004. His research interests have centered on the molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of RNA splicing. His landmark work in 1977 provided the first indications of “discontinuous genes” in mammalian cells. The discovery fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of gene structure and earned Dr. Sharp the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Sharp has authored over 400 papers. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society, UK. Among his many awards are the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the National Medal of Science. His long list of service includes the presidency of the AAAS (2013) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee, SU2C Project, AACR. A native of Kentucky, Dr. Sharp earned a B.A. degree from Union College, Barbourville, KY, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Dr. Sharp is a co-founder of Biogen and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Murray Sheldon, M.D., received his medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1975. He completed his general surgical residency with Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, California and his cardiovascular fellowships at the University of California, Davis and the Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York. In 1983, he entered private practice as a staff surgeon at several medical centers in Northern California performing cardiac, thoracic and vascular surgery. In 2003, he chose to become engaged in a highly productive career in the medical device industry, leading device development projects and providing expert consultative services to numerous device development firms. From 2003-2009, Dr. Sheldon was the Medical Director for Arbor Surgical Technologies, which developed a unique two-piece, sutureless aortic valve for clinical aortic valve replacement that was sold to Medtronic. Most recently, prior to joining FDA, he was the Medical Director for the minimally invasive surgical program at BioVentrix, Inc. and developed a catheter-based procedure for surgical ventricular reconstruction for heart failure patients. This device has recently obtained a CE mark in Europe. He also was the Medical Director for Solinas Medical, Inc. and was instrumental in developing a unique device for dialysis access. That device has recently received two 510(k) clearances. Dr. Sheldon joined the FDA in 2013 as the Associate Director for Technology and Innovation. He oversees the Center’s initiative to proactively facilitate medical device innovation to address unmet public health needs and to align what is traditionally done at FDA with what is required to support the US medical device ecosystem. His primary focus is working with staff, the medical device industry, the clinical community and others on ways to facilitate bringing innovative medical devices to the patients in the US first in the world. Dr. Sheldon currently leads the Medical Device Payer Communication Task Force, identifying methods to streamline the path from FDA approval to reimbursement.

Greg Simon, J.D., is the Executive Director of the Vice President’s Cancer Moonshot Task Force. Mr. Simon returns to the White House after serving as Vice President Al Gore’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor between 1993 and 1997. Previously, Mr. Simon was the CEO of the financial firm Poliwogg Holdings and Senior Vice President of Worldwide Policy at Pfizer Inc. Prior to that, Mr. Simon was the founding President of FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, a center of the Milken Institute. Mr. Simon received his B.A in history from the University of Arkansas and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Jon Soderstrom, Ph.D., is currently the Managing Director of the Office of Cooperative Research at Yale University. The Office is responsible for commercializing inventions resulting from Yale’s scientific research including patent license agreements, strategic corporate partnerships and the formation of new business ventures.

Since joining the Office in 1996, he has participated in the formation of more than 25 new ventures including polyGenomics, Molecular Staging (acquired by Qiagen), Agilix, Asilas Genomic Systems, Achillion Pharmaceuticals (NASQ: ACHN), PhytoCeutica, Protometrix (acquired by Invitrogen), Iconic Therapeutics, Applied Spine Technologies, HistoRx, VaxInnate, Affomix, Kolltan Pharmaceuticals, Arvinas Pharmaceuticals and Artizan Biosciences. Collectively, these companies have raised over $500 million in professional venture capital.

Dr. Soderstrom was a founding board member and past president of the Association of Federal Technology Transfer Executives as well as a member of the Licensing Executive Society and Association of University Technology Managers where he was the 2008 President, has served as Vice President for Public Policy and a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He is frequently asked to lecture and teach seminars on various aspects of the technology transfer process and economic development both within the United States and abroad. He has testified before Congress on technology transfer issues and served as an expert witness in patent infringement litigation.

Jon holds an A.B. from Hope College and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Jonathan S. Stamler, M.D., President, Harrington Discovery Institute, is an internationally renowned physician-scientist, recognized for the discovery of protein S-nitrosylation, a ubiquitous mechanism for controlling protein function that operates across phylogeny and in all cell types and tissues, and that is commonly dysregulated in disease, ranging from heart disease to neurological disorders and cancer. His work on S-nitrosylation is notable for providing new insights into mammalian physiology, including the regulation of cardiac contractility and the discovery of red blood cell-mediated vasodilation, which is essential for oxygen delivery to all tissues. Dr. Stamler’s laboratory is also known for groundbreaking work on hemoglobins in mammals, microbes and worms, in the process discovering the vasoregulatory role of a third gas (nitric oxide) in the mammalian respiratory cycle (thereby redefined as a 3-gas system: NO/O2/CO2) as well as new enzymatic functions of hemoglobins that protect against nitric oxide in lower organisms. Dr. Stamler also identified the molecular mechanism of nitroglycerin bioactivation and tolerance.

Dr. Stamler is a graduate of Brandeis University in Boston, and received his medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He completed his internship, residency and fellowships in cardiovascular and pulmonary medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. He was on the faculty at Harvard University before spending 16 years at Duke University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Durham, NC.

Dr. Stamler relocated to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Case Medical Center in 2010, where he holds the Robert S. and Sylvia K. Reitman Family Foundation Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Innovation, is a professor of medicine and biochemistry and director of the Institute for Transformative Molecular Medicine as well as president of the Harrington Discovery Institute.

Dr. Stamler has published nearly 300 original articles and edited two books. He has co-founded seven biotechnology companies and licensed two additional programs to major pharmaceutical companies. He holds more than 125 patents and patent applications, and has been recognized by several awards and prizes.

Roger M. Stein, Ph.D., has been actively engaged in developing, implementing and writing about new approaches to applied risk modeling and financial prediction for over 25 years. He and his teams have developed, implemented and delivered products and services that have become industry benchmarks in banking and finance.

He currently holds the position of Research Affiliate at the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, is an Adjunct Professor at the Stern School of Business, NYU and was a Senior Lecturer in Finance at MIT for a number of years. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at the Center for Risk Management Research, University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests are in the areas of systemic risk, credit risk, model risk and validation, biomedical funding, and the interface between machine learning and financial theory.

In addition to his academic work, he has held a number of senior positions in industry. He was the Chief Analytics Officer at State Street GX, as well as Senior Managing Director of Product Strategy. Before this he was Managing Director of Research and Academic Relations globally for Moody’s Corporation and prior to this he was President of Moody’s Research Labs (MRL). Earlier, he was co-head of research at Moody’s KMV.

Dr. Stein has written over sixty professional and academic articles and serves on the editorial boards of several finance journals. He has also co-authored two full-length texts on applied analytics: Active Credit Portfolio Management in Practice (Wiley, 2009), on practical credit risk management; and Seven Methods for Transforming Corporate Data into Business Intelligence (Prentice Hall, 1997), on commercial applications of data analytics, data mining (big data) and artificial intelligence. Stein is a frequent invited speaker at industry, academic and regulatory venues and is also a TED speaker.

Dr. Stein was is the founder and president of the Consortium for Systemic Risk Analytics and is member of the Advisory Council of the Museum of Mathematics; and and the Academic Advisory Board of the EC’s SYstemic Risk Tomography Project (SYRTO). He is on the editorial boards of a number of finance and data science journals.

Mayukh Sukhatme, M.D., has served as Senior Vice President, Business Development of Roivant Sciences, Inc. since April 2015. From 2000 to 2015, Dr. Sukhatme was a healthcare-focused analyst and Portfolio Manager for large institutional investment firms, including both public markets and venture capital firms. His principal focus was on development-stage biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, where he led diligence and investment decisions on numerous companies and pharmaceutical compounds across a wide variety of therapeutic areas. Most recently, he was a partner at Apple Tree Partners, a healthcare venture fund. Dr. Sukhatme received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology and Literature (Phi Beta Kappa) from MIT.

Lara S. Sullivan, M.D., MBA, a Pfizer Senior Leader and member of the Pfizer Medical Leadership Team, leads the recently established Pfizer CURES platform which aims to bring together patient foundations, impact investors and venture philanthropy with Pfizer assets that serve specific patient populations. These novel partnerships and alliances with financial, philanthropic and public sector partners will extend the scientific and development innovation opportunities for a select number of quality assets in Pfizer’s portfolio that have the potential to offer significant benefits to patients. Dr. Sullivan joined Pfizer in 2011 as Vice President and Head of WorldWide R&D Strategy & Portfolio Solutions within the global R&D organization. Prior to joining Pfizer, Dr. Sullivan was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Products Practice serving both Big Pharma and biotech clients across a variety of strategic and operational issues, with a particular emphasis on R&D productivity. Dr. Sullivan holds an MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University.

William T. Symonds, Pharm.D., has served as Senior Vice President, Clinical Research at Roivant Sciences, Inc. since May 2014. He also currently serves as a director of Arbutus Biopharma Corporation, a company focused on developing a cure for chronic hepatitis B virus infection. From February 2012 to April 2014, Dr. Symonds served as Vice President, Liver Disease Therapeutic Area at Gilead Sciences, Inc., and he was the Senior Vice President, Clinical Pharmacology and Translational Medicine, at Pharmasset, Inc. from 2007 to January 2012. From 1993 to 2007, Dr. Symonds held various positions of increasing responsibility at GlaxoSmithKline, most recently as Director, Antiviral Clinical Pharmacology and Discovery Medicine. Dr. Symonds received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Campbell University and completed a fellowship in clinical pharmacokinetics at the Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory in Buffalo, New York.

Marty Tenenbaum, Ph.D., is a renowned computer scientist, Internet entrepreneur, and cancer warrior. He is Founder and Chairman of Cancer Commons, a non-profit network of physicians, scientists, and patients that Newsweek dubbed the “LinkedIn of Cancer.” He began his career in AI, leading elite research groups at SRI International and Schlumberger Ltd. Later, as an Internet commerce pioneer, he founded or co-founded five successful startups. Dr. Tenenbaum is a fellow and former board member of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, a former Director of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and a former consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He currently serves as a Director of CommerceNet, Efficient Finance, and Patients Like Me. Dr. Tenenbaum holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford, and has received numerous awards for his work as a patient advocate.

Laura S. Thrall, M.S., brings 30 years of nonprofit leadership experience to her current role as CEO of CureSearch for Children’s Cancer. Since taking the helm in 2012, CureSearch has been transformed from its prior role as the largest Federal grantee in childhood cancer, to a privately funded foundation advancing the most innovative cancer research, with a focus on driving new treatments out of academia and into the clinic.

Prior to coming to CureSearch, Ms. Thrall held the President and Chief Executive Officer position at both the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago and the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago.

Dedicated to advancing the health and human services sector, Ms. Thrall served as an appointed member on two Illinois Governor’s Commissions; the Human Services Commission and Discrimination and Hate Crimes Commission. She chaired the Chicago Alliance for Collaborative Effort (“CACE”), and led the Donor’s Forum Public/Nonprofit Policy Forum. A founding member of Illinois Partners for Human Services she also served as an appointed member of the City of Chicago’s Volunteerism Advisory Board.

Passionate about healthcare, Ms. Thrall was a three-term appointed member of the Visiting Committee for the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. In 2012 she was selected to serve on the Advisory Council for Northwestern University Medical Center’s Cerebrovascular Institute, and currently serves on the boards of Americas Charities and the Lisa Colagrossi Foundation.

Ms. Thrall holds a Master’s degree with distinction in Public Service Management from DePaul University in Chicago. A 29-year resident of Chicago, she relocated to the Annapolis, Maryland region in 2012. She and her partner Kevin Booth have five adult children between them, residing in New York, Chicago, LA and Atlanta.

Chris Viehbacher is the Managing Partner of Gurnet Point Capital. Gurnet Point is a Boston based investment fund associated with the Bertarelli family and has a $ 2 billion capital allocation. He is also a member of the Board of Pure Tech Health plc and is the Chairman of Vedanta, a Pure Tech portfolio company. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Northeastern University.

Mr. Viehbacher is the former CEO and Member of the Board of Directors of Sanofi, a Fortune 50 Biopharmaceutical company based in Paris. He was also the Chairman of the Board of Genzyme in Boston.

Prior to joining Sanofi, Mr. Viehbacher spent 20 years with GlaxoSmithKline in Germany, Canada, France and, latterly, the US as President of GSK North America. He was a Member of the Board of Directors of GSK plc in London and Co-President of GSK’s Portfolio Management Board. Mr. Viehbacher began his career with Price Waterhouse after graduating with a degree in Commerce at Queen/s University in Canada.

Mr. Viehbacher has been a strong advocate for the healthcare industry. Current and past advocacy roles include:

• Former Co-chair with Bill Gates, the CEO Roundtable on Neglected Diseases.
• Past-Chairman of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer.
• Chairman of the Board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington.
• President of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations in Brussels.
• Chair of the Health Governors at World Economic Forum and Co-chair of a WEF initiative to create a Global Charter for Healthy Living.
• Member of the International Business Council.

Mr. Viehbacher has in the past served on various advisory groups at MIT, Duke University and Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario.

Mr. Viehbacher has received the Pasteur Foundation Award for outstanding commitment to safeguarding and improving health worldwide. He has also received France’s highest civilian honor, the Legion d’Honneur.

Janet Wu, M.S., is a multi-media journalist known for her many years as an Anchor/Health Reporter for Boston’s NBC station. She currently contributes medical reports to two international networks and is an adjunct professor at Emerson College.

A frequent Op-Ed contributor to The Boston Globe, her work has also been published in The New York Times,The Boston Herald, and several anthologies, including The “Norton Sampler of Essays,” one of the most widely read college textbooks.

She graduated from Yale with a dual major in Philosophy and Psychology and earned a master’s degree in Journalism and International Affairs at Columbia University.

She is on the Boston Board of the American Heart Association, in honor of her late father, a noted heart surgeon. She also sits on the Boards of Overseers for the New England Conservatory of Music and The Franciscan Hospital for Children. She is on the Advisory Boards of The Max Warburg Foundation and Homestart. She is a Founding Member of SheGives, a venture philanthropy organization of women.

She was named The Girls Scouts of New England 2015 Leading Woman of the Year and was on the Fall 2016 slate of TEDXCambridge speakers.

She plays the piano and cello and has traveled to 64 countries, 21 of those alone.

Jake Xia, Ph.D., joined HMC as Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer in June 2013. In this role, Mr. Xia manages investment risk in the endowment arising from both the internal and external portfolios and focuses on asset allocation.

Prior to joining HMC, Mr. Xia spent 17 years at Morgan Stanley, serving most recently as Head of Global Structured Rates Trading in New York and managing trading groups across the globe, including New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney. Prior to this role, Mr. Xia was Head of Global Fixed Income Trading Risk within the sales and trading function in New York where he worked closely with the Global Head of Fixed Income and was responsible for managing trading exposures in all fixed income products, including interest rates, foreign exchange, emerging markets, credit, and real estate securities. Previously, Mr. Xia served as Morgan Stanley’s co-Head of Fixed Income in Japan where he was also a member of Morgan Stanley’s ten-person Global Fixed Income Operating Committee, Asia Executive Committee, and Tokyo Management Committee. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Xia served as Vice President of Fixed Income Research at Salomon Brothers in New York and was a research scientist at Schlumberger-Doll Research.

Mr. Xia holds a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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