Presenters

Irene Aguilar, M.D.

Born and raised in inner city Chicago, Irene Aguilar was the first in her family to receive a bachelor’s degree. She attended Washington University in St. Louis on a scholarship and received her medical degree from the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine.

Jandel Allen-Davis, M.D.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD, is vice president of Government, External Relations and Research for Kaiser Permanente Colorado. She leads the organization’s community relations, communications, advertising and marketing functions, stakeholder engagement, government relations, clinical research activities and community benefit investment.

Stephen Ansolabehere

Stephen Ansolabehere is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is an expert in public opinion and elections, and has published extensively on elections, mass media, and representation, political economy, and public opinion, especially concerning energy and the environment.

Alan Attie

I began my research career by studying lipid and lipoprotein metabolism. In mid-career, I switched to work on genetics of obesity and diabetes.

Emmanuel E. Baetge

Emmanuel E. Baetge is the director of the new Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences, located at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

Richard Barker

Richard is an internationally respected leader in healthcare and life sciences. He is Founding Director of the Oxford-UCL Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation (CASMI), a major UK initiative aimed at transforming the R&D and regulatory processes in life sciences to bring advances more rapidly and affordably to patients.

Michael Bennett

Michael F. Bennet was elected United States Senator for Colorado in November 2010.

Ian Billick

Ian Billick is a field biologist who is interested in the ecology and evolution of complex systems. He earned a BA in Math and Physics at Trinity University (Texas) in 1988 and a PhD in Biology at the University of California San Diego in 1997.

Tom Blumenthal

Tom Blumenthal is the Anna and John J. Sie Professor in Genomics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he is executive director of the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome.

Patti Brennan

Patricia Flatley Brennan is the Director of the NLM, a component of the NIH. The NLM is the world’s largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals, and members of the public worldwide.

Sarah Burgamy, Ph.D.

Sarah Burgamy, Psy.D. is the founder of a private practice in Denver, Colorado, PhoenixRISE, with specialty offerings in identity development (considering intersections of target and non-target status identities), sexual minority competency as well as transgender and gender variant issues with children, adolescents, and adults.

Bill Burhans

After graduating with a degree in Cell Biology from the University of Connecticut in 1975, Bill lived in Colorado for two years before settling in Bennington, Vermont.

Paula Cannon, Ph.D.

Paula Cannon, Ph.D. is a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. She leads a research team that studies viruses, stem cells, and gene therapy, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS.

Charles Cantor

Charles Cantor is a founder, and Chief Scientific Officer at SEQUENOM, Inc. He is also founder of SelectX Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company based in the Boston area; Retrotope, an anti-aging company; and DiThera, a biotherapeutic company.

Tom Cathcart

Thomas Cathcart spent most of his career in health care, including serving as chief operating officer of a hospital and directing a boarding home for people with HIV/AIDS.

Elvir Causevic

Dr. Elvir Causevic leads Ocean Tomo’s Strategic Advisory Services practice. He advises innovative enterprises on cost-effective strategic management of their intellectual assets, and creates monetization and transaction strategies for maximum value creation.

Tom Cech

Dr. Cech was raised and educated in Iowa (B.A. in chemistry from Grinnell College, 1970). He obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

Grazia M. Cereghetti

Grazia Cereghetti is a research scientist at the University of Geneva. She obtained her doctorate in biochemistry and biophysics from the ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) working on prion diseases.

Diana Chapman Walsh

Diana Chapman Walsh serves on the governing boards the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the Kaiser Family Foundation; the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the Mind and Life Institute, and on several national advisory boards.

Benjamin Coles, Ph.D.

Ben Coles is a broadly trained economic and political geographer who researches the intersections between commodities and markets, with a particular focus on food.

Marilyin Coors

Dr. Coors is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Her teaching and scholarship focus on advances in genetics and the implications for what it means to provide health care in the age of genetic medicine.

Neal Copeland

Neal Copeland received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Utah and carried out his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he met his long-time collaborator and wife, Nancy Jenkins. After their postdoctoral training, they moved to The Jackson Laboratory where they were associate staff scientists.

Ruth Crowe

Ruth Crowe was trained as a physician-scientist at NYU School of Medicine and received residency and Hematology-Oncology fellowship training at Cornell University Medical College.

Scott Danielson

Scott Danielson is a tinkerer, inventor and entrepreneur who creates high-impact, high-value, customer-centered products and services.

Kevin Davies

Kevin Davies is the founding editor of Bio-IT World and Nature Genetics, and the author of The $1,000 Genome (Free Press, 2010), an account of the revolution in DNA sequencing technologies, personal genomics, and personalized medicine.

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett is Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy.

Robin Deterding

Robin Deterding is a tenured professor of pulmonary medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Lakshmi A. Devi

Lakshmi Devi received her PhD from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada and postdoctoral training at the Vollum Institute, Portland, Oregon, and Addiction Research Foundation, Palo Alto, California.

Chunming Ding

Dr. Chunming Ding is the Dean at School of Laboratory Medicine and Life Sciences, Wenzhou Medical University. He obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biochemistry (1997, Fudan University; 2000, Brandeis University), and Ph.D. degree in Bioinformatics (2003, Boston University).

Alexandra Drane

Alexandra Drane is the co-founder and chairman of the board of Eliza Corporation, and co-founder of Engage with Grace. She is obsessed with using technology to help people of all walks of life be happier, healthier, and more productive

Robert Duke

Robert Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor and Head of Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Elizabeth Shatto Massey Distinguished Fellow in Teacher Education, and Director of the Center for Music Learning.

Sean Eddy, Ph.D.

Sean Eddy is a computational biologist at Harvard University where he is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Ellmore C. Patterson Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology and of Applied Mathematics.

Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies, president of the Center for Conservation Biology, at Stanford University, and adjunct professor at University of Technology, Sydney. His research is in population biology, which includes ecology, evolutionary biology, behavior, human ecology, and cultural evolution.

Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.

Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., received his B.A. from Yale University and his M.D. from Western Reserve University. In 1956, pulling the No. 6 oar as a member of the victorious United States rowing team, he was awarded a gold medal at the Olympic Games.

Stanley Feld

Stanley Feld is the founding partner of Endocrine Associates of Dallas, P.A. and former clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School.

Sir Marc Feldmann

Marc Feldmann is a professor at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. He trained in medicine at Melbourne University and then earned a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute with Sir Gus Nossal.

Elizabeth Fenn, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Fenn is the chair of the History Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she is the Walter and Lucienne Driskill Professor of Western American History.

Jean Feraca

Born in New York City, Jean Feraca  graduated from Manhattanville College in English with honors from Harvard. She completed her M.A. at the University of Michigan where she studied with poet Donald Hall.

Susan Fisher

Dr. Susan Fisher is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.

Mark Fishman

Mark C. Fishman, M.D., is Professor in the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and Chief of the Pathways Clinical Service at the MGH for patients with complex medical disorders. His current research focus is on the genes that guide social behavior, using genetics of the zebrafish.

Matt Fitzgerald

Matt Fitzgerald is a writer specializing in the topics of endurance sports, fitness, and diet. He has authored or co-authored twenty-two books, including Racing Weight, Diet Cults, and Iron War.

Garret A. FitzGerald

Garret A. FitzGerald, MD, is the McNeil Professor in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he chairs the Department of Pharmacology and directs the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics.

Susannah Fox

Susannah Fox recently served as the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she created opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation across the Department’s 27 divisions and 80,000+ employees.

Lloyd Fricker

Peptides play many important physiological roles in most organisms. Neuropeptides and peptide hormones function in cell-cell signaling and are involved with a wide variety of biological functions including feeding and body weight regulation, fear, anxiety, pain, circadian rhythms, memory, reward mechanisms, and many others.

Terry Fry

Terry Fry, M.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics, Hematology and Immunology and Co-Director of the Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Initiative at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and holds the Robert and Kathleen Clark Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cancer Therapeutics at the Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Pat Furlong

Pat Furlong is the Founding President and CEO of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD), the largest non profit organization in the United States solely focused on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Duchenne).

Peter Ganz

Dr. Ganz is the Chief of Cardiology and the Director of the Center of Excellence in Vascular Research at the San Francisco General Hospital.

Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH

Julie Gerberding is Executive Vice President and Chief Patient Officer, Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy, and Population Health at Merck & Co., Inc., where she also has responsibility for the “Merck for Mothers” global program to prevent maternal mortality and the Merck Foundation.

Elodie Ghedin, Ph.D.

Elodie Ghedin is a Professor of Biology and Global Public Health and a member of the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at New York University. Her laboratory uses comparative genomics, evolutionary biology, and systems biology techniques to generate critical insights about host-pathogen interactions.

Larry Gold

Larry Gold serves as the Founder and Chairman of the Board of SomaLogic, and is a Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Keith Gottesdiener

Keith Gottesdiener, M.D., is Chief Executive Officer of Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Boston based biotech company that specializes in the development of peptide therapeutics for the treatment of metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity and functional GI disorders.

Sarah Gray

Sarah Gray is the author of the award-winning, Washington Post best-seller, A Life Everlasting: The Extraordinary Story of One Boy’s Gift to Medical Science.

Casey Greene, Ph.D.

Casey Greene’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania is dedicated to developing computational tools that biologists use to gain insights from other labs’ data as easily as from their own. More than 2 billion dollars’ worth of publicly funded genomics data are freely downloadable.

Leslie Greengard

Leslie Greengard is the director of the Simons Center for Data Analysis, at the Simons Foundation, and a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Courant Institute of New York University, where he served as the director from 2006-2011.

Rick Guidotti

Rick Guidotti, an award-winning fashion photographer, has spent the past fourteen years working internationally with advocacy organizations/NGOs, medical schools, universities and other educational institutions to effect a sea-change in societal attitudes towards individuals living with genetic difference.

Jian Han

Jian Han, M.D., Ph.D., is a faculty investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. Jian has more than 30 years of experience developing molecular diagnostic technologies and products.

Joan Henneberry

Joan Henneberry is a Vice President supporting colleagues in multiple Health Management Associates (HMA) offices across the country, and working with government, and private sector clients to implement state and federal health reform programs; developing new business models and partnerships that allow specialty providers to be part of new networks and new service delivery approaches; and assisting healthcare organizations with market assessments and business planning.

James Heywood

An MIT engineer, Jamie entered the field of translational research and medicine when his brother Stephen was diagnosed with ALS at age 29.

Kevin Hickerson

Kevin Hickerson’s research in particle physics focuses on neutrons and neutrinos. He is an academic lecturer, stand-up comic, tinkerer with many patents, Hollywood science consultant, and hosts the science and comedy podcast, Surely You’re Joking.

James O. Hill

James O. Hill, Ph.D. is Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, James O. Hill, Ph.D. is the Founding Executive Director of the Colorado Center for Health and Wellness at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Paula L. Hoffman, Ph.D.

Paula Hoffman is a tenured professor of pharmacology in the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Phillip Holliger, Ph.D.

Philipp Holliger’s research spans the fields of chemical biology, synthetic biology and in vitro evolution. His work has been published in major journals (e.g. Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS etc.) and has led to numerous patents.

David Housman

David Housman has been engaged in work on genetic diseases since 1970. He received his PhD at Brandeis University in 1971.

Lawrence Hunter

Dr. Lawrence Hunter is the Director of the University of Colorado’s Computational Bioscience Program and a Professor of Pharmacology (School of Medicine) and Computer Science (Boulder).

Clyde Hutchison

Clyde Hutchison obtained his B.S. in Physics from Yale. As an undergraduate, he worked on bacterial spore germination with Carl Woese, then a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Harold Morowitz. His Ph.D. research, in the laboratory of Robert L. Sinsheimer at Cal Tech, concerned the genetics of bacteriophage phiX174.

Allan Jacobson

Dr. Allan Jacobson is Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Don Jones, J.D.

Donald Jones serves as vice president of business development for Qualcomm Incorporated. He is responsible for leading Qualcomm’s expansion of wireless technologies into the consumer health, healthcare and medical device markets.

Michael J. Joyner, M.D.

Michael J. Joyner, M.D., is the Caywood Professor of Anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic where he was named distinguished investigator in 2010. His interests include exercise physiology, blood pressure, metabolism, and transfusion practices.

David Juncker

David Juncker studied at the Institute of Microtechnology of the French speaking University of Neuchâtel, and received a degree in Electronics–Physics in 1996.

Ted J. Kaptchuk

Ted J. Kaptchuk is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Placebo Studies, Healing and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Peter S. Kim

Peter S. Kim is a structural biologist known for discovering how proteins cause membranes to fuse, a central feature of all life. He has designed novel compounds that stop membrane fusion by the AIDS virus, thereby preventing it from infecting cells, and has pioneered efforts to develop an HIV vaccine based on similar principles.

Judith Kimble, Ph.D.

Judith Kimble is a Vilas Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Daniel Klein

After a brief career in television comedy, Daniel Klein began writing books, ranging from thrillers and mysteries to humorous books about philosophy, including the New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar – Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.

Yvonne Monique Kobayashi

Yvonne Kobayashi is a principal research scientist at Eli Lilly & Company and came to the Mobility & Metabolism Division at the end of 2012.

David Krakauer

A graduate of the University of London, where he went on to earn a master’s degree in computer science and mathematics, David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary theory from Oxford University in 1995.

Don Kripke

Don Kripke was born in Schenectady, NY, and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale with a BA in Philosophy in 1963. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he received his M.D. degree in 1967.

Greg LaGana, M.D.

Greg LaGana, M.D., completed an internal medicine internship and residency at Harlem Hospital and is board-certified in internal medicine

Richard Lamm

Denver. Richard D. Lamm is one of the new breed of policy analysts who argues that the challenge of the 21st century is to meet new public needs by reconceptualizing much of what government does and how it does it.

Larry Lasky

Larry is an expert in biotechnology, a field that he has worked in commercially for over 27 years. In 1981, he was a founding scientist of Genetics Institute (acquired by Wyeth), one of the earliest biotechnology companies.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA

For too long in America health has been defined as simply not being sick. But health is so much more than that. Health is everything. It is influenced by a complex web of social factors: Where we live, how we work, the soundness and safety of our surroundings, and the strength and resilience of our families and our communities.

Richard Lawn

Richard Lawn received a B.A. degree in Astronomy from Harvard College and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado.

David M. Lawrence

Dr. Lawrence served as CEO and Chairman of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals until his retirement in 2002. He was appointed CEO in 1991 and Chairman the next year.

David Lawrence, M.C.

Leslie Leinwand

Dr. Leinwand is a Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chief Scientific Officer of the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Richard C. Levin

Richard C. Levin recently completed a twenty-year term as Yale’s President. He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1968 and studied politics and philosophy at Oxford University, where he earned a B.Litt. degree.

Barry Levy

Barry Levy, M.D., M.P.H., completed an internal medicine residency at University Hospital and the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and a preventive medicine residency at the Centers for Disease Control. He is board-certified in internal medicine and occupational medicine.

Allen Lim, Ph.D.

Allen Lim received his doctorate from the Applied Exercise Science Laboratory in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder under the direction of Dr. William Byrnes.

Dennis Lo

Professor Dennis Lo is the Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and the Chairman of the Department of Chemical Pathology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

Simon Lovestone

Simon Lovestone is Director of Research, King’s Health partners, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.

Stephen Macknik

Stephen Macknik is Laboratory Director at the Barrow Neurological Institute. He is an award winning scientist and his book, along with Dr. Susana Martizez-Conde, Sleights of Mind, is an international bestseller recognized as one of the Top 36 Books of the Year by The Evening Standard.

Patrick Mahaffy

Mr. Mahaffy is a founder of Clovis and has served as its President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of its board of directors since its inception.

Cindy Malone

Dr. Malone began her scientific career wearing hip-waders in a swamp behind her home in Illinois. She earned her B.S in Biology at Illinois State University and her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at UCLA.

Jo Marchant

Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist and author of several books including the New York Times bestseller Cure: A journey into the science of mind over body (2016).

Tony Marion, Ph.D.

Tony Marion is a professor in the department of microbiology, immunology, and biochemistry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.

Pippa Marrack

Dr. Marrack has studied T cells, how they are created and how they operate for good or ill for more than 40 years, almost since the cells were discovered.

Susana Martinez-Conde

Susana Martinez-Conde received a BS in Experimental Psychology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a PhD in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Jessica Mathews

Jessica Mathews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Carnegie’s president for 18 years. Before her appointment in 1997, her career included posts in both the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism and science policy.

Jennifer McCrea

Jennifer McCrea is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at Harvard University and the co-founder and CEO of Born Free Africa, an initiative of the Millennium Development Goals Health Alliance that brings private sector resources and expertise to the goal of eradicating mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Jennifer McCrea

Jennifer McCrea is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at Harvard University and the co-founder and CEO of Born Free Africa, an initiative that brings private sector resources and expertise to the goal of eradicating mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.

Steven McKnight, Ph.D.

Steven L. McKnight received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Texas in 1974 and his Ph.D. degree in biology from the University of Virginia in 1977.

Mark Messenbaugh

Mark Messenbaugh serves as SomaLogic’s Chief Corporate Strategy and Development Officer, where he is responsible for developing and structuring key business opportunities and third-party collaborations.

Charles R. Middleton

Charles R. “Chuck” Middleton has had a long and distinguished career in higher education, currently serving as Roosevelt University’s 5th president.

Matt Might

Matt Might is an active advisor to the newly established Undiagnosed Disease Network Coordinating Center at Harvard University. He is passionate about patient-driven precision medicine, accelerating drug development in rare disease, and bending the cost curve in medical research with computation and social media.

Carl Morris, Ph.D.

Carl Morris is the SVP of Research and Development at Solid Biosciences where he is responsible for overseeing the company’s drug development activities. Prior to joining Solid, Carl was a Senior Director for Pfizer’s Rare Disease Research Unit, leading their efforts in neurologic diseases and the muscle biology programs.

Steven Morrissett

Steve Morrissett is a trial lawyer in the Palo Alto, California, office of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, a law firm that practices exclusively intellectual property law.

Craig Mundie

Craig J. Mundie is President of Mundie & Associates. He joined Microsoft in 1992 and became the Principal Technology-Policy Executive. In 2014, he retired from Microsoft as Chief Research and Strategy Officer. Previously he was CEO and co-Founder of Alliant Computer Systems.

Jeremy Nicholson

Professor Nicholson obtained his BSc from Liverpool University (1977) and his PhD from London University (1980) in Biochemistry working on the application of analytical electron microscopy and the applications of energy dispersive X Ray microanalysis in molecular toxicology and inorganic biochemistry.

Lee Niswander

Dr. Lee Niswander completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder and her Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Genetics at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Gilbert Omenn

Gilbert Omenn is Professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, and Public Health and Director of the Center for Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics and the Proteomics Alliance for Cancer Research at the University of Michigan.

Emanuel Petricoin, Ph.D.

Emanuel Petricoin has been the co-director of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM) at George Mason University since 2005, where he is a university professor.

Greg Petsko

Gregory A. Petsko is Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where from 1994 to 2008 he served as Director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center.

Steven Pollak

Dr. Pollak has devoted his career to fostering solutions that personalize and improve care around the needs of the whole patient, reducing the clinical, financial and lifestyle risks of healthcare for individuals and organizations alike.

George Poste

Dr. George Poste is Chief Scientist, Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI) at Arizona State University. This program links expertise across the university in research on synthetic biology, ubiquitous sensing and Healthcare informatics for personalized medicine.

Franklyn Prendergast

Training: Medical degree with honors from the University of West Indies; Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar); MA Physiology. Internal medicine residency Mayo Clinic.

Anna Marie Pyle

Anna Marie Pyle is the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, professor of chemistry at Yale University, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

David Quammen

David Quammen is an author and journalist who lives in Montana and travels widely for research, usually to jungles and mountains and swamps. His fifteen books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, Spillover—a work on the science and history of dangerous zoonotic pathogens—including Ebola and HIV, and Yellowstone: A Journey through America’s Wild Heart.

Steven Reed

Steve Reed is the Founder, President, and CSO of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI). His academic appointments include Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York and Research Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Washington.

Evelyn Resh

Evelyn Resh is a certified sexuality counselor, nurse-midwife, author and speaker. She frequently speaks and writes about sexual health and satisfaction and mother-daughter relationships.

Elio Riboli

Elio Riboli holds an M.D. degree and an MPH from the University of Milan and a MSc in Epidemiology from Harvard University. His career started at the National Institute of Cancer in Milan where he conducted research on the carcinogenic effect of occupational exposures, tobacco and alcohol.

John L. Rinn, Ph.D.

John L. Rinn is the Alvin and Esta Star Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, and senior associate member of the Broad Institute.

William Robinson

Bill Robinson is a Professor of Medicine and the Rifkin Endowed Chair for Cancer Research at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.

Gene Robinson, Ph.D.

Gene E. Robinson received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1986 and joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. He holds a university Swanlund Chair, is the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), and director of the Bee Research Facility.

William Rom

William N. Rom M.D., MPH is the Sol and Judith Professor of Medicine and Environmental Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and Director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

David Rosenman

David Rosenman is a hospital-based physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. At the Mayo Medical School, David’s pride and joy is the Preclinical Block, a six-week, multidisciplinary transition from the classroom to the real world

Scott Russell Sanders, Ph.D.

Scott Russell Sanders is the author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Hunting for Hope, Earth Works, and Divine Animal.

William J. Rutter

William J. Rutter, PhD is Founder and Chairman and CEO of Synergenics, LLC, which controls a consortium of companies with different but complimentary approaches to diagnosis, prevention and treatment on a worldwide basis.

Jane Salmon

Dr. Jane Salmon is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. She is the Collette Kean Research Chair and Director of the Lupus and Antiphospholipid Center of Excellence at Hospital for Special Surgery.

Lucy Sanders

Lucy Sanders is CEO and co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and also serves as executive-in-residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Sara Sawyer, Ph.D.

Sara Sawyer is as Associate Professor in the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a recognized expert in “zoonotic” viruses such as Ebola, HIV, and Zika, which emerge from animal reservoirs and enter the human population.

Jack Scannell, Ph.D.

Jack Scannell studies biomedical R&D productivity from both an economic and a scientific perspective, particularly the unpalatable contrast between cheaper and better scientific inputs, and what has been a long-term decline in innovative output efficiency.

Elizabeth Scarboro

Elizabeth Scarboro was born on September 11, before it was September 11, in a hospital in Denver, on the night of an eclipse, which her father remembers well, and her mother, shakily.

Ray Schinazi

Raymond F. Schinazi is the Frances Winship Walters Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology at Emory University and Co-Director of the HIV Cure Scientific Working Group for the NIH-sponsored Emory University Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).

Lucy Shapiro

Lucy Shapiro is a Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine where she holds the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Chair in Cancer Research and is the Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.

Howard-Yana Shapiro

Howard-Yana Shapiro has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding, molecular biology, and genetics for over 40 years. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, governmental agencies and the private sector around the world.

Kenneth E. Sharpe

Kenneth E. Sharpe is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College where he teaches political philosophy, practical ethics, Latin American politics, and foreign policy.

Jonathan Shay

Dr. Shay is a psychiatrist whose treatment of combat trauma suffered by Vietnam veterans combined with his critical and imaginative interpretations of the ancient accounts of battle described in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are deepening our understanding of the effects of warfare on the individual.

Neil Siegel

Neil Siegel, Ph.D. is sector vice-president & chief technology officer at Northrop Grumman. In this position, he has been responsible for the creation of many first-of-their-kind, large-scale, high-reliability systems for the U.S. Government and other customers.

Ajit Singh

Dr. Ajit Singh is Managing Director and General Partner at Artiman Ventures, based in Palo Alto, CA and focuses on early-stage Technology and Life Science investments.

David Snow

As Medco’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David B. Snow, Jr., architected the transformation of Medco Health Solutions into an enterprise that is today recognized as one of the world’s most admired and innovative companies, and a leader in clinically driven pharmacy care that empowers the practice of precision medicine.

Richard A. Spritz

Dr. Richard A. Spritz is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Human Medical Genetics Program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Fintan Steele

Fintan Steele joined SomaLogic in 2011 as executive director for communications. Fintan’s background includes more than 20 years of experience in communicating scientific research, particular the science (and its implications) behind the “omics revolution.”

Lisa Stubbs

Our research combines mouse genetics, bioinformatics and genomic methods to explore cis- and trans-acting components of mammalian gene regulatory machinery.

Wendy Sue Swanson

Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician, the executive director of Digital Health, and author of the Seattle Mama Doc Blog for Seattle Children’s Hospital.

John Swindle

John Swindle is the co-founder, President and CEO of CompleGen, Inc. in Seattle, WA and co-inventor of the Company’s core XenoGene technology.

Michael Teitell

Dr. Teitell is a Professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, in the Department of Pediatrics, and in the Bioengineering Interdepartmental Program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Sharon Terry

Sharon F. Terry is President and CEO of the Genetic Alliance. She is the founding CEO of PXE International, a research & advocacy organization for the genetic condition pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE), a condition that affects her two children.

Dan Theodorescu

Dan Theodorescu, MD, Ph.D. is the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) designated Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Colorado where he is also a Distinguished University Professor. Dan is known for his work on the molecular mechanisms underlying bladder cancer and tools that determine drug response as well as discovery of new drugs for cancer.

Ann Thor

Dr. Ann Thor is the Todd Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Colorado School Of Medicine, and the former Rader Professor and Chair of Pathology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Glenn J. Treisman

Glenn Jordan Treisman is the Director of the AIDS Psychiatry Program and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Calvin Trillin

Calvin Trillin has been acclaimed in fields of writing that are remarkably diverse. As someone who has published solidly reported pieces in The New Yorker for more than fifty years, he has been called “perhaps the finest reporter in America.”

Mathias Uhlen

Dr Mathias Uhlen is Professor of Microbiology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Uhlen is member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA), the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and member of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) council.

Julia Vitarello

Julia Vitarello is founder and CEO of Mila’s Miracle Foundation. Her life has taken her from Washington, D.C., where she grew up, to Amherst College, where she pursued a liberal arts degree, and then to Italy, where she lived and worked for many years.

Christopher Walsh

Christopher Walsh is the Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (BCMP) at Harvard Medical School.

Harriet Warshaw

Harriet Warshaw is the executive director of The Conversation Project, a public engagement campaign dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care.

Bob Weinberg

Robert A. Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bob and his colleagues isolated the first human cancer-causing gene, the ras oncogene, and the first known tumor suppressor gene, Rb, the retinoblastoma gene.

Steve Williams

Dr. Williams trained as a physician at Charing Cross and Westminster medical school, University of London, and following his internships returned to the same institution for a Ph.D. in medicine and physiology.

Phyllis Wise, Ph.D.

One of society’s greatest challenges today is to improve health and achieve health equity for all at lower cost. I will speak about the plan of the Colorado Longitudinal Study (COLS) to create the largest, longitudinal repository of biological specimens and associated community and public health data in the world.

Jay Wohlgemuth

Dr. Wohlgemuth is Vice President of Science & Innovation of the Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

Nathan Wolfe

Dr. Nathan Wolfe is an epidemiologist who fights disease pandemics with an unprecedented early warning system to forecast, pinpoint and control new plagues worldwide before they kill millions.

Lynne Wolfe

Lynne has been a nurse for over 30 years and a Nurse Practitioner working with children and adults who have all types of rare diseases for 25 years.

Stephan Wolfert

Stephan Wolfert left a career in the military for a life in the theatre after seeing Shakespeare’s Richard III. Stephan received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Trinity Repertory Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. On Broadway, Stephan created and directed the military segments for Twyla Tharp & Billy Joel’s Tony-Award winning production Movin’ Out and has been a character coach for Cirque du Soleil’s, Mystere.

Timothy Yu

Dr. Tim Yu is a neurologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. A graduate of Harvard College, he completed his M.D. and Ph.D. at UC San Francisco and neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.