If you experience difficulty with the video you can Watch on YouTube
Larry Hunter is a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.
He is widely recognized as one of the founders of bioinformatics; he served as the first President of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), and created several of the most important conferences in the field, including ISMB, PSB and VizBi. Hunter’s research interests span a wide range of areas, from cognitive science to rational drug design. He has published more than 100 scientific papers, holds two patents and has been elected a fellow of both the ISCB and the American College of Medical Informatics. His primary focus recently has been the integration of natural language processing, knowledge representation, machine learning and advanced visualization techniques to address challenges in interpreting data generated by high throughput molecular biology.
He received a PhD in computer science from Yale University in 1989, and then joined the National Institutes of Health as a staff scientist, first at the National Library of Medicine and then at the National Cancer Institute, before coming to Colorado in 2000.
Abstract
Abstract coming soon!
Abstract
For half a century, the RNA research community has seen RNA emerge from being simply a copy of the information stored in DNA to an active participant in the chemistry of life. But these breathtaking discoveries went largely unnoticed by the general public, even as people became more conversant with DNA. Then in 2020, the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines put RNA in the spotlight — and opened the door for sharing the wonders of RNA science with the world.Biography
Tom Cech is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder). In 1982, Cech and his research group announced that an RNA molecule from Tetrahymena, a single-celled pond organism, cut and rejoined chemical bonds in the complete absence of proteins. This discovery of self-splicing RNA provided the first exception to the long-held belief that biological reactions are always catalyzed by proteins. In addition, it has been heralded as providing a new, plausible scenario for the origin of life because RNA can be both an information-carrying molecule and a catalyst; perhaps the first self-reproducing system consisted of RNA alone. From 2000-2009, he served as President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private biomedical research organization in the U.S.A. He then returned to full-time research and teaching at CU Boulder, also serving as the Founding Director of the university’s BioFrontiers Institute.
Cech’s work has been recognized by many national and international awards and prizes, including the Heineken Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1988), the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1988), the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989), and the National Medal of Science (1995). He has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1987) and National Academy of Medicine (2000) and is a lifetime professor of the American Cancer Society.
Tom received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Abstract
The emergence of combined multi-omic and clinical data directly from patient tissue, along with the availability of ultra-scale computing, and recent developments in AI that can reverse-engineer causal mechanisms from observational data, have converged to enable the creation of Gemini Digital Twins, replicas of human disease biology. Gemini Digital Twins are computational representations of human disease that capture a critical mass of the known and unknown genetic and molecular interactions that causally drive clinical and physiological outcomes. “Virtual experiments” or simulations are conducted on these human disease replicas to discover hidden drivers of disease progression and drug response. This approach is especially important in diseases such as neurodegenerative diseases and rare diseases where the preclinical models–animals, cell lines, stem cells–are especially poor proxies of human disease. When this technology and approach is applied to rare diseases, it has the potential to discover and develop new therapeutics that can effectively treat disease in ways that are significantly more effective than has been possible to date. While rare diseases such as sickle cell anemia and Huntington’s Disease have known disease drivers at the genetic level, discovering and developing effective drugs has been elusive as “the cause is not always the cure. “ The Huntington gene was discovered by Jim Gusella at Massachusetts General Hospital over 30 years ago as the definitive genetic cause of the disease, but we still do not have an effective disease-modifying therapy. Here we will present an approach and early evidence of the application of this approach to Huntington’s Disease that has yielded a compelling discovery program that is advancing towards the clinic. The approach may be the first true example of a drug candidate moving into clinical development based on an entirely hypothesis-free approach to unraveling previously unknown human biology.Biography
Colin Hill is a leading voice in AI and precision medicine and brings impressive leadership experience in developing and commercializing AI solutions and discoveries in biopharmaceutical drug discovery and development and in managed care industries. Colin currently serves on the board of Centrexion Therapeutics, a biotech company focused on developing and commercializing non-opioid, non-addictive chronic pain drugs.
Colin previously served on the boards of Biotelemetry Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAT), the leading mobile health information company (acquired by Philips in 2021), and PPD Inc. (NASDAQ: PPD), a leading global contract research organization (acquired by Thermo in 2021), and was a founding member of the Board of Directors of AesRx, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of new treatments for sickle cell disease (acquired by Baxter in 2014).
He was also a founding board member of TMed (Transforming Medicine: The Elizabeth Kauffman Institute), a non-profit foundation (501c3) dedicated to the advancement of personalized medicine. In 2016, he was appointed by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to the Massachusetts Digital Health Council. Colin was the founding Chairman of O’Reilly Media’s Strata Rx in 2012, the first healthcare big data conference in the industry. In 2004, Colin was named to MIT Technology Review’s TR100 list of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
He is a frequent speaker at national and international scientific and industry conferences and has appeared in numerous publications and television programs, including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC Morning Call & SquawkBox, Nature, Boston Globe, Politico, Forbes, Wired, and The Economist.
Abstract
Abstract coming soon!
Abstract
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides powerful tools for mapping the human brain. However, because conventional fMRI provides little information about brain function in individuals, it is rarely used for clinical applications. Given that mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases disrupt normal thought processes, the lack of any principled method for assessing thought patterns directly presents a serious limitation to our ability to diagnose these disorders. Recent breakthroughs in individualized functional brain mapping could provide new opportunities to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of brain disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.Biography
Jack Gallant is Chancellor’s Professor and Class of 1940 Chair at the University of California at Berkeley. He holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and past Chair of the IEEE Brain Community.
Professor Gallant’s research focuses on high-resolution functional mapping and quantitative computational modeling of human brain networks. His lab has created detailed functional maps of human brain networks mediating vision, language comprehension, and navigation. They have used these maps to decode and reconstruct perceptual experiences directly from brain activity.
Abstract
For millennia, humans have used music to convey information. Songs and melodies heighten interest, facilitate comprehension, and promote long-term recall. The timing and variations in pitch and rhythm of a song lead the listener to process the information differently when compared to spoken or silently read information. Extensive research using neuroimaging highlights unique cognitive processing of content in song. Individuals with language processing challenges may benefit from sung information, but teachers and care providers may not have the time or skill to sing information during a lesson. While it is possible to pre-record and play back sung information, pre-recorded lesson plans are inflexible and cannot be rapidly tailored to individual student needs.Biography
Lex Van der Ploeg is the Founder, President, Chairman, and CSO of RIFFIT, an edtech company focused on AI-enabled digital applications to advance learning and communication for diverse neurological conditions, as well as general communication and entertainment. He is also an advisor to DeuteRx, Neuromity, Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, and Board of Advisors for IRIS Kinetics.
Van der Ploeg is an experienced biotech executive, scientist, and entrepreneur, contributing to the development of novel therapeutics and successful M&A transactions. Over the past ten years, he has played a key role in the development of Rhythm Pharmaceuticals’ setmelanotide (IPO in 2017), the sale of Motus Therapeutics for relamorelin (acquired by Allergan in 2016), and the sale of DeuteRx’s DRX065 (now PXL065 following its 2018 acquisition by Poxel). He also supported the sale of Deuteria Pharmaceuticals to Celgene, the sale of Deuteria assets to Salarius, and the founding of Neuromity.
Prior to RIFFIT, Van der Ploeg was the senior vice president of integrative medicine and translational sciences at Abraxis Bioscience, acquired by Celgene in 2010. He spent 17 years at Merck, establishing and growing the Merck Boston research laboratories, discovering the ghrelin receptor, and contributing to the discovery of the target for ivermectin and the development of vorinostat. Van der Ploeg put over 15 programs into clinical development and guided programs at Banyu Res labs in Japan for ten years, and restructured the Merck San Diego laboratory. Before joining industry, he was a tenured faculty member at Columbia University in infectious diseases.
Van der Ploeg has received numerous awards, has over 250 peer-reviewed publications, and is an inventor on over 70 patents.
Abstract
Abstract coming soon!
Abstract
Abstract coming soon!
Abstract
The NIH All of Us Research Program is working to advance precision medicine by building the largest, most diverse biomedical data resource in the world. Launched in May 2018, All of Us seeks to gather health data from one million or more participants across the United States, representing a wide array of backgrounds, ages, geographic regions, and health statuses.Biography
Chris Lunt is the Chief Technology Officer for the All of Us Research Program. Chris has more than 20 years of experience designing web services and other data platforms, and has spent the last 10 years working as a technology executive. He joins the NIH from GetInsured, where he served as the Vice President of Government Solutions for the previous four years. There, he worked with the federal government, states, and the vendor community to improve health insurance shopping and enrollment systems. Previously, Chris worked as an HHS entrepreneur. He has also served as the Vice President of Engineering at Readyforce, the Chief Executive Officer of Nombray, the Founder and Vice President of Engineering at WisdomArk, and the Senior Director of Engineering at Friendster.
Abstract
Why is it so hard for scientists in healthcare and biology to command programming power? Data has dominated the field for decades, and wave after wave of scientists have been exciting graduate students trained in informatics at some level. However, the field has (so far) successfully resisted network effects in data and systemic end-user programming as a day-to-day practice. If we are going to afford scientists real programming power, we need better software systems to support science at scale. It's just a small matter of programming.Biography
John Wilbanks works at the intersection of data, software, policy, and science. He is currently Head of Product for the Data Sciences Platform at the Broad Institute, which serves 65,000+ data scientists on more than 80PB of biomedical data. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Milken Institute’s FasterCures, and as Senior Fellow at the Datasphere Initiative.
He was most recently Head of Data at Biogen Digital Health, where he led teams running real-world digital studies, building data products, and implementing data science software platforms. Before Biogen, he was Chief Commons Officer at Sage Bionetworks, where he led efforts in governance and informed consent. Sage’s informed consent toolkit has been integrated into Apple’s ResearchKit, Android ResearchStack, and has supported the enrollment of hundreds of thousands of participants in mobile studies since its open source release in 2016.
John’s technical background includes a stint in web standards at the World Wide Web Consortium, as the Founder and CEO of a venture-backed graph bioinformatics company, and in voice/pen human-computer interface. His policy background includes leading open science at Creative Commons (when he was also a visiting scientist at the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation), serving on the national advisory board for the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central, and as a Legislative Assistant in the US House of Representatives.
John holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Tulane University in New Orleans.
Abstract
Abstract coming soon!
Abstract
In this talk, Bennett will review the research and key conclusions in his new book A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains. Despite centuries of effort, we still do not understand how the human brain works. The brain is full of messy redundancy that makes it difficult to reverse engineer by trying to decompose brain structures into various functions. Bennett will propose an alternative approach for reverse engineering the algorithms in the human brain: instead of trying to decompose the algorithms within the modern human brain, we can track the key evolutionary breakthroughs through which the modern human brain emerged. This gives us a new tool in our toolbox for trying to interpret many perplexing aspects of human intelligence. Bennett proposes that human brain evolution can be approximated as the culmination of five algorithmic breakthroughs.Biography
Max Bennett is an entrepreneur and researcher. He has co-founded multiple AI companies, holds several patents for AI technologies, and has published numerous scientific papers on the topics of evolutionary neuroscience and intelligence. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and the Built In NYC’s 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. Most notably, Bennett was the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Bluecore, a company that helps the largest brands in the world use AI to personalize their marketing. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing companies, as well as Glassdoor’s 50 Best Places to Work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 billion. Bennett graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, summa cum laude, with a degree in economics and mathematics.
Abstract
The path to significant innovation and change can be long, but if you work on major problems creatively and hard enough, you can have a major impact. Khosla Ventures has been actively investing in a number of areas in biology and medicine over the last decade that are now poised to improve the world in a variety of ways. These include efforts in neurotechnology, fetal-maternal medicine, tissue engineering, whole organism engineering, fundamental approaches to age-related diseases, and AI in healthcare and drug discovery. However, the path to impact can take time, and it is important to get the incentive structures for all parties appropriately aligned along the journey, including right at the start of the journey, but they should also be iterated as time unfolds.Biography
Alex Morgan is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley VC fund that invests broadly in technology from seed stage funding to later stage capital investments. Alex has a special focus on biotechnology, healthcare, and data-driven innovation. He serves on the boards of a number of Khosla Ventures portfolio companies and works on company incubation and new investments.
Alex has an undergraduate degree in Physics, MS in Biology, MS and PhD in Biomedical Informatics, an MD, and did a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry. Before studying biology and medicine, he spent six years as an AI researcher. As a scientist, Alex has published over 50 scientific publications, primarily at the intersection of computer science, biology, and healthcare, and has licensed IP to three separate companies.
