Weida Tong Director, Center for Bioinformatics FDA Weida leads the Center for Bioinformatics at the FDA. This is designed to develop bioinformatic methodologies and standards to support FDA research and regulation, and to advance regulatory science and personalized medicine.
Graeme Hodgson Associate Director, Biomarkers & Translational Biology ARIAD Graeme’s work has primarily involved development and implementation of genomic approaches for cancer target discovery and validation, and more recently has focused on molecular genetic and genomic applications for biomarker discovery, development, and implementation in oncology clinical trials.
Oleg Iartchouk Global Head, Next Generation Sequencing Novartis After a number of years in a similar role at Sanofi, Oleg is currently Global Head of NGS at Novartis, and the leading expert in the application of next gen sequencing in oncology drug discovery and early clinical development.
Scott Kahn Chairman, Biomarkers Council International Cancer Advocacy Center (ICAN) Scott supervises a team of experts from industry and academia who collectively assimilate extensive, up to date knowledge on pharmacodynamic, pharmacogenomic and predictive biomarkers, as well as biomarker applications at all stages of discovery and clinical development.
Cyrus Hedvat Director, Diagnostic Molecular Pathology Laboratory Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Cyrus is actively involved in the molecular testing of a high volume of hematological malignancies and solid tumors, and has led efforts to implement next generation sequencing tests in the clinical lab, now a routine part of clinical testing.
Peter Kazon General Counsel American Clinical Laboratory Association Peter is a senior counsel at Alston & Bird, concentrating on health care law and policy. Peter counsels health care providers on regulatory issues, involving Medicare reimbursement. He specializes in advizing clinical laboratories and companies furnishing diagnostic services and products on regulatory issues.
Danielle Greenawalt Principal Scientists I, Oncology Bioinformatics AstraZeneca Danielle spent the last 5 years at Merck, where most recently she has been leading pharmacogenetics in Oncology and internal efforts around analysis of NGS data. At AstraZeneca, she leads bioinformatics in the Oncology Target ID/ Validation space.
Brian Dougherty Translational Genomics Lead, Oncology AstraZeneca Brian responsibilities at AZ include coordinating the delivery of genetic / genomic technologies, including Next- Gen sequencing, across the Oncology Translational Science and Oncology iMed with the goal of developing DNAbased biomarkers, patient selection strategies, and identifying new geneticsbased cancer targets.
Yinghui Zhou Principal Scientist AVEO Yinghui joined AVEO pharmaceuticals 10 years ago and is currently group leader in cancer biology. He is in charge of in vivo platform development and preclinical pharmacology support for multiple drug discovery and development programs.
Ted Burczynski Head of Integrated Clinical Biomarker, Technologies Bristol-Myers Squibb Ted led the Biomarker Laboratory within Clinical Translational Medicine at Wyeth and conducted postdoctoral work in the field of toxicogenomics at Johnson and Johnson. He is currently an adjunct professor within the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine.
Greg Miles Senior Bioinformatics Scientist Cancer Institute of New Jersey He has expertise in both NGS and gene expression/microarray data analysis. His current projects include microarray/ pathway analysis, exploring G-quadriplexrelated differentially expressed genes and the development of novel bioinformatics methods for determining microRNA/ mRNA dysregulations in cancer and their subtypes.
Thomas Westerling Research Fellow Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Thomas joined the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in 2008 for a research fellowship and is developing novel approaches and automated methods in the NGS space to interrogate the impact of non-coding variants and somatic mutations on breast cancer.
Raya Khanin Assistant Director, Bioinformatics Core Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Raya leads the Research group that focuses on computational and bioinformatics analyses of highthroughput cancer genomics data. She actively engages in work with clinical investigators, focusing on data integration, biomarker discovery, and personalized treatments as well as basic cancer research studies.
George Mulligan Director, Translational Medicine Millennium George manages the implementation of oncology biomarker research and is responsible for developing biomarker clinical strategy and protocols. He led the development and implementation of patient selection research programs including a focus on companion diagnostic implementation for oncology programs.
Jinhua Wang Research Assistant Professor New York University Medical Center Jinhua started his graduate PhD training in computational biology and genomics research in the Institute of Biophysics at Chinese Academy of Sciences. He made significant contribution to several pioneering genome sequencing projects as bioinformatics research manager in Chinese National Human Genome Center.
Justin Klekota Scientist II Takeda Oncology With experience in the pharmaceutical industry and academia, Justin manages drug discovery projects at Takeda. These involve analysis of genomic data including NGS and related applications to discovery of antibody-drug conjugate targets, compound biomarkers, and proof-of concept indications.
Jiye Shi Director, Computational Structural Biology UCB Jiye brings 12 years of experience in antibody drug discovery using computational approaches powered by parallel, distributed and cloud computing platforms. His research interests span across drug discovery, structural bioinformatics, nanobiotechnology, mobile cloud computing and communications.
Christopher Maher Assistant Professor of Medicine, Genome Institute Washington University Christopher’s main focus is on the development of novel computational tools and approaches to analyze and interpret data from high-throughput genomic technologies. He helped develop the ChimeraScan tool that can detect gene fusions within nextgeneration transcriptome sequencing data.
Saumya Pant Research Fellow, Clinical Development, Merck