Executive Director, Personalized Medicine Coalition

Edward Abrahams, executive director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, a nonprofit educational and advocacy group representing diverse members with an interest in advancing medical progress through the adoption of personalized medicine concepts and products, brings extensive experience in industry, academia, and government to the position. As former executive director of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association, Dr. Abrahams managed all aspects of the Association, including public advocacy, media relations, and educational programs, tripling its size and revenues in three years. He also spearheaded the successful effort that led to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's investment of $200 million to commercialize biotechnology in that state. Previously, Dr. Abrahams had been assistant vice president for federal relations at the University of Pennsylvania, and also held a senior administrative position at Brown University. Before becoming a university administrator, Dr. Abrahams worked seven years for the United States Congress, including as a legislative assistant to Senator Lloyd Bentsen and as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee under the chairmanship of Congressman Lee Hamilton. (Hide)

Navigenics, Inc.

Ms. Baker was most recently an executive-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which she joined in 2006. Prior to that, she was president of BabyCenter, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company. Under her leadership, BabyCenter became the world's leading website for new and expectant parents, winning numerous online health awards and expanding significantly offline and internationally.

Prior to her tenure with BabyCenter and Johnson & Johnson, she was a senior vice president at Intuit, Inc., which she joined in 1989 as product manager for Quicken. Ms. Baker led the growth of Quicken into the No. 1 personal finance product in the world, along with international expansion and the launch of Quicken.com. Ms. Baker also held executive or product management positions at Now Software, Migent Software, and E.F. Hutton.

Ms. Baker attended Stanford University, graduating with degrees in economics and sociology. She served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University from 1996-2003, including oversight of the Stanford Medical Center, and continues to serve as a trustee emeritus. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cozi Group and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. (Hide)

CEO, Genomic Healthcare Strategies

Dr. Batchelder has been a consultant for a several health care companies including GenData, a new nonprofit corporation created by the State of Utah, the University of Utah, and the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, where he was the architect of a strategy to leverage the Utah Population Database (genotypic and phenotypic information from founder families) in clinical trials and drug discovery; and Scientia, an oncology phenotype company working in a unique alliance with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, where he set up a system to collect new genomic, gene expression profiling and proteomics data in cancer. He has also been an officer in several health-care organizations.

As chief technical officer of Worldcare Clinical Trials, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was a member of a team that took a money-losing, niche contract-research organization specializing in fast-track drug approval into profitability. He was a core member of the team that created Harvard Salud Integral, a new HMO in Mexico City, where he helped secure angel funding in a newly privatized health care environment and helped to grow the plan to cover 150,000 patients. He was also an early principal with Amicas, a company that was successfully sold for approximately $30 million cash and stock equivalents.

Dr. Batchelder received an MD from Hahnemann University School of Medicine, an MS in materials science from New York University, a DMD from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine, and a BA in physics from Middlebury College. As a postgraduate, he trained in medical informatics at the Boston VA Medical Center and was on the professional research staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed a fellowship at the Food and Drug Administration. (Hide)

Harvard George Church Personal Genome Project

Jason Bobe currently works for the Personal Genome Project based out of George Church's lab at HMS, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has degrees in molecular biology and information systems, although he is not a scientist or a computer programmer. He's worked for a genetic counseling start-up, doing business development, and has a graduate degree from a business school, but is not really a business person. History of science and medicine are his passions, particularly when they lend insight to present day issues or serve as tools for forecasting. The entrepreneurship of ideas, especially around emerging technologies with rich informational components and significant social and personal impacts, defines the space where he likes to get involved, both intellectually and professionally. He is particularly interested in how new technologies and the Web are going to redefine the relationships between scientific research communities, communities from the general public, and the networks of actors in between. (Hide)

Atlas Venture

Dr. Bruce L. Booth is a principal with Atlas Venture, a global venture capital firm, where he focuses exclusively on early-stage life science companies across biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and technologies, diagnostics, and research platforms. Prior to Atlas Venture, Bruce was a principal at Caxton Health Holdings LLC, a health care-focused investment firm. He focused on the firm's private equity activities, ranging from early-stage venture capital through late-stage buyouts. Prior to joining Caxton Health, he was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company, a global strategic management consulting firm, where he focused on R&D productivity, corporate strategy, and business development issues for several major biopharmaceutical companies.

Bruce works closely with Atlas Venture portfolio companies ARCA Discovery, Archemix, Avila, Dynogen, Miragen Therapeutics, NxStage Medical (NASDAQ: NXTM), Prestwick Pharmaceuticals, Proprius, SGX Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SGXP), and Zafgen. He serves on the boards of Zafgen and Miragen Therapeutics.

As a British Marshall Scholar, Bruce earned a doctorate in molecular immunology from Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Medicine and the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. He received a bachelor of science degree with highest honors in biochemistry from the Pennsylvania State University, where he was an Evan Pugh Scholar.

He currently serves on the New York Academy of Medicine Board of Trustees and is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Bruce has also authored numerous scientific papers and biotechnology business reviews, including several in Nature journals. (Hide)

Co-Founder and Vice President of Business Development, Predictive Bioscience

Eugene Chiu co-founded Predictive Biosciences and is responsible for the company's business strategy, marketing, and business development activities. Predictive Biosciences is applying proprietary urinary protein biomarkers to develop and commercialize patient-friendly diagnostics across multiple cancer types. The company is initially focused on the precise, real-time management of cancer survivors. Predictive Biosciences, based in Lexington, MA, is funded by Highland Capital Partners and IDG Ventures Boston.

Eugene was previously a founding team member of Codon Devices, a private biotechnology company enabling commercial applications of synthetic biology with industrial-scale gene synthesis. As business development lead, he helped develop Codon's business strategy and recruit its scientific advisory board. Codon Devices is funded by Highland Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Alloy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Flagship Ventures.

From 1999 to 2003, he was co-founder and VP, Business Development, of BigMachines, a leading provider of on-demand configuration and quoting software, where he raised $30 million in financing, built the marketing and business development functions, and helped direct the company to profitability. Earlier, he managed iNiku business development at NIKU Corporation leading up to its successful IPO and was a consultant at McKinsey. Eugene performed graduate research under the guidance of Professor Robert Langer at MIT. He earned his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College, his M.S. in health sciences and technology from MIT, and his MBA from Harvard Business School. (Hide)

Associate Director for Genomics, Office of Clinical Pharmacology and Biopharmaceutics, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research/FDA

Dr. Frueh holds the position of associate director for genomics in the Office of Clinical Pharmacology (OCP) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the FDA and also chairs the FDA-wide Interdisciplinary Pharmacogenomics Review Group (IPRG). Prior to his appointment at the FDA, Dr. Frueh was managing partner at Stepoutside Consulting, LLC, and served as a special government employee to the FDA and as a consultant to the CDC's NHANES project. He held the position of research director for pharmacogenetics at Transgenomic, Inc., managing the expansion of the business into new program areas for the diagnosis of genetic disorders. Prior, Dr. Frueh was the assistant director for biology at Protogene Laboratories, Inc., responsible for application development based on novel, in situ synthesized DNA microarray technology. He held an appointment as assistant professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, in the departments of Pharmacology and Medicine and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and at the Biocenter of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Felix is a native of Basel and lives in Maryland with his wife and two sons. (Hide)

Partner, InterWest Partners

Linda Grais, M.D. brings to InterWest Partners a wide array of experience as a physician, attorney, and biotechnology entrepreneur.

Previously, Dr. Grais was a founder and executive vice president of SGX Pharmaceuticals (SGXP), a drug discovery company focusing on new treatments for cancer. Prior to that, she was a corporate attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she represented biotechnology and medical device companies in venture financings, public offerings, and strategic partnerships.

Before practicing law, Dr. Grais worked as an assistant clinical professor of Internal Medicine and Critical Care at the University of California, San Francisco. She has also served as a consultant to the Institute of Medicine, and is a member of the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors.

Dr. Grais received a B.A. from Yale University, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; an M.D. from Yale Medical School; and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. (Hide)

General Partner, IDG Ventures Michael founded IDG Ventures in Boston in 2001 and is a general partner focusing on information technology, health care, and medical technology investments. He currently represents IDG Ventures on the boards of BlueTarp, MicroCHIPS, Predictive Biosciences, Protein Forest, and VidSys, and led the firm's investment in T2 Biosystems and Magen Biosciences. He also is on the board of International Data Group, a global media company.

Prior to founding IDG Ventures, Michael was with Polaris Venture Partners, where he focused on both early-stage and later-stage financings for emerging growth companies. Before Polaris, Michael served for over five years as senior vice president and founding partner of GCC Investments, a successful $200 million private equity fund. Prior to GCC Investments, Michael was a vice president and one of the early professionals at Wasserstein Perella & Co., an international merchant bank with a $1.0 billion private equity fund. Additionally, Michael was a member of the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Morgan Stanley & Co. and worked in the Leveraged Buyout Group of Credit Suisse First Boston.

Michael currently serves as the president of the New England Venture Capital Association.

Michael received a BA with honors in chemistry from Williams College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. (Hide)

SVP, Strategy and Corporate Development, Gene Express, Inc.

Dr. Lester is senior VP of Gene Express in the role of Strategy and Corporate Development. In addition, he is president of ITHW, Inc., consulting on Innovative Technologies for Health and Wellness. Previously he was New York site head of Global Clinical Technology and director of Pfizer Human Health Technologies at Pfizer. He received PhD in biological sciences from Northwestern University in 1984. From 1983 to 1985, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology from Harvard University Medical School. He then joined the faculty in 1985 of the Deptartment of Membrane Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. In 1990, he moved to the U.S. and was a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health. In 1993, he moved to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration, where he held numerous positions until his departure in 2001. His final position at CDER was as the associate director and senior science advisor of the Office of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In 2001, he was appointed director of Clinical Technologies at Pharmacia Corp., until May 2003, when, upon the acquisition of Pharmacia by Pfizer, he transferred to his present position.

Research interests and activities have included the integration of innovative technologies in health care and wellness and how society can move towards "individualized medicine." Dr. Lester has an extensive publication record included five edited volumes. He is active in numerous professional societies and has a strong record in public science policy activities. (Hide)

Director, Technology Management, U.S. Chief Technology Office, Roche Diagnostics

Linda McAllister holds a B.S. in biology from the California Institute of Technology, a Ph.D. in neurosciences, and an M.D. from Stanford Medical School. She completed internal medicine house staff training at University of California, San Francisco, and postdoctoral research programs in cardiology and biochemistry at Stanford. She held roles in scientific collaborations and marketing at Affymetrix and business development with Celera Diagnostics, and from 1994 to 2005 was assistant clincial professor of medicine at UCSF. She is currently working in a technology evaluation role for divisional business development of Roche Diagnostics. Research experience includes molecular biology, early development, and genetics. She is interested in the translation of new knowledge and technology to health care. (Hide)

Principal, Genomic Healthcare Strategies >Peter Miller is an experienced entrepreneur, manager, innovator, coach, strategist, and consultant. He has spent his career helping build entrepreneurial companies.

Mr. Miller was a founding member, and later vice president, COO, and board member, of Abt Associates Inc., now a $180-million firm working in fields such as health care research and policy, clinical trials, and survey research. At Abt he ran all day-to-day operations, sales and marketing, service delivery, and planning.

He has helped build a number of companies in software and professional services and grow them to the acquisition stage. These include Waterfield Technology Group and SNAP Software, where he was a board member and COO. SNAP was sold to Dun & Bradstreet and Waterfield to Whitman Hart.

Mr. Miller has worked on seven successful money-raising ventures and has been involved in M/A activities on both "buy" and "sell" sides. He has been a licensed (NASD) broker/dealer.

He has also been a long-term strategic advisor to firms such as Molecular, Inc., Nano-C, and Banta Corporation and has consulted to such firms as Unum Life Insurance, Reliant Energy, USAGroup, and LDI, Limited.

He is the former board chairman of the International MIT Enterprise Forum, a past board member of the MIT Alumni Association, and currently serves as codirector of the MIT Venture Mentoring Service.

Mr. Miller holds an SB degree from MIT, and completed all coursework in the Sloan School Masters' program. He has taught classes at MIT, Harvard, BU, and Babson, and frequently writes and speaks on issues such as entrepreneurship, business strategy, business plan development, and angel investing. (Hide)

Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer, Helicos BioSciences Corporation

Dr. Milos joined Helicos in June 2007. Her expertise and extensive knowledge in the life sciences advances the company's efforts to develop innovative and breakthrough technology. She previously served as executive director at Pfizer Global Research and Development, where she was responsible for leadership, strategic alignment, and execution of the scientific disciplines of pharmacogenomics, proteomics, metabonomics, and RNA profiling across the Pfizer portfolio from early discovery into the marketplace. She joined Pfizer in 1993 and held numerous research positions of increasing responsibility focusing on cardiovascular and metabolic disease, pharmacogenomics, DNA sequencing, biomarkers, and molecular sciences.

Dr. Milos serves on the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research and was pivotal in the establishment and oversight of key Pfizer strategic investments in the genomics area, most notably the Genetic Association Information Network. She also sits on several editorial boards for journals and has published and presented extensively in the genomics area. Dr. Milos conducted post-doctoral fellowships at Brown University and Harvard University. She earned her MS and PhD degrees at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and received her BA from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. (Hide)

Professor, Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, Predictive Biosciences

Dr. Marsha A. Moses is a professor at Harvard Medical School and a senior principal investigator in the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston. She is an internationally recognized biochemist who has had a longstanding interest in identifying the molecules and understanding the mechanisms that regulate angiogenesis. To complement these studies, Dr. Moses has established a Proteomics Initiative in her laboratory that has now led to the discovery of a panel of urinary cancer biomarkers that not only predict disease status in cancer patients but are also sensitive and specific markers of disease progression and therapeutic efficacy of cancer drugs.

Dr. Moses received her PhD in biochemistry from Boston University, and completed a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship at Children's Hospital Boston and MIT. She serves on, or has chaired, a variety of national peer review panels. Dr. Moses has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including articles in Science, Cell, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and the New England Journal of Medicine. She has presented over 100 lectures to national and international audiences. Dr. Moses holds 40 patents, both issued and pending. Her awards and honors include the Cancer Research Foundation Award, the American Cancer Society Research Award, and the Center for Excellence in Women's Health Research Award from Harvard Medical School. (Hide)

Director, Technology Licensing Office, MIT

Lita Nelsen is the Director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been since 1986. This office manages over five hundred new inventions per year from MIT, the Whitehead Institute, and Lincoln Laboratory. Typically, they negotiate over one hundred licenses, and start up over twenty new companies per year.

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 Technology Licensing Office, Ms. Nelsen spent twenty years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology, at such companies as Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Applied Biotechnology.

Ms. Nelsen was the 1992 president of the Association of University Technology Managers and serves on the board the Mount Auburn Hospital, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Foundation. She serves as the intellectual property advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is a founding and current board member of the Center for Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research.

Ms. Nelsen is widely published in the field of technology transfer and university/industry collaborations and was a CMI Fellow at the University of Cambridge with the Cambridge MIT Institute studying university/industry/government partnerships in technology transfer and local economic development. She is a co-founder of Praxis, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme. (Hide)

Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP

David Resnick focuses his practice in the life sciences, including patent prosecution, patent interferences, transaction matters and associated client counseling. He has extensive experience in prosecuting applications for major U.S. research institutions and domestic and international corporations. The subject matter includes proteomics, tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, stem cells, angiogenesis modulation, cancer vaccines, treatment of cancer, immune modulation, medical devices, and diagnostics. Mr. Resnick has developed a particular focus on the areas on pharmacogenomics, proteomics, and disease biomarkers and their application in the evolving field of personalized medicine.

Mr. Resnick has assisted in representing major U.S. research institutions, U.S. companies, and foreign corporations, on interferences before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that have involved complex technical areas. He has also assisted clients by evaluating their intellectual property portfolios, as well as the intellectual property held by competitors or potential acquisitions or partners. In connection with these activities, he has been involved with due diligence and freedom-to-operate analyses and has prepared infringement and validity opinions.

Mr. Resnick has lectured to the Association of University and Technology Managers, Inc. (AUTM), and he has written articles on patent prosecution practice, personalized medicine, and technology issues for Nature Biotechnology, The Journal of Biolaw & Business, Personalized Medicine, and other publications. (Hide)

Managing General Partner, Still River Funds

Jim Saalfield has more than twenty years of experience investing in and advising successful early stage companies. Jim has served on the boards of more than thirty public and private companies in the life sciences, remote data acquisition, and data distribution fields. He founded Still River Management Company to manage the Dean's Hill Limited Partnership in 1994.

Prior to forming the Still River Funds and Dean's Hill partnerships, Jim was a general partner in Fleet Financial Group's venture capital funds, Fleet Venture Partners I through IV. At Fleet, he invested in early-stage and growth companies, as well as small management buyouts. In addition to twenty-six direct investments, Fleet Venture Partners acquired and managed over $90 million in venture investment assets adding over fifty additional companies to the venture portfolio. Earlier in his career, he served as the assistant dean of administrative affairs at Harvard Business School, as well as an admissions and financial aid officer.

At Still River Funds, Jim has led the investments in Broadband Access Systems, Bus-Tech, Contour Semiconductor, Global Communication Devices, MEMSIC, Spinwave Systems, Stargus, US Genomics, and Xanthus Pharmaceuticals.

Jim currently sits on the board of directors of Bus-Tech, Contour Semiconductor, MEMSIC, Snip-its, Spinwave Systems, Tracer Technologies, US Genomics, and Xanthus Pharmaceuticals.

Jim received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Oberlin College. (Hide)

SVP, Molecular Medicine

Fintan Steele joined Feinstein Kean Healthcare in 2006 as the senior vice president for the Molecular Medicine practice, and was promoted to executive vice president of the Life Sciences group in 2007. His background includes more than 15 years of experience in communicating the science and implications of genetics and genomics to a variety of audiences.

Prior to joining Feinstein Kean, Fintan was the director of communications for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the new collaborative effort by MIT, Harvard, and its affiliated hospitals and the Whitehead Institute, founded to bring the power of genomics to medicine. He previously worked as the global head of communications for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, the research division of Novartis.

In addition to his communications director experiences, Fintan held several editorial positions for public and private scientific publishers, including News and News & Views editor for Nature Medicine, executive editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and executive editor of Genomics and of Molecular Therapy. He earned his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the National Eye Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Fintan also holds a master of divinity degree from St. Meinrad School of Theology as well as a master of arts degree in medical ethics/religious studies from Indiana University, where he focused on ethical issues in genetic engineering. He has published many articles, both on scientific findings and the implications of scientific findings for those affected by them. (Hide)

Vice President Clinical Practice, Medco Health Solutions, Inc.

J. Russell Teagarden is vice president of Clinical Practices and Therapeutics at Medco Health Solutions, Inc. He holds academic appointments at Rutgers College of Pharmacy, Ohio Northern University College of Pharmacy, and the Albany College of Pharmacy. He served for twelve years as a drug information specialist and as a clinical pharmacist in the Chicago teaching hospital community. During this time, Mr. Teagarden was assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health from September 2001 to June 2002. Mr. Teagarden received a B.S. in pharmacy from the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy and an M.A. in research methodology from Loyola University of Chicago. He completed a residency in hospital pharmacy at Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago. (Hide)

President, Co-Bio Consulting

Mr. Trusheim has over 15 years of executive experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. He began his life sciences management career at Monsanto, where he held progressive positions as a director or vice president for Searle Pharmaceuticals, Monsanto Health Solutions, and Monsanto Genomics, and finally as co-president and COO of Cereon Genomics. Mr. Trusheim was subsequently the founder and CEO of Cantata Laboratories, a diagnostics and biomarker company, and he has also served as a board director as well as the interim president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Mr. Trusheim has extensive business and corporate development experience in leading a wide variety of research and licensing agreements, strategic corporate partnerships and alliances, equity and debt financings, and M&A transactions. He holds a BS degree in chemistry from Stanford University and a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management. (Hide)