Jon Brilliant was a co-Founder and the CFO of Bigfoot Biomedical, a Silicon Valley-based company focused on reducing the burden of living with insulin-requiring diabetes and to maximize the leverage of health care providers through data, connectivity, automation, and artificial intelligence. Prior to Bigfoot, Jon was a founding Board member and CFO of WellDoc, the pioneer in digital health founded in 2005 – first mobile app cleared by FDA, prescribed by physicians and reimbursed by payers.
Over the years, Jon has been a board member and/or strategic financial advisor to the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, one of the leading venture funds in digital health, and many digital health companies ranging from pain management, mindfulness, schedule optimization, mental health, and substance use disorder.
Raphael has 25 years of experience architecting, designing and delivering global enterprise class solutions across health care, retail, insurance, banking, and oil and gas. Raphael specializes in simplifying complex challenges into innovative solutions. In the last 9 years Raphael has focused on AI technologies and adapting AI to real world problems. Examples include deploying IBM Watson AI capabilities to an oil rig, employing AI in education to improve how children learn, enabling high tech laboratories that “come alive, and enabling fully anthropomorphic social robots that interact with users and guests and perform common functions. Most recently, the goal with Apricity Health enabling physicians and clinical care teams in impoverished locations to perform with the expertise of the world’s top doctors.
Dr. Chin is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, a renowned cancer genomic scientist and a leader in application of technologies, AI/ML and big data in medicine. A dermatologist by training, Dr. Chin conducted research in cancer genomics and cancer biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, served on the executive subcommittee of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and co-led development of the Firehose pipeline at the Broad Institute.
As the founding chair of Department of Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center, she launched initiatives to develop technology-enabled platform capabilities to accelerate translation and democratize evidence-based care. Later, as Chief Innovation Officer of the University of Texas System, Dr. Chin created the Institute for Health Transformation to develop technology-enabled ecosystem to equalize access to care for the underserved. Throughout her career, Dr. Chin has been a champion for cross-industry collaboration. She was the scientific director at the Belfer Applied Cancer Institute of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and later at the Institute for Applied Cancer Science of MD Anderson Cancer Center, both built on a novel organizational construct designed to bridge across academia and industry to enable science-based drug discovery.
Dan has been in executive leadership for the last 20 years as either a CIO or COO. Dan spent 15 years with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) where he had the unique experience of leading and building the IT enterprise for 1994 World Cup Soccer Tournament in the United States. During his tenure he set four internet world records for performance and volume that held for 12 years and won three industry awards for providing the most technologically advanced sporting event in history. Dan also led the IT enterprise for the 1998 World Cup Soccer Tournament in France. While at EDS, Dan achieved the recognition of Project Management Fellow – the highest honor provided to a delivery leader. In 1999, Dan left EDS and being working in the healthcare industry delivering technical solutions and services to improve patient care and support. He has implemented 25 Health Information Exchange (HIE) organizations in the US. For various organizations, Dan has led teams that won three IT Innovation Awards, including two for care management programs and one for electronic charting, and received “Integrator of the Year” twice.
Ronan is a proven leader in drug discovery and development with a successful track record in company building and in portfolio development from early discovery through IND and clinical proof-of-concept. He has over 20 years of experience in oncology R&D including bringing over 20 molecules through IND and into clinical development. Ronan was most recently the CSO at Xilio therapeutics where he built the R&D team from scratch, developed the protein engineering platform, and brought two programs through IND filings and two more to clinical candidate stage within three years. Previously, Ronan led Oncology Discovery and co-led Translational Oncology for Merck (MSD) supporting the R&D pipeline through leadership of discovery, translational, early clinical development and business development teams. Earlier, he was also the first scientist at AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc, with responsibility for developing the research portfolio and he rose through positions of increasing responsibility as the company moved from discovery into clinical development and grew from start-up stage through IPO.
Dr. Wang is a licensed physician with a medical degree from the Medical College of GA and post graduate anesthesiology training from Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is also a software developer and cofounder of REACH Health, a telestroke solution that has generated dozens of peer reviewed telemedicine manuscripts and was recently acquired by Teladoc Health. His last nine years have been dedicated to Utilization Management with Optum360 and Common Spirit Health as a Medical Director responsible for evaluating medical necessity, appropriateness and efficiency in the use of healthcare services, procedures and facilities both with Medicare Fee-for-Service and commercial payors.
Michael Joseph is a Founder and current Co-CEO of Ion Pacific, an innovation-driven investment house that works globally to provide creative and flexible capital to talented entrepreneurs, dynamic companies and like-minded members of the technology investment community. Since Ion Pacific’s founding in early 2015, Michael has worked with the team across Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Europe and the U.S. to quickly build the firm into a thought leader in innovation investing.
Before founding Ion Pacific, Michael was a Managing Director and founding Co-Head of Investment and Merchant Banking at Reorient Group, the Hong Kong listed financial institution that was sold to Jack Ma (Ali Baba) in 2015. While there, Michael worked on several ground-breaking international investments and transactions across multiple IP and brand-driven businesses and led strategic acquisitions for the firm to drive returns and enhance its position in the region. Prior to joining Reorient Group, Michael was part of the Och-Ziff team in Hong Kong where he focused on investing across Asia Pacific, taking part in some of the larger deals in the market at the time. Michael moved to Hong Kong as a Managing Director and a Responsible Officer overseeing Balyasny Asset Management’s expansion into Asia. He took part in leading the group’s regional strategy and took a senior role in investing and establishing the brand in the region. Before moving to Asia, Michael was a portfolio manager at Balyasny in New York City, overseeing the global industrials book.
Prior to joining Balyasny, Michael was a founding member of the global industrial team at the hedge fund, George Weiss Associates. He ran his own book within the firm Industrials portfolio that made investments across markets worldwide. Michael began his career at the Connecticut based hedge Fund, Pequot Capital.
Dr. Sung Poblete has made it her life’s work to improve health and wellness outcomes from all angles: galvanizing awareness, improving patient outcomes, and enabling cutting-edge research.
Dr. Poblete has held senior-level positions with a focus on patient outcomes and disease management. Notably, as Vice President of Clinical Operations for a subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care – North America, she developed and operationalized national chronic kidney disease management programs utilized by national health plans. As Executive Director of the Oxford Health Plans Foundation, she led strategic grant-making initiatives devoted to cutting-edge research and program innovation for projects that improved the healthcare delivery system. In all of her professional activities, Dr. Poblete has brought cutting-edge innovation and groundbreaking initiatives to new and evolving non-profit and corporate healthcare environments.
As CEO of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), Dr. Poblete successfully drove funding and development of the newest and most promising cancer treatments to help patients, dramatically accelerating the rate of new discoveries by connecting top scientists in unprecedented collaborations to create breakthroughs and better cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Since 2008 the organization received pledges of more than $750 million and supported over 100 team science grants and awards.
Most recently, Dr. Poblete has joined the Food Allergy Research and Education non-profit (FARE) as its new CEO, effective May 16th. FARE is the world’s leading non-governmental organization engaged in food allergy advocacy and the largest private funder of food allergy research. Their mission is to improve the quality of life and the health of the estimated 32 million Americans with food allergies, and to provide them hope through the promise of new treatments. FARE is transforming the future of food allergy through innovative initiatives that will lead to increased awareness, new and improved treatments and prevention strategies, effective policies and legislation and novel approaches to managing the disease.
Dr. Poblete currently serves on the Boards of Directors including Apricity Health, Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus, LLC, Preparedness & Treatment Equality Coalition and Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium. Additionally, Dr. Poblete serves on the Advisory Boards of Nok Nok Labs, the Medically Home Group, and the Osteosarcoma Institute.
Dr. Poblete has received numerous grant awards from CDC, NIH, NSF and private foundations since 2002. She served as Centers for Disease Control-UC Health Systems Public Health Scholar from 1999-2000. Dr. Poblete earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in nursing from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She began her teaching career 25 years ago at Rutgers and continues to serve in the role of visiting associate professor at its School of Nursing. In 2016, Dr. Poblete was inducted into Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni, joining a select group of more than 200 honorees across Rutgers’ 256-year history who have devoted time and energy to the greater good of society.
MD Anderson Cancer Center
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. James Allison is Regental Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Olga Keith Wiess Distinguished University Chair for Cancer Research, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research, and the Executive Director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He has spent a distinguished career studying the regulation of T cell responses and developing strategies for cancer immunotherapy. He earned the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Dr. Tasuku Honjo, “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.”
Among his most notable discoveries are the determination of the T cell receptor structure and that CD28 is the major costimulatory molecule that allows full activation of naïve T cells and prevents anergy in T cell clones. His lab resolved a major controversy by demonstrating that CTLA-4 inhibits T-cell activation by opposing CD28-mediated costimulation and that blockade of CTLA-4 could enhance T cell responses, leading to tumor rejection in animal models. This finding and a great deal of persistence paved the way for the field of immune checkpoint blockade therapy for cancer. Work in his lab led to the development of ipilimumab, an antibody to human CTLA-4 and the first immune checkpoint blockade therapy approved by the FDA. Among many honors, he is a member of the National Academies of Science and Medicine and received the Lasker-Debakey Clinical Medical Research award in 2015. His current work seeks to improve immune checkpoint blockade therapies currently used by our clinicians and identify new targets to unleash the immune system in order to eradicate cancer.
Formerly IBM
Dr. Bahrs is an expert in machine learning, artificial intelligence, smart cameras and cloud systems. For 27 years, Dr. Bahrs was IBM’s Chief Technology Officer, Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor and award winning member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He grew a business from a team of 5 based in Austin, Texas, to a world wide $700m/year organization consisting of 3000 technical experts responsible for delivering projects in mobile apps, enterprise integration, and platform migration. Dr. Bahrs was the Red Team review leader for IBM for 10 years. He led large scale projects in banking, healthcare, retail, government, defense, and insurance in the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy. Dr. Bahrs holds 27 US Patents.
Dr. Bahrs received a BS, MS and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Louisiana’s Center for Advanced Computer Studies. He worked as a lab manager, NASA Research Assistant and Landmark Graphics Research Assistant. While in graduate school, Dr. Bahrs wrote the petroleum industry’s first Windows based application for well penetration and production for Resource Technology Group. Dr. Bahrs PhD was on heterogeneous parallel graphics systems.
Icahn School of Medicine
at Mount Sinai
Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, holds the Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Research and is a Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Bhardwaj, Director of Immunotherapy at The Tisch Cancer Institute, is an immunologist who has made seminal contributions to human dendritic cell biology. She is also the founder and Medical Director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the first enterprise of its kind in the area.
Dr. Bhardwaj is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians, and a recipient of the Doris Duke Distinguished Scientist Award. In 2015, she received the Fred W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute. She is a member of Mount Sinai’s institutional COVID Trials Oversight Committee, serving as the chair of the COVID Trials Vaccine Subcommittee, and as a member of 4 other subcommittees, owing to her expertise on dendritic cell and innate immunity research. Dr. Bhardwaj has also attracted multiple federal and foundation grants and has authored over 200 publications.
Genesis Medical Group
David Ellent, MD, is currently CEO, oncologist, and Founder of Genesis Medical Group in Houston, TX. Dr. Ellent has established himself as a dynamic, results-driven physician with 25 years of clinical and administrative roles. He offers leadership and direction to design-focused, effective plans and strategies to support patient healthcare needs and organizational goals. He is a collaborative leader working closely with medical and value-focused professionals to resolve complex issues in clinical, medical administrative, and integrated healthcare solutions services.
Since founding Genesis Medical Group, Dr. Ellent has helped sculpt the organization’s visionary long-term strategic plan. He serves on the Boards of multiple for-profit and non-profit organizations throughout the United States. More broadly, Dr. Ellent has made significant inroads in overcoming systemic dysfunction in the U.S. healthcare system by eliminating unnecessary waste and inefficiencies. Working closely with industry leaders, Dr. Ellent also forms and scales transformative healthcare spinout companies in four fields: chronic care, date utility, traditional productivity, and healthcare value. These efforts and strategic focus have enabled Dr. Ellent to position several organizations for continued growth and innovation expansion across the entire care continuum. His distinguished record has played a pivotal role in achieving its strategic goals and objectives in a diverse healthcare organization. Dr. Ellent and his wife, Maria, have three children.
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Riley Fadden has been a family nurse practitioner since 2012. She works at Massachusetts General Hospital in ambulatory oncology, specializing in the management and treatment of melanoma and other skin cancers. Prior to joining MGH she worked at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in inpatient oncology as an RN. She attended Simmons College, in Boston, MA, for both her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Science in Nursing.
Her primary role at MGH is the management and treatment of patients with melanoma, in both the metastatic and adjuvant settings. She helped establish the Severe Immunotherapy Complications (SIC) Service which is an inpatient multidisciplinary team at MGH that specializes in the management of patients with acute immunotherapy toxicity. Her clinical interests include immunotherapy toxicity management & education, and survivorship.
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Jon Brilliant was a co-Founder
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Flaherty is Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As described in the more than 300 peer reviewed primary research reports he has authored or co-authored, Dr. Flaherty and colleagues made several seminal observations that have defined the treatment of melanoma when they established the efficacy of BRAF, MEK and combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in patients with metastatic melanoma in a series of New England Journal of Medicine articles for which Dr. Flaherty was the first author. Dr. Flaherty joined the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors in 2018 and AACR Board of Directors in 2019. He serves as editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research.
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Hodi is the Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received his MD degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1992. Dr. Hodi competed his postdoctoral training in Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Medical Oncology training at Dana-Farber cancer Institute where he joined the faculty in 1995. His research focuses on gene therapy, the development of immune therapies, and first into human studies for malignant melanoma. Dr. Hodi is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Melanoma Committee, the International Society for the Biological Therapy of cancer, and a founding member of the Society for Melanoma Research.
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Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Lacouture is an Associate Professor and the director of the Oncodermatology Program in the Dermatology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He did his postdoctoral work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, an internship in General Surgery at Cleveland Clinic and residency in dermatology at The University of Chicago, IL. He received his M.D. degree from Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia, where he grew up. His research interests span the disciplines of dermatologic conditions in cancer patients, and those that arise as a consequence of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy or stem cell transplants. Dr. Lacouture is currently the Principal Investigator for “The CHANCE Trial”, A Longitudinal Study of Chemotherapy-Induced Hair Changes and Alopecia, Skin Aging and Nail Changes in Women with Non-Metastatic Breast Cancer.
Dr. Lacouture is a well-known lecturer in the US and abroad on dermatologic conditions as a result of cancer therapies. He founded a clinical program that encompasses patient care, education, and research on dermatologic care in cancer patients and survivors. He is currently Co-Chair of the Skin Toxicity Study Group of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer and is on the advisory board of Cancer.Net and Bridges, the Newsletter for Cancer Survivors. In 2012, CancerCare named Dr Lacouture as Physician of the Year for his contributions to the education of people living with cancer. Dr Lacouture has published over 180 articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of Dr Lacouture’s Skin Care Guide for People Living With Cancer and Editor of the textbook Dermatologic Principles and Practice in Oncology.
MIT Sloan School of Management
Andrew Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, a Professor of Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Lo’s current research spans three areas: evolutionary models of investor behavior and adaptive markets, quantitative models of financial markets, and healthcare finance. Recent projects include: an evolutionary explanation for bias and discrimination, and how to reduce their effects; a new analytical framework for measuring the impact of impact investing; and new statistical tools for predicting clinical trial outcomes, incorporating patient preferences into the drug approval process, and accelerating biomedical innovation via novel business and financing structures.
Lo has published extensively in academic journals (see http://alo.mit.edu) and his most recent book is Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought. His awards include Batterymarch, Guggenheim, and Sloan Fellowships; the Paul A. Samuelson Award; the Eugene Fama Prize; the IAFE-SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year; the Global Association of Risk Professionals Risk Manager of the Year; the Harry M. Markowitz Award; the Managed Futures Pinnacle Achievement Award; one of TIME’s “100 most influential people in the world”; and awards for teaching excellence from both Wharton and MIT. His book Adaptive Markets has also received a number of awards, listed here. He is a Fellow of Academia Sinica; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Econometric Society; and the Society of Financial Econometrics.
Lo is also a principal investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, an affiliated faculty member of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a member of the New York Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Advisory Roundtable, FINRA’s Economic Advisory Committee, the National Academy of Sciences Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Board of Overseers, and the boards of Roivant Sciences and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Lo holds a BA in economics from Yale University and an AM and PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Stanford Medicine
Crystal Mackall, MD is an Endowed Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University. She is Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of Stanford Cancer Institute, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford. During her tenure as Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch, NCI, she built an internationally recognized translational research program spanning basic studies of T cell homeostasis and tumor immunology, and clinical trials of immune based therapies for cancer. Her work is credited with identifying an essential role for the thymus in human T cell regeneration and discovering IL-7 as the master regulator of T cell homeostasis. She has led numerous cutting edge and first-in-human and first-in- child clinical trials spanning dendritic cell vaccines, cytokines, and adoptive immunotherapy using NK cells and genetically modified T cells. Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia, to demonstrate activity of the CD22-CAR in childhood leukemia, and to identify T cell exhaustion as a major factor limiting the efficacy of this novel class of therapeutics.
At Stanford, she launched one of the first trials utilizing a bispecific CAR aimed at offsetting immune escape. Dr. Mackall’s clinical trials are notable for the incorporation of deep biologic endpoints that further our understanding of the basis for success and failure of the agent under study. She has published over 170 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and serves in numerous leadership positions, including co-Leader of the St. Baldrick’s-StandUp2Cancer Pediatric Dream Team, Chair of the AACR Pediatric Cancer Working Group and Leader of the NCI Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics and Internal Medicine.
Formerly UnitedHealth Group
Lee Newcomer, MD spends his time creating new approaches to make cancer care more effective and affordable. He utilizes expertise in medical oncology, health plan strategy and operations, health services research, finance and communications to create disruptive approaches for improved care of cancer patients.
The majority of his career was with UnitedHealth Group. He was their Chief Medical Officer from 1991 to 2001 where he built the company’s medical management programs. He focused his later work on the development of performance measures and incentives for the improvement of clinical care. He returned in 2006 to lead an initiative combining clinical, financial and program management experts to focus on cancer care. This team was the first to complete an episode payment program for cancer treatment and it created the first commercial cancer database combining clinical and claims data.
Prior to his work at UnitedHealth Group Dr. Newcomer practiced medical oncology for nine years in Minneapolis and Tulsa, Oklahoma. He served as the Medical Director for Cigna Healthcare, in Kansas City and he was a founding executive of Vivius, a consumer directed venture that allowed consumers to create their own personalized health plans.
He is a former Chairman of Park Nicollet Health Services (HealthPartners). He is a director at Myriad Genetics, Cellworks (Chairman), and Coherus Biosciences.
Dr. Newcomer holds a B.A. degree from Nebraska Wesleyan University, a M.D. degree from the University Of Nebraska College Of Medicine and a Masters of Health Administration from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His clinical training included an internal medicine residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a medical oncology fellowship at the Yale University School of Medicine.
University of California, Los Angeles
Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD is Professor of Medicine, Professor of Surgery, and Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) Center at UCLA. Dr Ribas is a physician-scientist who conducts laboratory and clinical research in malignant melanoma, focusing on gene engineered T cells, PD-1 blockade and BRAF targeted therapies. His research is based on models of disease to test new therapeutic options, studies mechanism of action of treatments in patients and the molecular mechanisms of therapy resistance.
Dr. Ribas is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), has a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Buenos Aires, co-led the Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C)-Cancer Research Institute (CRI)-AACR Immunotherapy Dream Team with the Nobel Laureate James Allison, is the recipient of a NCI Outstanding Investigator Award, was profiled as one of the five Visionaries in Medicine by the New York Times on May 27, 2018, acknowledged as Great Immigrant by the Carnegie Foundation in the New York Times on July 4, 2018, and is the recipient of the 2014 AACR Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award and the 2018 AACR-CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology. He was President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) from 2020-2021.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Sharma is a nationally and internationally renowned physician scientist whose research work is focused on investigating mechanisms and pathways within the immune system that facilitate tumor rejection, with subsequent clinical benefit, or elicit resistance to immune checkpoint therapy. She is a trained medical oncologist and immunologist and the T.C. and Jeanette D. Hsu Endowed Chair in Cell Biology. She designed and conducted the first pre-surgical trial, also known as a window-of-opportunity trial, with immune checkpoint therapy (anti-CTLA-4) in 2004, which allowed her to study the impact of immune checkpoint therapy on human tumors, with subsequent identification of the ICOS/ICOSL pathway as a novel target for cancer immunotherapy strategies.
Dr. Sharma continues to design novel pre-surgical trials to evaluate human immune responses to different immunotherapies and she is the Principal Investigator for multiple immunotherapy clinical trials that focus on translational laboratory studies. Her studies enable development of new immunotherapy strategies for the treatment of cancer patients. She is a Professor in the departments of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology, and the Scientific Director for the Immunotherapy Platform at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. She is also the Co-Director of Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and received the Emil Frei III Award for Excellence in Translational Research in 2016 and the Coley Award for Distinguished Research for Tumor Immunology in 2018.
As a leader in the fields of surgical oncology and general surgery, Dr. Shyamali Singhal is no stranger to the medical world and the lives her patients lead while under her care. At the beginning of her career, Dr. Singhal focused primarily on bench-to-bedside, studying drug resistance to chemotherapeutic agents such as taxol before shifting her focus from medicine to surgery. After finishing her fellowship in surgical oncology, Dr. Singhal was offered the opportunity to serve as the Medical Director at the El Camino Hospital Cancer Center in Silicon Valley, which at the time had no available organized cancer services.
As a general surgeon and surgical oncologist with over twenty years of medical experience, Dr. Singhal has borne witness to the will and power which is needed in order to tolerate and overcome chemotherapy through the lives of her patients, and understands that being a great surgeon is just as important as being a great listener. She has developed a multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment that involves not only chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery but working closely with patients to focus on the treatment of their bodies during and after the chemotherapy process.
In addition to her work as Executive Director of the Cancer Center at El Camino Hospital, Dr. Singhal graduated from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, where she received her M.D. as well as her PhD. in Molecular Pharmacology. After completing her surgical residency at the University of Washington, she finished a post-residency fellowship in surgical oncology at the City of Hope National Cancer Center in Duarte, California.
Stanford
Playground Global
Dave Singhal is an innovator in health and visual analytics, processing, and AI. He received a BS from UC Berkeley and MS from Stanford University.
Dave’s career has been focused on AI, computation, and image processing. He was an early member in three sequential start ups which went through initial stock offerings (Cirrus Logic, Trident Microsystems, Neomagic), and later started and ran another (Luxxon) which was acquired by Hutchison Whampoa. He also was a key executive driving the successful restructuring and split sale of a public company, MIPS Technologies, a spin off from Stanford.
He currently advises the Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering, the Biswal Pain Imaging Lab at Stanford, and Playground Global, a start-up incubator in Palo Alto.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Sumit Subudhi is an associate professor in the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. A trained medical oncologist and immunologist, his research focuses on investigating the immunological mechanisms responsible for tumor rejection and immune-related toxicities. He is the principal investigator of multiple immunotherapy clinical trials for patients with prostate cancer, and he conducts translational laboratory studies related to those trials. His research enables the development of novel immunotherapy strategies for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Dr. Subudhi received the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Young Investigator Award in 2014 and the V Foundation–Lloyd Family Clinical Oncology Scholar Award in 2017.
Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine
Jedd Wolchok is Chief of the Immuno-Oncology Service and holds The Lloyd J. Old Chair in Clinical Investigation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). He is also head of the Swim Across America – Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory; Associate Director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy (LCCI); SU2C–ACS Lung Cancer Dream Team Co-leader and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK. Dr. Wolchok is a clinician-scientist exploring innovative immunotherapeutic strategies in laboratory models, and a principal investigator in numerous pivotal clinical trials. He specializes in the treatment of melanoma. The focus of his translational research laboratory is to investigate innovative means to modulate the immune response to cancer as well as to better understand the mechanistic basis for sensitivity and resistance to currently available immunotherapies.