Dr Jinghui Zhang
Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Computational Biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She holds the St. Jude Endowed Chair in Bioinformatics.
Dr. Zhang began working in genomics as a second-year graduate student, which sparked her interest in investigating how genes contribute to the development of diseases like cancer. She joined St. Jude in 2010, leading the genomic analysis for the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) and the creation of new computational and visualization tools that have been adopted by researchers worldwide.
Her research in the genomic landscape of pediatric cancer has led to new directions in research involving high-risk leukemia, brain and solid tumors. She sees the importance of sharing data gained from her collaboration with other pediatric cancer research institutes. The sharing of information can help advance research not only for pediatric cancer, but for genetic research in other diseases.
Before joining St. Jude, Dr. Zhang led genetic variation analysis of the first assembled human genome. She also contributed to key discoveries in the pilot phases of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas Project and led the pan-cancer analysis of the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatment (TARGET) initiative which has unveiled striking difference in the genomic landscape of pediatric versus adult cancer.
Dr. Zhang received her undergraduate degree from Fu Dan University in Shanghai and her doctorate from the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn.
Dr Gustavo Stolovitzky
Dr Victor Hanson-Smith
Victor Hanson-Smith, Ph.D., is one of the world's leaders in mathematical modeling of eukaryotic genome evolution. He has co-authored over a dozen publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Science; his work has been featured in the NYTimes and Washington Post. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Information and Science from the University of Oregon, and completed his post-doctoral fellowship with Alexander Johnson at UCSF. Additionally, he is a full-stack Django web developer on Amazon Web Services, with 15 years experience engineering in C/C++, Python, and Java.
Dr Slava Akmaev
Slava Akmaev, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President and Chief Analytics Officer at BERG, leading the Analytics division with over 18 years of industry experience. He is responsible for supporting BERG’s drug and diagnostic development programs with data science efforts using BERG’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform, bAIcis®. Dr. Akmaev is an advocate for the application of AI tools in digital healthcare and is a frequent speaker at AI industry events. Dr. Akmaev is an inventor on 10+ pending and issued patents and an author on more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and 100+ presentations/ posters.
Prior to his role at BERG, Dr. Akmaev was the Scientific Associate Director at Genzyme Genetics where he launched multiple commercial diagnostic products. While at Genzyme R&D, he led the development of novel statistical approaches for high-throughput “omics” data and performed analytical work in genomics and genetics.
Dr. Akmaev published numerous manuscripts in genomics and was one of the early developers of analytical methodology around high-throughput molecular data. He co-authored the publication of the Long SAGE™ technology, “Using the transcriptome to annotate the genome” in Nature Biotechnology.
Dr. Akmaev holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dr Shahar Keinan
Dr. Shahar Keinan is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Cloud Pharmaceuticals. She has over 20 years of extensive experience in the field of computational and theoretical chemistry. Shahar has received a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has numerous papers and presentations in the fields of in-silico drug design and discovery, as well as molecular materials design and computational methods development. She has been instrumental in the development of Cloud Pharmaceuticals’ novel Quantum Molecular Design process since its inception at Duke University.
Dr Chip Petricoin
Dr. Emanuel F Petricoin is the Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder of Perthera, Inc., Perthera is a leading precision medicine company that empowers all cancer patients and oncologists globally with the most comprehensive molecular profiling and data analytics process. Dr. Petricoin has been the Co-Director of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at George Mason University since 2005, where he is a University Professor. Prior to this position, he served as Co-Director of the FDA-NCI Clinical Proteomics Program and a Senior Investigator within the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA from 1993-2005. He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications and invited reviews with an H Factor of 98, and is on the editorial board of over 10 high impact journals. He has authored over 45 book chapters, is a Senior Editor for Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention and on the editorial board of JCO Precision Oncology, Nature Precision Oncology, Proteomics, Biomedical Microdevices, Proteomics-Clinical Applications, Proteomics-Protocols, Molecular, Carcinogenesis, Journal of Personalized Medicine and Dr. Petricoin is a founding member of the Human Proteomic Organization (HUPO). He has received numerous awards including the University Professorship at George Mason University, the NIH Director’s Award, FDA Distinguished Scientist Award, 2015 Innovator of the Year Award, GAP50 Top Virginia Entrepreneurs, Nifty 50 Award, American Society of Cytopathology Basic Research Award, the Roche Diagnostics/CLAS Distinguished Scientist Award and the Harvard University Leading Edge Award and is a Kentucky Colonel.
Mark Davies
Dr Victoria Gamerman
Dr Ramesh Dursuvala
As the Information Officer for Research, Ramesh Durvasula is responsible for all of the IT and informatics capabilities that support the drug discovery efforts of Lilly Research Labs.
Dr. Durvasula has focused his career on the intersection of life science and informatics. For more than a decade, he built award-winning technology platforms for Bristol-Myers-Squibb (BMS) research labs. Most recently, Ramesh was Executive Director of Discovery IT and Automation at BMS. He has held a variety of leadership roles during his 12-year tenure at BMS. He successfully led his team through delivery of various IT strategies and roadmaps for biologics, laboratory modernization, translational R&D, in-vivo excellence, high-throughput workflows and leveraging data for quantitative decision making. He is an active leader in many industry forums, such as the Pistoia Alliance and the Allotrope Foundation. Prior to BMS, he spent several years at Tripos, a computational chemistry software firm. Ramesh earned his BA in Chemistry and PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics from the University of Virginia.
Dr Kelly Zou
Kelly Zou, Ph.D., PStat® is Vice President, Medical Analytics & Insights, R&D and Medical, Upjohn Division, Pfizer Inc. She is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an Accredited Professional Statistician. Previously, she was Senior Director, Global Real World Evidence Center of Excellence and Senior Director, Statistical Center for Outcomes, Real World & Aggregate Data at Pfizer. She was Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, as well as Director of Biostatistics at its affiliated teaching hospitals. She was Associate Director of Rates at Barclays Capital. She received both MA and PhD degrees in Statistics from the University of Rochester, following a BA in Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude), with a Minor in Physics. She completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard. Her research interests include healthcare policy, big data, and outcomes research, with over 140 professional articles and 4 books. She has played several leadership roles: Chair, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Awards; Chair, Statistical Partnerships among Academe, Industry, and Government Committee, American Statistical Association (ASA); Chair, ASA Health Care Policy Statistics Section; Vice Chair, ASA Committee on Applied Statisticians; Member, Board of Directors and Publications Committee, International Chinese Statistical Association. She was featured as an Outstanding Woman in Data Analytics by Forbes, an Inspirational Women in Statistics & Data Science by Wiley and the Royal Statistical Society, and an Accomplished Woman in Statistics and Data Science by the ASA.