Speakers for CMMT Scientific Symposium: Frontiers of Genetic Medicine
Eric Shadt
Dr. Eric Schadt recently joined Mount Sinai Medical School as the Chair, Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and as Director, Institute of Genomics and Multiscale Biology (effective 1 August 2011). In June 2009, Eric joined Pacific Biosciences as Chief Scientific Officer to oversee the scientific strategy for the company, including creating the vision for next-generation sequencing applications of the company’s technology. He is also a founding member of Sage Bionetworks, an open access genomics initiative designed to build and support databases and an accessible platform for creating innovative, dynamic models of disease. Eric’s current efforts were motivated by the genomics and systems biology research he carried out at Merck to elucidate common human diseases and drug response using novel integrative genomics approaches based on genetic and molecular profiling data. His research helped revolutionize a field in statistical genetics (the genetics of gene expression), and has energized the systems biology field, leading to a number of discoveries relating to the causes of common human diseases. As of earlier this year, greater than 50% of all new drug discovery programs at Merck in the metabolic space were derived from his work. Eric also holds an affiliate professor position in the Departments of Medical Genetics and Biostatistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, and he was recently appointed as Fellow to the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Imperial College London. He received his B.S. in applied mathematics/computer science from California Polytechnic State University, his M.A. in pure mathematics from UCD, and his Ph.D. in bio-mathematics from UCLA (requiring Ph.D. candidacy in molecular biology and mathematics).
Jasper Rine
Dr. Jasper Rine has been on the Berkeley faculty since 1982. His research spans the fields of genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry. He was the director of the LBL Human Genome Center from 1991 to 1994, and more recently was the Director of the Center for Computational Biology. His research accomplishments include the construction of the first genetic map of the dog genome, discovery of biochemical links between cholesterol biosynthesis and cancer causing genes, and the discovery of a mechanism of epigenetic inheritance. His most recent research interests focus on understanding the impact of human genetic variation. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award, and is a Professor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Among his honors are election to the National Academy of Science, and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Tom Boyce
Tom Boyce is the Sunny Hill Health Centre/BC Leadership Chair in Child Development at the University of British Columbia. He is also Co-Director of the Experience-Based Brain and Biological Development Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and a member of the Institute of Medicine and Harvard University’s National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. As a social epidemiologist and a developmental-behavioral pediatrician, his research addresses how genetic, neural and psychosocial processes work together to lead to differences in childhood disease across different socioeconomic groups. His work has shown how psychological stress and neurobiological reactivity to aversive social contexts interact to produce disorders of both physical and mental health in populations of children. He completed his baccalaureate degree in philosophy and psychology at Stanford University and an MD at Baylor College of Medicine. He then did pediatric residency training at the University of California, San Francisco and was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Prior to his appointment at the University of British Columbia, he spent twenty years on the pediatrics and public health faculties of the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley.
Ron Kopito
Dr. Ron R. Kopito is a Professor of Biology in the Biology Department at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ron has received the March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award, A National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award & the American Heart Association Established Investigatorship Award. His research is concerned with elucidating the basic molecular mechanisms that underly the recognition and destruction of misfolded proteins in eukayotic cells and the role of the QC apparatus in human disease.
John Hardy
Dr. John Hardy received his degree in Biochemistry from Leeds in 1976 and his PhD from Imperial College in Neuropharmacology in 1979. He did postdocs at the MRC Neuropathogenesis Unit and the Swedish Brain Bank, in Umea, where he started to work on Alzheimer’s disease. In 1985 he took the job of Lecturer in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College, where he began working on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. In 1991 he led the group which found the first mutation in the amyloid gene which caused Alzheimer’s disease. This finding led him and others to formulate the amyloid hypothesis for the disease. In 1992 he moved to the United States, to the University of South Florida. In 1996 he moved to the Mayo Clinic where he became Chair of the Department of Neuroscience in 2000. In 1998 he was part of the consortium which identified mutations in the tau gene in Pick’s disease. In 2001 he moved to the NIH to become the Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, where he was part of the group which found triplications in the synuclein gene caused Parkinson’s disease. He returned to the Department of Molecular Neuroscience at the Institute of Neurology in 2007. He has won the Allied Signal, Potamkin, MetLife and Kaul Prizes for his work on Alzheimer’s disease and the Anna Marie Opprecht Prize for his work on Parkinson’s disease. He has been elected a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences and has been awarded an honorary MD by the University of Umea, Sweden. He was made an FRS by the Royal Society in 2009 and in 2010 was awarded a honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Newcastle. He has three adult children and two grandchildren who live in the US.
Mario Capecchi
Dr. Mario Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy in 1937. He received his B.S. in chemistry and physics from Antioch College in 1961 and his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University in 1967. He completed his thesis work under the guidance of Dr. James D. Watson. From 1967-69 he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. In 1969 he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Harvard School of Medicine and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971. In 1973 he joined the faculty at the University of Utah as a Professor of Biology. Since 1988 Dr. Capecchi has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; since 1989, a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine; and since 1993, Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology.
Dr. Capecchi is best known for pioneering the technology of gene targeting in mouse embryo-derived stem (ES) cells that allows scientists to create mice with mutations in any desired gene by choosing which gene to mutate and how to mutate it. This gives the investigator virtually complete freedom in manipulating the DNA sequences in the genome of living mice, and allows detailed evaluation of any gene’s function during its development or post-developmental phase. Research interests include the molecular genetic analysis of early mouse development, neural development in mammals, production of murine models of human genetic diseases, cancer and factors affecting life expectancy, homologous recombination and programmed genomic rearrangements in the mouse.
Dr. Capecchi is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1991), the European Academy of Sciences (2002), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009). His prestigious awards include the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award (1992), Gairdner Foundation International Award (1993), General Motors Corporation’s Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize (1994), German Molecular Bioanalytics Prize, (1996), Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (1996), Baxter Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences (1998), Colby Presidential Endowed Chair (1999),
Italian Premio Phoenix-Anni Verdi Award (2000), Spanish Jiménez-Diáz Prize (2001), Albert Lasker Award (2001), National Medal of Science (2001), John Scott Medal Award (2002), Massry Prize (2002), Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research (2003), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2002/03), March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (2005), the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine (2007) with Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans, member of the American Academy of Arts and Science (2009).
Donald Nicholson
Dr. Donald Nicholson is Vice-President, Merck Research Laboratories, and Franchise Worldwide Discovery Head for Respiratory & Immunology (R&I), based in Kenilworth NJ. Prior to taking this role within the newly-formed Franchise model, he was Vice-President of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and was Vice-President and Site Head of the Merck Neurosciences Research site in San Diego California before that. Don began his career at Merck at the Merck Frosst Centre for Therapeutic Research in Montreal where he came directly from post-doc training at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry in Munich. His formal training is in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology. Outside of Merck, Don is internationally recognized for his long-standing contributions to the field of apoptotic cell death pathways, including the initial discovery of the caspases and associated cell death biology. He also holds a cross-appointment as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal.
Michael Hayden
Dr. Michael Hayden is the Killam Professor of Medical Genetics at the UBC and Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine. He is also the Director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) and founder of three biotechnology companies: NeuroVir Therapeutics Inc., Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Corp. Michael focuses his research primarily on genetic diseases, including genetics of lipoprotein disorders, Huntington disease, predictive and personalized medicine. Michael and his research group have identified 10 disease-causing genes which includes the identification of the major gene underlying high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in humans. Michael also identified the first mutations underlying Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL) Deficiency and developed gene therapy approaches to treat this condition.
Dr. Michael Hayden was named Canada’s 2008 Health Research of the Year and received the Order of B.C. in 2009. In 2010, Dr. Hayden received the Order of Canada and is also the recipient of the 2011 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award
