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Alta Charo is the Knowles Professor Emerita of Law & Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, where for over 30 years she has taught classes on biotechnology policy, food and drug law, public health law and bioethics. Alta served as a David A. Hamburg Inaugural Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, working in its global biosecurity program. She is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the National Academy of Medicine. She was a member of Pres. Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, worked as a policy analyst at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the US Agency for International Development, and served as a senior policy advisor in the Office of the Commissioner at the FDA, focusing on regulatory approaches to emerging technologies. At the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine she co-chaired the committees on guidelines for embryonic stem cell research (2005-2010) and governance of human genome editing (2015-2017), co-founded the forum on regenerative medicine, served on its committee on science technology and law, and now co-chairs its standing committee on “emerging science, technology and innovation.” She is also a member of the World Health Organization’s expert advisory committee on global governance of genome editing, and was a member of the organizing committee for the 2022 US-UK “third international summit on genome editing.”

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Dr. Karl Koehler is an Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. He also serves as a Principal Investigator in the FM Kirby Center for Neurobiology. After earning his PhD in Medical Neuroscience from Indiana University School of Medicine in 2014, he quickly established his laboratory there, before transitioning to Boston Children’s Hospital in 2019. Dr. Koehler’s research is dedicated to understanding how embryonic cells coalesce to shape the organs responsible for our auditory, vestibular, visual, tactile, and nociceptive senses. A cornerstone of his work is the development of organoid models, which are cell culture representations of the human embryo formed using stem cells. Dr. Koehler’s team pioneered the creation of the inner ear organoid; a significant advancement now being leveraged to progress gene therapies for disorders affecting hearing and balance. Another noteworthy achievement of his team came in 2020 when they produced human skin organoids capable of growing hair and sensory nerves. This innovation holds promise in fields ranging from skin disease research and advanced wound treatment to investigations into the evolutionary trajectory of skin and hair attributes across different species. His work has been funded through numerous grants from the Department of Defense, National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, and philanthropic gifts.

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Professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of cell surface sugars important to human health and disease. Her research group profiles changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and uses this information to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in the area of immuno-oncology.

Dr. Bertozzi completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Harvard University and her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, focusing on the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs. During postdoctoral work at UC San Francisco, she studied the activity of endothelial oligosaccharides in promoting cell adhesion at sites of inflammation. She joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2000, she came to Stanford University in June 2015, among the first faculty to join the interdisciplinary institute ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health). She is now the Baker Family Director of Stanford ChEM-H.

Named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999, Dr. Bertozzi has received many awards for her dedication to chemistry, and to training a new generation of scientists fluent in both chemistry and biology. She has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and received the Lemelson-MIT Prize, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, and the Chemistry of the Future Solvay Prize, among others.

The Bertozzi Group develops chemical tools to study the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer, inflammation, tuberculosis and most recently COVID-19. She is the inventor of “bioorthogonal chemistry”, a class of chemical reactions compatible with living systems that enable molecular imaging and drug targeting. Her group also developed new therapeutic modalities for targeted degradation of extracellular biomolecules, such as antibody-enzyme conjugates and Lysosome Targeting Chimeras (LYTACs). As well, her group studies NGly1 deficiency, a rare genetic disease characterized by loss of the human N-glycanase.

Several of the technologies developed in the Bertozzi lab have been adapted for commercial use. Actively engaged with several biotechnology start-ups, Dr. Bertozzi cofounded Redwood Bioscience, Enable Biosciences, Palleon Pharmaceuticals, InterVenn Bio, OliLux Bio, Grace Science LLC and Lycia Therapeutics. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Lilly.

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Hendrik Poinar is an evolutionary geneticist specializing in ancient DNA. Poinar first became known for extracting DNA sequences from ground sloth coprolites. He is currently director of the Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is interested in the preservation and degradation of organic residues in the fossil record. He devises novel ways to extract these molecules and uses any remaining sequence information to address questions about the past. Recently, he has tried to identify the aetiological agent(s) of past pandemics (Black Death, Plague of Justinian), and to illuminate the evolutionary dynamics of these bacteria (and viruses) during both epidemic and non-epidemic cycles, as well as their reservoirs (hosts and environmental), and the underlying changes in both hosts and pathogen(s) that may explain their increased virulence and, in some cases, subsequent attenuation.

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More than 30 years of experience in transplant surgery and the pioneering visionary whose work the modern xeno-field is built upon. He is currently Director of the Xenotransplant Institute; Surgical Director, Small Bowel and Multivisceral Transplant Program, University of Miami Medical School. Dr. Tector received his training from McGill University, University of Miami, and St Louis University School of Medicine.

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Florian Hollfelder was educated at the Technical University of Berlin (Diplom-Chemiker) and Cambridge University (MPhil). After a formative stay at Stanford (with Dan Herschlag) on free-energy relationships in enzymes) he joined Tony Kirby’s group at the Chemistry Department of Cambridge University working on enzyme models and physical-organic chemistry. During his PhD he also collaborated with Dan Tawfik (on the mechanism and evaluation of model enzymes such as catalytic antibodies). His postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School (with Chris T. Walsh) was concerned with the biosynthesis and action of the natural antibiotic microcin B17.

In 2001 he returned to Cambridge to start his own research group in the Biochemistry Department, where he is Professor in Chemical and Synthetic Biology. The group’s research centres around quantitative and mechanistic questions at the chemistry/biology interface, involving low- and high-throughput approaches. Mechanistic work focuses on enzymatic bioreactions and their organic chemical counterparts, on strategies for finding and creating enzymes with novel reactions and on the pathways by which these can be enhanced by directed evolution. Most recently this approach has been extended to mechanisms of cellular development and embryology. A key technology under development in the group are ultrahigh throughput approaches for directed evolution, cell development in 3D and single cell transcriptomics.

Florian has held ERC Advanced and Starting Grants and coordinated several EU-funded trans-national collaborative initiatives, e.g. the H2020 research training networks MMBio (‘Molecular Tools for Nucleic Acid Manipulation for Biological Intervention‘) and ES-Cat (‘Directed Protein Evolution for Synthetic Biology and Biocatalysis’), ENDIRPRO & ENEFP on directed evolution of functional proteins, ProSA on protein-protein interactions and PhosChemRec on the chemical biology of phosphates. He is coordinator of the BBSRC sLOLA grant “Novel Plastizymes”, member of the EU Horizon Europe projects “BlueTools “and “BlueRemediomics” (on metagenomic exploration of marine biospheres) and co-founder of the companies DropTech and Evoralis. Florian is a Staff Fellow at Trinity Hall, where he acted as Tutor, Director of Studies and Graduate Mentor.

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Dr. Jun Wu is an associate professor in the department of molecular biology at UT southwestern medical center. Dr. Wu’s work has contributed to the development of novel culture systems and methods that enable the generation of new stem cells for basic and translational studies. Dr. Wu has expanded the spectrum of pluripotent states by capturing mouse pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) with distinct molecular and phenotypic features from different developmental stages. And some of these culture conditions developed in mice enabled the generation of PSCs from many other mammalian species, including humans, non-human primates, and ungulates. In addition, Dr. Wu has developed efficient and versatile blastocyst complementation methods for in vivo generation of functional tissues and organs from cultured PSCs, and several stem cell derived embryo models. Dr. Wu has received several awards including UT southwestern endowed scholar (2017), CPRIT scholar (2017), NYSCF-Robertson Stem Cell Investigator award (2022), and the ISSCR Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2024).

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Elinor Karlsson, PhD, is associate professor in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology at the UMass Chan Medical School, and director of Vertebrate Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her research combines new technology, community science and genomics to investigate diseases and discover the origins of exceptional mammalian traits.  Dr. Karlsson’s research includes the Zoonomia project, an international effort to compare the genomes of over 240 mammals (from the African Yellow-spotted Rock Hyrax to the Woodland Dormouse), to identify segments of DNA that are important for survival and health.  Dr. Karlsson has a special interest in dog and wolf genetics, and her international Darwin’s Ark project invites all dog owners to enroll their dogs in an open data research project exploring the genetic basis of behavior, as well as diseases such as cancer.   Elinor received her B.A. in biochemistry/cell biology and her B.F.A. (Bachelor of Fine Arts) from Rice University, and earned her Ph.D. in bioinformatics from Boston University. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Pardis Sabeti at Harvard University before starting her research group at UMass Chan in 2014.

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Carlos D. Bustamante is an American population geneticist, academic, and entrepreneur. He is currently chief executive officer of Galatea Bio, Inc., a company he founded when a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Academic Appointments:

Member, Bio-X
Member, Cardiovascular Institute
Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Member, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME)
Member, Stanford Cancer Institute

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Andrew Pask is a Professor in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne. He completed his PhD in 1999 at LaTrobe university and moved for a postdoc to the University of Melbourne. In 2001 he was awarded an NHMRC CJ Martin fellowship, on which he spent 2 years at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Texas USA and 2 years at the University of Melbourne. He then received an NHMRC RD Wright fellowship in 2005 to continue his work in reproductive biology. In 2008 he took an appointment as Associate Professor at The University of Connecticut where he stayed until 2013. He was then recruited back to the University of Melbourne as a Research Accelerator Program Fellow. In 2014 he received an ARC Future Fellowship. In 2018 he was promoted to Professor at the University of Melbourne and he is now the Domain Leader for Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology within the School of BioSciences. Prof Pask heads up the TIGRR and Evo-Devo-Repro research laboratories which explore many aspects of mammalian evolution, development and reproductive technologies.

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Bridgett vonHoldt is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in genomic analysis of North American canines. She is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and champions the value of mixed genetic ancestry for endangered species conservation. Her research focuses on evolutionary genomics of admixed canine species across hybrid zones, with her researching having significant conservation applications for endangered species like the red wolf. Bridgett is the founder and director of the North American Canine Ancestry Project, as well as a co-founder and lead geneticist for the Gulf Coast Canine Project.

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Dr. Kenneth Lacovara has unearthed some of the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the earth, including the massive 65-ton Dreadnoughtus, which appeared in the recent film Jurassic World: Dominion. He is a recipient of The Explorers Club Medal, the club’s highest honor, previously awarded to pioneers such as Sir Edmund Hillary, Jane Goodall, and Neil Armstrong. His TED talk has been viewed by over four million people, and his book, Why Dinosaurs Matter, published by Simon & Schuster, is a winner of the Nautilus Book Prize. Lacovara’s discoveries have landed him three times in Discover magazine’s 100 Top Science Stories of the Year, and he has appeared in 17 television documentaries. Currently, he is researching the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is the founding dean of the School of Earth & Environment at Rowan University, and is executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, where he and his team are building a $85M museum designed to connect people to deep time, the contingencies of natural history, and the fragility of our planet.

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Tomas Marques-Bonet is an ICREA and Full Professor of Genetics at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. From 2016 to 2020, Tomas served as the director of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC). At the heart of his research lies a passion for understanding human and non-human primate evolution combining different areas of conservation, evolutionary and comparative genomics and biomedicine. His lab is investigating genomes and genomic variation in living primates and other mammals, including extinct species. Furthermore, Tomas and his team explore the evolution of gene regulation through comparative genomics. He serves as the coordinator of research at the Barcelona Zoo and is also the director of the Cryozoo, an essential infrastructure within the Barcelona Zoo Foundation. The Cryozoo’s mission is to create and preserve cell lines and induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSc) of endangered species, contributing to the preservation of biodiversity and the protection of vulnerable animal populations. His recent work has been funded by the European Research Council, the EU H2020 actions, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Spanish National Research System.

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Dr. Taylor is a dynamic innovator, scientist and entrepreneur and a global thought leader and speaker in regenerative medicine. She is recognized as a thought leader in biomanufacturing as evidenced by her recent service on a White House panel, has published over 180 papers, holds over 30 patents, and is the founder of multiple companies, one of which went public last year (MIRO;NASDAQ). She has trained hundreds of undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate fellows worldwide in her laboratories in the U.S. and Europe. Although she held academic positions for over 20 years, she recently founded RegenMedix Consulting LLC to enable academic and commercial enterprises in the regenerative medicine space. In 2021she founded a new biotech Organamet Bio Inc. to bioengineer personalized replacement hearts on demand. The latest breakthrough in that technology was featured on CNN in September 2022 (https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/09/15/cfc-gupta-taylor.cnn). Taylor is credited with the first functional scientific repair of injured heart with stem cells in 1998. Her group further transformed the field of organ transplantation science in 2008 by developing a unique cell removal (decellularization) method that makes un-transplantable organs into usable scaffold frameworks for building new organs with stem cells. This was so revolutionary it was recognized as one of the “Top 10 Research Advances” by the American Heart Association and Taylor was nominated as one of “100 most influential people in the world” by Time magazine.  Next, she turned to disease prevention and has begun to develop “cellular signatures” of heart disease and aging that appear to differ by sex race and ethnicity.  Dr. Taylor frequently appears as an expert on molecular biology, biobanking, cell therapy, women’s health, cardiac repair and organ transplantation in the public media. Her work has been recognized and featured by 60 Minutes, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Natonal Geographic, BBC Horizon, BBC News Health, ABC, NBC and CBS News, Associated Press, Good Morning America, , the Oprah Winfrey Show, NOVA Science Now, PBS NOVA Transplanting Hope, Discovery Channel’s Through the Worm Hole with Morgan Freeman, Science Channel’s Stem Cell Universe with Stephen Hawking, NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippet and most other worldwide media outlets. Taylor sits on numerous think tanks and international scientific committees including for the NIH, the FDA, the American Association of Blood Banks, and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. She serves as a member of the Leadership Advisory Committee for the Alliance for Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) and sat on the international jury for the Institut de France LeFoulon-Delalande Foundation Grand Prix which is awarded annually to individuals making worldwide contributions to cardiovascular medicine. Dr. Taylor earned a B.S. from Mississippi University for Women (MUW) and a Ph.D. from UT Southwestern Medical Center. She is appointed as a Fellow of the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and European Society for Cardiology. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by MUW and the national Distinguished Alumnus Award by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. In 2019 she was elected as a Senior member of the National Academy of Inventors and in 2020, was elected as a fellow to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.  Her motto is “Build the Future of Medicine Today.”

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Dr. Osborne obtained his BS with honors from Penn State University, his MD magna cum laude from Jefferson Medical College, and his PhD in cardiovascular physiology from Thomas Jefferson University.  After graduation he continued his post- doctoral training at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts where he completed his Internship, Residency, and Research Residency in Internal Medicine and a Fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease. While at Harvard, Dr. Osborne published many articles on atherosclerosis, vascular biology, and molecular genetics.  His clinical training focued on non-invasive techniques and he is the only physician board certified in Cardiology and Internal Medicine, Lipidology, Clinical Hypertension, Cardiac CT Angiography, Echocardiography and Nuclear Cardiology.  His clinical interests include preventive cardiology, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, hypertension, congestive heart failure, cholesterol disorders, and cardiovascular genetics.  In 2019 he was recognized as a Fellow of the National Lipid Association and he is currently pursuing a MSc in Cardiovascular Management, Outcomes, and Economics at the London School of Economics.  His background includes both basic science experience in cardiovascular physiology and molecular genetics along with two decades of experience in clinical trials.  He is the founder and director of State of the Heart Cardiology in Dallas, TX and the Director of Cardiovascular Imaging at the Carrollton Regional Medical Center, the first installation of the 640-slice Atlas uCT System in North America.

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Mikki McComb-Kobza, is the Director and Chief Scientist of Ocean First Institute, an ocean conservation nonprofit organization that conducts impactful species conservation projects coupled with educational initiatives. She is the President of the American Elasmobranch Society which promotes the study of sharks, skates, rays and chimeras. She is faculty at CU Boulder’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and is a National Fellow of the Explorer’s Club. She is an applied conservation biologist with over 20 years of experience researching endangered species and advancing marine ecosystem restoration. Her primary research focuses upon the biology, behavior, abundance, and movement of sharks using novel methodologies. She uses multiple strategies to advance science-based conservation initiatives across disciplines. She has led and participated in over 50 marine research expeditions, including regions of Australia, Africa, Brazil, China, Nova Scotia, Belize, the Caribbean, and the eastern coast of the United States. Her research has been broadcast by the BBC, National Public Radio, the National Geographic Society, Discovery Channel Shark Week, and CBC National Radio Canada.

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Dr. Ling is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. He spent his graduate and postdoctoral careers investigating human herpesviruses Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV) and Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). He continued his work on EBV and other animal gammaherpesviruses after moving to Baylor College of Medicine to start his own research program. His lab uses a variety of genetic, biochemical and omics approaches to discover and characterize new intrinsic and innate host responses to infection and to identify viral countermeasures against these responses to understand how these viruses establish long-term chronic infections in their hosts.

In 2010, following the death of 2-year old Mac from elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) at the Houston zoo, a collaboration was established between the zoo and Dr. Lings lab to address the devastating disease caused by this virus, especially in Asian elephant calves. Since that time, his laboratory has leveraged its experience and knowledge of human herpesviruses to combat the threat of EEHV in endangered Asian and African elephants and has emerged as a leading global expert in the field.

Dr. Ling’s lab has an overarching “Bench to Barn” approach to address the EEHV problem. The major activities include generating diagnostics, evaluating treatments, and generating an effective vaccine. His lab is responsible for generating qPCR tests to detect this family of viruses, which are being used world-wide. More recently his lab generated EEHV-specific serology tests, which have provided important insights into factors that may predict vulnerability of elephants for EEHV hemorrhagic disease. Through collaborations with the Baylor College of Medicine Human genome sequencing center, his lab determined the genomic sequences for almost all the EEHV varieties that are known to cause disease in elephants. He has now generated tools for development and evaluation of an EEHV vaccine, which he hopes to implement in the near future.

In addition to his research activities, Dr. Ling previously served as Secretary of the Epstein-Barr virus association and chaired the Microbial Pathogenesis and Cancer study section for the American Cancer Society. He is a member of the EEHV advisory group Steering committee, and is also an Editor for Plos Pathogens. He has trained several students and postdoctoral fellows who are making significant contributions to science in academia and industry.

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Prof Dr Thomas Hildebrandt is professor and chair of wildlife reproduction medicine at the Freie Universitaet of Berlin. Prof Hildebrandt and his team are world leaders in using artificial reproduction to breed rare and endangered animals such as elephants, rhinos and giant pandas. He was a founding member of the subspecialty Zoo Health Management as part of the European College of Zoological Medicine (ECZM) and served as Credential Committee of the European College of Zoological Medicine the board of veterinary specialists from 2011 to 2014.

He holds the honorary appointment of Professiorial Fellow of biosciences at the University of Melbourne (2012 to 2022) and is also the Head of the Department of Reproduction Management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. Prof Hildebrandt is well known internationally for his research on assisted reproduction in wildlife and especially the rescue project of the northern white rhinoceros (BioRescue) raised global interest. He is recipient of numerous awards. For example he received the Conservation Legacy Award in 2015 for his substantial impact to conservation projects in the USA.

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Love Dalén is a Professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University, and one of the founding members of the Swedish Centre for Palaeogenetics. He is a member of the IUCN Conservation Genetics Specialist Group, and a scientific advisor to the International Commission for Missing Persons in the Hague. His research is focused on investigating the evolutionary history of both extinct and extant species and studying how genetic diseases evolve in small threatened populations. He has been working on woolly mammoth genetics since 2003, and has led multiple scientific expeditions to the Arctic to collect ancient remains for genetic analysis. His research group is renowned for being the first to sequence a complete woolly mammoth genome, and he is currently using a population genomics approach to understand the mammoth’s origin, evolution and extinction. In 2021, he led an international consortium that sequenced the oldest genomes ever recovered, from mammoth remains that were more than one million years old. His current research is funded by the Swedish Research Council and an ERC Advanced Grant

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Kristin Brzeski is a conservation geneticist who conducts research at the intersection of applied conservation and wildlife ecology. As an assistant professor at Michigan Technological University, she uses genomic and epigenetic sequencing, noninvasive genetics, and a variety of field-based techniques to unravel the ecology of little-known species and protect endangered wildlife. With a primary focus on wild canid genetics, Kristin has made significant contributions in her field as director of the Gulf Coast Canine Project and contributor to the Canine Ancestry Project. In addition to her canid research, Kristin is a co-founder of Biodiversity Initiative, an NGO focused on the protection of biodiversity in Central Africa through the collaborative creation, study, and management of protected areas.

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Dr. Christopher Mason is a Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He is also co-Founder and global director at Biotia, co-Founder and scientific director at Onegevity, Director of Genomics at Tempus Labs, and recently published The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds.

Dr. Mason develops and deploys computational and experimental methodologies to identify the functional genetic elements of the human genome and metagenome. To do this, we perform research in three principal areas: (1) molecular profiling in patients with extreme phenotypes, including brain malformations, aggressive cancers, and astronauts, (2) creating new biochemical and computational techniques in DNA/RNA sequencing and DNA/RNA base modifications, and (3) the development of new cell and genome modifications. In the very long term, we believe these systems-based methods will enable an understanding of the functional elements of the human genome and embedded metagenome, such that we can begin to repair or re-engineer these genetic networks for ameliorating disease and lay the foundation to enable long-term human spaceflight.

Dr. Mason has won the NIH’s Transformative R01 Award, the NASA Group Achievement Award, the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance Young Investigator award, the Hirschl-Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award, the Vallee Scholar Award, the International Space Station (ISS) Research and Development Award, the CDC Honor Award for Standardization of Clinical Testing, and the WorldQuant Foundation Scholar Award.  He was named as one of the “Brilliant Ten” Scientists by Popular Science, featured as a TEDMED speaker, and called “The Genius of Genetics” by 92Y. He has written 2 books and >300 peer-reviewed papers, featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Microbiology, and Neuron, as well as legal briefs cited by the U.S. District Court and U.S. Supreme Court.  Coverage of his work has also appeared on the covers of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, TIME, The LA Times, and across many media (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, PBS, NASA, NatGeo). He is an inventor on four patents, co-creator of five FDA-authorized diagnostic tests, founded five biotechnology companies, and he serves as an advisor to 21 others, as well as 3 non-profits. He lives with his daughter and wife in Brooklyn, NY.

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Dr. Hobbs is a physician-scientist and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) in Dallas, Texas. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Case Western Reserve Medical School (Cleveland OH). Afterwards she trained in internal medicine and endocrinology at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital (NYC) and UTSW and then joined the UTSW faculty in 1987. Together with Jonathan C. Cohen, she spearheaded establishment of the Dallas Heart Study (DHS), a multiethnic, population-based study of heart and metabolic diseases. In that population, she tested the hypothesis that DNA sequence variations with major phenotypic effects contribute to complex disorders. This approach unveiled a powerful strategy to dissect disease pathogenesis that was initially used to identify genetic differences that confer protection from atherosclerotic heart disease. She identified new sequence variations/genes contributing to differences in plasma levels of LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride (TG). These studies revealed new targets that led to the development of FDA-approved therapeutic antibodies (anti-PCSK9 and -ANGPTL3). She identified the first and most important genetic difference contributing to fatty liver disease. Gene identification is just the starting point of her studies. Ongoing functional analyses have elucidated the pathways and processes that are altered by the defective genes identified in the genetic studies. Her work has been recognized by several national and international organizations.  She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the prizes she has received are the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Grand Prix Award from the Institute of France, and the Harrington Prize for Innovation and Medicine.  She has been on the Board of Pfizer, Inc. since 2011 and has consulted for the Column Group since 2019.

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Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Distinguished Professor, Biomolecular Engineering, University of California

Santa Cruz Scientific Director, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz

Scientific Co-Director, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3)

David Haussler develops statistical, algorithmic and experimental methods to explore molecular function and evolution in the human genome, integrating comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. He develops and shares infrastructure to support both basic research and medicine. In the 1990s, he pioneered the use in genomics of hidden Markov models, stochastic context-free grammars, neural networks and discriminative kernel methods, building some of the most successful computational methods to find genes in genome sequences and align them to detect evolutionary changes. As collaborators on the international Human Genome Project, his team created the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence and posted it on the Internet on July 7, 2000. They subsequently developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that has more than 10,000 users on average per day generating more than 1 million page requests.

His experimental research focuses on the molecular evolution of DNA, RNA, and protein sequences with a special emphasis on neurodevelopment and immunology. His lab uses CRISPR, cortical organoid, single cell RNA-seq and other technologies to functionally characterize neurodevelopmental genes that were specifically altered in human evolution. His team develops and shares infrastructure to support both research in and the clinical application of precision medicine.

Haussler received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He has won a number of awards, including the 2015 Dan David Prize in the future category, 2011 Weldon Memorial prize for application of mathematics and statistics to biology, 2009 ASHG Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics, the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology, the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in Artificial Intelligence.

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Positions

• 2014-  Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta
• 2010-2020  Canada Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change (renewed November 2015- October 2020)
• 2003-2014 Assistant/Associate Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta

Awards and Recognition

• 2016 Elected to the College of New Scholars, Scientists and Artists of the Royal Society of Canada
• 2013  Geological Association of Canada W.W. Hutchison Medal
• 2011  Faculty of Science Research Award (University of Alberta)
• 2006 Alberta Ingenuity New Faculty Award
• 2006 Canadian Geomorphology Research Group J. Ross Mackay Award

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Dr Mike McGrew is a professor at the Roslin Institute, part of the Royal Dick School of
Veterinary Studies and the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Dr McGrew earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in Biochemistry
from Boston University Medical School. He is engaged in applying stem cell technologies to conserve bird species. The McGrew laboratory studies a kind of animal stem cell, the germ cell, which produces the sperm and eggs of birds. His research group developed a serum free culture medium to grow chicken germ cells indefinitely in vitro and developed a genetically sterile surrogate host chicken that carry the germ cells from any breed of chicken and produce healthy offspring. They use these systems to investigate the genes involved in sexual determination and gametogenesis, develop genome editing technologies and for ‘biobanking’ of bird reproductive cells.

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Prof. Fritz Vollrath studied Biology in Göttingen and Freiburg, Germany, and held professorial positions in Basel CH, Aarhus DK and Oxford GB.  Fritz’s academic research embraces two rather distinct areas of Zoology: spider webs & silks and elephant behavior, ecology & evolution. His silk interests range from fundamental research into the mechanical and molecular properties of this important natural material to the fabrication and commercialization of silk-based high-tech products.  Fritz’s elephant research combines fieldwork on their behavioural ecology with applications to their conservation as well as more speculative research into the molecular basis of the elephant’s anti-cancer defences.

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Professor O’Neill received her BA with Highest Honors in Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992 and her PhD in Genetics and Human Variation from La Trobe University in 1997. Dr. O’Neill is currently a Professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, with a joint appointment in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences at UConn Health. Prof. O’Neill serves as Director of the cross-campus Institute for Systems Genomics and serves as Director of the Center for Genome Innovation within the Institute for Systems Genomics. Prof. O’Neill received the CT Woman of Innovation Award, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award, and was a finalist for the CT Science Center STEM Achievement Award. She was recently elected to the CT Academy of Science and Engineering and appointed as a UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. Prof. O’Neill’s research programs leverage genomics, cytogenomic and computational approaches to study fundamental processes underlying genome function and evolution. Her comparative genomics approach encompasses several model and non-traditional systems, including human, non-human primates, carnivores, rodents, marsupials, Antarctic and deep-sea marine species, microbial communities, and infectious viral communities. She has participated in several genome consortia, including lead PI on the TE and Repeat annotation for the T2T (Human Telomere-to-Telomere) Project, Executive Member for the Earth Biogenomes Project, Member of both the KanGo and Koala Genome Consortia and currently serves as Director of the Deep Ocean Genomes project.

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Mat Wooller is a paleoecologist who specializes in isotopic analyses of modern and past organisms, including the tusks and bones of mammoths. His studies of modern organisms have ranged widely to include analyses of whales, seals, bison, salmon and humans. He is a Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he has directed the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility for about 20 years. Primarily focusing on the Arctic, Mat has used cutting edge isotopic techniques to reconstruct past climates, ecosystems and the diets of some of the earliest people in Alaska. His lab’s isotopic analyses of a mammoth tusk were used to provide an unprecedent and detailed perspective on the movement ecology of a male, adult mammoth that was alive in Alaska at the height of the last ice age. Mat is the founder and lead of the “Adopt a Mammoth” project that is coupling crowd-sourcing, radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA techniques to study the University of Alaska Museum of the North’s large collection of mammoth fossils in a hunt for the most recent mammoth that existed in mainland Alaska. As an open and collaborative paleo-ecological researcher, Mat integrates isotope techniques amongst a wide range of other approaches for studying the past, including analyses of pollen, plant macrofossils, insect remains and his newly found interest in paleo-proteomics.

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S. Matthew Liao is Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, Professor of Global Public Health, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University.  He is the author or editor of The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press); Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press); Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality (Oxford University Press); The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Oxford University Press); Current Controversies in Bioethics (Routledge), and over 60 articles in philosophy and bioethics.  He has given TED and TEDx talks in New York and CERN, Switzerland, and he has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the BBC, Harper’s Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, Scientific American and other media outlets. 

From 2006 to 2009, Liao was the Deputy Director and James Martin Senior Research Fellow in the Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. He was the Harold T. Shapiro Research Fellow in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University in 2003–2004, and a Greenwall Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a Visiting Researcher at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University from 2004–2006.  Liao obtained his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University and his AB from Princeton University.  He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy, a peer-reviewed international journal of moral, political and legal philosophy.

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Elazer R. Edelman, is the Director of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is also Director of the Clinical Research Center, and the current occupant of the Edward J. Poitras Chair as Professor of Medical Engineering and Science. At Harvard Medical School he is Professor of Medicine, and Senior Attending Physician in the cardiac intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

His research melds clinical and medical training, focusing on how tissue architecture and local biochemical, biomechanical and flow dynamic regulation maintain homeostasis. He and his students have used fluid and hemodynamics to guide basic scientific investigation of vascular signaling and repair on multiple scales and dimensions, and in the applied realm to guide the development of critical clinical devices from endovascular implants to mechanical cardiovascular support devices. His clinical work utilizes these findings to care for people critically ill with instabilities in flow and perfusion. He has mentored some 360 students and fellows who have ascended to leadership positions in academia, industry and government.

Edelman is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors. As Chief Scientific Advisor of Science: Translational Medicine and member of the FDA Scientific Board he has set the tone for the national debate on translational research and innovation.

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Claire Aldridge, Ph.D. serves as Senior Vice President, Chief of Staff and Business Operations at Taysha Gene Therapies, a Dallas-based company focusing on eradicating monogenic CNS disease. She previously served as Associate Vice President for Commercialization and Business Development at UT Southwestern Medical Center and VP, Venture Development with Remeditex Ventures, a local biotech venture fund. Dr. Aldridge brings more than 20 years’ experience facilitating the translation of scientific discoveries into patient and commercial benefits.

Dr. Aldridge has leveraged her training as a translator, or liaison, between scientists and non-scientists, communicating effectively about the potential of science. Her roles have included technology commercialization; improving patient outcomes through quality based initiatives; working with disease-specific nonprofits; development and venture philanthropy; and biotech and life science investing through venture capital.

Dr. Aldridge received her Ph.D. from Duke University in the Department of Immunology and Program in Genetics, and her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science is from Texas A&M University.

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Shane C. Campbell-Staton is an American evolutionary biologist. Since July 2021, he has been an assistant professor in the ecology and evolutionary biology department at Princeton, where he leads a research group. His work is on how phenotypes respond to human activity that affects the environment. He also hosts the podcast ‘Biology of Superheroes’ together with Arien Darby. Shane is interested in how human history, culture, technology and politics influence life, biological stress and evolution of species around the world. He uses physiology, gene expression, genomics and experimentation to identify genes and traits that allow animals to rapidly adapt to new environmental pressures faced in a human-dominated world. Shane also has a deep passion for sharing science with the public. His own passion for science was kindled through television as a child. Growing up in a small town in South Carolina, he was not exposed to much nature or the outdoors. But watching nature documentaries and TV shows featuring passionate presenters, like Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin, he developed a love for the natural world. Now Shane is sharing his own passions and the wonders of science with a diverse audience through his research as well as visual and audio media.

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Michael Hofreiter is scientific advisor for Colossal Bioscience. He is Professor for Evolutionary Adaptive Genomics at the University of Potsdam, Germany. His research focuses on paleogenomics of extinct species such as mammoth, dwarf elephants, cave bears and other Pleistocene megafauna. Michael studied biology in Munich where he met the father of ancient DNA analyses, Svante Pääbo, who was a professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University at this time. Michael followed Svante to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig as a PhD student and received his PhD from the University of Leipzig in 2002. He continued working at the MPI EVA, first as a postdoc and, from 2005-2009, as a research group leader. In 2009, he was appointed as Professor for Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at the University of York. In 2013, he was offered his current professorship in Potsdam, where he has worked since then.

Michael has published on ancient DNA since 1998. While his interest is mainly in deciphering the evolutionary history of – mostly mammalian – species, he has also published a large number of technical studies and was among the first to apply next generation sequencing to ancient DNA. His research started on short segments of ancient DNA pieced together via PCR, but since the introduction of next generation sequencing in 2005, it has shifted more and more towards deciphering complete genomes, which allow tremendous insights into the evolution and past life of extinct creatures. Michael has worked on numerous species, but he has a special interest in cave bears and extinct elephant species (including the mammoth). Among his publications are a number of papers that resolved the phylogenetic relationship of the mammoth to the living elephants, a genomic analysis that showed that the extinct straight tusked elephant was a hybrid species, the first mitochondrial genome of an extinct dwarf elephant and the oldest genome from outside the permafrost, obtained from a 360,000 year old cave bear bone.

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DeSimone joined Stanford University after a 30-year career in NC where he was the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at UNC and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at NCSU.

DeSimone and his trainees have made significant scientific breakthroughs in green chemistry, medical devices, nanotechnology, and most recently in 3D printing. He mentored over 80 students through Ph.D. completion at UNC and NCSU, half of whom were women and members of underrepresented groups in STEM. An author of over 370 scientific publications with over 42,000 citations to his work, DeSimone is a named inventor on >200 issued patents.

He has co-founded several companies including BVS (biodegradable stent; sold to Guidant, then Abbott); Liquidia Technologies (precision medicines for pulmonary diseases; NASDAQ: LQDA); Blue Current (solid-state batteries); Advanced Chemotherapy Technologies (interventional oncology targeting pancreatic cancer); and Carbon (3D printing that is taking the industry from a prototyping-only industry to digital manufacturing). In recognition of his entrepreneurial success, he was selected as the 2019 EY Entrepreneur of the Year National Overall winner. Chemical & Engineering News named Carbon their Company of the Year for 2019.

DeSimone has achieved international recognition as a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur, earning major accolades including the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, 2017 Heinz Award and the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. He is one of only 25 individuals elected to all three U.S. National Academies—the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering. In 2016 President Obama presented him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

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Vagheesh Narasimhan is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Integrative Biology, Statistics and Data Science, as well as Population Health at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Genomics and Medicine from the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and later completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School with David Reich and Nick Patterson.

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Erez Lieberman Aiden received his PhD from Harvard and MIT in 2010. After several years at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and at Google as Visiting Faculty, he moved to the Baylor College of Medicine, where he is now an Associate Professor, with additional appointments at Rice University and ShanghaiTech.

Dr. Aiden’s inventions include the Hi-C method for three-dimensional DNA sequencing, which enables scientists to examine how the two-meter long human genome folds up inside the tiny space of the cell nucleus (Lieberman-Aiden & Van Berkum et al., Science, 2009). In 2014, his laboratory reported the first comprehensive map of loops across the human genome, mapping their anchors with single-base-pair resolution (Rao & Huntley et al., Cell, 2014). In 2015, his lab showed that these loops form by extrusion, and that it is possible to add and remove loops and domains in a predictable fashion using targeted mutations as short as a single base pair (Sanborn & Rao et al., PNAS, 2014). In 2017, Dr. Aiden and Olga Dudchenko showed that it is possible to use 3D maps, generated using Hi-C, to reliably and inexpensively assemble whole chromosomes (Dudchenko et al., Science, 2017). Today, Hi-C is a key component of most contemporary genome projects.

Together with Jean-Baptiste Michel, Dr. Aiden also developed the Google Ngram Viewer, a tool for probing cultural change by exploring the frequency of words and phrases in books over the centuries. This tool is used by billions of people as a part of Google Search.

Dr. Aiden’s research has won numerous awards, including recognition for one of the top 20 “Biotech Breakthroughs that will Change Medicine”, by Popular Mechanics, membership in Technology Review’s 2009 TR35, recognizing the top 35 innovators under 35; and in Cell’s 2014 40 Under 40. His work has been featured on the front page of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the Houston Chronicle. One of his talks has been viewed millions of times at TED.com; four of his research papers have appeared on the cover of Nature, Science and Cell. In 2012, he received the President’s Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, the highest government honor for young scientists, from Barack Obama. In 2014, Fast Company called him “America’s brightest young academic.” In 2015, his laboratory was recognized on the floor of the US House of Representatives for its discoveries about the structure of DNA.

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