George Church, Harvard Medical School & MIT

George Church, PhD, is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. George is most known for his professional contributions in the sequencing of genomes and interpreting such data, in synthetic biology and genome engineering, and in an emerging area of neuroscience that proposes to map brain activity and establish a “functional connectome.” His innovations have contributed to nearly all “next generation” DNA sequencing methods and companies (CGI-BGI, Life, Illumina, Nanopore). He is the founder of numerous companies. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Francois Ferré, ALMA LifeSciences

Francois Ferré, PhD, is one of San Diego’s leading biotech entrepreneurs and angel investors. In 1998, Dr. Ferré and his wife, Magda Marquet, PhD, started their first company, Althea Technologies, which became a leading provider of contract services to the biotechnology field in the U.S. and Europe. That company was acquired in 2013 by the Japanese group Ajinomoto. Dr. Ferré also co-founded a spinoff company, AltheaDX, which specializes in personalized medicine and pharmacogenomics. Four years ago, Dr. Ferré and Dr. Marquet co-founded ALMA Life Sciences, LLC. an early-stage investment firm focusing on the creation and growth of healthcare companies in San Diego.

John Minna, UT Southwestern Medical Center

John Minna, MD, is the Max L. Thomas Distinguished Chair in Molecular Pulmonary Oncology and the Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. He is the director of the Hamon Center for Therapeutic Oncology and is a professor of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology. John has countless awards for his contributions to cancer research, and has over 600 peer reviewed publications. He is most known for his contributions to the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of lung and breast cancer through a genome-wide approach and the development of molecular biomarkers for the response to cancer therapy.

Kevin Schulman, Stanford University

Kevin Schulman, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Associate Chair of Business Development and Strategy in the Department of Medicine, Director of Industry Partnerships and Education for the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC) at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and, by courtesy, Professor of Economics at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. His research interests include organizational innovation in health care, health care policy and health economics.  With 300 original articles, 80 review articles/commentaries, and 40 case studies/book chapters, Kevin Schulman has had a broad impact on health policy (h-index = 61). His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Annals of Internal Medicine. He is a member of the editorial/advisory boards of the American Heart Journal, Health Policy, Management and Innovation (www.HMPI.Org), and Senior Associate Editor of Health Services Research.