Cancer Commons Editorial Advisory Board

Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., F.A.C.P

Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., is a Professor of Medicine in the University of Southern California (USC) Departments of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Scientific Director of the Cancer Genetics Unit and the Director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program, and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz earned his M.D. degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 1991, he completed his internship, residency and fellowship training at the Eberhardt Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He had special fellowship training at Universität Wien (Austria), George Washington University and Harvard Medical School. In 1991, he received the prestigious Research Fellowship Award from the “Deutsche Krebshilfe” (Bonn, Germany). He completed his research fellowship in biochemistry and molecular biology at the USC/Norris Cancer Center before joining the faculty of USC in 1994. He was awarded a Career Development Award from STOP CANCER (1994-1997). Based on his research, he also received in 1994 a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). In 1995, Dr. Lenz was selected for the prestigious ASCO Career Development Award. The National Cancer Institute funded laboratory of Dr. Lenz has been interested in the identification and determination of molecular markers in pre-cancerous and cancerous tissues that might predict for cancer risk and clinical outcome in gastrointestinal and breast cancer. Dr. Lenz is also the Institutional Principal Investigator on the UO1/NIH contract (California Cancer Consortium) in collaboration with City of Hope and UC Davis, which allows him to design innovative clinical trials with novel promising anticancer drugs.

George Lundberg

A 1995 “pioneer” of the medical internet, Dr. Lundberg was born in Florida, grew up in lower Alabama and holds earned and honorary degrees from North Park College, Baylor University, the University of Alabama (Birmingham and Tuscaloosa), the State University of New York, Syracuse, Thomas Jefferson University and the Medical College of Ohio. He served 11 years in the US Army during the Vietnam War Era. Dr. Lundberg was Professor of Pathology and ran the labs at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center for 10 years, and was Professor and Chair of Pathology at UC Davis for 5 years. Dr. Lundberg has worked in tropical medicine and forensic medicine in multiple countries. He is past President of the American Society for Clinical Pathology. From 1982 to 1999, Dr. Lundberg was Editor in Chief at the AMA, with editorial responsibility for its 39 medical journals, American Medical News, and various television and internet products, and the Editor of JAMA. In 1999 Dr. Lundberg became Editor in Chief of Medscape, and the founding Editor in Chief of both Medscape General Medicine and CBS HealthWatch.com. He served as the Editor in Chief of The Medscape Journal of Medicine, the original open access general medical journal, and beginning in 2006, Editor in Chief of eMedicine from WebMD, the original open access comprehensive medical textbook. A frequent lecturer and webcasting guest and host, and a member of the Institute of Medicine, Dr. Lundberg was a Professor at Harvard from 1993 to 2008. Dr Lundberg is now Editor in Chief, Cancer Commons; Editor at Large, MedPage Today, a Consulting Professor at Stanford and is President and Board Chair of The Lundberg Institute. In 2000, the Industry Standard dubbed Dr. Lundberg “Online Health Care’s Medicine Man”.

Ravi Salgia, M.D., Ph.D.

Ravi Salgia, MD, PhD, is a tenured professor of medicine, pathology and dermatology, and the Director of the Thoracic Oncology Program, and Aerodigestive Tract Program Translational Research Lab in the Section of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois. Dr Salgia is also an attending physician in the Department of Medicine, Section of Hematology/Oncology, University of Chicago. Dr Salgia is a member of the American Society of Hematology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research, and International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, among others. He is also a member of the Committee on Cancer Biology and Clinical Trials Review Committee at the University of Chicago. Dr Salgia’s research interests focus on novel therapeutics against lung cancer. He has been an invited lecturer to more than 300 symposia and seminars. Dr Salgia has been honored with numerous awards, including recently being named one of the Top Doctors in America. Dr Salgia is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Carcinogenesis, Update on Cancer Therapeutics, and Current Women’s Health Reviews. He also serves as associate editor for the Journal of Environmental Pathology, Toxicology, and Oncology. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, 125 abstracts, and 30 book chapters. Dr Salgia earned a medical degree from Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, where he also obtained a doctorate of philosophy. He did his internship/residency in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He also did his Medical Oncology Fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He was on faculty at the DFCI for a decade before moving to the University of Chicago.

Jay M. Tenenbaum, Ph.D.

Jay M. Tenenbaum, Ph.D. is the Founder and Chairman of Cancer Commons, a non-profit, open science community that compiles and continually refines information about cancer subtypes and treatments, based on the literature and actual patient outcomes. Dr. Tenenbaum is also Co-Founder and Chairman of CollabRx, a provider of Web-Based applications and services that help cancer patients and their physicians select optimal treatments and trials.

Dr. Tenenbaum’s background brings a unique perspective of a world-renowned Internet commerce pioneer and visionary. He was founder and CEO of Enterprise Integration Technologies, the first company to conduct a commercial Internet transaction (1992), secure Web transaction (1993) and Internet auction (1993). In 1994, he founded CommerceNet to accelerate business use of the Internet. In 1997, he co-founded Veo Systems, the company that pioneered the use of XML for automating business-to-business transactions. Dr. Tenenbaum joined Commerce One in January 1999, when it acquired Veo Systems. As Chief Scientist, he was instrumental in shaping the company’s business and technology strategies for the Global Trading Web. Post Commerce One, Dr. Tenenbaum was an officer and director of Webify Solutions, which was sold to IBM in 2006, and Medstory, which was sold to Microsoft in 2007.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Tenenbaum was a prominent AI researcher and led AI research groups at SRI International and Schlumberger Ltd. Dr. Tenenbaum is a fellow and former board member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a former consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He currently serves as a director of Efficient Finance, Patients Like Me, and the Public Library of Science, and is a consulting professor of Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon’s new West Coast campus. Dr. Tenenbaum holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.

Douglas Blayney

Douglas W. Blayney, MD is the Ann and John Doerr Medical Director of the Stanford University Cancer Center and a Professor of Internal Medicine. He is immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He came to Stanford after seven years in a similar position at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; previously he was with Wilshire Oncology Medical Group in Pasadena, California, where he practiced for 17 years. Dr. Blayney has served on the FDA�s Oncology Drug Advisory Committee, as founding editor-in-chief of ASCO�s Journal of Oncology Practice, and was a founder of ASCO�s internet site, www.asco.org. He has authored or co-authored over fifty peer reviewed journal articles, and co-edited one book. His current research involves measuring and improving quality of cancer care using information technology. Dr. Blayney received a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford and went on to the University of California, San Diego, from which he received his medical degree in 1977, and was an intern and resident in internal medicine at their University of California Hospitals. He trained in oncology at the National Cancer Institute, and is board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology.

Raphael Bueno, M.D.

Dr. Bueno is the Associate Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bueno is a busy clinical surgeon with expertise in the surgical management of complex lung cancer. Dr. Bueno is also a funded investigator who has been working in the field of prognosis and diagnosis of thoracic malignancies. He has a particular interest in developing diagnostic and prognostic tests for patients with lung cancer. He has been a member of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B cooperative group for clinical and translational cancer research for the past decade and has participated in several multi-center research efforts through this and other organizations.

Nicholas Campbell, M.D.

Dr. Nicholas Campbell earned his medical degree at the Medical College of Georgia. He then completed his residency in Internal Medicine and then fellowship in Medical Oncology both at the University of Chicago where he served as Chief Fellow. Dr. Campbell is now a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago teaching affiliate hospital, Northshore University. Dr. Campbell’s clinical research interests include novel therapeutics, trial development, and database management in Thoracic Oncology.

Arthur Caplan

Arthur Caplan is the Emmanuel and Robert Hart Director of the Center for Bioethics and the Sidney D Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Prior to coming to Penn in 1994, Caplan taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University. He was the Associate Director of the Hastings Center from 1984-1987. Caplan is the author or editor of twenty-nine books and over 500 papers in refereed journals. His most recent books are Smart Mice Not So Smart People (Rowman Littlefield, 2006) and the Penn Guide to Bioethics (Springer, 2009). He has served on a number of national and international committees including as the Chair, National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group; the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning; the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability; a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses; the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy; the ethics committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy; chair of the advisory committee on bioethics for GlaxoSmithKline and the special advisory panel to the National Institutes of Mental Health on human experimentation on vulnerable subjects. And most recently was the Co-Director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts.

Susan Cohn

Susan L. Cohn, MD, is a highly respected expert in pediatric cancers and blood diseases. She is a leading authority on neuroblastoma, a cancer of nerve cells, and the most common type of cancer found in infants. Dr. Cohn is actively researching several aspects of neuroblastoma. She is one of the few pediatric oncologists in the United States who is conducting Phase I clinical trials of promising treatments for the disease. Her research has received generous support from the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

George Demetri

Dr. George Demetri received an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Harvard University, followed by a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to do research at the Université de Besancon, France, after which he received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA. After completing Internal Medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Washington Hospitals in Seattle, Washington, he pursued a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Harvard Medical School, where he has served as an attending physician since 1989. Dr. Demetri and colleagues at Harvard have developed a large research-focused multidisciplinary center of excellence for sarcoma patients at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, supporting a number of translational and clinical research projects in sarcomas and focusing on new drug development. Dr. Demetri’s research and clinical interests have focused on mechanism-based drug development for solid tumors, with a particular emphasis on molecularly-defined subsets of sarcomas such as Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GIST). Work from the multidisciplinary team at Dana-Farber/Harvard has contributed to the development of several new drugs for sarcomas and other malignancies, including imatinib (Gleevec), sunitinib (Sutent), dasatinib (Sprycel), trabectedin (Yondelis) and other new targeted therapies in development. Dr Demetri serves as co-chair of the Medical Advisory Board for the Sarcoma Foundation of America as well as several scientific and editorial advisory boards. With an interest in internet-based patient support, he also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of CancerNet (www.cancer.net) from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Phillip Dennis, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Phillip Dennis attended the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar and obtained his Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from New York University as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program. Dr. Dennis completed training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins and joined the NCI as a tenure track investigator in 1999. Since then, Dr. Dennis’ scientific and clinical interests have focused on studying signal transduction pathways that contribute to formation, maintenance, and therapeutic resistance of lung cancer. Dr. Dennis became a Senior Investigator in the Medical Oncology Branch in 2006. Dr. Dennis currently heads the Signal Transduction Section in the Medical Oncology Branch. Dr. Dennis is a recipient of the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Health and an NIH Merit Award, and was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2007.

Laura Esserman

Dr. Laura Esserman is a breast surgeon and Director of the Breast Care Center. She specialized in breast cancer research and treatment because she saw great opportunities to advance our knowledge and treatment of breast cancer and to make a meaningful difference in the lives of women who have breast disease. Her overall vision‹as demonstrated by such initiatives as a healing garden, an art therapy program for patients, and a same day assessment program‹is to develop state-of-the-art ways to care for and empower patients during their treatment. Dr. Esserman received her undergraduate degree from Harvard, and her medical and surgical training from Stanford University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in breast oncology at Stanford in 1988, and received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1993. She joined the UCSF faculty in 1993. Dr. Esserman has received many honors for her work, a grant to establish a state-of-the-art breast center and breast cancer research foundation-one of three major Department of Defense grants awarded to in the United States in 1998. She is also the Clinical director of the Breast Oncology research program at UCSF.

David Fisher

David E. Fisher, M.D., PhD is a researcher, clinician and academic, who is chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also serves as director of the MGH Cutaneous Biology Research Center and director of the Melanoma Center at MGH. Fisher’s research has focused on understanding the molecular and genetic events which underlie formation of melanoma as well as skin pigmentation. As a clinician, he has worked to translate these understandings into advances in diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human diseases related to the skin and associated disorders. A graduate of Swarthmore College with a degree in Biology and Chemistry, Fisher is also an concert cellist and received a degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He received his PhD under Nobel Laureate Gunter Blobel at Rockefeller University and his Medical Degree at Cornell University Medical College. Fisher’s specialty training in Medicine, Pediatrics, and Oncology were carried out at Harvard Medical School, followed by postdoctoral studies with Phillip Sharp at MIT. His research interests span examination of molecular events controlling mammalian gene expression, and their integration into diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities focused on human disease.

Keith Flaherty

Dr. Flaherty received a Bachelor of Science from Yale University and medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and completed a fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the faculty in the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and member of the Developmental Therapeutics Program in the Abramson Cancer Center in 2002. In 2009, Dr. Flaherty moved to Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School to serve as the Director of Developmental Therapeutics for the MGH Cancer Center. He was awarded a K23 grant from the NCI to investigate the inhibition of angiogenesis with targeted therapy combinations in melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. In addition to being principal investigator of numerous first-in-human clinical trials with novel targeted therapies, he is the principal investigator of two national, cooperative group trials: E2603, a phase III trial comparing sorafenib, carboplatin and paclitaxel to carboplatin and paclitaxel alone in patients with metastatic melanoma and E2804, a randomized phase II trial comparing combinations of anti-angiogenic agents in metastatic renal cell carcinoma. He served as principal investigator for the first-in-human clinical trials of the first prospectively developed selective BRAF inhibitors, RAF-265 and PLX4032. PLX4032 has emerged as the most active single-agent therapy ever evaluated in metastatic melanoma patients, and is rapidly being tested in a phase III trial of which Dr. Flaherty serves as co-principal investigator. He is internationally known for expertise in clinical and translational research directed against signal transduction pathways in melanoma.

Erica Frank

Dr. Erica Frank is a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and a Tier I Canada Research Chair. She is also the Founder and Principal Investigator of the Healthy Doc = Healthy Patient initiative (delineating and building on the relationship between physicians’ personal and clinical practices), Founder and Director of Health Sciences Online (www.hso.info, creating a global virtual health sciences university), and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Gilles Frydman

Gilles Frydman is a pioneer of medical online communities. After working on government research programs involving telecommunication technology, he founded the Association of Cancer Online Resources ACOR [*] in 1995, after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. ACOR was designed to leverage the communication tools on the Internet to optimize the care received by cancer patients, worldwide. A founding member of the Cook’s Branch Initiative (a group formed by the late Dr. Tom Ferguson to promote a model of active patient participation in their care) Gilles has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study online patient. He has served on a number of communication expert groups at the National Cancer Institute. He currently serves on a number of advocacy and advisory committees in support of patient-centered computing. He consults, with Google and other Internet corporations, about the importance of the networked patients and the central role of the Internet in the long tail of medicine. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Participatory Medicine; founding member and current president of the Society for Participatory Medicine. His current projects are all related to the role of online virtual environments to facilitate, improve healthcare and promote accelerated scientific discoveries. [* To this day ACOR, after serving over 650,000 cancer patients and caregivers remains the largest online social network for cancer patients, composed of close to 200 separate online support groups for individuals with cancer.

Mikhail Gishizky, Ph.D.

Dr Gishizky has more than 25 years experience in research and development within the academic, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry settings where he led efforts in the development of revolutionary signal transduction inhibitor drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Dr. Gishizky has been instrumental in establishing two biotechnology companies (SUGEN, Entelos) whose technology is helping bring the promise of personalized medicine to the patient’s bedside. Dr. Gishizky has been a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation where he contributed to numerous workshops and publications regarding pharmaceutical development and patient care that have been used by Public and Congressional leaders to support the call for change in the biomedical enterprise. Earlier in his career, Dr. Gishizky held positions of increasing responsibility at SUGEN, Pharmacia, and Pfizer as Vice President and Research Zone Head, developing targeted therapies and signal transduction pathway analysis tools to identify patients most likely to respond to given therapies (i.e., Sutent, a leader in the class of signal transduction inhibitors marketed by Pfizer). Dr. Gishizky received his degree in endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco where his work focused on defining the molecular mechanisms responsible for the development and progression of diabetes mellitus. Dr. Gishizky’s post-doctoral training and academic work focused on cancer biology, hematopoietic cell development. His research led to the development of in vitro systems and an animal model for human chronic myeloid leukemia that was instrumental in the development of Gleevec. Dr. Gishizky has published extensively in the areas of diabetes mellitus and oncology research.

Scott Gottlieb

Scott Gottlieb, M.D. is a practicing physician and Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2005-2007, Dr. Gottlieb served as FDA Deputy Commissioner and before that, from 2003-2004, as a senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner and as the FDA’s Director of Medical Policy Development. He left FDA in the spring of 2004 to work on implementation of the new Medicare Drug Benefit as a Senior Adviser to the Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he supported the agency’s work on quality improvement and coverage and payment decision-making, particularly related to new medical technologies. Dr. Gottlieb is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Brain Health Institute at Rutgers University. He is a Director of Molecular Insights (MIPI) a radiotherapy and cancer diagnostics company; and CombiMatrix (CBMX) a medical diagnostics company focused on gene profiling and cancer diagnostics. Dr. Gottlieb is partner to a healthcare investment firm and continues to practice medicine as a hospitalist. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.

Sarah Greene

Sarah Greene is Editor-in-Chief of The Scientist, a magazine for biomedical research and the life sciences, and of its parent, Faculty of 1000, a post-publication peer review service for biomedical institutions located in London. She is a publishing and new media entrepreneur with 30 years’ experience and three startups acquired by Wiley (Current Protocols), Elsevier (HMS Beagle web magazine and BioMedNet), and Thomson Healthcare (Praxis Press; Best Practice of Medicine). Prior to her current position, she was a co-founder and served as Managing Editor overseeing the development and launch of the Journal of Participatory Medicine. Greene also developed award-winning websites with original content for the New York Academy of Sciences and the New York Times-Health and was Chief Content Officer at Keas, Inc., where she helped invent original tools, content, and communities for patients and health care professionals. She serves on the Board of Directors of Epic Ensemble Theatre in New York City, the Advisory Board of Keas, Inc., and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Participatory Medicine. Her website is http://sarahgreene.net.

David Haussler

David Haussler’s research lies at the interface of mathematics, computer science, and molecular biology. He develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to explore the molecular function and evolution of the human genome, integrating cross-species comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. He is credited with pioneering the use of hidden Markov models (HMMs), stochastic context-free grammars, and the discriminative kernel method for analyzing DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. He was the first to apply the latter methods to the genome-wide search for gene expression biomarkers in cancer, now a major effort of his laboratory.

As a collaborator on the international Human Genome Project, his team posted the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence on the Internet on July 7, 2000. Following this, his team developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research and serves as the platform for several large-scale genomics projects, including NHGRI’s ENCODE project to use omics methods to explore the function of every base in the human genome (for which UCSC serves as the Data Coordination Center), NIH’s Mammalian Gene Collection, NHGRI’s 1000 genomes project to explore human genetic variation, and NCI’s Cancer Genome Atlas project to explore the genomic changes in cancer.

His group’s informatics work on cancer genomics, including the UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser, provides a complete analysis pipeline from raw DNA reads through the detection and interpretation of mutations and altered gene expression in tumor samples. His group collaborates with researchers at medical centers nationally, including members of the Stand Up To Cancer “Dream Teams” and the Cancer Genome Atlas, to discover molecular causes of cancer and pioneer a new personalized, genomics-based approach to cancer treatment.
He co-founded the Genome 10K Project to assemble a genomic zoo—a collection of DNA sequences representing the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species—to capture genetic diversity as a resource for the life sciences and for worldwide conservation efforts.

Haussler received his PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2011 Weldon Memorial Prize from University of Oxford, the 2009 ASHG Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics, the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology, the 2005 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in Artificial Intelligence.

Matthew Holt

Matthew Holt has spent about 20 years in health care as a researcher, generalist forecaster, and strategist. He’s conducted in-depth studies about the health care market, information technology and policy for public release and private clients. He learned from some of the best in forecasting, policy and survey organizations, like Institute for the Future and Harris Interactive. But these days he’s best known as the author of The Health Care Blog and as the co-founder of the Health2.0 Conference. For that he’s been mostly self-taught!

Donald Kennedy

Donald Kennedy received AB and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard and has served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1960 to the present. He served as Chair of the Department of Biology from 1964-1972, and as Director of the Program in Human Biology from 1973-1977. He was Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration from 1977-79 and President of Stanford University from 1980 to 1992. His present research program (see above) is conducted as a Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment. Prof. Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He served on the National Commission for Public Service and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, as a founding Director of the Health Effects Institute, as a Director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as Co-Chair of the National Academies’ Project on Science, Technology and Law. Professor Kennedy served as Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine from 2000-2008.

Daphne Koller

Daphne Koller is the Rajeev Motwani Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Her main research interest is in developing and using machine learning and probabilistic methods to model and analyze complex domains. Her current research projects include models in computational biology, computational medicine, and in extracting semantic meaning from sensor data of the physical world. Daphne Koller is the author of over 180-refereed publications, which have appeared in venues spanning Science, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Genetics, Cell, the Journal of Games and Economic Behavior, and a variety of conferences and journals in AI and Computer Science. She has received 9 best paper or best student paper awards and has given keynote talks at over 10 different major conferences, also spanning a variety of areas. She was the program co-chair of the NIPS 2007 and UAI 2001 conferences, and has served on numerous program committees and as associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, the Machine Learning Journal, and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. She was awarded the Arthur Samuel Thesis Award in 1994, the Sloan Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1996, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 1998, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1999, the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 2001, the Cox Medal for excellence in fostering undergraduate research at Stanford in 2003, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004, the ACM/Infosys award in 2008, and was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2011.

Scott Kopetz, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Scott Kopetz graduated Summa Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University with a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering/Electrical and received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He obtained his residency training in Internal Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, followed by a medical oncology fellowship at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Kopetz joined M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2006 as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology. He subsequently completed a Ph.D. at M.D. Anderson in cancer biology with thesis focus on mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance in colorectal cancer. Dr. Kopetz is board-certified in Internal Medicine and in Medical Oncology. He has authored peer-reviewed articles in respected scientific journals such as Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet, Cancer Research, Cancer, Clinical Cancer Research, and JAMA, and is a member of the editorial board for Clinical Cancer Research. In addition, he was a recipient of peer-reviewed grants from American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Institute of Health, among others. His research interests include the biology of the refractory colorectal cancer and the development of novel therapeutics for molecularly distinct subsets of colorectal cancer patients.

Heinz-Josef Lenz

Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., is a Professor of Medicine in the USC Departments of Medicine, and Preventive Medicine, Scientific Director of the Cancer Genetics Unit and the Director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program, and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz earned his M.D. degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 1991, he completed his internship, residency and fellowship training at the Eberhardt Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He had special fellowship training at Universität Wien (Austria), George Washington University and Harvard Medical School. In 1991, he received the prestigious Research Fellowship Award from the “Deutsche Krebshilfe” (Bonn, Germany). He completed his research fellowship in biochemistry and molecular biology at the USC/Norris Cancer Center before joining the faculty of USC in 1994. He was awarded a Career Development Award from STOP CANCER (1994-1997). Based on his research, he also received in 1994 a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). In 1995, Dr. Lenz was selected for the prestigious ASCO Career Development Award. The NCI funded laboratory of Dr. Lenz has been interested in the identification and determination of molecular markers in pre-cancerous and cancerous tissues that might predict for cancer risk and clinical outcome in gastrointestinal and breast cancer. Dr. Lenz is also the Institutional Principal Investigator on the UO1/NIH contract (California Cancer Consortium) in collaboration with City of Hope and UC Davis which allows him to design innovative clinical trials with novel promising anticancer drugs.

Howard Markel

Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D. is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. A critically acclaimed historian of medicine, Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books and the author of over 200 articles in the scholarly literature and popular periodicals. His latest book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and the Discovery of Sigmund Freud, will be published in the summer, 2011 by Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf. Dr. Markel is the editor-in chief of The 1918-1919 American Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive and is a contributing writer for JAMA. Professor Markel’s contributions have been recognized by numerous grants, honors and awards from national foundations, the federal government, and academic societies. In 2008, he was elected as a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Laurence J. Marton, MD

Dr. Marton is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and serves as a consultant to industry and to governmental and academic institutions. In recent years he has been a founder, director, CEO, CSO, and CMO of the SLIL Biomedical Corporation, and CSO of both Cellgate and Progen Pharmaceuticals. These companies were or are focused on the discovery and development of novel compounds for the treatment of cancer and other serious diseases.

Before moving from academia to industry, Dr. Marton was Dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School and previously Chaired the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF, where he was a Professor in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Neurological Surgery. He is a leading expert with extensive experience in the fields of cell growth and drug development. His work is focused on the use of polyamine analogs in treating human diseases related to aberrant cell growth and epigenetics, including cancer and other diseases. His research has resulted in more than 190 original publications, 60 scientific reviews and chapters, four books, and numerous patents.

Dr. Marton serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Association for Cancer Research Foundation and on the Board of Directors of the California Heart Center Foundation, is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of PharmaJet, and is on the Advisory Boards of Ruga Corp, Contrast Therapeutics, and Silicom Ventures. Dr. Marton received his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and his BA from Yeshiva University.

Joan McClure

Joan S. McClure, MS is Senior Vice President of Clinical Information and Publications for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). Ms. McClure is responsible for the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™, associated Guidelines for Patients in English and Spanish, the NCCN Drugs & Biologics Compendium™, and The Journal of the NCCN (JNCCN). Ms. McClure also serves as an Associate Editor for JNCCN. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™ are a comprehensive set of guidelines detailing the sequential management decisions and interventions for the malignant cancers that affect 97% of all cancer patients and for cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis and supportive care. Updated annually, the clinical practice guidelines are recognized as the standard for clinical policy in the United States and have served as a model for guidelines programs elsewhere in the world. Ms. McClure previously managed national oncology information programs for patients, health professionals and the public on contracts with the U. S. National Cancer Institute (NCI). She directed investigator recruitment efforts in oncology for a multinational CRO and managed the technical and scientific effort to standardize data for submission to regulatory authorities in the United States, Europe, and Japan in a contract with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She supported NCI’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program in its 2000 revision of the Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC).

Frank McCormick

Frank McCormick, Ph.D., F.R.S., D.Sc. (Hon) is the Director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, a multidisciplinary research and clinical care organization that is one of the largest cancer centers in the Western United States, and he is Associate Dean of the UCSF School of Medicine. A native of Cambridge, England, Dr. McCormick received his B.Sc. in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham (1972) and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge (1975). Postdoctoral fellowships were held in the United States at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and in London at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1996. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. McCormick pursued cancer-related work with several Bay Area biotechnology firms, including positions with Cetus Corporation (Director of Molecular Biology, 1981-90; Vice President of Research, 1990-91) and Chiron Corporation, where he was Vice President of Research from 1991-92. In 1992 he founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals and served as its Chief Scientific Officer until 1996. Dr. McCormicks current research interests center on the fundamental differences between normal cells and cancer cells that can allow the development of novel therapeutic strategies. In addition to his positions as Director of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Associate Dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, he holds the E. Dixon Heise Distinguished Professorship in Oncology and the David A. Wood Distinguished Professorship of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research in UCSFs Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Dr. McCormick is the author of more than 270 scientific publications.

Wells Messersmith, M.D., F.A.C.P

Dr. Wells Messersmith attended Williams College, Harvard Medical School, and then trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He did his Medical Oncology/Drug Development Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, where he was on the faculty from 2004-2007 in the Gastrointestinal Oncology and Drug Development programs. Dr. Messersmith joined the University of Colorado faculty in August 2007 as the Director of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology and also serves as Deputy Head of the Division of Medical Oncology and Program co-Leader of Developmental Therapeutics. Dr. Messersmith is focused on clinical and translational cancer and has held several National Institute of Health grants (K23, R01, R21’s) as well as an American Society of Clinical Oncology YIA. He serves as the principal investigator on numerous national and local therapeutic trials. He is an active investigator in the developmental therapeutics laboratory, working on novel targeted therapies as well as correlative studies for use on human tissue samples. Honors include the Isselbacher Humanitarian Award (Harvard Medical School), Passano Clinician Scientist Award (Johns Hopkins), and an National Cancer Institute Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award.

David G. Nathan

David G. Nathan, M.D. is a graduate of Harvard College (1951) and Harvard Medical School (1955). He was an intern and senior resident in medicine at the then Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and a Clinical Associate at the National Cancer Institute. From 1959 to 1966 he was a hematologist at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and then became Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. From 1985 to 1995 he was Physician-in-Chief of the Children’s Hospital and from 1995 to 2000 was President of Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Nathan’s research has focused on the inherited disorders of red cells and granulocytes and particularly on Thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. He has trained over 100 hematologists many of whom hold leading positions in pediatrics and internal medicine. His text book entitled Hematology of Infancy and Childhood is the leading text in the field. He is the author of two popular books: Genes Blood and Courage published by the Harvard University Press in 1995, and The Cancer Treatment Revolution published by John Wiley and Sons in March 2007. Dr. Nathan is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the American Pediatric Society, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Medal of Science, the Stratton medal of the American Society of Hematology (of which he was President), The Walker Prize of the Boston Museum of Science, the John Howland medal of the American Pediatric Society, the George M. Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians and the John Stearns Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Medicine of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Gregory Otterson, M.D.

Dr. Otterson is Professor in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University James Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Otterson is broadly interested in improving the care and understanding of thoracic malignancies (adenocarcinoma, squamous carcinoma, large cell carcinoma, never-smoking adenocarcinoma, small cell lung cancer, mesothelioma and thymic cancers). His research centers around the genetic and epigenetic changes in lung cancers, particularly microRNAs. Therapeutically, he is interested in understanding how better to target specific therapies to specific patients – i.e. understanding which patients will respond to which therapeutic maneuvers. Dr. Otterson has active collaborations within OSU, including in the Division of Cancer Genetics (Carlo Croce), the School of Public Health (Mary Ellen Wewers and Amy Ferketich), and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (Patrick Nana-Sinkam). Outside of OSU, he works with investigators at the University of Minnesota, and also actively works with the Cancer and Leukemia Group B, having been National Principal Investigator on three studies through the Respiratory Committee.

John Quackenbush, Ph.D.

John Quackenbush received his PhD in 1990 in theoretical physics from UCLA working on string theory models. Following two years as a postdoctoral fellow in physics, Dr. Quackenbush applied for and received a Special Emphasis Research Career Award from the National Center for Human Genome Research to work on the Human Genome Project. He spent two years at the Salk Institute working on developing physical maps of human chromosome 11 and two years at Stanford University working on new laboratory and computational strategies for sequencing the Human Genome. In 1997 he joined the faculty of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) where his focus began to shift to post-genomic applications with an emphasis on microarray analysis. Using a combination of laboratory and computational approaches, Dr. Quackenbush and his group developed analytical methods based on integration of data across domains to learn biological meaning from high-dimensional data. In 2005, he was appointed Professor of Biostatistics and Computational Biology and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Since that time, his work has increasingly focused on the analysis of human cancer using systems-based approaches to understanding and modeling biological problems. In 2010 he launched the Center for Cancer Computational Biology (CCCB) at the DFCI which provides broad-based bioinformatics support to the local research community using a collaborative consulting model as well as performing and analyzing large-scale second generation DNA sequencing.

His expertise is in genomics technologies, including sequencing and array-based approaches, integrative genomics, personalized genomics, and the integration of clinical and research data to drive discovery.

Jared Schwartz

Jared Schwartz has over 30 years of pathology expertise, and currently serves as CMO of Aperio. Prior to Aperio, Dr. Schwartz was President of the College of American Pathologists, and Director of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Presbyterian Healthcare in Charlotte, North Carolina. Board certified in anatomic and clinical pathology with subspecialty boards in medical microbiology and cytopathology, he is a graduate of Duke University Medical School, where he completed his residency and fellowship training, and served as chief resident. He was appointed to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee by HHS, and was a co-chair and author of the ASCO/CAP Guidelines on HER2, which was published in the January 2007 editions of the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He is one of the authors of the ASCO/CAP Guidelines on ER/PR, which was published in both journals in April 2010.

George Simon, M.D.

Dr. Simon is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Oncology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC. He also serves as the Assistant Director of Clinical Investigation at the Hollings Cancer Center and is the Burtschy Family distinguished endowed chair in Cancer Research. Previously he served as the Director of the Thoracic Oncology Program, Department of Medical Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After earning his medical degree from the Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana in Punjab, India, Dr. Simon completed residencies in internal medicine at the Christina Medical College and Hospital, Punjab, India and St. Joseph’s Hospital, Denver, CO, and a fellowship in medical oncology and hematology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, CO. Previously, Dr. Simon has served as the director of the mesothelioma research program at the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL. Prior to joining the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Dr. Simon served as the Director of Clinical Investigation in the Division of Hemotology and Oncology at the Denver Health Medical Center, Denver, CO. Dr. Simon has served as a member of the NCCN Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer guidelines panel, American College of Chest Physician, Lung Cancer Guidelines committee and in the thoracic core committee of the South West Oncology Group. He currently serves in the Thoracic Core Committee of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. Dr. Simon is an Ad Hoc reviewer for several panels of the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, and Department of Defense and also a reviewer for several journals including, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Chest, Cancer, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, and Indian Journal of Cancer. He is author of co-author of over 70 peer-reviewed research publications, 13 book chapters and over 65 abstracts.

Thomas Stossel

Thomas Stossel, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Universities, is Director of Translational Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (http://translationalmedicine.bwh.harvard.edu/) and American Cancer Society Professor at Harvard. He was President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and American Society of Hematology and edited the Journal of Clinical Investigation. For his research on cell motility he was elected to The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The Institute of Medicine. His policy interest concerns physician-industry collaboration, and he is a co-founder of the Association of Clinical Researchers and Educators. He is a founder of Critical Biologics Corporation (http://www.criticalbiologics.com/) and has licensed patented technology to Velico Medical, Inc. With his wife, Dr Kerry Maguire, Stossel does dental and medical work in rural Zambia (http://optionsforchildren.org/default.htm).

Sabine Tejparz, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Sabine Tejpar received her medical degree from the Catholic University Leuven (K.U. Leuven, Belgium) in 1995 and did her residency in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, at the University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Leuven. In 2000, she obtained her Ph.D from the program in Molecular Oncology at the Center for Human Genetics at K. U. Leuven. After her medical and scientific training, she joined UZ Leuven as an Associate Professor in the Department of Gastroenterology, Digestive Oncology Unit. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the K.U. Leuven as well as a Senior Clinical Investigator of the Fund for Scientific Research in Flanders, Belgium where her research focuses on the molecular sub-classification of colorectal cancer, prognostic markers in adjuvant colorectal cancer, and predictive markers for efficacy of EGFR inhibition. She is also a practicing clinician serving at Adjunct Clinical Head of the Department of Gastroenterology, Digestive Oncology Unit, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Leuven. Dr. Tejpar is an active member of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) where she also serves as vice-chair of the EORTC translational research advisory committee, board member of the Gastrointestinal Group, member of the EORTC Network of Core Institutions (NOCI) steering committee and executive committee, member of the EORTC Pharmacology and Molecular Mechanisms Group and Laboratory Research Division, co-chair of the EORTC-NCI-ASCO tutorial, and member of the AACR-NCI-EORTC program committee. She is also on the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) program committee, a member of the Belgian Group for Digestive Oncology (BGDO), and a board member of the Belgian Familial Adenomatous Polyposis Assocation (FAPA). Since 2009, Dr. Tejpar has also been a member of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) translational research working group and since 2006 a member of the Ministerial advisory committee for colon cancer prevention in Flanders.

Laura J. van 't Veer

Laura van ‘t Veer received her M.Sc. degree in Biology (1984) at the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Medicine (1989) at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. She did her postdoctoral training at the Cancer Center of the Harvard Medical School and The Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA (1989-1991) and The Netherlands Cancer Institute (1992-1993). From 1993 till 2007 she initiated and held the positions of Head Molecular Pathology and Head Genetic Counseling Clinic at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. In 2003 she was one of the founders of the Netherlands Cancer Institute spin-off, the molecular profiling company Agendia. In 2007-2010 she became Division Head Diagnostic Oncology, including clinical operations and research of 5 clinical departments. Since 2010 she is Professor at the University of California San Francisco, where she leads the Breast Oncology Program. Dr. van ‘t Veer is first author of a study showing that microarray genomics technology can predict which breast tumors will likely metastasize and which will not (Nature 2002, NEJM 2002). When these findings are implemented into daily clinical practice, the amount of so-called adjuvant treatments with chemotherapy for (pre-menopausal) breast cancer patients could be reduced by up to thirty percent. This microarray test now called MammaPrint, is central to the work of the translational research network TRANSBIG (Translational Research Breast International Group). The MINDACT trial is worldwide the first large scale clinical trial implementing genomics. MammaPrint is an FDA cleared In Vitro Diagnostic Multigene Index Assay (IVDMIA), included in several international and national guidelines for breast cancer management. At UCSF she coordinates the tissue and biomarker activities of the FNIH sponsored multicenter adaptive clinical trial I-SPY. Dr. van ‘t Veer received for this work the 2007 European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) life-time achievement award for translational research in breast cancer.

John Wilbanks

John Wilbanks is Vice President for Science at Creative Commons. He was previously a Fellow at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences, and founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Before moving into technology, he was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark. John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He serves on the Board of Directors for Sage BioNetworks, DuraSpacem and AcaWiki.

Peter Paul Yu

Dr. Peter Paul Yu is in clinical practice at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF), a multi specialty medical group serving the San Francisco Bay area. Dr. Yu is Director of Cancer Research at PAMF and graduated from the combined undergraduate and medical school Program in Medicine at Brown University. His residency was at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Medical Center in New York City where he was Chief Resident. After a fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Yu completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the laboratory of Dr. John Mendelsohn. He is Board Certified in both Medical Oncology and Hematology. He has served as President of the Association of Northern California Oncologists, Chief of Medicine at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, member of the Board of Directors of Pathways Homecare and Hospice and is a member of the Audit Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB).

He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and Chair of the ASCO HIT Work Group. Past ASCO activities have included Chair of the Clinical Practice Committee, member of the Cancer Research, Information Technology, Grant Selection, Audit and Nominating Committees, Chair of the Best of ASCO San Francisco 2005, Chair ASCO EHR Symposium 2009, Annual Meeting Educational Session Chair 2007, 2009 and 2010, and faculty of the Clinical Trials for the Community Oncology Team Workshop 2005.

Dr. Yu has served as co-chair of the Commission for Certification of Health Information Technology (CCHIT) Oncology work group, co-chair of the AMA-RAND Clinical Decision Support Oncology work group under contract to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, co-chair of the ASCO-NCI CORE project and has participated in several Institute of Medicine health information technology workshops.