Board of Directors

Marty Tenenbaum, PhD
Founder & Chairman of the Board
Cancer Commons

Marty Tenenbaum, PhD
Founder & Chairman of the Board
Cancer Commons

Marty Tenenbaum is a renowned computer scientist, Internet entrepreneur and cancer survivor. He founded Cancer Commons and CollabRx (NASD: CRLX) to help each cancer patient obtain the best possible outcome. He is an Internet commerce pioneer and visionary, having founded EIT (1990) and CommerceNet (1994) to accelerate business use of the Internet, and later, was an officer and director of Commerce One, Webify Solutions (sold to IBM in 2006),  and Medstory (sold to Microsoft in 2007). He currently serves on the boards of Efficient Finance, Patients Like Me, and the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

Dr. Tenenbaum is a fellow and former board member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and a former consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.

Paul Billings, MD, PhD
Vice Chair of the Board, Cancer Commons CEO & Director, Biological Dynamics Inc.

Paul Billings, MD, PhD
Vice Chair of the Board, Cancer Commons CEO & Director, Biological Dynamics Inc.

Dr. Paul R. Billings is a board-certified internist and clinical geneticist, who also holds a PhD in Immunology, from Harvard University. He worked there with Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, who subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

In 2018, Dr. Billings became the Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at Natera, Inc., a global leader in human genetic testing. Dr Billings recently has been a Partner in the diagnostic medicine consultancy, the Bethesda Group, and the Managing Director of the Bethesda Group Fund.

He is Chairman of PlumCare, LLC, and Synergenz Biosciences Limited. He has held academic and research appointments at Harvard University, UC San Francisco, Stanford University and UC Berkeley. He has published approximately 200 papers and volumes. He co-founded the stem cell company, CBR Systems, was a Director at Ancestry.com and Signature Genomics Inc., and is co-founder and senior advisor of Fabric Genomics, Inc., a leading genome informatics firm.

Since June of 2019 he is also Chairman of the Board of OmniSeq, Inc., a cancer diagnostic company affiliated with Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY. He is also a Director at OmniSeq Inc., which provides novel cancer and immunodiagnostic testing. Dr. Billings advises or directs several other firms in the precision medicine field.

Until 2018, Dr. Billings was the Chairman of Biological Dynamics, a revolutionary molecular measurement platform. Dr. Billings was the SVP and Senior Physician at Laboratory Corporation of America, Inc., and Chief Medical Officer at Life Technologies Inc. (Applied Biosystems), and later the clinical division of ThermoFisher Scientific Inc. He is an expert in precision medicine diagnostics particularly in Oncology, Transplantation and Women’s Health.

Laurence J. Marton, MD
Member of the Board of Trustees
American Association for Cancer Research Foundation

Laurence J. Marton, MD
Member of the Board of Trustees
American Association for Cancer Research Foundation

Dr. Marton serves as a consultant to industry and to nonprofit, government, and academic institutions. In the nonprofit sector, Dr. Marton is an Emeritus Member of the   Board of Trustees of the American Association for Cancer Research Foundation and is on the Board of Directors of Cancer Commons.  In the for-profit sector, he serves on the Boards of Directors of Cellsonics, Matternet, Microsonic Systems, Nanotics, Omniox (also serving as Executive Chair), RenovoRx, and xCures and is an advisor to Assurance Health Data, PharmaJet, and the Precision Medicine World Conference.

Previously, Dr. Marton was Dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School and Chaired the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF, where he was a Professor in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Neurological Surgery.  Dr. Marton received his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Gladys H. Monroy, PhD, JD
Member of the Board of Trustees
American Association for Cancer Research Foundation

Gladys H. Monroy, PhD, JD
Member of the Board of Trustees
American Association for Cancer Research Foundation

Dr. Gladys H. Monroy has specialized in intellectual property strategy in the field of Life Sciences since 1986.  Her practice has included structuring and maintaining complex patent portfolios for companies ranging in size from start-up to large corporations, patent litigation, trade secret litigation, freedom of operation opinions and validity opinions, due diligence analysis of intellectual property portfolios for mergers, acquisitions, and financing including IPOs.

Dr. Monroy joined Morrison & Foerster LLP (MoFo) as a partner in 1990.  She was a founder of the Patent Law Group at the firm and was Chair of the Patent Group from 1997 to 2006.  She retired from her position of Senior Partner in 2015.

Dr. Monroy has served as the President of the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association, and on the Board of the Intellectual Property Committee of the CA State Bar.  She has received recognition and many awards for her legal work.  These include:

  • The Patent Hall of Fame
  • Best Lawyers in America
  • Who’s Who in Law
  • Top Rating in Chambers USA
  • Chambers USA Women in Law Award: Intellectual Property Lawyer of the Year (2012)

Dr. Monroy received her B.A. in Chemistry from Hunter College, an M.S. in Biology from N.Y.U., and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from N.Y.U. Medical School.  She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology and Cancer at Albert Einstein School of Medicine, and an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at N.Y. Medical College.  She was also a Research Associate at U.C.S.F.  Dr. Monroy received her J.D. from U.S.F.

Dr. Monroy’s Bar Admissions include:

  • State Bar of California
  • United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit
  • United States Supreme Court

Dr. Monroy serves on several non-profit Boards.  She is on the Board of Cancer Commons, and is a Trustee of the American Association for Cancer Research.  Her work with the Weizmann Institute of Science includes the following: she is Regional Co-chair of the Bay Area for the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute (ACWIS), is a member of the Executive Committee of ACWIS, is a member of the International Board of the Weizmann Institute, and has been chosen to be the President of ACWIS in 2020.

Vern Norviel, JD
Partner | Patents & Innovations
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Vern Norviel, JD
Partner | Patents & Innovations
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Vern Norviel is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and a senior practitioner in the firm’s patents and innovations counseling practice. Vern has three decades of experience formulating successful strategies for life science companies and helping them develop IP programs. He represents a wide variety of companies, as well as venture capital firms, in areas such as therapeutics, diagnostics, nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, and personalized medicine. In fact, Vern’s interest in the field of personalized medicine prompted him to become the first attorney to have had his or her entire genome sequenced and made available in a public database.

Before joining the firm in 2003, Vern was the general counsel and corporate secretary of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., a start-up biotechnology company that scans the entire human genome for important therapeutic and diagnostic products. Previously, as senior vice president and general counsel, he was an early employee of Affymetrix, the biotechnology company that pioneered and developed DNA chip technology. He also had been a partner at Townsend and Townsend and Crew in Palo Alto.

During his career, Vern has authored or prosecuted dozens of patents that have been litigated in the U.S. and abroad, and has overseen intellectual property lawsuits throughout the world.

Vern previously served as a member of Wilson Sonsini’s board of directors and currently serves on the board of the Wilson Sonsini Foundation. In addition, he is a lecturer in biotechnology law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Photo of Greg Simon

Gregory C. Simon
President, Simonovation, LLC, and Former President, Biden Cancer Initiative

Photo of Greg Simon

Gregory C. Simon
President, Simonovation, LLC, and Former President, Biden Cancer Initiative

Greg Simon has held senior positions in both chambers of Congress, served in two Presidential administrations, was a senior strategy consultant to a variety of international technology CEOs, co-founded (with Michael Milken) and led, FasterCures, co-founded and led the Melanoma Research Alliance, was the Senior Vice President at Pfizer for Worldwide Policy and Patient Engagement, and was the CEO of Poliwogg, a financial services company creating unique capital market opportunities and indexes in healthcare and life sciences. He has a reputation as a visionary strategist, a dynamic public speaker and writer, and as an expert analyst of emerging trends in healthcare, information technology, innovative drug research and development, and patient advocacy.

Most recently, Greg was the President of the Biden Cancer Initiative, a nonprofit formed by Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden to continue the work of the White House Cancer Moonshot to double the rate of progress in preventing, detecting, diagnosing, treating, and surviving cancer. He came to that position after serving as the Executive Director of the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force established by President Barack Obama and led by Vice President Biden. Greg and his team helped launch over seventy innovative private and public-private collaborations and numerous novel interagency and international initiatives that helped support the successful effort to secure $1.8 billion in new funding for the Cancer Moonshot.

Greg came to Washington, DC in 1985 as General Counsel and then Staff Director of the Investigations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives’ Science, Space, and Technology Committee. During his years with the Science Committee, Greg organized a series of the earliest investigatory hearings on biotechnology policy and was involved in hearings and investigations related to NASA and the Challenger explosion, scientific misconduct, neurotoxins in the environment, the use of human biological materials in research and the artificial heart program.

Greg served as Sen. Al Gore’s Legislative Director from 1991 to 1993 before joining him in the White House in 1993 as his Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. He was the lead staffer for the Clinton-Gore Administration for development and passage of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 as well as the development of the National and Global Information Infrastructure initiatives. He represented the Vice President on the National Economic Council, helped negotiate the US-Russia agreement on the International Space Station and oversaw a number of key health and science initiatives, including programs at the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Human Genome Project. He was also instrumental in crafting the regulatory framework that is now the foundation for the biotechnology industry.

Following his White House service Greg was CEO of Simon Strategies and provided strategic advice to CEO’s of major international firms such as Sony, Cisco, Netscape, Motorola, Sega, and AOL.

In 2003, Greg was the co-founder (with Michael Milken) and the founding President of FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, an independent, nonpartisan organization that is a center of the California-based Milken Institute. There he led efforts to reform policies governing biopharmaceutical discovery and development, with the goal of bringing a greater number of lifesaving medicines more quickly to doctors and patients.

From 2009 to 2012, Greg was SVP for Worldwide Policy and Patient Engagement at Pfizer and headed their Worldwide Policy group. He led a global team of professionals in: 1) worldwide government policy, 2) science policy, 3) economic policy and research, and 4) international policy. He advised the CEO on the company’s efforts in contributing to and supporting the Affordable Care Act. He focused on engaging patients more productively in research and clinical trials and on helping Pfizer develop policies, practices, and medical solutions to improve health, happiness, and productivity.

The journal Nature Medicine named Greg one of “Ten People to Watch” in health care policy, noting that he was among “a handful of influential people who quietly keep the wheels of biomedical science turning”. In 2010 he received the Genetic Alliance’s Art of Advocacy award. In 2011, Greg was invited to be the second lecturer in the Constantin Spiegelfeld Lecture series of the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is a regular presenter at the Milken Institute Global Conference, the OECD, the Washington Campus (a nonprofit educational institution in Washington, D.C.) and at health conferences and academic institutions around the country.

In 1994, Greg was invited by William Gates, Sr., to be the inaugural speaker in the Shidler, McBroom, and Lucas & Gates Lectureship in Law and Technology at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he spoke on the relationship of digital and genetic information technologies.

In 2004, Greg received the Sharon Nelson Achievement Award from the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce, and Technology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In 2000, Greg was invited by the State Department under its expert program to visit government officials and citizens groups throughout the European Union to discuss the development of biotechnology regulation in the United States. In 1989, Greg won a fellowship to visit European Community Commission offices and government officials in London, Rome, and Madrid to discuss biotechnology.

He received his law degree from the University of Washington in 1983 where he was a member of the Law Review and the Moot Court. He has a B.A. in history from the University of Arkansas and studied at the Institute for European Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Bill Stasior, PhD

Bill Stasior, PhD
Member Board of Directors, Avellino, and Former VP of Technology, Microsoft

Bill Stasior, PhD

Bill Stasior, PhD
Member Board of Directors, Avellino, and Former VP of Technology, Microsoft

Dr. Stasior brings years of technical experience from several of the world’s leading technology companies. Most recently, he was a Corporate Vice President of Technology at Microsoft where he worked in the office of the CTO working on large scale artificial intelligence.

Prior to his time at Microsoft, he served as a Vice President of Machine Learning and A.I. at Apple where he led the development of Siri, Apple’s digital personal assistant. Before that, Dr. Stasior served as a Vice President at Amazon, where he led the development of Amazon’s search and personalization technology while serving on Amazon’s senior executive team, the S-team. Prior to Amazon, he worked at several startup companies in Silicon Valley. Dr. Stasior currently serves as a board member to Avellino labs which develops health diagnostics and therapeutics through the science and technology of genomics.

Dr. Stasior holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).