Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Begley serves as the Chief Executive Officer of BioCurate.  He also serves on the Board of Directors of the UK-based Oxford BioTherapeutics, and is on the Scientific Advisory Boards for several biotech companies. From 2002-2012, he was Vice-President and Global Head of Hematology/Oncology Research at Amgen, responsible for building, directing and integrating the research program at Amgen’s 5 research sites. He has over 20 years of clinical experience in medical oncology and hematology. His research has focused on translational clinical trials and regulation of hematopoietic cells. He has published over 200 scientific papers is Board Certified in Australia as a Medical Oncologist and Hematologist and has a PhD in cellular and molecular biology. He has numerous awards and honors including election to the Association of American Physicians.

William E. Bentley is the Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor of Engineering and founding Chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering. He is also appointed in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park and the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.

Dr. Bentley received his undergraduate (BS, ’82) and Master of Engineering degrees (’83) from Cornell University and his Ph.D. (’89) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, all in chemical engineering.

At Maryland since 1989, Dr. Bentley has focused his research on the development of molecular tools that facilitate the expression of biologically active proteins, having authored over 250 related archival publications. Recent interests are on deciphering and manipulating signal transduction pathways, including those of bacterial communication networks, for altering cell phenotype. He is also developing new platforms for bio/device interface that facilitate two way communication.

Dr. Bentley has served on advisory committees and panels for the NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, USDA, and several state agencies. He has mentored over 30 Ph.D.s, some of whom are academics at: Cornell (x2), University of Colorado, Clemson, University of Connecticut, Tufts, Postech (Korea), and Tsing-Hua (Taiwan). He co-founded a protein manufacturing company, Chesapeake PERL, based on insect larvae as mini bioreactors.

Dr. Bentley is a Fellow of the AAAS and AIMBE and is an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology. He is Co-PI of M-CERSI an FDA funded Center of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation.

Myles Brown, MD, is Director of the Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is an internationally recognized expert on the role of steroid hormones and their receptors in breast and prostate cancers.

Dr. Brown is the author of more than 150 scientific articles, reviews and book chapters. His laboratory has made seminal contributions that have uniquely reformulated the understanding of steroid hormone action in normal physiology and in the hormone dependence of breast and prostate cancers. Among his many honors are the North American Menopause Society/Wyeth Pharmaceuticals SERM Research Award and the Edwin B. Astwood Award of the Endocrine Society. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Brown currently serves as Chair of the Council for Extramural Grants of the America Cancer Society and as a member of the scientific advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure where he plays an active role in setting the scientific priorities of these organizations.

Born in Springfield, MA and raised in Bethesda, MD, Dr. Brown received his BS degree in Biology from Yale in 1978 and his MD from Johns Hopkins in 1982. He completed his clinical training in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber. He did post-doctoral research at the Dana-Farber and at MIT. He joined the faculty of Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School in 1991 where he became a Professor of Medicine in 2006. From 2002-2010 he was the Chief of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at the Dana-Farber. In 2010 together with Shirley Liu he founded the Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics at the Dana-Farber to facilitate the development of new therapies targeting the cancer epigenome.

Dr. Derek Craston is Chief Scientific Officer, Managing Director of Science and Technology and Government Chemist at LGC, where he is responsible for the leadership of teams delivering R&D programmes in analytical quality and metrology and providing regulatory related analysis.

Dr. Craston has a degree in Chemistry from the University of St Andrews and a Ph.D from Imperial College, London, for research in to enzyme electrochemistry.

Prior to joining LGC, Dr. Craston spent two years at the University of Texas, Austin (USA), undertaking postdoctoral research into electrochemical applications of scanning probe microscopy, and three years at AEA Technology, Harwell (UK), working on applied electrochemistry including sensors, fuel cells, batteries and ‘cold’ fusion.

Rick Horwitz is Executive Director of the newly formed Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle, Washington. He is a recognized leader in the fields of cell adhesion and invasion that impacts many biological processes, diseases, and therapeutic strategies.

Rick earned his B.A. in Chemistry from the Honors Program at the University of Wisconsin. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University and did post-doctoral research in the Laboratory for Chemical Biodynamics at UC Berkeley.

As former Associate Vice President for Research and Bioscience Programs, Rick developed interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaborations in bioscience, including the new for Data Science Institute at UVa. For the preceding 10 years, in addition to his research and teaching activities at UVA, he was the Director of the Cell Migration Consortium—an ~$80M international, interdisciplinary collaboration of 20 institutions focused on developing a spectrum of novel approaches and methods for studying cell migration in multiple biological contexts. Rick’s experience in research, administration, and program development began at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and continued at the University of Illinois, where he was head of cell biology department.

Rick has served on many grant and program review panels and on institutional, NIH, and agency strategic planning and advisory committees, including the Advisory Council for NIGMS, and served as a Councilor of the American Society for Cell Biology. Dr. Horwitz has organized many international meetings and delivered keynote lectures and symposium presentations at major bioscience societies and venues worldwide, and has served in editorial capacities for the major journals in his field.

Dr. Inglese currently heads a laboratory focused on the development of assay and screening technology targeting rare and neglected disease within the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and is an Adjunct Investigator of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Prior to this he co-founded the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) acting as its Deputy Director.

Dr. Inglese received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Prof. Robert J. Lefkowitz at Duke University Medical Center.

Before coming to the NIH, Dr. Inglese led research teams at the Princeton-based biotech Pharmacopeia and Merck Research Laboratories.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Inglese has contributed to over 150 publications and patents; his efforts on the early drug discovery process have resulted in novel assay formats and high throughput screening paradigms.

Dr. Inglese is the Founding Editor (2002) and Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies and serves on the scientific advisory boards of several NIH-funded chemistry and screening centers and international chemical biology consortia.

Gary Krishnan, M.Sc., PhD, is the Global Lead for External Innovation, Endocrine therapeutic area, at Eli Lilly and Company. He joined Eli Lilly and Company in 1998 as a Senior Scientist in Science and Technology, was promoted to Research Scientist in 2002, and became head of Musculoskeletal Research in Science and Technology two years later. He was promoted to Chief Scientific Officer in 1998. During this tenure, he developed a comprehensive portfolio of assets focused on Aging and Musculoskeletal diseases. He is currently overseeing the early phase external innovation portfolio.

Since 1992, Dr. Krishnan has been a co-inventor on 15 patents and has published more than 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Science, PNAS, J. Clinical Investigation, Molecular Pharmacology, Molecular Endocrinology, Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. He has been an invited speaker to several Osteoporosis and Steroid Receptor Meetings, and was invited in 2004 and 2008 to speak on Estrogen Signaling at the 48th and the 52nd Nobel Symposia, in Stockholm, Sweden. He was awarded the International Senior Investigator Award in 2006 by Science Spectrum magazine and the Lilly Research Labs President’s Award in 2005.

Dr. Krishnan received his PhD in biochemistry& biophysics from Texas A&M University in 1994. Earlier he received his Master’s degree in biochemistry and nutrition from the University of Bombay. He completed Postdoctoral Fellowship training in Cell Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in the 1997. He has held an Adjunct faculty appointment at the Indiana University School of Medicine since 1999.

Joshua LaBaer is one of the nation’s foremost investigators in the rapidly expanding field of personalized medicine. His efforts involve the discovery and validation of biomarkers — unique molecular fingerprints of disease — which can provide early warning for those at risk of major illnesses, including cancer and diabetes.

Dr. LaBaer was an early initiator and leader of the effort to build fully sequence-verified recombination-based clone sets for human genes and other model organisms now managed in an automated repository with more than 250,000 samples, which are openly shared with the scientific community. In addition, his group invented a novel protein microarray technology, Nucleic Acid Programmable Protein Array, which may aid the early diagnosis of breast cancer.

Formerly founder and director of the Harvard Institute of Proteomics, LaBaer was recruited to Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute as the first Piper Chair in Personalized Medicine in 2009.

Dr. LaBaer completed both his medical internship and residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a clinical fellowship in oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston. He is a board certified physician in internal medicine and medical oncology and was an instructor and clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has contributed more than 120 original research publications, reviews and chapters.

LaBaer is an associate editor of the Journal of Proteome Research and a member of the editorial boards of Analytical Biochemistry, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Cancer Biomarkers, Molecular Biosystems, and Clinical Proteomics. He is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors and serves as chair of the National Cancer Institute’s Early Detection Research Network Executive Committee and Co-Chair of its Steering Committee.  He is treasurer and president-elect of the U.S. Human Proteome Organization.  He also serves on a number of government and industry scientific advisory boards.

LaBaer earned his medical degree and a doctorate in biochemistry and biophysics, from the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Laurie E. Locascio is the director of the Material Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Material Measurement Lab has more than 900 staff members and visiting scientists, and serves as the nation’s reference laboratory for measurements in the chemical, biological and materials sciences through activities ranging from fundamental research in the composition, structure and properties of industrial, biological, and environmental materials and processes, to the development and dissemination of certified reference materials, critically evaluated data and other measurement quality assurance programs.

The Material Measurement Laboratory serves a broad range of industry sectors ranging from transportation to biotechnology, and provides research, measurement services and quality assurance tools for addressing problems of national importance ranging from assessment of climate change, to the investigation of new sources of renewable energy, to improved diagnostics and therapies for health care.

Dr. Locascio received her B.Sc. in chemistry from James Madison University, M.Sc. in bioengineering from the University of Utah, and Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and holds eight patents in the fields of microfluidics, biosensors and sensor/flow systems. Some of her honors and awards include the US Department of Commerce Silver Medal, US Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award, ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Arthur F. Findeis Award, the NIST Applied Research Award, and is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Dr. Locascio serves as co-chair of the National Science and Technology Council MGI Subcommittee that resides under the Committee on Technology.

Timothy S. Simcoe is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. From 2014 to 2015, he served as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Professor Simcoe’s research focuses on standards, innovation and technology policy, intellectual property and corporate strategy. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Management Science, the RAND Journal of Economics, Organization Science and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. He is an editor at Management Science and the Journal of Industrial Economics. In 2012 served on a National Academy of Sciences Committee to evaluate Intellectual Property Management in Standard-Setting Processes.

Dr. Simcoe holds a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard, along with an M.A. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sowmya Swaminathan is Head of Editorial Policy, Nature and Nature Journals, at Springer Nature, overseeing the development of editorial policies, including in the areas of research integrity and reproducibility, for the Nature group of journals. Prior to her current position, Sowmya was at Nature Cell Biology for 13 years serving as Chief Editor from 2009 onward. As Chief Editor, she was responsible for developing content strategy, evolving and implementing editorial policy, processes at workflows at the journal. Sowmya is a member of the Women in Cell Biology committee of the American Society of Cell Biology.

She has a B.A in Biology from Mount Holyoke College. She obtained her PhD from the University of Chicago and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsreid, Germany.

Dr. Scott Waldman obtained his PhD degree in Anatomy from Thomas Jefferson University, and his MD degree from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and Stanford University in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the laboratory of Ferid Murad, MD, PhD, who won the 1998 Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Dr. Waldman is the Director of the Delaware Valley Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, the Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program of the Kimmel Cancer Center, and the Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics of Thomas Jefferson University. He is a past member of the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology, a past Regent of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology, and a past-President of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

He is the Editor-in-Chief for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Biomarkers in Medicine, and the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Clinical and Translational Science.

Dr. Waldman’s research interests focus on tissue-specific pathways underlying intestinal tumorigenesis and their utility as targets for managing patients with colorectal cancer.