Scott Budman Reporter & Anchor for business and technology news NBC Bay Area

Born and raised in Oakland, Scott has been with NBC Bay Area since 1995 as a reporter and anchor for business and technology news. Scott earned a degree in political science at UCLA. He began his broadcasting career in radio as a business reporter for KMNY radio in Anaheim. He then spent some time as a general assignment reporter and business anchor/producer at the Orange County News Channel. Before joining NBC Bay Area, Scott was a reporter and weekend anchor at KEYT in Santa Barbara. Scott has won many awards including a national Iris Award for a documentary about gays in the military. He also received Golden Mike Awards from the Southern California Radio and Television News Directors Association.In addition to his busy schedule at NBC Bay Area, Scott is a devoted volunteer with the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Santa Clara County. He also supports the Second Harvest Food Bank. During his down time, Scott enjoys sports such as tennis and basketball. He also loves reading and seeing his family. He lives with his wife and two daughters.

Dr. Hood’s research has focused on fundamental biology (immunity, evolution, genomics) and on bringing engineering to biology through the development of five instruments; the DNA and protein sequencers and synthesizers and the ink-jet oligonucleotide synthesizer (making DNA arrays) for deciphering the various types of biological information (DNA, RNA, proteins and systems). In particular, the DNA sequencer has revolutionized genomics by allowing the rapid automated sequencing of DNA, which played a crucial role in contributing to the successful mapping of the human genome during the 1990s and early 2000s. These instruments constitute the technological foundation for modern molecular biology and genomics. He has applied these technologies to diverse fields including immunology, neurobiology, cancer biology, molecular evolution and systems medicine. Dr. Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. Indeed, Dr. Hood is one of only 7 (of more than 6000 members) scientists elected to all three academies (NAS, NAE and IOM). Dr. Hood has also played a role in founding more than 14 biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin and Rosetta. He is currently pioneering systems medicine and the systems approach to disease and has recently cofounded the company Integrated Diagnostics—that hopefully will become a platform company for P4 medicine.

Russ Biagio Altman is professor of bioengineering, genetics, & medicine (and of computer science by courtesy) and chairman of the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of computing technology to basic molecular biological problems of relevance to medicine. He is currently developing techniques for collaborative scientific computation over the Internet, including novel user interfaces to biological data, particularly for pharmacogenomics (e.g. http://www.pharmgkb.org/). Other work focuses on the analysis of functional microenvironments within macromolecules and the application of algorithms for determining the structure, dynamics and function of biological macromolecules (e.g. http://simbios.stanford.edu/). Dr. Altman holds an M.D. from Stanford Medical School, a Ph.D. in medical information sciences from Stanford, and an A.B. from Harvard College. He has been the recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics. He is a past-president and founding board member of the International Society for Computational Biology, an organizer of the annual Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. He leads one of seven NIH-supported National Centers for Biomedical Computation, focusing on physics-based simulation of biological structures (http://simbios.stanford.edu/).   He won the Stanford Medical School graduate teaching award in 2000.

Trish Brown is an executive with over 15 years of experience in the business of medical genetics. She is a board-certified genetic counselor with a passion for personalized medicine and consumer advocacy. Prior to joining DNA Direct, Trish was an Associate Vice President at LabCorp and Director of Strategic Technology Management and Implementation. In this role she oversaw the commercialization of new technologies and developed expertise in operations, project management, strategic planning, and product development. She was also responsible for LabCorp’s genetic information services which included a specialized genetics call center and clinical genetic counseling services. Trish received her undergraduate degree in Genetics at the University of California, Davis. She obtained her genetic counseling degree at Sarah Lawrence College, and then practiced prenatal and craniofacial genetic counseling at St. Peter’s Medical Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her next career step was at Duke University Medical Center in the Maternal Fetal Medicine department where she provided prenatal counseling and was on the Faculty for the Department of Pediatrics and Genetics for the Medical Genetics Fellowship Program. Trish has authored over forty five peer reviewed posters, publications, and presentations. She is a member of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, Women Business Leaders of the U.S.

Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than fifty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 110 Life Sciences companies which have already developed hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs for millions of patients. Brook was the founding President and then Chairman, of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB's offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of ten companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, OptiMedica, Pacific Biosciences, Inc., Tethys and XDx, Inc. He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe and others. These companies have pioneered the medical use of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics and genomics. Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He is a currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford’s Bio-X Advisory Council and the Stanford Eye Council. He was Co-Chair of the five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. In 2007, he was awarded the “UCSF Medal” as their honorary degree equivalent. In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Venture Capital Association. He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, That Many May See (UCSF) Vision Research Foundation (Chairman), the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and was a founder of TechNet.

Esther Dyson does business as EDventure Holdings, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004. In the last few years, she has turned her sights towards IT and health care. She dedicated two issues of her newsletter, Release 1.0, to the topic (Health and Identity: No Patient Left Behind? in January 2005 and Personal Health Information: Data Comes Alive! in September 2005). Also in September 2005, she ran the Personal Health Information workshop that laid out many of the challenges still perplexing the health-care community. Currently, she is one of the initial ten subjects of George Church's Personal Genome Project. Her primary activity is investing in start-ups and guiding many of them as a board member. Her board seats include Boxbe, CVO Group (Hungary), Eventful.com, Evernote, IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Meetup, Midentity (UK), NewspaperDirect, and WPP Group and Yandex (Russia). Some of her past direct IT investments include Flickr, Del.icio.us, BrightMail, Medstory and Orbitz. Dyson was the founding chairman of ICANN from 1998 to 2000, and was also chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the 90's. In 1997, she wrote Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age, which appeared in paperback a year later as Release 2.1. In 1994, she wrote a seminal essay on intellectual property for Wired magazine.

A leading expert on the legal, ethical, and social issues surrounding health law and the biosciences, Hank Greely (BA ’74) specializes in the implications of new biomedical technologies, especially those related to neuroscience, genetics, and stem cell research. He frequently serves as an advisor on California, national, and international policy issues. He is chair of California’s Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee and a co-director of the Law and Neuroscience Project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Active in university leadership, Professor Greely chairs the steering committee for the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and directs both the law school’s Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics’ Program in Neuroethics. Professor Greely serves on the Scientific Leadership Council for the university’s interdisciplinary Bio-X Program. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1985, Greely was a partner at Tuttle & Taylor, served as a staff assistant to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, and as special assistant to the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense. He served as a law clerk to Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.Greely is also a professor (by courtesy) of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine.

Dr. Lashkari has worked in the life sciences area since 1988 developing and commercializing novel technologies. He gained corporate and business development experience through senior management positions in a number of biotechnology companies. In addition, he was a founding Research Director at Synteni, which was acquired by Incyte Genomics, where he was Director of Product Development. He also worked with Operon Technologies, acquired by Qiagen, and Genometrix. Dr. Lashkari has represented THP on the boards of AcroMetrix, Althea Technologies, Applied Precision, Aurora Discovery and SwitchGear Genomics. Dr. Lashkari received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Vijay Lathi is a Managing Director and concentrates primarily on our diagnostics and pharmaceuticals investments. Vijay joined Sprout in 1998 after working as an analyst in the Healthcare Venture Capital Group at Robertson Stephens & Co. and Cornerstone Research, a consulting firm focused on financial and economic analysis for business litigation. Vijay graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University where he received his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering, with an emphasis on the application of engineering to life science technology. Vijay is also a member of AiCHE.

Ariel Miller, M.D., Ph.D. Pharmacogenetics & Personalized Medicine Center, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine & Research Institute Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Prof. Ariel Miller holds a M.D. degree from the “Sackler” school of Medicine, Tel-Aviv, and a Ph.D. degree in Experimental Sciences (Neurobiology) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a senior neurologist since 1989. From 1989 to 1992 he was a research fellow at the Center for Neurologic Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, as a scholar of the Fogarty International Research Fellowship (N.I.H.). From 1992 to 1993: Scientist in the Department of Cell Biology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. He is currently the head of The Center for Multiple Sclerosis & Brain Research at Carmel Medical Center, associated with The Rappaport Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences, and the Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.Prof. Miller is elected member of the American Neurological Association (ANA) (2005), and the recipient of the Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Award – 2006, for his contribution in the field of Pharmacogenetics and 'Personalized Medicine'.Prof. Miller's scientific and medical work is dedicated to elucidation of the mechanisms underlying Brain diseases, with special focus on implementation of therapeutic strategies for Multiple Sclerosis as well as Pharmacogenetics towards development of 'Personalized Medicine'.

Stephen Quake, Ph.D. Professor of Bioengineering Stanford University

Dr. Stephen R. Quake's research interests lie at the nexus of physics, biology and biotechnology, focusing on understanding the basic physics and biological applications of microfluidic technology. His achievements include developing new forms of biological automation and applying these tools to problems of biological and medical interest, including structural genomics, systems biology, microbial ecology and nanoliter-scale synthetic chemistry. Dr. Quake pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for large scale automation of biology at the nanoliter scale. Commercial versions of microfludic LSI are now used in hundreds of laboratories around the world for diverse purposes. Dr. Quake demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing technology. His contributions to genomics include the first measurement of the immune repertoire of an organism. In 2009 he and two co-workers sequenced his personal genome using the commercial version of the single molecule sequencing technology that he developed. Dr. Quake is Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He received a BS in physics and MS in mathematics from Stanford University, and his PhD in physics from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. Dr. Quake has received numerous career awards, including “Career” and “First” awards from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. He is a founder and scientific advisory board chair of Fluidigm, Inc. and Helicos Biosciences, Inc.

Bruce Quinn Senior Health Policy Specialist Foley Hoag

Bruce Quinn, M.D., Ph.D., MBA, formerly the Contractor Medical Director for the California Medicare Part B program, practices within the firm’s Government Strategies practice, where he focuses on Medicare coverage and payment matters for new technologies. Bruce is a national leader in the areas of Medicare coverage and payment, claims and billing, and Medicare contractor reform processes. Dr. Quinn works with companies, providers and venture capital investors to develop strategies for Medicare payment for new technologies. A large part of this work is on local and national coverage decisions. Bruce focuses, in particular, in the emerging field of molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine. He also advises clients on Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) reform and its effect on payment policy. Before serving in the Medicare Part B program, Bruce was a physician executive in the Health & Life Sciences division of Accenture and was a clinician-scientist at Northwestern University School of Medicine, leading pathology research for Northwestern’s NIH-funded Alzheimer Research Center. He also held academic positions at New York University School of Medicine and UCLA Center for Health Sciences.

Barbara Ralston is the Vice President for Guest Services and International Medicine at Stanford Hospital and Clinics.  She is responsible for strategic planning and implementation of programs for in- and out- patient and visitor services that translate to a reputation of world-class service for Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Stanford’s Executive Health, Corporate Partners, and Aging Adult Programs are key components of her operation.

Barbara has been at Stanford Hospital since 1989. Her background is in health and administration. Previously a consultant with Arthur D. Little, Inc., she holds a B.S. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University, an MT(ASCP) clinical laboratory certification, and an M.Sc. in Demography and Public Health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London.

Hakan Sakul, Ph.D. Sr. Director and Global Head of Diagnostics and Oncology Pfizer

Hakan serves as the Global Head of Diagnostics and Oncology Leads, leading Pfizer’s Diagnostics efforts across its pharmaceutical portfolio.  He received his BS and MS degrees from Ankara University in Turkey.  He completed his PhD degree in Quantitative Genetics from the University of Minnesota as the recipient of a “Freedom from Hunger” Scholarship from The Rotary Foundation in its inaugural year in 1986.  Following a postdoctoral program at the University of California-Davis, Hakan worked in the biotech industry in human genetics, pharmacogenomics and statistical genetics.  His entry into the pharmaceutical industry was through Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals – Warner Lambert as Director of Human Genetics, Statistical Genetics and Pharmacogenetics programs.  Following the merger of W-L and Pfizer, Hakan served as Site Head for Clinical Pharmacogenomics in Pfizer’s Connecticut site.  Hakan assumed his current role in mid-2007.  A member of the Editorial Board of the Personalized Medicine Journal, the Organizing Committee of the annual Personalized Medicine meeting at Harvard, and the author of over 30 scientific refereed articles and several book chapters, Hakan has served as an invited speaker on many panel discussions and scientific meetings.  His external representation of Pfizer includes memberships on the Clinical Science and Technology Committee of The Personalized Medicine Coalition, the Research Tools and Molecular Diagnostics Sub Team of BIO, and the California Healthcare Institute Diagnostics Working Group.  Hakan is keenly interested in applications of companion diagnostics, pharmacogenomics and related technologies to the pharmaceutical pipeline to advance Personalized Medicine for the improvement of individualized healthcare.

Cecilia Schott is the Business Development Director in AstraZeneca’s Personalized Healthcare group. She is responsible for identifying, evaluating and facilitating interactions with diagnostics partners for implementation of personalized healthcare strategies in drug development. Cecilia has 20 years of professional experience in healthcare including biotech, device and pharmaceutical industries with a focus in drug development and commercialization. Prior to joining AstraZeneca Cecilia held positions at Biogen, Boston Scientific and St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Boston.

Dr. Syeda-Mahmood is a research manager in the Health care Informatics department at the IBM Almaden Research Center. She currently leads the AALIM project on multimodal mining for healthcare. Dr. Syeda-Mahmood graduated from the MIT AI Lab in 1993 with a Ph.D in Computer Science. Prior to IBM, she worked as a Research Staff Member at Xerox Webster Research Center, Webster, NY. She joined IBM Almaden Research Center in 1998. Prior to coming to IBM, Dr. Syeda-Mahmood led the image indexing program at Xerox Research and was one of the early originators of the field of content-based image and video retrieval. Currently, she is working on applications of content-based retrieval in healthcare. Over the past 25 years, her research interests have been in a variety of areas relating to artificial intelligence including computer vision, image and video databases, medical image analysis, bioinformatics, signal processing, document analysis, and distributed computing frameworks. She has over 100 refereed publications and over 40 issued patents. Dr. Syeda-Mahmood was the program co-chair of CVPR 2008 recently. She is a senior member of IEEE.

Patrick Terry CEO of Technic Solutions, Co-Founder of Genomic Health, Founder of Personalized Medicine Coalition

Mr. Thau is co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s 140-lawyer Life Sciences Group. His practice focuses on the representation of life science, medical device, and other technology companies at all stages of their life cycles, from company formation, equity and debt financing, merger and acquisition transactions, strategic alliances and public offerings. He also represents venture capital and investment banking firms in public and private financing transactions. He has represented companies and investors in over a hundred venture capital and debt financing transactions, as well as in numerous public offerings and public and private M&A transactions. Mr. Thau’s clients include AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, Allux Medical, Altair Therapeutics, Baxano, Catalyst Biosciences, DURECT Corporation, Horizon Therapeutics, Osteologix, SurModics and Visiogen. Mr. Thau also represents venture capital firms including CHL Medical Partners, CMEA Ventures, Prospect Venture Partners, Three Arch Partners and Thomas, McNerney & Partners and has represented underwriters including AG Edwards & Sons, Inc. and CS First Boston.

In the early 1980’s Dr. Urdea was one of the first employees at Chiron where he directed the nucleic acids chemistry group and began the molecular diagnostics efforts. He led the development of quantitative RNA and DNA assays, including the introduction of the first HIV and HCV viral load tests. He became head of the Nucleic Acid Diagnostics business unit at Chiron. In 1998, he joined Bayer Diagnostics as Senior Vice President of Nucleic Acid Diagnostics and acting-Chief Scientific Officer of Bayer Diagnostics. He left Bayer in 2000 and co-founded Tethys Bioscience in 2002. Dr. Urdea received a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Washington State University and held an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF with William J. Rutter. He has published more than 185 articles and book chapters, and is an inventor on more than 100 issued and pending patents.

P.J. has expertise in the study of human and murine autoantibodies and autoantigens, apoptosis signaling pathways, animal models of autoimmunity, proteomics and microfluidics. Members of his laboratory are developing several cutting-edge proteomics technologies for immunological applications, including multiplex planar-based autoantigen microarrays and microfluidic CE assays. P.J. is actively involved with many educational programs within the University. He is director of the CCIS Summer High School Research Program, and he provides formal lectures to undergraduate, graduate, and medical students in the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering. He also teaches medical students, residents and fellows in the clinics and on the in-patient wards. Professor Utz is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several Bay Area biotechnology companies. He is also actively involved in consulting with biotechnology companies.

Dr. Vance Vanier is the Chief Medical Officer of Navigenics and a clinical faculty member of Stanford University Medical Center. As a former partner at venture capital firm, Mohr Davidow Ventures, he has spent years in the molecular diagnostics industry bringing new genomic technologies into clinical practice. Dr. Vanier received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and did his residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, and Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif. He serves as a member of the Personalized Medicine Coalition's Clinical Science Committee, Stanford Hospital's Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, and the American College of Preventive Medicine. During his medical career, he has had a strong commitment to international medicine -- including traveling to Kosovo after the war to work with the World Health Organization in creating the nation's first ambulance system. He received an MBA from Stanford University, as well as dual bachelor's degrees with honors.

Dr. Weiss completed her MSc and PhD in molecular genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel and obtained her medical degree at Hadassah Medical Center, affiliated with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. After practicing medicine for a few years, Dr. Weiss joined an Israeli venture capital firm as a vice president responsible for analyzing and maintaining deal flow, and then moved on to become a medical and business development director at Genzyme Israel. Dr. Weiss joined Merck's Israeli subsidiary as medical director in the beginning of 2004 and this summer joined Merck's Licensing group in San Francisco as a scientific scout responsible for identification of licensing opportunities emanating from the West Coast.

Alan H.B. Wu, Ph.D. Professor of Laboratory Medicine UCSF Pathology & Laboratory Medicine