Peter Goodhand
Peter Goodhand is a leader in the global health sector as a senior executive and board member.
Goodhand played a key role in the creation of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and was appointed as its founding Executive Director in 2014, and as Chief Executive Officer in 2018. From May 2016 to April 2018, he also served as the President of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR).
Prior to the GA4GH and OICR, he was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Cancer Society, Canada's largest health charity. Before joining the charitable sector, Goodhand had a 20 year career in the global medical technology industry, including strategic leadership roles with multinational healthcare companies such as American Cyanamid and Johnson & Johnson; Board Chair and President of Canada’s Medical Device Industry association (MEDEC); and as the founding Managing Director and then Board Chair of the Health Technology Exchange (HTX).
Goodhand is currently a member of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre Steering Committee, Co-chair of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of Global Genes, Co-chair of the International 100K+ Cohorts Consortium (IHCC), and a member of the of the Global Genomic Medicine Collaboration (G2MC) Steering Committee.
He chaired the Government of Canada’s Expert working group on the future of medical isotope production, and was a member of the Canadian delegation to the UN summit on non-communicable diseases.
Dr Vivien Bonazzi
Dr. Vivien Bonazzi joined the Office of Strategic Coordination in 2017 leading the NIH Data Commons, part of the broader New Models of Data Stewardship program.
Dr. Bonazzi has been advising the NIH Office of the Director (OD) on data science-related issues since 2014. Before joining the NIH OD, she served as program director for the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program for the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
Dr. Bonazzi was also part of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) a trans-NIH Common Fund Initiative whose aims are to characterize the microbial communities found at several different sites on the human body and to analyze the role of these microbes in human health and disease. Prior to joining NHGRI, she was a Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton providing strategic development expertise in data science and also managing several genome and protein bioinformatics projects for NIH and biomedical companies. She has also held the positions of R&D Director for Bioinformatics at Invitrogen and Director of Gene Discovery at Celera Genomics where she was part of the team that sequenced and annotated the Human, Mouse and Drosophila genomes. Dr. Bonazzi received a BSc in Medical Laboratory Science from the University of Canberra, Australia, a MSc (prelim) in Pharmacology from the University of Melbourne, Australia and a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology and Computational Biology also from the University of Melbourne.
Prof Robert L Grossman
Dr Jinghui Zhang
Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Computational Biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She holds the St. Jude Endowed Chair in Bioinformatics.
Dr. Zhang began working in genomics as a second-year graduate student, which sparked her interest in investigating how genes contribute to the development of diseases like cancer. She joined St. Jude in 2010, leading the genomic analysis for the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) and the creation of new computational and visualization tools that have been adopted by researchers worldwide.
Her research in the genomic landscape of pediatric cancer has led to new directions in research involving high-risk leukemia, brain and solid tumors. She sees the importance of sharing data gained from her collaboration with other pediatric cancer research institutes. The sharing of information can help advance research not only for pediatric cancer, but for genetic research in other diseases.
Before joining St. Jude, Dr. Zhang led genetic variation analysis of the first assembled human genome. She also contributed to key discoveries in the pilot phases of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas Project and led the pan-cancer analysis of the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatment (TARGET) initiative which has unveiled striking difference in the genomic landscape of pediatric versus adult cancer.
Dr. Zhang received her undergraduate degree from Fu Dan University in Shanghai and her doctorate from the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn.
Dr Gustavo Stolovitzky
Dr Victor Hanson-Smith
Victor Hanson-Smith, Ph.D., is one of the world's leaders in mathematical modeling of eukaryotic genome evolution. He has co-authored over a dozen publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Science; his work has been featured in the NYTimes and Washington Post. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Information and Science from the University of Oregon, and completed his post-doctoral fellowship with Alexander Johnson at UCSF. Additionally, he is a full-stack Django web developer on Amazon Web Services, with 15 years experience engineering in C/C++, Python, and Java.
Dr Slava Akmaev
Slava Akmaev, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President and Chief Analytics Officer at BERG, leading the Analytics division with over 18 years of industry experience. He is responsible for supporting BERG’s drug and diagnostic development programs with data science efforts using BERG’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform, bAIcis®. Dr. Akmaev is an advocate for the application of AI tools in digital healthcare and is a frequent speaker at AI industry events. Dr. Akmaev is an inventor on 10+ pending and issued patents and an author on more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and 100+ presentations/ posters.
Prior to his role at BERG, Dr. Akmaev was the Scientific Associate Director at Genzyme Genetics where he launched multiple commercial diagnostic products. While at Genzyme R&D, he led the development of novel statistical approaches for high-throughput “omics” data and performed analytical work in genomics and genetics.
Dr. Akmaev published numerous manuscripts in genomics and was one of the early developers of analytical methodology around high-throughput molecular data. He co-authored the publication of the Long SAGE™ technology, “Using the transcriptome to annotate the genome” in Nature Biotechnology.
Dr. Akmaev holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dr Shahar Keinan
Dr. Shahar Keinan is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Cloud Pharmaceuticals. She has over 20 years of extensive experience in the field of computational and theoretical chemistry. Shahar has received a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has numerous papers and presentations in the fields of in-silico drug design and discovery, as well as molecular materials design and computational methods development. She has been instrumental in the development of Cloud Pharmaceuticals’ novel Quantum Molecular Design process since its inception at Duke University.
Dr Chip Petricoin
Dr. Emanuel F Petricoin is the Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder of Perthera, Inc., Perthera is a leading precision medicine company that empowers all cancer patients and oncologists globally with the most comprehensive molecular profiling and data analytics process. Dr. Petricoin has been the Co-Director of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at George Mason University since 2005, where he is a University Professor. Prior to this position, he served as Co-Director of the FDA-NCI Clinical Proteomics Program and a Senior Investigator within the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA from 1993-2005. He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications and invited reviews with an H Factor of 98, and is on the editorial board of over 10 high impact journals. He has authored over 45 book chapters, is a Senior Editor for Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention and on the editorial board of JCO Precision Oncology, Nature Precision Oncology, Proteomics, Biomedical Microdevices, Proteomics-Clinical Applications, Proteomics-Protocols, Molecular, Carcinogenesis, Journal of Personalized Medicine and Dr. Petricoin is a founding member of the Human Proteomic Organization (HUPO). He has received numerous awards including the University Professorship at George Mason University, the NIH Director’s Award, FDA Distinguished Scientist Award, 2015 Innovator of the Year Award, GAP50 Top Virginia Entrepreneurs, Nifty 50 Award, American Society of Cytopathology Basic Research Award, the Roche Diagnostics/CLAS Distinguished Scientist Award and the Harvard University Leading Edge Award and is a Kentucky Colonel.
