Progress, Potential, and Possibilities

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Dr. Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., ( https://www.francisscollins.com/ ) is the former Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where as the longest serving director of NIH (spanning 12 years and three presidencies) he oversaw the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, from basic to clinical research.  

Dr. Collins continues to serve as NIH Distinguished Investigator, 
Center for Precision Health Research, at the National Human Genome Research Institute ( NHGRI - https://irp.nih.gov/pi/francis-collins ).

Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993-2008.

Dr. Collins' research laboratory has discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, a familial endocrine cancer syndrome, and most recently, genes for type 2 diabetes, and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare condition that causes premature aging.

Dr. Collins received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale University, and an M.D. with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to the NIH in 1993, he spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. 

Dr. Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007 and the National Medal of Science in 2009.

Dr. Collins also founded and served as President of The BioLogos Foundation ( https://biologos.org/ ), which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religion.

Dr. Collins is also an accomplished author with many available titles including The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, and a new book coming out The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust - Sep 17, 2024 ( https://www.amazon.com/Road-Wisdom-Truth-Science-Faith/dp/0316576301 ).

#FrancisCollins #NationalInstitutesOfHealth #HumanGenomeProject #NIH #Progeria #Cancer #Diabetes #Repurposing #Wisdom #Faith #Truth #Trust #BioLogosFoundation #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Dr. Benjamin L. Oakes, Ph.D., is Co-Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer at Scribe Therapeutics ( https://www.scribetx.com/ ), a molecular engineering company focused on creating best-in-class CRISPR-based therapies that permanently treat the underlying cause of disease. Previously, as an Innovative Genomics Institute Entrepreneurial Fellow, Dr. Oakes focused on the holistic engineering of genome editing technologies to build novel genome editing molecules.

Dr. Oakes has contributed to over 35 publications and patent applications across synthetic biology, molecular engineering, CRISPR, and zinc finger-based genetic modification. 

Dr. Oakes has been named to the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40, Endpoints 20 Under 40 in Biopharma, Business Insider 30 Under 40 Transforming Healthcare, and the Biocom Life Sciences Catalyst Awards. He received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2017, where he worked in the Doudna Lab and Savage Lab developing CRISPR-Cas9 molecules with enhanced characteristics. Two such projects resulted in distinct versions of synthetic sensing systems that can modify nucleic acids only when triggered by external stimuli, and have found use in both research and pragmatically applied technologies.

Prior to his Ph.D., Dr. Oakes received his B.A. in the fields of Philosophy and Neurobiology and worked as a researcher applying unbiased, combinatorial evolution methods to build tens of thousands of “version one” genome editing tools, providing an open source framework for scientists and medical professionals to modify the genome before the discovery of CRISPR technology.

#BenjaminOakes #ScribeTherapeutics #MolecularEngineering #CRISPR #InnovativeGenomicsInstitute #JenniferDoudna #MolecularBiology #UniversityOfCalifornia #Berkeley #SyntheticBiology #ZincFingerNucleases #Optogenetics #EmmanuelleCharpentier  #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Ben Zimmer is CEO of Priovant Therapeutics ( https://www.priovanttx.com/ ), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on delivering novel therapies for autoimmune diseases associated with the greatest morbidity and mortality. Priovant is developing oral brepocitinib, a potential first-in-class dual inhibitor of TYK2 and JAK1, across multiple severe autoimmune indications, unlocking new treatment options for patients who are underserved by existing therapies.

Ben joined Priovant from Roivant, where he was a member of the founding team in early 2015 and held multiple leadership roles across the organization, including President, Roivant Health, Chief Operating Officer, and Head, Public Affairs. As President, Roivant Health, Ben led and oversaw the launch of Roivant's Chinese biopharmaceutical subsidiaries, healthcare technology companies (including Datavant), and computationally powered drug discovery platform (including VantAI). 

Earlier in his career, Ben was a consultant at McKinsey & Co and co-founded and led a public policy non-profit. He holds a BA magna cum laude from Harvard College and a JD from Yale Law School.

#BenZimmer #PriovantTherapeutics #AutoimmuneDiseases #Brepocitinib #TYK2 #JAK1 #Dermatomyositis #NonInfectiousUveitis #Pfizer #Roivant #VivekRamaswamy #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Rocky Batzel is CEO of SnapSlide ( https://www.snapslide.com/ ), a company that recently introduced to the market the First Child-Resistant Closure with Single-Handed Opening for RX and OTC medication Bottles. This patented solution, of which Mr. Batzell is the inventor, is focused on bringing life-changing potential for over 60 million Americans with physical limitations, finally addressing the vital yet widely overlooked aspect of inclusivity – namely medication accessibility.  

Mr. Batzell earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Marywood University in Pennsylvania, and while enrolled in medical school, he noticed his grandmother struggling with a traditional, "push-and-twist", child-resistant cap on her prescription bottle. That inspirational moment led him to pivot his career into the world of entrepreneurship, and he set out to design the very first prototype of what would eventually become SnapSlide. 

After securing patent protection, Mr. Batzell ultimately formed a company around his groundbreaking innovation. As the company’s CEO, he is dedicated to advancing engineering, diversifying applications, and leading SnapSlide’s mission to bring this adaptive solution to those who need it most.

#RockyBatzel #SnapSlide #ChildResistantClosure #SingleHandedOpening #RX #OTC #MedicationBottles #Arthritis #Fibromyalgia #MultipleSclerosis #ParkinsonsDisease #Amputation #Stroke #Paralysis #BirthDefects #Disabilities #MedicationAdherence #Compliance  #Pharmacy #Agetech #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Dr. Angie Burnett, Ph.D. is Program Director at the Advanced Research and Invention Agency ( ARIA - https://www.aria.org.uk/ ), a UK organization created by an Act of Parliament, and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, to fund projects across a full spectrum of R&D disciplines, approaches, and institutions, per the ARIA mission statement to “Look beyond what exists today to the breakthroughs we’ll need tomorrow”.

Prior to this role, Dr. Burnett was a Research Associate in the Department of Plant Sciences, and a former David MacKay Research Associate at Darwin College and Cambridge Zero where her work focused on understanding the response of maize plants to high light and cold temperature stresses, and the genetic basis for stress tolerance, so that breeders can produce plants which are better able to withstand environmental stress.

Dr. Burnett’s background is in plant physiology. She holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from the University of Sheffield, where she was awarded the inaugural PhD studentship from the Society for Experimental Biology. Before commencing her role at the University of Cambridge, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA and as a Consultant at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Italy.

Important Episode Links

"Programmable Plants" Opportunity Space - https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ARIA-Programmable-Plants-v1.pdf

"Synthetic Plants For A Sustainable Future" Program Thesis - https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ARIA-Synthetic-plants-for-a-sustainable-future.pdf

#AngieBurnett #AdvancedResearchAndInventionAgency #ARIA #SyntheticPlants #PlantPhysiology #FoodSecurity #CropStress #CropYield #PlantBiotechnology
#Genetics #PlantEnvironmentInteractions #ClimateChange #DepartmentForScienceInnovationAndTechnology #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Dr. Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA, is Chief Medical Officer And Senior Vice President, Labcorp Diagnostics, and Global Head of Quality And Discipline Director, Immunohematology, Labcorp ( https://www.labcorp.com/deborah-sesok-pizzini-md-mba ), where she is involved in furthering the company's initiatives to enhance the patient experience, enable health provider decisions and develop innovative testing solutions.

Dr. Sesok-Pizzini joined Labcorp with over two decades of experience in healthcare, holding multiple appointments with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, including Patient Safety Officer, Chief of the Division of Transfusion Medicine and Vice-Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She was also a professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.

Dr. Sesok-Pizzini earned her medical degree from the Penn State College of Medicine and did her residency and fellowship at The University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. She also graduated from Villanova University, with a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in finance.

Dr. Sesok-Pizzini holds certifications in clinical pathology and blood bank and transfusion medicine. She is a member of the College of American Pathology, the American Society of Clinical Pathology, and the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies. She is a board member of the Intersociety Council for Pathology Information and serves as an adjunct professor with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

#DeborahSesokPizzini #ChiefMedicalOfficer #Labcorp #Diagnostics #Immunohematology #ChildrensHospitalOfPhiladelphia #CHOP  #TransfusionMedicine #Pathology #LaboratoryMedicine #PerelmanSchoolOfMedicine #UniversityOfPennsylvania #Penn #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Vid Desai is Chief Information Officer, Office of Digital Transformation (ODT), at the U.S. Food And Drug Administration (FDA), where he sets and leads the agency’s Information Technology (IT) strategy, as well as the agency’s enterprise IT, data management, and cybersecurity. (https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/vid-desai)

The ODT oversees the overall FDA IT spend of close to $1Bn and a staff of around 2,500 employees and contractors. In this capacity, Mr. Desai was recently named to the Forbes CIO Next List 2023 and was the only federal CIO to receive this honor. He was also selected as a WashingtonExec Top Government IT Leaders to watch in 2023, in additional to multiple agency and industry awards. 

Prior to being named CIO, Mr. Desai served as the FDA’s Chief Technology Officer, overseeing day-to-day technology operations as the leader of the Office of Information Management and Information Technology.

Mr. Desai is a seasoned, nationally recognized technology leader with over 35 years of experience in the IT field, and healthcare and life sciences industries. He has previous experience working for large pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and clinical research organizations.

Prior to joining the FDA in 2019, Mr. Desai held the CIO role at Vyaire Medical, a respiratory medical device company formed from a divestiture from Becton Dickinson. He was CIO at Endochoice, a GI device and services provider, and Lake Region Medical, which was acquired by Greatbach to form Integer, a medical device, outsource manufacturer. His previous experience includes IT leadership roles with large CRO and pharmaceuticals, including Quintiles Transnational, where he served as executive director, Global IT Infrastructure. Prior to Quintiles, Mr. Desai held several leadership positions of increasing responsibility with GlaxoSmithKline. He started his career in IT as a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation in Reading, U.K.

Mr. Desai holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (first class with honors) from Royal Holloway College, University of London.

Important Episode Links 

FDA’s Technology Modernization Action Plan (TMAP) - https://www.fda.gov/media/130883/download

FDA's Data Modernization Action Plan (DMAP) -
https://www.fda.gov/media/143627/download?attachment

FDA's Cybersecurity Modernization Action Plan
https://www.fda.gov/media/163086/download?attachment

#VidDesai #ChiefInformationOfficer #OfficeOfDigitalTransformation #FoodAndDrugAdministration #FDA #InformationTechnology #ZeroTrust #ArtificialIntelligence #QuantumComputing #IT #Cybersecurity #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Dr. Lily Brown, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry and Director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, Perelman School of Medicine, at University of Pennsylvania ( https://www.med.upenn.edu/ctsa/LilyBrownPhD.html ).  

Dr. Brown received her Bachelors of Science Degree in Psychology at Drexel University and her Doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology and Learning and Behavior Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  In graduate school, Dr. Brown researched mechanisms of change in fear conditioning and extinction, with a particular focus on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in the Anxiety and Depression Research Center.  She completed her predoctoral internship at Brown University in the Psychosocial Research Department where she completed research on the rate of suicidal behaviors in patients with PTSD.   

Dr. Brown’s current research focuses on treatment development and implementation to mitigate suicide risk in patients with anxiety disorders and PTSD.  She specializes in cognitive-behavior therapy for anxiety disorders, including Exposure and Response prevention (EX/RP) for obsessive compulsive disorder, and has been trained in the treatment of borderline personality disorder.

#LilyBrown #Psychology #CognitiveBehaviorTherapy #CenterForTheTreatmentAndStudyOfAnxiety #PerelmanSchoolOfMedicine #UniversityOfPennsylvania #PTSD #Suicide #PosttraumaticStressDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #OCD #Panic #SocialPhobia  #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Professor Dr. Dan Blumberg, Ph.D. is the Vice-President for Regional and Industrial Development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ( BGU - https://www.blumberg.bgu.ac.il/ ), an elected Member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and Chair of the Israel Space Agency ( https://www.space.gov.il/en ), a position he was appointed to by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology ( https://www.gov.il/en/departments/ministry_of_science_and_technology/govil-landing-page ) in 2022.

Prior to these positions, Prof. Blumberg completed five years as Vice President and Dean for Research and Development at BGU and before that he fulfilled several positions including Deputy Vice President, Chairperson of the Department of Geography and Environmental Development and the founder of the Green Campus initiative at BGU which gained the University an international ranking of #18.

Prof. Blumberg earned a Ph.D. from Arizona State University (1993) where he studied and worked in the Planetary Geology Group and focused on aeolian processes and microwave radar remote sensing to study arid zone environments and planetary geology.  He was a Co-Investigator on the SRL (Spaceborne Radar Laboratory) mission, SRTM (Spaceborne Radar Topography) mission and other space missions. 

Prof. Blumberg has been working for the past 20 years on analysis of multi-parameter remote sensing data including radar, hyperspectral, multi-spectral and ground penetrating radar data. He has also published numerous papers in the areas of target and anomaly detection and combined field studies with the use of remote sensing data.  He also led the development and successful launch on February 15, 2017 of a Nanosatellite, BGUsat. 

Prof. Blumberg has also been a key leader in the development of the cyber eco-system in Beer-Sheva ( https://www.blumberg.bgu.ac.il/_files/ugd/d86da1_7750b399fc5843af9763fd4e1ffe59af.pdf ), which brought 39 multi-national companies and 70 startups to the advanced technologies park in Beer-Sheva. Additional roles include as Director of the Homeland Security Institute ( https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/hsi/Pages/Board.aspx ) and Simon Family Chair in Remote Sensing at BGU.

#DanBlumberg #RemoteSensing #Mars #Venus #BenGurionUniversityOfTheNegev #Astronautics #IsraelSpaceAgency #NASA #Geology #Geography #BaruchBlumberg #Astrobiology  #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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Dr. Parag Mallick, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Stanford University ( https://profiles.stanford.edu/parag-mallick ) and Co-Founder of Nautilus Biotechnology ( https://www.nautilus.bio/ ), a development stage life sciences company, engaged in creating a platform technology for quantifying and unlocking the complexity of the proteome for a new era of scientific discovery. 

Originally trained as an engineer and biochemist, Dr. Mallick’s research spans proteomics, computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology and nanotechnology. 

Dr. Mallick received his B.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in Chemistry & Biochemistry, where he worked with Dr. David Eisenberg. He completed his post-doctoral studies at The Institute for Systems Biology with Dr. Ruedi Aebersold. 

Dr. Mallick’s group has been pioneering systems-biology approaches towards understanding disease mechanisms, discovering biomarkers and enabling personalized medicine. Most recently, his group has been developing model-based and physics-based approaches to machine learning that enable learning over domains that span a wide range of time and length scales. 

Dr. Mallick has over 100 publications and holds patents in the fields of artificial intelligence, proteomics technology, biomarker development, and nanotechnology. Additionally, he serves as an advisor to numerous biotechnology and diagnostics companies and is an accomplished magician. Dr. Mallick is a member, and frequent performer at the prestigious Magic Castle in Hollywood. He has performed all over the world for clients ranging from A-List Celebrities to Fortune 500 companies.

#ParagMallick #Proteomics #Proteome #StanfordUniversity #NautilusBiotechnology #LifeSciences #DrugDiscovery #Diagnostics #Cancer #Alzheimers #Ashwgandha #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research

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