The Brain Surgeon's Take

Dr. Rice is a virologist who is known for the development of effective treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV). His work to generate a version of HCV that enabled the development of antiviral drugs capable of reducing HCV to undetectable levels, essentially curing chronic infection. For this breakthrough, Rice was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

Rice attended UC Davis for college and earned his graduate degree at Cal Tech, where he focused his research on RNA viruses. He deduced the genome of the virus that causes yellow fever and helped develop a vaccine. He also helped establish the flavivirus family which includes West Nile fever and Dengue fever. Rice then joined the faculty at the Washington University, where he shifted his focus to the development of a vaccine for hepatitis C. He generated a culturable version of the virus, allowing him to provide a description of the complete HCV genome and demonstrate the infectious nature of the virus. In 2001 Rice moved to Rockefeller University, where he discovered multiple proteins required for HCV entry into liver cells. In addition, he designed assays to test for drugs capable of blocking HCV replication, which led to new therapeutic agents for hepatitis C. The first of these drugs was approved in 2013 by the FDA.

Rice was a recipient of the 2015 Robert Koch Prize and the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. He was an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

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Cassandra Gaston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She is an expert in atmospheric chemistry, specifically, in aerosols, traces gases, and their interactions.

Cassandra has lectured on topics such as atmospheric instrumentation, aerosols, and mass spectrometry. She has mentored undergraduate and graduate students on the use of particle sizing instrumentation and mass spectrometry for the sampling of gases and particles. Cassandra has guided students both in the laboratory and in the field resulting in first and co-author publications for those students, including undergraduate students.

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Mayor Gimenez is a Cuban American and former fire fighter. He was chief of the Miami Fire Department before entering politics. Carlos Gimenez has been Mayor of Miami-Dade County since 2011, running a government of more than 28,000 employees and an $8.9 billion budget. Mayor Gimenez is currently running for United States Congress in the November 2020 election.

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Bryan became nationally known as the man who “talked South Florida through” Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which lead to his work on NBC and as the CBS News Hurricane Analyst from 1996 to 2008. In appreciation for his work before, during, and after Hurricane Andrew, Bryan was publicly recognized with designations of Bryan Norcross Days in Miami, Miami Beach, and Fort Lauderdale, among other cities. In addition, he’s the recipient of an Emmy Award from the southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the DuPont and Peabody awards.

After working on emergency management communications with America’s Emergency Network, Bryan joined The Weather Channel as Senior Hurricane Specialist in 2010. In 2018, Bryan returned to WPLG in Miami as Hurricane Specialist. Bryan was profiled in the New York Times following his long hours of coverage of Hurricane Sandy on The Weather Channel. The Times article includes a quote describing Bryan as “the most trusted hurricane human on the planet.”

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Brent Gleeson is an acclaimed speaker on topics ranging from leadership and building high performance teams to culture, resilience, and organizational transformation. Upon leaving SEAL Team 5, Brent turned his discipline and battlefield lessons to the world of business, as Founder and CEO of TakingPoint Leadership, a progressive leadership and management consulting firm with a focus on business transformation and building high-performance cultures. With degrees in finance and economics from SMU, certificates in English and History from Oxford University, and an MBA from UCSD, Gleeson’s extensive experience is both academic and real-world in nature. Gleeson has won awards for business leadership and was named one of the “Top 10 CEOs” in Entrepreneur Magazine for his exemplary approach to building high-performance teams in business.

He is the bestselling author of 2 books - Embrace the Suck and TakingPoint. Between his experiences in the SEAL Teams and building award winning organizations that have topped the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, Brent has become a business transformation expert.

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Sergey Young is a longevity investor and visionary on a mission to extend healthy lifespans of one billion people. To do that, Sergey founded the Longevity Vision Fund to accelerate life extension technological breakthroughs and to make longevity affordable and accessible to all. Sergey is on the Board of Directors of the American Federation of Aging Research and is a co-sponsor of the AGE REVERSAL XPrize Design. Once ultimately launched, this XPRIZE aims to dramatically delay the biological aging process through widely available interventions that extend the human life and health span.

Sergey Young has been featured as a top longevity expert and contributor on CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Forbes. As the author of books such as The Science and Technology of Growing Young and the mastermind behind the online life extension platform SergeyYoung.com, Sergey is passionate about sharing news from the exciting world of longevity. Sergey’s investor experience spans over 20 years, which includes managing a $2 billion private equity fund.

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A member of the Presidential Cabinet, Dr. Carson first made a name for himself as a pioneer in neurosurgery. He became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins by the age of 33. Before retiring from medicine in 2013, his numerous accomplishments included successful separation of conjoined twins, performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, performing the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins, and revitalizing hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures. Dr. Carson has over 60 honorary doctorate degrees, has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was inducted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.

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Alberto Carvalho has been Superintendent of Miami-Dade Public Schools since 2008. As director of the 4th largest school district in the USA, Mr. Carvalho has been awarded Florida Superintendent of the Year and National Superintendent of the Year multiple times.

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Immersed in sports his entire life as his great grandfather founded Anheuser-Busch and his grandfather owned the St. Louis Cardinals. After graduating with a double-major in Real Estate Finance and Sports Management from Southern Methodist University, Adie spent the early years of his career primarily focusing on sports marketing where he was able to set himself apart from others in the industry due to his forward and creative thinking.  Adie created unprecedented wealth for his clients by securing not only large endorsements, but equity ownership in companies that continue to grow into national powerhouses.  Adie formed APAA Sports Group because he understood the value of having all of the necessary services that clients demand under one agency, something he saw that many other companies failed to address.

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