Speaker Bios

Robert C. Cresanti
Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology, U.S.Department of Commerce

Robert C. Cresanti was sworn in as Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology on March 20, 2006 in a private ceremony. President Bush nominated him on November 10, 2005; the United States Senate confirmed him on March 16, 2006. As head of the Technology Administration (TA), Cresanti oversees a policy analysis staff, and provides oversight to the National Institute of Standards and Technology and National Technical Information Service.

The primary mission of the Technology Administration (TA) is to maximize the competitiveness and innovation of the U.S. technology industry and its contribution to America’s economic growth and global leadership. The Under Secretary is focused on carrying forward President Bush’s vision to grow the economy through the American Competitiveness Initiative and related policies and programs. As a portal between the federal government and the technology community, the Under Secretary’s priorities are to:

• continue the Technology Administration’s work in paving the way for appropriate government support of industry’s rapid advances in technological development;
• foster an environment conducive to private sector investment in innovation, by identifying ways to facilitate knowledge exchange between scientists and investors, which will boost our country's economic performance;
• find efficient ways to promote the mechanisms and capture the data necessary to ensure and measure our return on government R&D investments;
• serve as a one-stop-shop for U.S. industry representatives to discuss and resolve critical issues that challenge their ability to thrive.

The Under Secretary also serves on the President's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), where he co-chairs the Committee on Technology, and participates in the Committee on Education and Training; the Committee on International Science, Engineering, and Technology; and the Committee on National Security.

Before his confirmation, Cresanti served as Vice President of Public Policy at the Business Software Alliance. Prior to this, he was Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the Information Technology Association of America. Earlier in his career, he served as Staff Director for the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. He was also Staff Director for the Subcommittee on Financial Services and Technology for the Senate Banking Committee. Mr. Cresanti received his B.A. degree from Austin College and his J.D. degree from Baylor University.

Charles R. Denham, M.D.
CEO, HCC Corporation, Chairman TMIT

Dr. Denham has a business development career spanning 20 years which has resulted in numerous product and process innovations. As a radiation oncologist, professor of biomedical engineering, and instructor at a number of medical schools and business schools, he has taught innovation adoption, technology transfer, and commercialization. He has served on numerous editorial boards of journals as a Health Information Technology (HIT) and solution specialist, authored numerous publications, and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Patient Safety. He currently serves on a steering committee of the World Health Organization. In 2006, Dr. Denham was ranked number 31 in the 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives by Modern Healthcare.

He is CEO and Founder of HCC Corporation, a business development accelerator that has led, developed, or supported 400 product development teams in over 50 product categories, including pharmaceuticals, devices, capital equipment, and Health Information Technologies.

He is Chairman and founder of TMIT, a non-profit medical research organization dedicated to drive adoption of clinical solutions in healthcare performance improvement. TMIT has established a National Research Test Bed of more than 3,100 hospitals through which it accelerates the adoption of high impact performance improvement solutions, products, services, and technologies. This Test Bed is served by more than 250 clinical and administrative subject matter experts from a number of our nation’s best academic and frontline institutions. TMIT has established a National Harmonization Program through task forces with each of JCAHO, CMS, AHRQ, IHI, and the Leapfrog Group in order to generate a synchronized set of practices that will provide a common roadmap to hospitals. This harmonization effort provides a common set of targets that the payers can build into their purchasing programs.

Dr. Denham is Chairman of the Leapfrog Group Safe Practices program which ranks US hospitals on an annual basis, providing the mechanism for consumers and insurance purchasers to reward quality improvement by their purchasing, The Leapfrog Group is a consortium of more than 170 Fortune 500 companies, with over $69 billion in healthcare purchasing power, responsible for more than 34 million covered lives. As Co-Chairman of the National Quality Forum Safe Practices Consensus Standards Maintenance Committee, Dr. Denham and TMIT are involved in updating the 30 NQF Safe Practices on an ongoing multi-year basis.

Professor Jean-Claude Healy, Ph.D., M.D.
Director, Office of External Relations and Governing Bodies (EGB), World Health Organization HQ

Professor Healy is a 62 year old French national graduate of the University of Paris (PhD and MD). He has over 35 years professional experience in biomedical Research & Development, radioprotection and information technology application. He was Professor of Biophysics and Medical Informatics at University Hospitals: Paris, Strasbourg, St. Etienne, France. He has held Ministerial and senior administrative appointments at national and EU level, as well as professional clinical posts. He was head of the Health Telematics unit of DG INFSO at the European Commission in Brussels from 1995-2004 and is presently a Director at WHO HQ, Geneva in charge of the WHO eHealth strategy and eHealth Resolution.

Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D.,
Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Scientific Director, Harvard–Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics

Raju Kucherlapati came to the US in 1967 after completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in India. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana and did his postdoctoral work in the lab of Frank Ruddle at Yale University. After working at both Princeton and the University of Illinois, in 1989 he became Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a position he held for eleven years. In 2001 Dr. Kucherlapati became Professor of Medicine and the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and the first scientific director of the Harvard – Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. He was a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Human Genomics Research Institute, is on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and was editor in chief of the journal Genomics. He currently serves on the boards of Millennium and Abgenix and was a founder of Cell Genesys.

The Kucherlapati laboratory has four major areas of interest. These include mammalian genetics, where his laboratory participated in the mapping and sequencing of the mouse and human genomes; the etiology of Velo-Cardio-Facial syndrome; generation of mouse models for human cancer; and the etiology of Noonan Syndrome.

Prof. Dr. Raphael H. Levey
Chairman and Founder,Global Medical Forum Foundation

Upon graduation from Princeton University in 1955 (Magna Cum Laude in Biology), Dr. Levey entered Harvard Medical School and received his degree with Honors in 1959. Dr. Levey entered into the Surgical Residency program at Massachusetts General Hospital, graduating as Chief Resident in 1968. He then spent two years in London as a Visiting Consultant in Pediatric Surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children. Seeing the need to delve further into research in order to progress the knowledge and thus technology of surgery, he began his research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (1961 to 1963) and then in London (1965 to 1966), working with the famed Peter Medawar (Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1960). Having completed his clinical training in general and thoracic surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and having spent four years in basic research, he joined the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School (HMS) in the Department of Surgery at the Children's Hospital and in the Division of Medical Sciences (Immunology). He received tenure at HMS in 1975. He founded the Organ Transplantation Program at Children's Hospital, serving as Chief of Unit for over ten years, and performed the first successful Bone Marrow, Kidney and Liver Transplants at the hospital. He was a Moseley Fellow in Medicine at HMS, a Markle Scholar in Academic Medicine, and a Faculty Research Associate of the American Cancer Society. He was a member of the Advisory Council at Princeton University and of the Transplantation and Immunology Committee at the NIH. He has held visiting Professorships at many European and North American Universities and was elected a Member of the College de France. In the early 1970s, he developed in the laboratory and then transferred to clinical use an entire new class of immunosuppressive agents and, in so doing, worked closely with pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration. In the late 1970s, foreseeing that the progressive escalation of healthcare costs in the United States would soon preclude the vast majority of foreign patients from seeking state-of-the-art care, Prof. Dr. Levey founded Health Care International (HCI).  Prof. Dr. Levey served as Chairman of the Company and was responsible for raising £185 million, creating what was the largest start-up company in the history of the City of London. He identified the equity investors, developed the functional program, obtained planning permission to build the medical complex and developed extensive contacts with the highest levels of the UK government and all relevant pan-European regulatory agencies in the healthcare industry. His company served as project developer. In 2001, he co-founded the Global Medical Forum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit private global network of selected innovators and decisionmakers in healthcare. It is a place for these selected leaders to discuss rational solutions to the healthcare debate and thereby to better understand the interrelationship and inter-dependency of the global systems of healthcare. By disseminating the high-quality content produced by this special network, it is a provider of unbiased information on the value and role of medical innovation and technology, the financing of healthcare, and other related issues of public policy. Lastly, the Foundation is the initiator of, and participant in, creative public private partnerships (PPPs) which create new models for biomedical innovation and healthcare delivery around the world, with a primary focus on emerging markets. Major PPPs led by the Global Medical Forum Foundation include Shanghai Bio City and Abu Dhabi Bio City.

Manuel T. Lowenhaupt, M.D.
Partner, Accenture Health & Life Sciences

Dr. Lowenhaupt is a Partner at Accenture and the National Practice Leader for Clinical Transformation. He is internationally noted for his work in clinical effectiveness, care management, and clinical informatics. In his 15 years of consulting, he has worked with greater than one hundred twenty healthcare organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Far East. Dr. Lowenhaupt received his undergraduate degree from M.I.T. and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Sue Schade, MBA
Chief Information Officer,Brigham and Women's Hospital

Sue Schade is currently the Chief Information Officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA. In this role, she provides direction and oversight to information technology initiatives at both the Brigham and Women's and Faulkner Hospitals and manages the Partners Information Systems staff based at BWH.

Ms. Schade has 20 plus years experience in health care information technology management having previously worked for a large IDN in the Chicago area, a software vendor, and a national consulting firm. She received her MBA degree from Illinois Benedictine College at Lisle. She is a member of both the national Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). She currently serves on the CHIME Board.

John Wade,
Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Saint Luke's Health System

John Wade is the Vice President, Information Services and for the past 13 years served as CIO for Saint Luke's Health System of Kansas City, a multi-hospital healthcare provider servicing eastern Kansas and western Missouri within 150 miles of Kansas City. His new responsibilities include the implementation of the Kansas City Regional Electronic Exchange (KCREE), the area’s emerging RHIO.

Saint Luke’s received the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in November 2003, and was awarded the Missouri Quality Award in 1995, 1999 and 2003, the only organization in Missouri to win this award for a third time.

Prior to joining Saint Luke’s, John was a Principal and National Healthcare Practice Director with the consulting firm of Logica North America, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Previously he served as Senior Information Executive at the University of Alabama Health Systems at Birmingham, Northwestern Memorial Health System—Chicago, and Children’s Hospital Medical Center—Boston. John is an honor’s graduate of Boston College where he pursued his Master’s in Business Administration and is a Fellow of both HIMSS and CHIME. He has been a featured speaker at HIMSS, HFMA, NMHCC and National VHA conferences. He was recently recognized as one of the top CIOs in the U.S. by Computerworld. John is the Board Chair Elect of HIMSS, the premier professional organization for health information professionals.

John Apathy
Partner, Health & Life Sciences Practice, Accenture

John Apathy is a Partner in Accenture’s Health & Life Sciences practice and is based in their Philadelphia office. He is a member of the Pharmaceutical R&D Leadership team and focuses much of his consulting in the delivery of Accenture’s service offerings in the Pre-Clinical and Early Development phases of Pharmaceutical R&D. Recently John has led Accenture's efforts in working with Pharmaceutical clients to define and capture business value from the growing Health IT trends and a nation-wide health information network in the U.S. A Biochemist originally by training, John has over 22 years of experience within the Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences industries, all principally focused on improving capabilities for the discovery and development of new healthcare products. His expertise ranges from Strategy to Business Transformation and IT Strategy. He started his career within Clinical Research at Eli Lilly & Company and spent 11 years in various management roles with Lilly. He has spent the past 11 years delivering Management Consulting for large global Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, and Research Services organizations. He has an MBA from Indiana University in Strategy and Marketing, a B.S. in Biochemistry from Indiana University, and a M.S. in Biology/Pharmacology from Purdue University. John lives in Devon, Pennsylvania with his wife Susan and their three children - Joseph, Emily, and Caroline - and divides his free time between the variety of sporting events featuring any one of his children on a given weeknight or weekend.

Bung-Chul Chang, MD, Ph.D
CIO, Yonsei University Medical Center, Professor,Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery

Dr. Chang specializes in Adult Cardiac and Peripheral Vascular Surgery at Yonsei University College of Medicine. He received his M.D. from Yonsei University College of Medicine in 1977 and performed his residency at Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Residency. Dr. Chang was an Evarts A. Graham Traveling Fellow (AATS 1987), and a Research Associate at Washington University School of Medicine (1988-1989) in St. Louis, MO. He received a Ph.D. in 1991 from Yonsei UniversityPostgraduate School.

Dr. Chang was Chairman and Professor, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Yonsei Cardiovascular Center, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. Dr. Chang also has many professional recognitions, his awards include the Dongshin Smith-Kline Bicham Prize for Research Achievement; Young Kyun Lee Medical Award, The Korean Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery; Biomedical Award, Korean Society of Biomedical Engineering; Suk Young Chi Award, Husaeng Medical News and the CIO of the Year 2005, CIO Forum, Korea. Dr. Chang has also published over 155 manuscripts in the field of thoracic and cardiovascular medicine.

Felix Cirillo -
Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer,ActiveHealth Management, Inc.

Felix Cirillo has over fifteen years of clinical and technology experience in acute and managed care settings. Felix has a proven track record in system design, implementation, and process improvement. In 1998, he was Director of Data Administration and Informatics Security at Catholic Medical Centers. There, Felix was responsible for decision support, data warehousing, and data administration for an integrated system comprised of four acute hospitals, three skilled nursing facilities, twenty-five ambulatory care sites, and a home health agency. From 1997 to 1998, Felix was Director of Clinical Information and Care Management for Vytra Health Plans, the largest HMO in the New York metro area. In 1996, Felix built a seven million-dollar information system for HealthFirst PHSP, the largest Medicaid system in New York State. Previously, Mr. Cirillo held several management positions in healthcare, covering quality improvement, administration, patient care, and nursing.

Felix holds a BSN in Nursing from Adelphi University, an MBA in Executive Management from Dowling College, and performed his post-Master’s work in Information Systems at New York University.

J. Michael Hardin, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Research, Culverhouse College of Commerce, University of Alabama

Dr. Hardin has authored or co-authored over 80 papers in various journals including the Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the American Journal of Epidemiology, the American Statistician, the Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, and Communications in Statistics. He is the author or co-author of over 150 abstracts presented at national meetings and has given over 75 invited lectures or talks. He is the author of several book chapters dealing with database design and decision support systems.

Dr. Hardin often serves as a consultant to healthcare organizations in the areas of data mining, sampling, and program integrity. Additionally, he is an instructor and consultant for the SAS Institute in the areas of data mining and time series analysis. He is Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics and Adjunct Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has served as Scholar in Residence in the Center for Information Management, Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, Loyola University, Chicago, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Management and Information Sciences and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He is a member of numerous professional associations including the American Statistical Association, the Biometric Society, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

His areas of specialty include data mining and knowledge discovery, data visualization, data warehousing, machine learning, statistical classification models, data management and collection methodologies, research design, informatics, the applications of statistical methodologies in the study of aging, and biostatistics.

Education: University of West Florida (B.A.), Florida State University (M.S.), The University of Alabama (M.A. and Ph.D.).

Hugh Levaux, Ph.D.
CEO, Ninaza

Dr. Levaux has over 15 years of experience in pharmaceutical outsourcing, strategic consulting, and health outcomes research. His experience includes early phase clinical development, as well as late phase registries and safety surveillance programs. Dr. Levaux sets the strategic direction for Ninaza and oversees daily operations, with particular focus on product development, professional services, and commercial operations. Before coming to Ninaza, Dr. Levaux served as VP and GM of the Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology practice at CareScience, a top-tier provider of web-based patient database and analysis software. Prior to CareScience, Dr. Levaux served as Senior VP at Quintiles Transnational where he led worldwide Late Phase sales and the Clinical Operations unit. Dr. Levaux also worked as VP of Operations at the Lewin Group, a division of Quintiles, where he managed consulting projects on health economics, quality of life, and reimbursement. Prior to Quintiles, Dr. Levaux worked as an analyst at the RAND Corporation where he performed risk assessment on emerging markets and evaluated the adoption of commercial processes and technologies for government and private sector clients. Fluent in Japanese, Spanish, and French, Dr. Levaux lived in Japan for over three years and handled International Business Operations at Matsushita Electric Co. Ltd. Dr. Levaux has published in leading academic and clinical journals. He has a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School and an M.A. in International Economics and International Relations from SAIS at Johns Hopkins University. He also has a Masters in International Politics from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

Eric Newmark
Senior Research Analyst, IDC Health Industry Insights

Eric Newmark is a Senior Research Analyst for IDC's Health Industry Insights (HII). Mr. Newmark manages HII's Business System Strategy and Leading Indicators services, and provides research and market analysis on key topics within the Health and Life Science industries. At IDC, and prior as a Senior Analyst at AMR Research, Mr. Newmark has covered technologies ranging from supply chain optimization and RFID to CRM and analytics. Mr. Newmark has also held several leadership positions in application development, technical management, and operations management at Siebel Systems Inc., Easyware Software, and Onlink Technologies.

Mr. Newmark holds a BS in MIS and Finance from Babson College, as well as an MBA with concentration in Strategy and Business Analysis from the Boston University School of Management.

Wayne P. Yetter
CEO, Verispan, LLC

Mr. Yetter joined Verispan in September 2005 and brings more than 30 years of experience and leadership in the pharmaceutical industry to his role as Verispan's CEO. Most recently, he was founder and President of Biopharm Advisory LLC, helping pharmaceutical and life-science clients in the areas of disease management, e-business and outsourced hospital pharmacy services. Prior to that, he served as President and CEO of Odyssey Pharmaceuticals, a unit of the global generics company Pliva d.d., supporting Pliva's strategy to exit the proprietary pharmaceutical business. From 2000 to 2003, he was Chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based SYNAVANT Inc., a global pioneer of pharmaceutical customer relationship management technology and services. SYNAVANT was acquired by Dendrite International in 2003.

From 1999 to 2000, Mr. Yetter was Chief Operating Officer of IMS Health Inc., a global provider of information solutions for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. While at IMS, he supported a strategic review that resulted in two divisions of the company being spun off to form SYNAVANT. From 1997 to 1999, Mr. Yetter was President and CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Yetter began his pharmaceutical industry career in 1970 as a sales representative for Pfizer and contributed in positions in market research and product management. He joined Merck & Co. in 1977 as a product manager and rose through a series of increasingly responsible positions, including Vice President, Marketing Operations, and Vice President, Far East/Pacific. In 1991, he was appointed to build a new joint venture pharmaceutical company as President/General Manager of the Astra Merck Division of Merck & Co.; he served as President and CEO of Astra Merck Inc. from 1994 to 1997.

Samuel (Sandy) Aronson
Director of Information Technology, Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics.

Sandy Aronson is the Director of IT of the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG). In this position he oversees the development of IT infrastructure to support both the HPCGG's genetic, genomic and proteomic core facilities and the HPCGG's clinically focused Laboratory for Molecular Medicine.

This includes the development of portal, LIMS and repository systems as well as integrating these systems with other Partners clinical infrastructure. Prior to this position, Mr. Aronson was an IT consultant to the biotechnology industry working for Tribiosys. Mr. Aronson also held several position with Sapient Corporation, was a Strategic Consultant for Monitor Company and founded LearningAction, a web-based training company now part of Best Software. Mr. Aronson holds a Masters in Organizational Behavior and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Mark Frederic Davis
Hewlett-Packard Company

Mark Davis is a worldwide Enterprise Integration Manager for Hewlett-Packard. He is responsible for the Integration Competency Center (ICC) consulting service portfolio, SOA Center of Excellence service development, training, presales, and rollout for the Enterprise Integration & Development Practice. Mark was named to his present position in July 2003. Previously, he served as a Service Development Manager and SOA/ICC/B2B/EAI Domain Expert (since he joined Hewlett-Packard in April 2000).

Prior to Hewlett-Packard, he served four years as an ICC Manager for Cargill, Inc. Mark has managed many large Enterprise Integration projects and was one of the first to pioneer establishing an ICC in 1994. He received the Achiever’s Circle Award.

TC Foong
Information Management Director, Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd., Regional CIO, Janssen-Cilag North Asia

TaiChuan Foong (TC) has 25 years work experience within the chemical, processing and pharmaceutical industries, and spent the past 15 years working with multi-nationals in China. Before moving to China, TC worked in Australia and Malaysia. TC has multiple functional experiences, with increasing management responsibilities, from production to quality assurance, process engineering to supply chain, sales & marketing, project management (IT infrastructure), business process re-engineering and ERP architecture design and system implementation and SAP project management. TC started SAP ERP implementation in China in 1994. Prior to joining J&J in August 2000, TC helped create and run IM shared service platform at BASF North Asia, focused on accelerating SAP ERP system implementation. Prior to joining BASF China in 1994, TC managed supply chain and export sales, production at SC Johnson in China and Australia.

John Glaser
Vice President and CIO Partners HealthCare

John Glaser is Vice-President and CIO, Partners HealthCare. Previously, he was Vice-President, Information Systems at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Glaser managed the Healthcare Information Systems consulting practice at Arthur D. Little. Dr. Glaser was the founding Chairman of CHIME and is past President of HIMSS. He is currently the President of the eHealth Initiative Board. He is a senior Advisor to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. He holds a Ph.D. in Healthcare Information Systems from the University of Minnesota.

Professor Peter Hamilton, BSc, Ph.D.
Professor of Bioimaging and Informatics, Queen's University Belfast. Managing Director, i-Path Diagnostics Ltd.

Professor Peter Hamilton is Head of the Bioimaging and Informatics at Queen’s University Belfast. He has for the past 20 years been leading research on computer vision and decision support in diagnostic cancer pathology and the identification of novel digital tissue and cell markers for diagnostics, prognostics and for predicting response to therapy in cancer. Recent work has focused on spectral characteristics of cancer cells using high resolution cell imaging and digital texture analysis of chromatin phenotype. In addition he has developed novel approaches for the development of prognostic algorithms using methods such as casebased reasoning, neural networks and evolutionary algorithms. Approaches using Bayesian belief networks have led to the development of novel virtual training environments for pathology. Professor Hamilton has published extensively in this field and has been funded by government grants, cancer charities and industrial partners. He sits on the UK Medical Research Council Panel of Experts and on the management committees of a number of major medical research organizations including the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the International Society for Cellular Oncology. Professor Hamilton is also Managing Director of i-Path Diagnostics Ltd, a company specializing in digital pathology technology with a number of emerging products in virtual pathology training and on-line virtual tissue archiving including InView™ and PathXL™.

Des Higgins, Ph.D.
Professor of Bioinformatics, Conway Institute, University College, Dublin

Des Higgins is Professor of Bioinformatics in University College Dublin, Ireland. He has been involved in bioinformatics research since 1985, mainly in the areas of sequence alignment and molecular evolution. He wrote the first Clustal programs for multiple sequence alignment in 1988, in Dublin. Since then, the later versions, Clustal W and Clustal X have become some of the most widely used programs in use for sequence analysis, worldwide. The latter programs continue to be developed in his laboratory and by his collaborators in Heidelberg and Strasbourg. He has also been involved in the initial development of the T-Coffee and related packages for multiple alignment. After postdoctoral research in Dublin, Des moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany in 1990 where he stayed for 4 years. He then moved to the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK, for 2 years before returning to Ireland in 1997. His current research interests are divided between multiple sequence alignment methods, multivariate analysis of microarray and proteomics data, microRNA gene analysis and promoter analysis.

Isaac S. Kohane, MD. Ph.D.
Director, Lawrence J. Henderson Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School

Isaac (Zak) Kohane is the director of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and is the Henderson Associate Professor Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School. He is also Director of the Countway Library of Medicine of Harvard Medical School and co-Director of the HMS Center for Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Kohane leads multiple collaborations at Harvard Medical School and its hospital affiliates in the use of genomics and computer science to study cancer and the development of the brain (with emphasis on autism). He also has developed several computer systems to allow multiple hospital systems to be used as “living laboratories” to study the genetic basis of disease while preserving patient privacy.

Dr. Kohane has published over 115 papers in the medical literature and authored a widely used book on Microarrays for an Integrative Genomics. He has been elected to multiple honor societies including the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American College of Medical Informatics. He leads a doctoral program in genomics and bioinformatics at MIT. He is also a practicing pediatric endocrinologist and father of two energetic children.

Paul Korner, MD, MBA
Executive Director, Medical Affairs - Female Healthcare Berlex Laboratories

Dr. Paul Korner is Board Certified in Obstetrics/ Gynecology, and possesses several years of experience in clinical practice prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry in 1998. He earned his medical degree from Loyola University - Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, and completed his residency at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Dr. Korner earned his MBA from The Michael J. Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University, with concentration on healthcare administration. Dr. Korner has extensive experience leading global development programs and running clinical trials in various parts of the world. Prior to joining Berlex Laboratories as the head of Medical Affairs - Female Healthcare, he held positions of increased responsibility within Medical Affairs and Clinical Research & Development for Solvay Pharmaceuticals and Wyeth Research.

Rebecca D. Kush, Ph.D.
Founder and President, Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC)

Rebecca Daniels Kush, Ph.D. is a Founder and the President of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), which is a non-profit organization that has established worldwide industry standards to support the acquisition, exchange, submission and archive of clinical trial data. The current CDISC mission is to develop and support global, platform-independent data standards that enable information system interoperability to improve medical research and related areas of healthcare.

Dr. Kush has over 25 years of experience in clinical research and related areas, including work for the National Institutes of Health, academia, a global contract research organization and pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and Japan. Prior to dedicating full-time as President of CDISC, Dr. Kush founded Catalysis, Inc., a consulting company that focuses on strategy, project management, and process analysis and redesign, particularly associated with the implementation of new technology and associated processes for ‘electronic clinical trials’. Among numerous publications, Dr. Kush is the lead author of the book, eClinical Trials: Planning and Implementation, which conveys the vision of linking clinical research and healthcare.

Dr. Kush earned a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California (UCSD) School of Medicine in La Jolla, CA. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and the Drug Information Association (DIA), and she was recently invited to join the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, recently established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Frank Orlando
Hewlett-Packard Company

Frank Orlando is responsible for the Healthcare partnerships in the Enterprise Server and Storage Group. He has over twenty years of experience in IT solutions.

Frank started his career as an aerospace engineer. He was involved in numerous designs including Space Shuttle navigation system, as well as other navigation and landing systems. His career has spanned several industries including work on Wall Street, in healthcare and manufacturing. While working at a healthcare company, Frank was responsible for the development of medical instrumentation from the definition phase to the clinical trial.

Frank has an engineering degree from Cooper Union as well as a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Beverly Quarles
Solutions Director, NonStop Enterprise Division (NED), Hewlett-Packard Company.

Beverly is a Director in the NED Emerging Solutions Worldwide team. Her primary focus is on Healthcare. Beverly manages existing Healthcare partners and develops new Healthcare solutions for NED. Prior to joining the NED Emerging Solutions team, Beverly worked for NED as a development manager creating Clinical Intelligence Enterprise Data Warehouse solutions. As the development manager for the project, Beverly worked with the clinicians, doctors and development engineers to define the clinical intelligence needs, the data model, the data feeds, and the overall scope of the project. Prior to working on the data warehouse project, Beverly worked with NED as a development manager in the NonStop Real-Time Software organization.

Eamonn O'Toole, Ph.D.
Hewlett-Packard Company, Life and Material Sciences, Advanced Development Group, High Performance Computing Division

Eamonn O’Toole is a senior member of technical staff in HP’s High Performance Computing Division. He works in the Advanced Development and Strategic Customer Management group and is the technical lead in Life and Materials Sciences (LMS). His role is to understand the scientific application uses and needs of HP’s customers in LMS, to help ensure that current and future HP systems are effective for these uses, and to engage in collaborative projects in pursuit of these aims. Eamonn works directly with HP’s most important customers in LMS, including The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Vital-IT and others – including in the past Celera Genomics. He has contributed enhancements to a number of widely-used applications, including Gaussian, FASTA and HMMer. Eamonn holds a BE in Chemical Engineering from University College, Dublin, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.

Mark Schreiber, Ph.D.
Research Investigator, Bioinformatics Novartis Institutefor Tropical Diseases

Dr. Schreiber was educated in New Zealand and graduated with a PhD in Bioinformatics in 2002. His thesis studies focused on methods of improving bacterial gene and motif detection using advanced hidden markov models and techniques from information theory.

He worked with AgResearch (an agricultural biotech company) from 2001 to 2003 initially as a bioinformatics developer and later as a bioinformatics consultant. In January of 2004 he started work with the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases where he established the bioinformatics group. At NITD he works on projects involving drug target prioritization, data integration, molecular epidemiology and software development.

He has been involved with the BioJava open-source bioinformatics project since 2000 and is currently the lead architect for this software library. His research interests include the application of information theory to biology, integration of diverse datasets to reveal new findings, software architecture and data modeling.

Jaap Suermondt, Ph.D.
Hewlett-Packard Labs

Jaap Suermondt manages the Content Analysis and Data Mining group in the Information Services and Process Innovation Lab at HP Labs. He is also responsible for the portfolio of HP Labs research targeted towards HP Services and its customers and partners. He holds a B.S. degree in Mathematical and Computational Science from Stanford University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Medical Information Sciences from Stanford University School of Medicine. He has been with Hewlett-Packard in various research and management functions since 1992.

Mohan Uttarwar
President and CEO, BioImagene, Inc.

Mohan Uttarwar is president and CEO of BioImagene Inc, a company specializing in Image Informatics software for Digital Pathology. Mohan co founded BioImagene as he believes that digital pathology will improve the quality of patient care, while reducing the cost.

Mohan is a true Silicon Valley entrepreneur, with more than 20 years of experience in setting up high technology start- ups. He started his career in software development at Intel & HP. Being an entrepreneur at heart, he left his job to co-found a company called Digital Tools that became a success in the enterprise project and resource management software. He co-founded and was the CEO of Softplus Inc – a leading provider of e-crm software. He was the co-founder and CEO of Roamware Inc – a global leader in roaming services.

Mohan holds a Masters Degree in computer science from the Florida Institute of Technology as well as a Masters of Electrical Engineering from Bombay University.

He actively participates and is a charter member of TIE – a Silicon Valley-based forum for entrepreneurs. He is on the board of IDE – a leading non-profit devoted to the eradication of rural poverty worldwide.

In addition to his passion for innovative start-ups, Mohan likes to climb mountains like Mount Kailash in India, Mount Whitney and most recently Mount Kilimanjaro. Mohan resides in Cupertino, California with his wife and 2 daughters.