SPEAKERS
Virginia W. Cornish is the Helena Rubinstein Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in biochemistry in 1991 from Columbia University, where she did undergraduate research with Professor Ronald Breslow. She earned her Ph.D. in chemistry with Professor Peter Schultz at the University of California, Berkeley, and then was a postdoctoral fellow in the Biology Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the guidance of Professor Robert Sauer. Dr. Cornish joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Columbia in 1999, where she carries out research at the interface of chemistry and biology, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2004 and then professor in 2007. Her laboratory brings together modern methods in synthetic chemistry and DNA technology to expand the synthetic capabilities of living cells. Her research has resulted in 59 research publications and several patents and currently is supported by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Cornish has been recognized for her research by awards including an NSF CAREER Award (2000), a Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2003), the Protein Society Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award (2009), and the American Chemical Society Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (2009).
Michael Fischbach is an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and a member of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). Dr. Fischbach is a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a fellowship for science and engineering from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, a medical research award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Young Investigator Grant for Probiotics Research from the Global Probiotics Council. His laboratory uses a combination of genomics and chemistry to identify and characterize small molecules from microbes, with an emphasis on the human microbiome. Dr. Fischbach received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2007 from Harvard University, where he studied the role of iron acquisition in bacterial pathogenesis and the biosynthesis of antibiotics. Before coming to UCSF, he spent 2 years as an independent fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital coordinating a collaborative effort based at the Broad Institute to develop genomics-based approaches to the discovery of small molecules from microbes. Dr. Fischbach is a member of the scientific advisory boards of Schiff Nutrition, Second Genome, and Warp Drive Bio, and he is a consultant for Achaogen, Agraquest, and Genentech.
Marc Ostermeier is a professor and vice chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1990 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1996. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department at Pennsylvania State University before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 2000. Dr. Ostermeier was
promoted to associate professor in 2007 and professor in 2011. His research is in the areas of protein engineering, synthetic biology, protein evolution, and allostery. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.
David Schaffer is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, bioengineering, and neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering in 1993. Afterward, he attended MIT and earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1998 with Professor Doug Lauffenburger, while minoring in molecular and cell biology. Finally, he conducted a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Fred Gage at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, before moving to Berkeley in 1999. At Berkeley, Dr. Schaffer applies engineering principles to enhance stem cell and gene therapy approaches for neuroregeneration. This work includes mechanistic investigation of stem cell control, as well as molecular evolution and engineering of viral gene delivery vehicles. He has received an NSF CAREER Award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and a Whitaker Foundation Young Investigator Award, and he was named a Technology Review Top 100 Innovator. He was also awarded the American Chemical Society BIOT Division Young Investigator Award in 2006 and the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Shaffer Young Investigator Award in 2000, and he was elected to the college of fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2010.
Gregory L. Verdine is the Erving Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He is also the director of the Harvard/Dana-Farber Program in cancer chemical biology and executive director of the Chemical Biology Initiative at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In recent years, Dr. Verdine has established himself as one of the pioneers of the emerging discipline known as chemical biology, which seeks to understand the functions of small molecules, their interplay in the cell, and their effect on biological processes. He has studied the processes underlying control of gene expression and preservation of genomic integrity, and his work has shed light on the biochemical and structural basis for enzymatic recognition and repair of mutagenic damage in DNA. He joined the faculty of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry in 1988 and eventually became the Erving Professor of Chemistry in 2002. Dr. Verdine has received numerous awards and honors, including the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Sloan Fellowship, the Searle Scholar Award, and an Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.
Neal Woodbury is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University (ASU). As co-director and chief scientific officer of the Biodesign Institute, Innovations in Medicine, he leads a team that seeks to develop molecular devices and nanoscale hybrid electronics for use in biomedicine, environmental remediation and monitoring, threat detection, and agriculture. His research into the structure/function relationships in photosynthesis led him to realize the awesome potential of harnessing the energy of light to direct chemical reactions. His efforts have been directed at building synthetic systems that can do this: speed up natural evolution. Dr. Woodbury is an advocate of interdisciplinary science as a means of providing researchers greater vision in addressing real-world problems. His published work includes more than 75 articles and studies. He is a member of the NSF Biophysics Panel and the NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Panel and is an associate editor of Photochemistry and Photobiology. He has served as the director of the Photosynthesis Center at ASU and is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Biophysical Society, and the American Photobiology Society. Dr. Woodbury received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
FACILITATOR
Mikhail Shapiro is a neuroscientist, engineer, and technology entrepreneur focused on developing better ways to study the brain’s activity and treat neurological and psychiatric disease. Dr. Shapiro has been named as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop an independent research program focused on ways to non-invasively sense and manipulate brain activity at the molecular level. He studied neuroscience at Brown University and received his Ph.D. in biological engineering from MIT as a Hertz and Soros Fellow. Working with Alan Jasanoff and Robert Langer, Dr. Shapiro created the first-ever functional magnetic resonance imaging sensors for neurotransmitters. He was also a cofounder of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, whose BrainGate technology allowed paralyzed people to control external devices directly with their thoughts. As a venture principal at Third Rock Ventures, an $800 million life sciences venture capital firm, Dr. Shapiro helped launch companies focused on novel treatments for chronic pain, cancer, and other diseases. In 2010 he was recognized by the MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under age 35.
