2015 Panelists


2015 Panelists

Panels offer an opportunity to hear from experienced alums and Yale associates in a variety of fields!

The 2015 panels will be as follows:

Biotech & Pharma Academic Research & Teaching Science Communication
Public Health Business and Entrepreneurship Policy and Law

 


Biotech & Pharma

Dawn Mattoon

Dawn completed both her Ph.D. and postdoctoral work at Yale University, first in the laboratory of Daniel DiMaio studying PDGFR signaling, and then in the laboratory of Joseph Schlessinger studying EGFR signaling. Following her graduate work, Dawn joined the Invitrogen/Life Technologies R&D staff in 2004, and was recognized as one of Invitrogen’s best new scientists in 2005. Dawn served in a variety of roles at the company over the following 10 years, including leadership roles in R&D, Program and Portfolio Management, and Strategy. In addition, Dawn serves on the Global Leadership Team for IWIN, a women-led, grassroots organization within Life Tech focused on creating opportunities for networking, mentoring, and leadership development. Recently, Dawn relocated to the greater-Boston area as the Vice President for Product Development at Cell Signaling Technology, where she leads a team of 130 scientists in developing and commercializing reagents and assays to support biological research.

 

Augustine Choy

Augustine Choy completed his Ph.D in Immunobiology at Yale in 2013. In his graduate work he discovered a novel mechanism of autophagy inhibition by the intracellular pathogen Legionella pneumophila. After his graduate studies, he then joined Regeneron Pharmaceuticals as a post-doctoral fellow where he is working to discover new technologies for re-targeting effector cells of the immune system to new targets for therapeutical purposes.

 

 

 

Chris Cheng

Christopher Cheng ’12 is a Development Scientist in the Nucleic Acid Drug Formulations Department at Alexion Pharmaceuticals based in Connecticut. Christopher’s responsibilities bridge research, business development, and drug manufacturing. His primary goal is to engineer and develop a scalable delivery modality that will enable the use of nucleic acids as safe and potent biotherapeutics. In this role, Christopher oversees R&D efforts, drives strategic planning for nucleic acid drug development, and coordinates external collaborations within academia and the biotech industry. Before joining Alexion he was an interdisciplinary postdoctoral fellow in the research groups of Frank Slack (Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology), Mark Saltzman (Biomedical Engineering), and Don Engelman (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) at Yale, where he also received his Ph.D. in MB&B.

 

 

Vivi Ko

Vivi is currently a Senior Manager with Biogen Idec's U.S. Medical team.  In her role, Vivi is responsible for the oversight of specific operations including KOL database management, metrics analytics and reporting, and field leadership communications.  Furthermore, Vivi manages the U.S. investigator-initiated trials process from an operational excellence standpoint, supporting the U.S. Medical Directors and U.S. Medical Leadership. Before joining Biogen, Vivi spent several years in life sciences management consulting, at Leerink Swann and Campbell Alliance.  Prior to beginning her professional career in consulting, Vivi completed her Ph.D. studies at Yale University in pharmacology and cell biology, where she studied membrane trafficking and mechanisms of endocytosis in the laboratory of Pietro De Camilli, M.D., resulting in two peer-reviewed publications in PNAS.  As an undergraduate at Columbia University (Columbia College), she studied biological sciences."

 


Academic Research & Teaching

Stacy Horner

Dr. Stacy Horner is currently an Assistant Professor at Duke University Medical Center in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology and the Department of Medicine. Since 2014, she has also been serving as the Co-Director for the Duke Center for RNA Biology. Her current research focuses on understanding the cell biological organization and regulation of antiviral innate immunity and how RNA viruses, including hepatitis C virus, evade innate immunity. Dr. Horner is involved in graduate and undergraduate training at Duke, teaches graduate level courses, and is a faculty member of the Duke BioCore program, which promotes an inclusive and diverse community of research scholars in the sciences.  

Dr. Horner received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2001. She received her Ph.D. in 2007 from Yale University under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel DiMaio. Her postdoctoral fellowship, which was supported by the Irvington Institute Fellowship Program of the Cancer Research Institute, was with Dr. Michael Gale Jr. at the University of Washington. Her postdoctoral research focused on how hepatitis C virus regulates antiviral immunity during infection. Dr. Horner joined the faculty at Duke University Medical Center in 2013.
 

Tanya Schneider

Tanya Schneider is currently an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Connecticut College. A native of the New Haven area, Professor Schneider received a B.A. with honors in chemistry from Williams College in  1994. She went on to complete her graduate work in chemistry at Yale University under the supervision  of Alanna Schepartz, earning her Ph.D. in 2001. Following an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral  Fellowship at Harvard Medical School with Christopher T. Walsh, Tanya was appointed Senior R&D  Scientist at EnviroLogix, a biotech company in Portland, ME. After three years, she chose to return to  academia and accepted a visiting professorship in the chemistry department at Smith College in 2008.  At Connecticut College since 2010, Tanya teaches biochemistry and organic chemistry and pursues her  research interests in natural product biosynthesis and antibiotic resistance. Her undergraduate research  group is currently taking on questions that span organic chemistry and molecular biology, looking into  the enzymology of antibiotic biosynthesis and characterizing transcription factors that govern bacterial  quorum sensing.

 

Brian Couch

Brian Couch is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He leads a research program focusing on undergraduate STEM education, and his research interests include developing instruments for programmatic assessment and investigating factors that enable faculty to implement interactive teaching practices.  Brian completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University, where he studied molecular, cellular, and behavioral features of Alzheimer’s disease in Tony Koleske’s lab.  Formative experiences in programs offered by the Yale Graduate Teaching Center and the Yale Center for Scientific Teaching inspired him to pursue postdoctoral training in biology education research with Jenny Knight and Bill Wood at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

 

 

 

 

Ashley Sjolund

Ashley Sjolund is a science teacher at Greens Farms Academy in Westport, CT.  Ashley grew up in Hamden, CT and earned a B.S. in biology from Villanova University in 2008.  While at Villanova, she was involved in a joint research program with Thomas Jefferson University.  Through this program, she examined the role of prolactin and its receptor in breast cancer progression under the direction of Dr. Hallgeir Rui.  Subsequently, Ashley earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2014.  Her graduate research, conducted under the advisement of Dr. Joann Sweasy, focused on the role of a germline variant of Thymine-DNA Glycosylase (TDG) in the development of cancer and response to therapy.  While at Yale, Ashley was a Teaching Fellow for several courses and served as a Graduate Fellow at the Yale Teaching Center.  In addition, she worked as an adjunct professor at Fairfield University where she taught the General Biology I and II Lab courses and served as a Science Fair mentor and judge for the New Haven Public Schools.  Ashley is now happily on the faculty at GFA, where she teaches Honors Biology for freshman and AP Biology for upperclassmen.  Next year, in addition to her teaching responsibilities, she will serve as a student advisor and help direct the Independent Research Program at GFA. 

Ranjit Bindra

After Dr. Ranjit Bindra graduated from Yale University in 1998, he completed his post-graduate research in Rick Klausner’s lab at the NCI for 2 years before returning to do a Ph.D at Yale under the supervision of Peter Glazer. Dr. Bindra then completed an Internship and Rad-Onc residency at MSKCC before becoming a postdoc in Simon Powell’s lab at MSKCC. Rajit was appointed as an assistant professor at Yale School of medicine in summer 2012 in the department of Therapeutic Radiology, secondary in Experimental Pathology. His clinical focus is on adult and pediatric CNS tumors, which he combines with his research focus - high-throughput screening for novel chemo-/radio-sensitizers.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Science Communication

Amy Donner

Amy Donner is Director of Communications at RA Capital Management, a crossover fund manager dedicated to evidence-based investing in healthcare and life science companies. Her responsibilities include overseeing all internal and external communications. She earned her PhD in Biology from SUNY Buffalo, where she studied protein-nucleic acid biochemistry in bacteriophages. Amy has held senior editor positions at several notable science publications including Nature Chemical Biology and the Science-Business eXchange (SciBX), primarily focusing on drug discovery and biotechnology.

 

 

 

Ernesto Andrianantoandro

Ernesto Andrianantoandro is a scientific editor at Cell Press. He obtained a masters degree at UCSD followed by a PhD in 2006 at Yale where he studied actin dynamics in the Pollard lab, using a host of biochemical and biophysical techniques. He then did postdoctoral research at Princeton University in the Department of Electrical Engineering, as a synthetic biologist building gene circuits in bacteria and yeast, and later in the Department of Molecular Biology, as a geneticist studying the yeast mating pathway. Prior to joining Cell Press, he was an associate editor for Science Signaling at AAAS. He became the Editor of Trends in Biotechnology in September 2013.

 

 

 

 

Quinn Eastman

Quinn Eastman is a science writer at Emory University School of Medicine. He earned a PhD at Yale in David Schatz’s lab, investigating the mechanism of antibody gene recombination. His postdoctoral work on Wnt signaling took him to San Francisco and Munich. He shifted to writing about science with the help of the Science Communication program at University of California, Santa Cruz. Before coming to Emory in 2007, he was a newspaper reporter in the San Diego area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alison Adams

Alison Adams is currently an associate medical writer at Infusion Communications, a UDG Healthcare company, based in Haddam, CT. Infusion is a medical communications agency that works with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies to support medical writing, content development, and communications strategy. While at Yale,she earned her PhD in Antonio Giraldez's lab studying the role of microRNAs in zebrafish development. She then worked on targeted protein degradation during a postdoc in the lab of Craig Crews.

 

 

 

 

 


Public Health

Jessica Robbins

After graduating in 1999 as a 44-year old with a life in Philadelphia, Dr. Jessica Robbins looked exclusively for work there.  Jessica did a 2-year postdoc at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and while still there started working part time for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.  After the postdoc she began working for PDPH full time in the Division of Ambulatory Health Services, which operates eight community health centers.  Jessica does a mix of research, other data-related work in support of the Health Centers, and grant-writing (usually drafting the “Needs” section).  She frequently supervises MPH student projects, trying to ensure that they are useful both to the Health Centers and to the students, and has taught graduate-level epidemiology courses at 3 different universities in Philadelphia.  She still thinks epidemiology is fun, and that working in public health is a good use of her time.

 

 

Liz Harker Scheideman

Liz currently works as a Scientist in Cell Line Development at the Vaccine Production Program. The VPP is part of the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH and translates research products from the VRC  into material for proof-of-concept clinical trials. The Cell Line Development team uses high-throughput  transfection and clone selection technology to generate stable cell lines expressing vaccine candidates  including monoclonal antibodies and virus-like particles. Prior to joining the VPP, Liz received a B.S. in  Chemistry from Susquehanna University and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Yale working in the  laboratory of Alanna Schepartz on peptide inhibitors of the p53-hDM2 and p53-hDMX interactions.  She also completed postdoctoral studies on artificial transmembrane protein inhibitors of the HIV  coreceptor CCR5 in the laboratory of Daniel DiMaio at Yale.

 

 

Katie Egan

Katie Egan, PhD, is the lead Research Scientist/Epidemiologist on urology and pharmacology publication initiatives at the New England Research Institutes (NERI) assessing the impact of tadalafil treatment on the occurrence of erectile dysfunction and benign prostatic hyperplasia among aging men. Dr. Egan received her Ph.D. in 2014 from Yale University in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology with Dr. Michael Bracken where she studied associations between asthma and obesity among adolescents and young adults. She has earned dual bachelor degrees in Animal Science and Spanish from the University of Connecticut and a Masters in Maternal and Child Health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Egan also serves as a Resident Director for A Better Chance, a national not-for-profit organization that provides scholarships to academically talented children of color from underserved areas allowing them to realize their academic potential. As Resident Director, she lives with and cares for the six ABC scholars attending Darien High School in Darien, CT.

 

April Velasco

As Deputy Regional Health Administrator for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. April Velasco is responsible for public health leadership across HHS Region II and assists in administration of the Regional Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) programs in Minority Health, Population Affairs, Women’s Health, and the HIV/AIDS Regional Resource Network. In addition, Dr. Velasco leads and participates in initiatives in several areas, including mental and behavioral health, and chronic and infectious disease prevention. Prior to her work in HHS Region II, Dr. Velasco was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta where she addressed a broad range of public health areas, including nutrition and physical activity, diabetes education, environmental health policy, clinician outreach and communication, emergency response and preparedness, and public and private public health partnerships.  She also served as a member of the policy team for the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Dr. Velasco holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University, where she conducted research with the Rudd and PACE Centers, focusing on Social and Health Psychology on issues surrounding obesity stereotyping and discrimination. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.


Business & Entrepreneurship

Randy Teel, '08

Randy Teel is an associate partner in the Stamford, CT office of McKinsey & Company.  Over seven years at McKinsey, Randy had led teams supporting clients across the healthcare landscape: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, distribution, and insurance.  While most often focused on commercial problems, Randy has helped clients on topics as diverse as sales force strategy, mergers and acquisitions, field medical affairs, pricing, sourcing, logistics, organizational design, and regulatory interactions. Prior to McKinsey, Randy received a PhD in Immunobiology from Yale University and a BS in Biology from Gonzaga University.

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Rothberg

Dr. Jonathan Rothberg is best known for inventing high-speed, “Next-Gen” DNA sequencing. He founded 454 Life Sciences, bringing to market the first new method for sequencing  genomes since Sanger and Gilbert won the Nobel Prize in 1980. Dr. Rothberg sequenced the  first individual human genome (The Watson Genome, Nature), and initiated the Neanderthal  Genome Project with Svante Paabo. Under his leadership, 454 helped understand the mystery  behind the disappearance of the honey bee, uncovered a new virus killing transplant patients,  and elucidated the extent of human variation—work recognized by Science magazine as the  breakthrough of the year for 2007. The New England Journal described Dr. Rothberg’s  innovation as "The New Age of Molecular Diagnostics...", Science magazine called it one of  the top 10 breakthroughs for 2008. His contributions; cloning by limited dilution, and massively  parallel DNA sequencing, are the basis of all subsequent high-speed sequencing methods. Dr. Rothberg went on to invent semiconductor chip-based sequencing, and sequenced Gordon Moore as the first individual to be sequenced on a semiconductor chip (Nature). In 2010, Ion Torrent was acquired by Life Technologies for $725 million, the largest acquisition of its kind. In addition to founding 454 Life Sciences and Ion Torrent, Dr. Rothberg Founded CuraGen Corporation, Clarifi, RainDance Technologies, Butterfly Networks, Lam Therapeutics,  Quantum-Si, and Hyperfine Research.

Dr. Rothberg was born in 1963 in New Haven, Connecticut. He earned a B.S. in chemical  engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. in biology from  Yale University. He is the first person to be named a World Economic Forum's Technology  Pioneer three separate times, is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and received  The Wall Street Journal's First Gold Medal for Innovation. He received Nature Methods First  Method of the Year Award, The Irvington Institute's Corporate Leadership Award in Science,  the Connecticut Medal of Technology, the DGKL Biochemical Analysis Prize, and an Honorary  Doctorate of Science from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Jonathan is a member of the  National Academy of Engineering, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and is a life trustee of Carnegie Mellon University.

Susan Froshauer

Dr. Susan Froshauer is President and CEO of CURE and President of CURE Innovations, LLC. She is experienced scientist, mentor, entrepreneur and angel investor with skill at connecting academic expertise and technology with the commercial sector. Susan is involved with the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, the CTNEXT funded group, SECT Tech, the Creative Arts Workshop and the Angel Investor Forum. Prior to joining CURE, Dr. Froshauer was Director of the Technology Exchange Portal at the University of Connecticut’s Office of Economic Development. In this role Susan assisted Connecticut- based entrepreneurs and organizations with initiatives that train students, create jobs and contribute to economic development. She connected ideas with business expertise, business plans with investors and industry with scholars. Her passion and commitment is helping bioscience entrepreneurs build successful companies.

Until 2010, Susan served as President and CEO of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, which she co-founded in New Haven in 2000 with Yale scientists Tom Steitz, Peter Moore and Bill Jorgensen. Under her leadership, Rib-X raised more than $160 million in private equity, bridge financing and government grants and built an emerging pipeline of antibiotics to treat serious multidrug-resistant infections. Prior to Rib-X, Susan served as a member of Pfizer’s Strategic Alliance Group where she was part of a team involved in the creation of a significant technology investment portfolio, introducing new approaches to the Pfizer global research and development strategy.

Susan received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University and a B.A. from Connecticut College. She performed post-doctoral research at Yale Medical School in the Department of Cell Biology as a Jane Coffin Child’s Fellow.

Gualberto Ruaño

Gualberto Ruaño M.D., Ph.D., serves as the Director of the Genetics Research Center at Hartford Hospital and is President and Medical Director of Genomas Inc.  Before founding Genomas, Dr. Ruano served as Chief Executive Office of Genaissance, which he founded in 1997 and was located in New Haven’s Science Park. Since his groundbreaking work at Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, which he lead to an IPO in 2000, his name has been synonymous with the science of personalized medicine.   His work spans Connecticut:  from his time at Yale University School of Medicine where he trained as a physician scientist and patented DNA sequencing diagnostic technology from 1985 to 1995, his biotechnology entrepreneurship at New Haven from 1995 to 2005, and from 2005 to 2015 his research base and work at Hartford Hospital.  At Yale, he is recognized by the Office of Cooperative Research, as one of the 28 key scientists in the Yale Innovation Timeline, slated in this extraordinary hall of fame among Nobel laureates and chaired Professors in the University’s illustrious history. During Dr. Ruaño’s 20+ years in the field of personalized medicine, his achievements as a scientist and physician, an innovator and serial entrepreneur in the biomedical industry have set him apart. Dr. Ruaño served as founding editor of the journal Personalized Medicine and was a founding director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition in Washington, D.C.  He is a fellow of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He was elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering in 2004 and served as Chairman of its Health Technology Board for 4 years. Dr. Ruaño’s work in personalized medicine has had a direct impact on public health including patients with heart disease, diabetes and those struggling with mental illness.  Genomas medical laboratory, one of the first in the country devoted to clinical pharmacogenetic testing, has served 10,000 patients across the nation.

 

Garrett Cobb

Garrett Cobb is a life science strategy consultant at ClearView Healthcare Partners. As a consultant, he provides decision-making support to firms across the life sciences industry, including the biopharmacuetical, medical device, and diagnostic spaces. His engagements have ranged from corporate-wide strategies to asset-specific assessments, providing a combination of in-depth scientific analysis and commercially-oriented strategic thought. Garrett earned his PhD at Yale in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics. Prior to Yale, Garrett worked at Argonne National Laboratory and received a BS/MS from Brandeis University.

 

 

 


Policy & Law

David Van Goor

Dr. David Van Goor works as a patent agent in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. David assists with the preparation and prosecution of patent applications in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and clean technology/biofuels. He also provides support on strategic patent counseling and IP due diligence matters, including performing freedom-to-operate and patentability analyses. David is also a part-time law student and will complete a  J.D. degree from the George Washington University Law School in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

Beth Russell

Beth A. Russell, Ph.D., is a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the new NIH Office of the Associate Director for Data Science. This office was established in 2014 to accelerate the translational impact of biomedical research, by supporting the integration of data science with biomedicine.  Dr. Russell is the communications and legislative affairs lead. Dr. Russell’s policy interests are in applications of Big Data to biomedicine, including wireless health and precision medicine. These interests are informed by her experience as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago (2010-2014) and her doctoral work in the Yale Department of Genetics, where she received her PhD in 2009. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research and training has provided a strong foundation in basic science, clinical science, statistics, and bioinformatics. This foundation enables her understand biomedical data science research approaches and to communicate about them to diverse stakeholders. Her experiences have also provided the skills needed to communicate and translate effectively between the computer scientists, bioinformaticians, basic scientists, clinicians, and statisticians who need to work together to answer the biomedical questions that can only be solved with Big Data approaches.

David Lewin

David A. Lewin, Ph.D., Since 2010 he has been an Sr. Associate Director of Licensing specializing in life sciences technology management and licensing with Yale University's  Office of Cooperative Research, which he joined in 2005. He is responsible for the  intellectual property management, marketing, and licensing of a broad spectrum of  technologies in the biological sciences arising from Yale laboratories. Such technologies  range from pharmaceuticals to medical devices, microscope technology to diagnostic  tests, platform technologies and the occasional software. His duties also include  the management of alliances created in order to translate academic findings into  commercial products and facilitating the founding of new ventures based to achieve  such commercialization (Kolltan Pharmaceuticals, New Haven Pharmaceuticals, and  Novatract Surgical, CanTx, BioHaven Pharmaceuticals). Prior to returning to Yale, where  he did his thesis work in Cell Biology, Dr. Lewin was with CuraGen Corporation for  seven years as Group Leader in Collaborative Research/Alliance Management. In this  position he led CuraGen’s relationships with Genentech, Roche, Mitsubishi, Alexion, and  other biotechnology companies and pharma. His duties at CuraGen included business  development activities and he had ultimate responsibility for scientific deliverables  to CuraGen’s alliance partners. As a Group Leader in Biomarkers for CuraGen, he  discovered and developed clinical biomarkers for a protein drug in CuraGen’s pipeline  that were implemented in clinical trials. Dr. Lewin’s undergraduate degree is from the  University of California, San Diego, majoring in Cell Biology/Biochemistry, with minors in  organic chemistry and literature.

Diane Hanneman

Diane is a health science and policy expert with over 15 years experience in the public and privatesectors communicating health science advancements and building collaborative partnerships and programs to improve health in the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific.  Currently a health science policy analyst in the NIH Office of Science Policy within the NIH Office of the Director, she analyzes emerging biomedical research issues to inform policy recommendations for NIH leadership, facilitates NIH participation in the White House National Science and Technology Council, develops reports and other communications for Congress and the public, and manages the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship program for the NIH.  First arriving in Washington DC as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, she spent three years at the State Department as a regional science advisor to the East Asia Pacific bureau where she collaborated with other government agencies and the private sector to develop regional programs on health, food and product safety, and chemicals regulations. 

Prior to becoming a scientist, she enjoyed a career in marketing and communications for more than six years working with biomedical diagnostic and pharmaceutical clients.  Her graduate research was conducted in the Yale lab of Enrique De La Cruz studying the role of magnesium in the mechanical mechanism used by a cellular motor protein, myosin V, to transport cellular cargo along the actin cytoskeleton.  Diane has a BA in Chemistry from Purdue University and her PhD from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry.