SPEAKER BIOS FOR THE 2014 SUMMIT
Thursday August 21(In order of apperance)
Barbro C. Ehnbom, Founder & Chairman, SALSS »
Chris Heister, County Governor, Stockholm »
Carl-Henrik Heldin, Professor Molecular Cellbiology, Ludwig Iinstitutet for Cancer Research, Uppsala University and the new Chairman of the Nobel Foundation m»
Peter Agre, MD, Nobel Laureate »
Daniel Kraft, Executive Director of Exponential Medicine »
Alan I. Leshner, Chief Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, and Executive Publisher, Science. »
Jan M. Lundberg EVP, Science and Technology and President, Lilly Research Laboratories »
Martin Ingvar, Professor Karolinska Institutet »
Andrew Hessel, Distinguished Research Scientist, Synthetic Biology Expert Autodesk Bio/Nano Programmable Group »
Florence P. Haseltine, Founder of the Society for Women's Health Research »
Stefan Larsson, Managing Director, the BCG, Stockholm »
Christina Åkerman, Director General, Läkemedelsverket »
Anders Hamsten MD PhD FRCP President, Karolinska Institutet »
Eckhard U. Alt, MD PhD, Chairman of the Board Ingeneron »
Mahendra Rao, VP for Regenerative Medicine, The New York Stem Cell Foundation »
Pranela Rameshwar, Professor Rutgers University »
Urban Lendahl, Professor of Genetics, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB), Karolinska Institutet »
Mathias Uhlén, Center Director, SciLifeLab »
William A. Haseltine, Chairman and President, ACCESS Health International »
(In order of apperance)
Magnus Billing, President, NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm, and Head of Nordic Fixed Income and Baltic Markets »
Johanna Adami, Director and Head of the Health Division, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation System, VINNOVA »
Håkan Björklund, Industry Executive, Avista Capital Partners and Chairman, Lundbeck »
Robert S. Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor, MIT »
Jay D. Keasling, Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley »
Hans Wigzell, former President and Professor Emeritus, Karolinska Institutet »
Mark F. Brzezinski, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden »
Björn Lyrvall is Ambassador of Sweden to the United States »
Eugen Steiner, Partner, HealthCap#xbb;
Raghuram Selvaraju, Ph.D, Managing Director and Head of Healthcare Equity Research at Aegis Capital Corp »
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Barbro C. Ehnbom
Founder & Chairman
SALSS
Barbro C. Ehnbom has been a pioneer in the Life Science industry throughout her whole career. BarbroShe was one of the first female executives in the US pharmaceutical industry, and also a top analyst on Wall Street. She followed this withby many years of investment banking, including heading the M&A activities in Scandinavia for Wasserstein Perella as they held a market leading position. As a long time board member of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce and Chairman Emeritus of the Swedish Economist Group in New York, Barbroshe has 30 years of experience in creating successful financial partnerships involving Sweden and the U.S. Ms. Ehnbom is active not only in the commercial field but also in areas as diverse as academics, music, the arts and social entrepreneurship. As founder of the prestigious scholarship Female Economist of the Year, awarded to female students at the Stockholm School of Economics, Ms. Ehnbom tirelessly supports and promotes female economists as they enter into professional life.
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Chris Heister
County Governor
Stockholm
Chris Heister, County Governor, Stockholm is a Moderate Party politician and she was elected to the Riksdag (national parliament) in 1991 and served there until 2002. From 1999 to 2003 she was the Deputy Chairman of the party. In 2002, Chrisshe chose to step down from the Riksdag to pursue a career in Stockholm's local politics. She is very active on health issues, which is also the main function of Stockholm County Council. Heister was appointed governor of Västerbotten County in 2008 and in February 2012, she was appointed Governor of Stockholm County
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Carl-Henrik Heldin
Professor Molecular Cellbiology, Ludwig Iinstitutet for Cancer Research
Uppsala University and the new Chairman of the Nobel Foundation
Since 1986, Dr. Heldin is the Branch Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Uppsala, and since 1992. Dr. HeldinHe is also Professor in Molecular Cell Biology at Uppsala University where he obtained his PhD in Medical and Physiological Chemistry in 1980. Dr. Heldin is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Academia Europea. Dr. Heldin is currently Vice President of the European Research Council and is also an Associate Editor for Molecular Biology of the Cell, Genes to Cells and Growth Factors. He has received several scientific awards, including Prix Antoine Lacassagne in 1989, K. Fernström's Large Medical Prize in 1993 and the Pezcoller-American Association for Cancer Research Award 2002. Dr. Heldin is also serving on the board of several Life Science companies.
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Peter Agre
MD
Nobel Laureate
Peter Agre, MD, Nobel Laureate, is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. Dr. Agre received his BA in chemistry from Augsburg College in 1970, and his MD from Johns Hopkins University in 1974. Following an Internal Medicine Residency at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals of Cleveland and a Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Agre returned to Johns Hopkins as a postdoctoral fellow in cell biology. Dr. Agre joined the faculty in 1984 and has spent most of his professional life at Hopkins' School of Medicine, leaving in 2005 to become Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology at Duke University Medical Center. Professor Agre's research in red blood cell biochemistry led to the first known discovery of membrane defects in congenital hemolytic anemias (spherocytosis) and produced the first isolation of the Rh blood group antigens. In 1992, his laboratory became widely recognized for discovering the aquaporis, a family of water channel proteins found throughout nature and responsible for numerous physiological processes in humans - including kidney concentration, as well as secretion of spinal fluid, aqueous humor, tears, sweat, and release of glycerol from fat. Aquaporins have been implicated in multiple clinical disorders - including fluid retention, bedwetting, brain edema, cataracts, heat prostration, and obesity. Water transport in lower organisms, microbes, and plants also depend upon aquaporins. For this work, Dr. Agre shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roderick MacKinnon of Rockefeller University. Not long after receiving the Nobel Prize, Dr. Agre was awarded a JHMRI pilot grant to extend his studies of aquaporins to malaria, addressing the question of whether or not aquaporins could be exploited as a means of treating or preventing the disease. Initial encouraging results have led to an NIH grant and a focus on malaria as the primary area of study in Dr. Agre's laboratory. His honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000, the Institute of Medicine in 2005, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the American Philosophical Society in 2004. He has also received honorary doctorates from universities in Denmark, Japan, Norway, Greece, Mexico, Hungary, Poland and the United States.
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Daniel Kraft
Executive Director of Exponential Medicine
Daniel Kraft, Executive Director of Exponential Medicine, is a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. With over 20 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Dr. Kraft has chaired the Medicine Track for Singularity University since its inception and is Executive Director of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare. Dr. Kraft was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after completing a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital, and fellowships in hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford. Dr. Kraft’s academic research has focused on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, stem cell derived immunotherapies for cancer, bioengineering human T-cell differentiation, and humanized animal models. Dr. Kraft’s clinical work focuses on bone marrow/hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for malignant and non-malignant diseases in adults and children, medical devices to enable stem cell based regenerative medicine, including marrow derived stem cell harvesting, processing and delivery. Dr. Kraft has become a well-known and popular speaker at the TED circuit.
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Alan I. Leshner
Chief Executive Officer
American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, and Executive Publisher, Science.
Alan I. Leshner, Chief Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, and Executive Publisher, Science. Prior to this, Dr. Leshner was Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He also served as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and in several roles at the U.S. National Science Foundation. Before joining the government, Dr. Leshner was Professor of Psychology at Bucknell University. He also has held visiting appointments at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Public Administration, and many other professional societies. He is a member and served on the governing Council of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. Dr. Leshner was appointed by President Bush to the National Science Board in 2004, and then reappointed by President Obama in 2011. Dr. Leshner received PhD and MS degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University and an BA in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College. Dr. Leshner has been awarded six honorary Doctor of Science degrees.
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Jan M. Lundberg
EVP Science and Technology and President
Lilly Research Laboratories.
Jan M. Lundberg EVP, Science and Technology and President, Lilly Research Laboratories. Dr. Lundberg is a member of the company's executive committee and he joined Eli Lilly and Company in January 2010 with responsibility for Research and the Development Center of Excellence. Prior to assuming this position, Dr. Lundberg served as Global Head of Discovery Research at AstraZeneca for ten years and was a member of the senior executive team. Dr. Lundberg worked with numerous candidate drug nominations, development projects and support for marketed products. After his medical education, Dr. Lundberg served as Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet. Dr. Lundberg has authored over 500 publications of original articles in international peer-reviewed journals and is listed as one of the highly cited authors by the Institute for Scientific Information. His work has focused on cell signaling in integrated systems using multiple mediators (peptides, purines, and nitric oxide) with translational applications to nervous system, endocrine, inflammation and cardiovascular areas. He has also been appointed as Honorary Doctor at the Pharmaceutical Faculty, Uppsala University. Dr. Lundberg is the co-founder of a biotech diagnostic company, Aerocrine AB. Dr. Lundberg has served on several committees which include Chairman, PhD and post-doctoral program at Karolinska Institutet, Evaluation Committee for the Swedish Medical Research Council, Executive Advisory Board, the Swedish Medical Products Agency Registration of New Drugs and EFPIA Research head group generating the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a major public private partnership with the European Union. He serves on PhRMA's Science and Regulatory Committee and is on the board of Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and BioCrossroads.
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Martin Ingvar
Professor Karolinska Institutet
Martin Ingvar, Professor Karolinska Institutet, received his MD from Lund’s University 1982 with his thesis Regional cerebral metabolism and blood flow during experimentally induced seizures. In 1998, he was offered the position as Adjunct Professor in clinical neurophysiology at Karolinska Institutet and appointed to Professor in 1999. In 2007, he was appointed Professor in Integrative Medicine and Head of the Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine. Professor Ingvar is the author of a book on the topic dyslexia in society, En liten bok om dyslexi, and he is the co-author of the widely read books on brain functioning, Hjärnkoll-böckerna. Dr. Ingvar is also a board member of the World Childhood Foundation.
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Andrew Hessel
Distinguished Research Scientist
Synthetic Biology Expert Autodesk Bio/Nano Programmable Group
Andrew Hessel, Distinguished Research Scientist, Synthetic Biology Expert Autodesk Bio/Nano Programmable Group is also the co-founder of the Pink Army Cooperative, the world’s first cooperative biotechnology company, which is aiming to make open source viral therapies for cancer. Trained in microbiology and genetics, Dr. Hessel has continually worked at the forefront of genomics, first to read and comprehend bacterial, human, and other genomes and more recently to write them. He is active in the iGEM and DIYbio (do-it-yourself) and since 2009 Andrew has also been the co-chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology at Singularity University. He educates graduate students and executive participants on the disruptive shifts underway in life science and helps them become actively engaged in these changes. In 2011, he was appointed a fellow at the University of Ottawa, Institute for Science, Society and Policy, focusing on how next-generation technologies shape society’s future. Mr. Hessel’s recent work in synthetic biology developing a virus in only two weeks at Autodesk has generated a lot of publicity worldwide.
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Florence P. Haseltine
Founder of the Society for Women's Health Research.
Florence P. Haseltine, Founder of the Society for Women's Health Research. Dr. Haseltine has been at the forefront of health technology since the early 1980s. She is an entrepreneur, innovator and inventor holding numerous patents. Her current activities include developing mobile apps for medicine. Recently her work has expanded to include such wearable devices as Google GLASS. Dr. Haseltine is a fighter and has tirelessly promoted the advancement of women and was the founding editor of the Journal for Women’s Health. In 1990 she founded the Society for the Advancement of Women’s Health Research (SWHR). Retiring in 2012, she was named an Emerita Scientist. At heart, Dr. Haseltine is a pioneer who has accepted few limits. As Director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, at the National Institutes of Health, she led the way for advances in contraception research and other critical health areas. She received a BA from the University of California-Berkeley, a PhD in from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Biophysics, and an MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She interned at the University of Pennsylvania and did a residency at Boston Hospital for Women (Brigham & Women’s Hospital). At Yale University she was an Associate Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics/Gynecologist and Pediatrics. She is a board certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist and Reproductive Endocrinologist. Dr. Haseltine is a member of the Institute of Medicine and in 2012 received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Friends of UNFPA.
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Stefan Larsson
Managing Director
the BCG, Stockholm,
Stefan Larsson, Managing Director, the BCG, Stockholm, is a senior partner and a global leader of BCG's Health Care Payers and Providers sector. Dr. Larsson has been a BCG Fellow since 2010 and his research topic is mainly focused on value-based health care, how transparency on health care, outcomes and patient group costs, will drive the transformation of health care systems. Dr. Larsson has famously presented a TED talk on the topic entitled What Doctors Can Learn from Each Other, as part of a series of talks curated by TED and the BCG. Before joining the BCG, Dr. Larsson was an associate professor at Karolinska Institutet and he has published 22 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. Dr. Larsson holds an MD from Karolinska Institutet and he also completed his PhD studies at both Karolinska Institutet and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Larsson is also the BCG's representative to the International Consortium of Health Outcomes Measurement, ICHOM, founded jointly by the BCG, Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, and Karolinska Institutet.
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Christina Åkerman
Director General
Läkemedelsverket
Christina Åkerman, Director General, Läkemedelsverket is a specialist in Clinical Pharmacology, has a PhD in Clinical Physiology and an Executive MBA in General Management from the Stockholm School of Economics. Dr Åkerman is a member of the board at Uppsala University and at Fouriertransform. From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Åkerman held the position as Marketing Company President of AstraZeneca in the Philippines. Since 1995, she has held senior positions as Project Manager, Medical Director and Marketing Director at Hässle Pharmaceuticals and at AstraZeneca, Sweden. She holds a PhD from Gothenburgh University. Dr. Åkerman previously served on the board as Chairman for Partners for Investments in Development, PULS AB (Partners för Utvecklingsinvesteringar within Life Science. Dr. Åkerman is scheduled to assume the position as President of ICHOM (the International Consortium of Health Outcomes Measurement), founded by the BCG, Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, and Karolinska Institutet.
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Anders Hamsten
MD PhD FRCP President
Karolinska Institutet.
Anders Hamsten MD PhD FRCP President, Karolinska Institutet. Professor Anders Hamsten is President of Karolinska Institutet since 2013. He is a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and has served on the Nobel Committee during 2010-2012. Professor Hamsten earned his medical and doctoral degrees at Karolinska Institutet. In 1999, he was appointed Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases, and he is since 1999 Senior Consultant Cardiologist at the Karolinska University Hospital. He has served as Chairman of Medicine for seven years, as Director of the King Gustaf V Research Institute for 14 years and as Head of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit at the Department of Medicine for twenty years. Professor Hamsten has authored more than 400 original articles, and his work has been cited >28,000 times (h-index: 90). Professor Hamsten’s research focus is in atherothrombosis, with the mission to unravel the etiology and pathophysiological mechanisms underlying atherosclerosis, arterial thrombosis and aneurysm formation. He is a principal investigator of the European PROCARDIS program on the search for new susceptibility genes underlying coronary heart disease, initiated with support from the European Commission in 1998. Professor Hamsten has served as member of the international evaluation panel of the Biocenter Oulu, University of Oulu, Finland and of the scientific boards of the Ragnar Söderberg Foundation and the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation. He has also been serving as member of site visiting teams evaluating British Heart Foundation chairs and was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians London (for scientific excellence) in 2002. He also received a Distinguished Professor Award from Karolinska Institutet in 2011.
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Eckhard U. Alt
MD PhD
Chairman of the Board Ingeneron.
Eckhard U. Alt, MD PhD, Chairman of the Board Ingeneron. Dr. Alt, MD PhD has been Chairman of the Board of InGeneron, Inc since 2006. Dr. Alt is also Chairman of the Board of MediaCS, Inc located in Houston, TX and since 2001 he has been the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Isar Klinik II AG in Munich, Germany. Dr. Alt was the past Chairman of the Supervisory Board of InFlow Dynamics AG, and he has served as a consultant to EP Med Systems, Inc, Guidant, Inc, Intermedics, Inc, and Medtronic, Inc. He has held leadership positions in numerous medical societies including the Advisory Panel for the World Medical Association, and being a founding member of the European Heart Rhythm Association and the European Cardiac Arrhythmia Society. He is an active researcher and a prolific inventor, holding more than 600 patents worldwide. Dr. Alt currently holds the position of Professor in the Department of Molecular Pathology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In addition, Dr Alt holds appointments as Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University Health Science Center and Professor of Medicine at Technische Universitaet in Munich Germany. Dr. Alt received his MD, graduating at the top of his class, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
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Mahendra Rao
VP for Regenerative Medicine
The New York Stem Cell Foundation.
Mahendra Rao, VP for Regenerative Medicine, The New York Stem Cell Foundation. Dr. Rao has worked in the stem cell field for over 20 years, with positions in academia, government, regulatory affairs and industry. He received his MD from Bombay University and his PhD. in developmental neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology. Following postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University, he established his research laboratory in neural development at the University of Utah. He next joined the National Institute on Aging as chief of the Neurosciences Section, where he studied neural progenitor cells and their clinical potential. Most recently, he spent six years as the VP of Regenerative Medicine at Life Technologies and also co-founded Q Therapeutics, a neural stem cell company based in Salt Lake City. Dr. Mahendra Rao has joined The New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute as the Vice President for Regenerative Medicine. He came to the National Institutes of Health in 2011 to direct the NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine, a trans-NIH initiative that focuses on the clinical translation of stem cell technology. Dr. Rao's Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology focuses on the application of stem cell technology to neuroscience. Dr. Rao, who holds an MD degree and a PhD in developmental neurobiology, is one of the nation’s most prominent stem cell scientists. Dr. Rao is tenured at the University of Utah School of Medicine in both Neurobiology and Anatomy and has ten issued patents.
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Pranela Rameshwar
Professor Rutgers University,
Pranela Rameshwar, Professor Rutgers University, serves as Professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she is a Faculty Member in the Medicine Department, Division of Hematology and Oncology. Dr. Rameshwar served as Consultant of IR Biosciences Holdings Inc. She serves as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at ImmuneRegen BioSciences, Inc., CellHealth Institute LLC and IR Biosciences Holdings Inc. She is an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of regenerative medicine, genetics and stem cell research. She has written over 100 articles on these subjects and has presented over 140 abstracts at national and international meetings including the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Immunologists, and the American Association for Cancer Research and she holds nine U.S. patents. Her research interests include hematopoiesis, properties of mesenchymal stem cells and factors impacting their transdifferentiation to neurons, and identification of breast cancer stem cells in bone marrow. Her expertise includes study of neural-hematopoiesis axis, and generation of electrophysiological functional neurons from bone marrow cells. She serves as Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Celvive, Inc. Dr. Rameshwar wrote her doctoral thesis on the stimulatory effect of substance P on the immune system, which adds value at ImmuneRegen because its developmental candidate Homspera(TM) is related to substance P. She received her Undergraduate degree in Medical Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in Biology from Rutgers University.
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Urban Lendahl
Professor of Genetics
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB), Karolinska Institutet.
Urban Lendahl, Professor of Genetics, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB), Karolinska Institutet. After earning his PhD at Karolinska Institutet in 1987, Dr. Lendahl was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT from 1987 to 1989 with Professor Ron McKay as mentor. After returning to Karolinska Institutet, Dr. Lendahl became Professor of Genetics in 1997. Dr. Lendahl is a member of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine since 2001, and was, during 2012, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Lendahl’s research focuses on developmental biology, stem cells and intracellular signaling pathways, notably the Notch signaling pathway. Dr. Lendahl has served as head of the Review Committee at the Human Frontiers Science Foundation, and serves at evaluation committees at the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Cancer Society. He is currently director of three research centers in stem cell research and regenerative medicine, DBRM, StratRegen and the Wallenberg Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Lendahl holds since 2010 a Distinguished Professor Award at Karolinska Institutet, is Editor-in-Chief for the journal Experimental Cell Research and is a Member of the Board of Trustees for the Koerber European Science Award.
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Mathias Uhlén
Center Director
SciLifeLab,
Mathias Uhlén, Center Director, SciLifeLab, received his PhD in chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). After a postdoctoral period at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, he became professor in microbiology at KTH in 1998. Dr. Uhlén has more than 350 publications in bioscience, focusing on the development and use of affinity reagents in biotechnology and biomedicine. Dr. Uhlén was the first to describe the use of affinity tags for purification of proteins, a principle now widely used in bioscience. His group described a new strategy for DNA analysis called Pyrosequencing, a method that was further developed by a US company (454/Roche) into the first of a new generation of next generation sequencing methods. His group also developed a new affinity reagent called Affibodies, based on combinatorial principles and developed alkali-stable variations of protein A, now commercially available for purification of antibodies (MabSelectSure). In the early 2000s, his group started an international effort, with groups in Sweden, India, China and South Korea, for the creation of a Human Protein Atlas with the aim to systematically map the human proteome with antibodies. Dr. Uhlén is a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, the European Molecular Biology Organization and member of the Human Proteome Organization Council. He was Vice President of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and, recently, he became the Director of a new center, Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm, for high-throughput bioscience. Dr. Uhlén has received numerous awards, including the Göran Gustavsson prize, the Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Akzo Noble Award, the HUPO Distinguished Award, the KTH Great Prize, the ABRF award, the Scheele prize and H.M. the King’s Medal with the ribbon of the Order of Seraphim.
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William A. Haseltine
Chairman and President
ACCESS Health International
William A. Haseltine, Chairman and President, ACCESS Health International, pursues an active career in science, business and philanthropy. Previously, professor at Harvard Medical School and at Harvard School of Public Health from 1976 to 1992, where he founded and held the chairs of two academic research departments. Dr. Haseltine is well known for his pioneering cancer, HIV/AIDS and genomics research. He has authored more than 200 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of several books including Affordable Excellence: The Singapore Healthcare System, 2013. He is the Founder of Human Genome Sciences, Inc. and served as the Chairman and CEO of the company until 2004. He is also the Founder of several other successful biotechnology companies. ACCESS Health International, Inc., a foundation that supports access to affordable, high quality health services in low, middle and high income countries, and Chairman Haseltine Foundation for Science and the Arts that fosters dialog between sciences and the arts. Dr. Haseltine serves as advisor to several governments, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies including the Advisory Council for the Koch Institute of MIT and the Advisory Board of the Ragon Institute and the Rockefeller University Council. He is a Lifetime Governor of the New York Academy of Sciences and a member of the Board of AID for AIDS International, the Geoffrey Beene Alzheimer’s Foundation and the Global Virus Network. Dr. Haseltine is an honorary member of the Board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Magnus Billing
President
NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm, and Head of Nordic Fixed Income and Baltic Markets,
Magnus Billing, President, NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm, and Head of Nordic Fixed Income and Baltic Markets, was previously Chief Legal Counsel and Senior Vice President of NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc., and responsible for legal and market surveillance operations in Europe. Mr. Billing has been working within the exchange industry since 2001. Prior to his current role, he was the General Counsel of OMX and led the negotiations around the consolidation of the OMX Nordic Exchanges. He is a member of the NASDAQ OMX Listing Committee, secretary of the Board of Directors, NASDAQ OMX Nordic Foundation, and serves as an alternate director of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code Board of Directors. He holds a degree in law from Stockholm University.
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Johanna Adami
Director and Head of the Health Division
Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation System, VINNOVA.
Johanna Adami, Director and Head of the Health Division, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation System, VINNOVA. She also holds a position as professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Previously, she served as Medical Director of a medical technology company and has vast experience of practicing medicine, particularly in emergency care. She holds a PhD from Karolinska Institutet and a MD from Uppsala University, as well as a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Adami’s research within clinical epidemiology has contributed to new and altered methods in Swedish surgery. In an important study concerning smoking, she demonstrated in a convincing manner that the risk of complications post-surgery was reduced by fifty percent for those that quit smoking with assistance prior to the surgery. This result led to the wide introduction ‘quit smoking’ programs in Swedish health care, and especially in orthopedics.
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Håkan Björklund
Industry Executive
Avista Capital Partners and Chairman, Lundbeck,
Håkan Björklund, Industry Executive, Avista Capital Partners and Chairman, Lundbeck, is the former Chief Executive Officer of Nycomed, which was sold to Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2011. He joined Avista Capital Partners in October 2011. Dr. Björklund worked closely with the Avista team on the development of Nycomed prior to its sale to Takeda. Under Dr. Björklund’s leadership, Nycomed grew from a predominantly Scandinavian business into a global pharmaceutical company with leading market positions in Europe, Russia, Brazil and Latin America. In 2006, Dr. Björklund led the integration of Altana Pharmaceutical, a German-based company taken over by Nycomed. He was also instrumental in growing Nycomed in emerging markets, most recently through the acquisition of Guangdong Techpool Bio-Pharma Co., Ltd, a Chinese bio-pharmaceutical company, in 2010. Prior to Nycomed, Dr. Björklund was Regional Director at Astra, now AstraZeneca, and, earlier, President of Astra Draco. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors at Lundbeck A/S, a member of the Board of Directors of Coloplast A/S, Alere Inc. and Atos Medical AB. He was director at Danisco A/S until its recent acquisition by Dupont and holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Karolinska Institutet.
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Robert S. Langer
David H. Koch Institute Professor
MIT.
Robert S. Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor, MIT. Professor Langer has written over 1,250 articles and he also holds nearly 1,050 patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 250 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. Furthermore, Dr. Langer is the most cited engineer in history. He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 to 2002, and as its Chairman from 1999 to 2002. Dr. Langer has received over 220 major awards and is one of seven individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science (2006) and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). He also received the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize, the 2012 Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, the 2013 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2014 Kyoto Prize. He is the also the only engineer ever to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award.
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Jay D. Keasling
Professor
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.
Jay D. Keasling, Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Keasling is also Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, the Hubbard Howe Jr. Distinguished Professor of Biochemical Engineering and Director, Physical Biosciences Division, LBL and Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center CEO, Joint BioEnergy Institute. Dr. Keasling obtained his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Biology in 1986 from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a Master of Science in 1988 in Chemical Engineering, and his PhD from the University of Michigan in Chemical Engineering. He pursued postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in Biochemistry. From 1999 Dr. Keasling assumed the Vice-Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has held numerous positions at the same university including Executive Committee Member, UC BioSTAR, Director, and University of California BioSTAR. The research in the Keasling Laboratory focuses on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for degradation of environmental contaminants or for environmentally friendly synthesis. To that end, Dr. Keasling has developed a number of new genetic and mathematical tools to allow more precise and reproducible control of metabolism. These tools are being used in such applications as synthesis of biodegradable polymers, accumulation of phosphate and heavy metals, and degradation of chlorinated and aromatic hydrocarbons, biodesulfurization of fossil fuels, and complete mineralization of organophosphate nerve agents and pesticides.
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Hans Wigzell
former President and Professor Emeritus
Karolinska Institutet,
Hans Wigzell, former President and Professor Emeritus, Karolinska Institutet, has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. since June, 2010. In the past five years, Dr. Wigzell has served as a director of Probi AB and currently serves as a director of RaySearch Laboratories AB, Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB, and Valneva SE (a successor to Intercell AG). Since 2006, Dr. Wigzell has served as chairman of Karolinska Development AB, a company listed on the NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm selecting, developing and commercializing promising new Nordic life science innovations. Previously, he was the President of Karolinska Institutet, and was Director General of the National Bacteriological Laboratory in Stockholm from 1987 to 1993. Dr. Wigzell is chairman of the board of the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. He is an elected member of several national academies, including the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, the Royal Academy of Science, the Danish Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Finnish Science Society and the European Molecular Biology Organization. His academic career includes being Chairman, Nobel Prize Committee, Karolinska Institutet and Distinguished External Advisory Professor, Ehime University, Japan. Additionally, Dr. Wigzell was appointed Chairman of the Nobel Assembly in 2000. He holds an MD and PhD from Karolinska Institutet and he has received honorary doctor's degrees at University Tor Vergata in Rome, Italy and Turku University in Finland.
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Mark F. Brzezinski, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden,
Mark F. Brzezinski, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 18, 2011 to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Sweden. Mr. Brzezinski has had a distinguished career in both public service and in the private sector. Most recently, he has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods law firm, specializing in anti-corruption law. At the same time, he has been very active in promoting broader public knowledge about the challenges of overseas corruption and ways the law can be used to address it. Mr. Brzezinski served as Director on the National Security Council in the White House from 1999 to 2001. During this time, he coordinated interagency policy formulation and advised the President and the National Security Advisor on issues relating to Russia, Eurasia and the Balkans. He helped to lead U.S. policy implementation in relation to NATO enlargement and in response to the Kosovo conflict. He also coordinated presidential summits in Russia and in the Ukraine. Mr. Brzezinski is a member of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland and of numerous articles on foreign policy and law. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College, a JD from the University of Virginia, School of Law, and a Doctorate from the University of Oxford.
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Björn Lyrvall is Ambassador of Sweden to the United States.
Björn Lyrvall is Ambassador of Sweden to the United States. From 2007 until September 2013, Ambassador Lyrvall was Director General for Political Affairs at Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. From 2002 to 2007, Ambassador Lyrvall was posted at Sweden’s Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels, as Sweden’s delegate to the EU enlargement negotiations, and then as Sweden’s Ambassador to the EU Political and Security Committee (2003-2007). Ambassador Lyrvall has also been working as Special Advisor to Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, in his role as EU negotiator and International High Representative in Bosnia and Hercegovina (1995-1997), as well as United Nations Special Envoy on the Balkans in 1999. Additional diplomatic stations included Leningrad, Moscow and London. Born in Hofors, Sweden, in 1960, Björn Lyrvall graduated from Stockholm University with a degree in Political Science, Eastern European Affairs and Russian.
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Raghuram Selvaraju, Ph.D., Managing Director and Head of Healthcare Equity Research at Aegis Capital Corp.,
Raghuram Selvaraju, Ph.D., is currently a Managing Director and Head of Healthcare Equity Research at Aegis Capital Corp., a full-service investment bank headquartered in New York City. He was previously a Senior Vice President and Senior Biotechnology Analyst at Morgan Joseph TriArtisan LLC, an investment bank with a private equity arm, and a senior equity research analyst covering the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals sectors at Noble Financial Group, Inc., also in New York City. He has 15 years' experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, having started his career at the Serono Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, he applied research arm of Serono, then Europe's largest biopharmaceutical firm as a pharmaceutical researcher. He began his sell-side research analyst career at Rodman & Renshaw in 2005 and subsequently was senior VP and head of healthcare equity research at Hapoalim Securities, the New York-based broker/dealer subsidiary of Bank Hapoalim B.M., Israel's largest financial services group, covering biotechnology, specialty pharmaceuticals, molecular analytics, and diagnostics. Dr. Selvaraju is widely quoted in national publications such as Barron's and The Wall Street Journal, as well as healthcare industry publications such as The Pink Sheet, BioWorld Today, and BioCentury, and has also been a frequent guest on Bloomberg TV and CNBC. He graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences and Technical Writing, and received a Doctorate in Cell Biology and Neuroscience from the University of Geneva in 2004 and an MBA from Cornell University's accelerated one-year program for scientists and engineers in 2005. Dr. Selvaraju has also published articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, presented research at various international scientific conferences, and is a co-inventor on several drug development patents.
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Eugen Steiner, Partner, HealthCap.
Eugen Steiner, Partner, HealthCap. Dr. Eugen Steiner, MD, PhD, is a partner of HealthCap, a leading European healthcare venture capital fund. Dr. Steiner is a serial entrepreneur and has served as Chief Executive Officer or Chairman of the Board of several biotechnology and biomedical companies, including Affibody, Biolipox, Biostratum, Calab Medical, Creative Peptides, Eurona Medical, Global Genomics, LTB4, PyroSequencing, Melacure Therapeutics, Nordic Vision Clinics, Optivy, and Visual Bioinformatics.
