Session Chair Profile

Keith Yamamoto

Biography

Dr. Yamamoto is a leader in science and public policy. He has made an indelible impact by simultaneously advocating for Precision Medicine across the .edu, .gov, .com and .org sectors. As Chair of the National Academies Board on Life Sciences, he appointed and served on the study committee that produced “Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease”, the report that enunciated the precision medicine concept. He helped to stimulate President Obama’s interest, which led to the Precision Medicine Initiative, as well as Gov. Jerry Brown’s launch of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine. He also promoted a precision medicine approach to Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, provoked broader participation by the corporate and nonprofit sectors, and directs UCSF Precision Medicine, an institution-wide imperative. In addition, Dr. Yamamoto has led or served on numerous federal or national committees focused on public and science policy, public understanding and support of biological research, research funding and peer review, and science education and the biomedical workforce; he chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences, and sits on the National Academy of Medicine Council and Executive Committee, and the National Academy of Sciences Division of Earth and Life Studies Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Advisory Board for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Research!America. At UCSF, Dr. Yamamoto is vice chancellor for science policy and strategy and professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology. He is a leading researcher, investigating transcriptional regulation by nuclear receptors, which mediate the actions of essential hormones and cellular signals; he uses mechanistic and systems approaches to pursue these problems in pure molecules, cells and whole organisms. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Speaker Profile

Dimitri Kusnezov

Biography

Dr. Dmitri Kusnezov received A.B. degrees in Physics and in Pure Mathematics with highest honors from UC Berkeley. Following a year of research at the Institut fur Kernphysik, KFA-Julich, in Germany, he attended Princeton University earning his MS in Physics and Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics. At Michigan State University, he conducted postdoctoral research and then became an instructor. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Yale University as an assistant professor in physics, becoming an associate professor in 1996. He has served as a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world. Dr. Kusnezov has published over 100 articles and a book. He joined federal service at the National Nuclear Security Administration in late 2001 and is a member of the Senior Executive Service and is also a Visiting Researcher at Yale. He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy.

Speaker Profile

Sumitra Muralidhar

Biography

Dr. Sumitra Muralidhar is the Program Director for VA’s Million Veteran Program (MVP) in the Office of Research and Development (ORD). She oversees the policy and infrastructure development for the collection and use of samples and genetic, clinical, lifestyle and military exposure data from one million Veterans. She served as ORD’s liaison to the White House Precision Medicine Initiative under President Obama, and continues to represent ORD/MVP in the federal interagency group on precision medicine. She also serves as the designated federal officer for VA’s Genomic Medicine Program Advisory Committee, which advises the VA Secretary on the development and implementation of research and clinical arms within the Veterans Health Administration. She previously served as Health and Science Advisor to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC), and Associate Professor at Georgetown University Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Maryland.

Speaker Profile

Stacie Calad-Thomson

Biography

Stacie Calad-Thomson is Chief Operating Officer of the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) Consortium, a new public-private partnership that aims to accelerate the discovery of effective cancer therapies through integration of high-performance computing, diverse biological data, and emerging biotechnologies. Founding consortium members include the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, GSK, the National Cancer Institute’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, and the University of California, San Francisco. The goal of the consortium is to create a new paradigm of drug discovery that would reduce the time from an identified drug target to clinical candidate from the current approximately six years to just 12 months. Stacie has worked for GSK, starting as a chemist and moving into business strategy and operations roles within R&D Platform Technology & Sciences, where she led several change initiatives. She has a BS (UC Berkeley) and a PhD (UC Irvine) in chemistry.