Richard Young studies gene regulatory circuitry in health and disease. His research accomplishments range from the development of genome-wide analysis technologies to discovery of the core regulatory circuitry of human embryonic stem cells. Dr. Young received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University and joined Whitehead Institute and MIT in 1984. He has served as an advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the Vatican and numerous scientific societies and journals. Dr. Young has founded and advised companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of CAMP4, Syros Pharmaceuticals and Omega Therapeutics. His honors include Membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Chiron Corporation Biotechnology Research Award, Yale’s Wilbur Cross Medal, and in 2006 Scientific American recognized him as one of the top 50 leaders in science, technology and business.

Dr. Zon is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the Stem Cell Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Zon received his B.S. in chemistry and natural sciences from Muhlenberg College (1979) and his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College (1983). He subsequently did an internal medicine residency at New England Deaconess Hospital (1986) and a fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (1989). His postdoctoral research was in Stuart Orkin’s laboratory (1990). Dr. Zon is internationally-recognized for his pioneering work in stem cell biology and cancer genetics. He has been the preeminent figure in establishing zebrafish as an invaluable genetic model for the study of the blood and hematopoietic development. He is founder and former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and chair of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. In 2005, he completed a term as President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. That same year, Dr. Zon was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In 2008, Dr. Zon was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2010, Dr. Zon was awarded the E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize from American Society of Hematology. In 2013, Dr. Zon received the ISEH Donald Metcalf Lecture Award. Other recent awards include the 2014 Boston Children’s Hospital Post-Doctoral Association Mentoring Award and the National Cancer Institute’s Alfred G. Knudson Award (2015).

Ken DiPietro currently serves as Chief Human Resources Officer at Cerevel Therapeutics, where he is leading the work to grow, engage and develop all aspects of the company’s people resources, as well as create and install systems to establish a workplace of distinction. Ken brings more than three decades of experience in talent management strategy including career development, recruiting, global operations, and culture transformation.

Prior to joining Cerevel Therapeutics, Ken worked as the Chief Talent Officer for Oak Hill Capital Partners and was also a senior advisor to several Polaris Ventures portfolio companies. Previously, he was a director at InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. after serving as Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Biogen. Earlier in his career, Ken held senior human resources roles with Lenovo Group Limited, Microsoft Corporation, and Dell Technologies.

He began his career at PepsiCo, where over a 19-year tenure, he served in a range of human resource and general management positions encompassing different lines of business and across a number of functions, regions, and geographies. Mr. DiPietro earned a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. He sits on the Dean’s Advisory Board at Cornell, the Peer Roundtable, the Boston Posse Advisory Board and advises a small number of technology startups focused on human resource management.

Peter Hecht, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer of Cyclerion Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) stimulators for the treatment of serious and orphan diseases. Under his leadership, Cyclerion spun out from Ironwood Pharmaceuticals in April 2019, raising $175 million in a private placement. The company is advancing its portfolio of five differentiated sGC stimulators, including three clinical programs and two late-stage discovery programs. He also serves on the Cyclerion Board of Directors. Prior to Cyclerion, he served as co-founder, chief executive officer and director of Ironwood from 1998 to 2019. During his tenure, Ironwood grew from nine PhD scientists to a commercial biotechnology company that discovered, developed and is now commercializing LINZESS® – the branded prescription market leader in its class. Additionally, the company pioneered new areas of science, including the sGC platform that is now the basis of Cyclerion’s research and development efforts.

Douglas E. Williams, PhD, is Codiak’s President and CEO. He previously served as Biogen’s Executive Vice President, Research and Development from January 2011 to July 2015.

Dr. Williams joined Biogen from ZymoGenetics, where he was CEO and member of the Board of Directors. ZymoGenetics was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb during his time as CEO for $985 million. Previously, he held leadership positions within the biotechnology industry, including Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Seattle Genetics Inc., and Senior Vice President and Washington Site Leader at Amgen Inc.

Dr. Williams also served in a series of scientific and senior leadership positions over a decade at Immunex Corp., including Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President of Discovery Research and Vice President of Research and Development.

Prior to joining Immunex, Dr. Williams served on the faculty of the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Williams has served on numerous boards of directors for companies in the biotechnology industry and currently is a member of the Board of Directors of Ovid Pharmaceuticals, and AC Immune and Cygnal Therapeutics.

Dr. Michael Hayden is a Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia. From 2012 to 2017, he served as the President of Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Dr. Hayden built and transformed research and development at Teva to become a highly productive research engine and led the approval of 35 new products.

Dr. Hayden has founded five biotechnology companies and has been the recipient of numerous prestigious honors and awards including being inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, receiving the July 2012 Diamond Jubilee Medal, on behalf of HRH Queen Elisabeth II and the Margolese National Brain Disorder Prize, awarded to Canadians who have made outstanding contributions to the treatment, amelioration, or cure of brain diseases. He’s also received the Canada Gairdner Wightman award for his outstanding leadership in medicine and medical science as a physician-scientist. Dr. Hayden was awarded the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, named Canada’s Health Researcher of the Year by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and has received the Prix Galien for his contribution to Canadian pharmaceutical research. Most recently, Dr. Hayden was named one of the 50 Canadians born in the 20th century who have changed the world.

Jason Buenrostro is an Assistant Professor at Harvard University in the department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. At Harvard, Buenrostro is developing new approaches for understanding gene regulation across cell fate decisions. Buenrostro earned a B.S. in general engineering and a B.S. in biology at Santa Clara University. He did his doctoral work at the Stanford University Department of Genetics with William Greenleaf and Howard Chang. At Stanford, he developed new high-throughput genomics tools including ATAC-seq and single-cell ATAC-seq.

Felix Frueh is a respected thought leader in personalized medicine with twenty-five years of R&D, management, and policy experience. He founded Opus Three in 2012 after spending several years at the FDA and in the payer environment working closely with the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry.

Frueh is also an entrepreneur, having founded or supported the founding of several startup companies. He is a mentor at the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and worked as entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock Ventures in Boston and San Francisco.

He was Chief Scientific Officer at Human Longevity, Inc. in San Diego, CA, and was President of the Medco Research Institute, in Bethesda, MD, leading the PBM’s clinical research initiatives in health economics and outcomes research after having formed Medco’s personalized medicine R&D organization. Prior, he was the first Associate Director for Genomics at FDA/CDER, where he oversaw the development and implementation of policies around biomarker qualification and companion diagnostics.

Frueh is a Board member at Enterome Biosciences, Ariana Pharma, Intellos Health, and CredibleMeds, and also served on the Boards of TcLand Expression and the Personalized Medicine Coalition. He serves (or served) on several scientific advisory boards to pharma companies.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and held faculty positions at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Frueh received his education at Stanford University and the University of Basel in Switzerland, where he graduated magna cum laude in biochemistry.

Dr. Wolfram Goessling is a physician-scientist with an active laboratory within the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is board certified in both oncology and gastroenterology. He is the Co-Director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and Advisory Dean of the Irving M. London Society.

His clinical practice focuses on the treatment of patients with liver disease and gastrointestinal cancers, His laboratory seeks to understand the signals that indicate organ injury and regulate regenerative and malignant growth using vertebrate and invitro models to elucidate the mechanisms of liver development, regeneration and cancer.

Dr. Joel Hirschhorn is the Chief of Endocrinology and the Concordia Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute. His research focuses on genetic variation that influences human diseases and quantitative traits. He leads the GIANT consortium, which has discovered many of the common and low frequency variants known to be associated with anthropometric traits, including measures of obesity and height. Other areas studied by the lab include diabetic kidney disease, Ehlers Danlos syndrome (hypermobile type), sickle cell disease, and disorders of sex development. In addition to using human genetics, the laboratory applies computational and experimental methods, integrating genetics, metabolomics and other genome-wide data, to translate genetic findings into underlying biology. The lab also uses genetic data to gain insights into human evolution.

Dr. Hirschhorn received his A.B. summa cum laude in biochemistry from Harvard College and his MD and PhD in genetics from Harvard Medical School. He completed a pediatric endocrinology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and postdoctoral training with Eric Lander at the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research. He directs the Center for Basic and Translational Obesity Research at Boston Children’s Hospital and co-directs the Broad Metabolism Program. Dr. Hirschhorn has received multiple awards, including the Society for Pediatrics Research E. Mead Johnson Award.

Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch’s laboratory’s expertise is in epigenetics, reprogramming and stem cells. He began his research career as a pioneer making transgenic mice, some of which have produced important advances in understanding cancer, neurological and connective tissue diseases, and developmental abnormalities. These methods have been used to explore basic questions such as the role of DNA modification, genomic imprinting, X chromosome inactivation, nuclear cloning, and, most recently, the nature of stem cells. Dr. Jaenisch’s laboratory is known for its expertise in cloning mice and in studying the many factors that contribute to the success and failure of that process.

Dr. Jaenisch and his colleagues have gained important insights into therapeutic cloning and have rescued mice having a genetic defect through therapeutic cloning and gene therapy. In addition, using mice as a model and a technique called “altered nuclear transfer,” we have demonstrated that it is possible to procure embryonic stem cells without harming a viable embryo. More recently the lab has demonstrated that somatic cells can be reprogrammed in vitro to pluripotent ES-like cells and that these cells are suitable to correct both genetic and induced defects in mice by transplantation therapy. Using this technique for turning skin cells into stem cells, the lab has been able to cure mice of sickle cell anemia -- the first direct proof that these easily obtained cells can reverse an inherited disease.

Dr. Jaenisch’s group comprises a team of scientists who are experts in deriving and manipulating iPS cells, and generating and differentiating neurons from them. Their interest in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimers, and Synucleinopathy has also created powerful synergies with other laboratories, sharing their expertise to understand and solve these devastating diseases. Dr. Jaenisch has mentored more than 30 former predoctoral fellows and over 60 postdoctoral researchers, including current full professors at Harvard, Stanford and UCLA.

Dr. Jaenisch earned his MD from the University of Munich, Germany, and completed doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, and Princeton University.

Dr. Benjamin Neale is an associate professor in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), associate professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and an institute member at the Broad Institute. Dr. Neale is strongly committed to gaining insights into the genetics of common, complex human diseases. Dr. Neale and Mark Daly, both of whom are associated with the Broad Institute and MGH, lead the ADHD Initiative, a collaborative effort that focuses on genomic studies of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Dr. Neale’s research and training have focused heavily on statistical methodology. He has analyzed genetic data from large-scale studies of patients with ADHD, autism, age-related macular degeneration, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic disorders. Neale also analyzed data from the first ADHD genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analysis, which combined the results of four studies to boost statistical power. Neale contributed to the development of software tools such as PLINK, one of the most frequently used packages for GWAS analysis. In addition to his roles at both the Broad Institute and MGH, Dr. Neale is the head of the ADHD psychiatric genetics GWAS analysis committee and an active member of the broader Psychiatric GWAS Consortium analysis committee, which is charged with analyzing all psychiatric data from these large-scale genome-wide association studies. Dr. Neale also led the design of the exome chip, a genotyping array that captures rare coding variation in a cost-effective manner. To date, over 1.5 million exome chips have been sold.

Dr. Neale studied at the University of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University, earning a B.Sc. in genetics. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in human genetics from King’s College in London, UK. Neale completed his postdoctoral training in Daly’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to many local research collaborations, he also serves as advisor and analyst to international genetic research consortia on psychiatric diseases.

Dr. Shendure is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Director of the Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing, and Scientific Director of the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine. His 2005 doctoral thesis with George Church included one of the first successful reductions to practice of next generation DNA sequencing. Dr. Shendure's research group in Seattle pioneered exome sequencing and its earliest applications to gene discovery for Mendelian disorders and autism; cell-free DNA diagnostics for cancer and reproductive medicine; massively parallel reporter assays, saturation genome editing; whole organism lineage tracing, and massively parallel molecular profiling of single cells. Dr. Shendure is the recipient of the 2012 Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, the 2013 FEDERAprijs, a 2013 NIH Director's Pioneer Award, the 2014 HudsonAlpha Life Sciences Prize, the 2018 Richard and Carol Hertzberg Prize for Technology Innovation, and the 2019 Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences. He serves or has served as an advisor to the NIH Director, the US Precision Medicine Initiative, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the Allen Institutes for Cell Science and Immunology. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School in 2007.