Synthetic and Systems Approaches to Interrogate Spatiotemporal Processes in Cancer (May 20 Speakers)

May 20 Speaker Bios

  • Keynote Speaker: Gordon    Mills

    Keynote Speaker: Gordon Mills

    millsg@ohsu.edu(link sends email)

    Oregon Health and Science University

    Professor

    Dr. Gordon B. Mills earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in biochemistry and completed his training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta. Prior to moving to OHSU, Dr. Mills was at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the number one ranked Cancer Center in the United States. He fulfilled multiple roles including founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology, co-Director of the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy co-Director of the Kleberg Center for Molecular Markers and held the Olga Keith Wiess Distinguished University Chair for Cancer Research at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. At the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Dr. Mills is Director of Precision Oncology and SMMART trials.

    https://www.ohsu.edu/school-of-medicine/mills-lab

  • Meeting Co-Chair: Laura  Heiser

    Meeting Co-Chair: Laura Heiser

    heiserl@ohsu.edu(link sends email)

    Oregon Health & Science University

    Associate Professor

    My laboratory uses integrated computational and experimental techniques to uncover mechanisms of therapeutic response and disease progression in cancer. We use a variety of state-of-the-art imaging and molecular techniques to deeply examine how diverse cells that make up tumors respond to various stimuli so that this information can be used to develop predictive computational models. I have served as vice chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and as co-leader of the Quantitative Oncology Program at the Knight Cancer Institute. I have led multiple collaborative interdisciplinary projects, including serving as co-PI on an NHGRI U54 LINCS Center grant designed to interrogate the influence of microenvironmental factors on epithelial cells. I have also served as PI on an NCI U54 Cancer Systems Biology Consortium Center grant focused on understanding the role of microenvironmental signals in modulating cell state heterogeneity and therapeutic response.

    https://www.ohsu.edu/school-of-medicine/heiser-lab

  • Meeting Co-Chair: Ajit   Nirmal

    Meeting Co-Chair: Ajit Nirmal

    ajitj_nirmal@dfci.harvard.edu(link sends email)

    Harvard University

    https://nirmallab.com/

    Dr. Ajit Johnson Nirmal is a Faculty at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. His research is focused on investigating the role of the tumor microenvironment on tumor progression and drug resistance. Dr. Nirmal utilizes spatial omics techniques and computational analysis to integrate large datasets to decipher the regulatory networks contributing to cancer development and drug resistance. Ultimately, he aims to establish personalized medicine frameworks that can provide clinically relevant therapeutic strategies tailored to individual patients.

    https://nirmallab.com/

  • Brian Brown

    Brian Brown

    brian.brown@mssm.edu(link sends email)

    Mount Sinai Medical Center

    Professor

    Dr. Brian Brown is an immunologist and biotechnologist. His research is focused on understanding how tissues and tumors control immune responses and developing new treatments for cancer. Work from his lab has led to insights into how cancers control their microenvironment and resist immunotherapy. He has also developed a number of technologies, including vector targeting strategies that led to improvements in experimental treatments for genetic disease and cancer. He has also developed novel genomics technologies such as Perturb-map which enables single cell and spatial resolution of CRISPR screens. Dr. Brown is the Director of the Icahn Genomics Institute and Vice Chair of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

    https://www.thebrownlab.org/

  • Justin Pritchard

    Justin Pritchard

    jrp94@psu.edu(link sends email)

    Pennsylvania State University

    Associate Professor

    Justin Pritchard is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Penn State. He received his B.S. from UCLA, and his Ph.D. from MIT. His career spans industry and academia. In industry he worked across discovery and translational sciences to work on drug discovery and development at Ariad and Takeda pharmaceuticals. After Takeda acquired Ariad he started an academic lab where he studies the evolution and control of resistance evolution using techniques from systems and synthetic biology. Using engineering design to build cell systems, then they test their ability to control and understand the way populations of cells evolve.

    https://sites.psu.edu/pritchardlab/

  • Arjun Raj

    Arjun Raj

    arjunrajlab@gmail.com(link sends email)

    University of Pennsylvania

    Professor

    Arjun went to UC Berkeley, where he majored in math and physics, earned his PhD in math from the Courant Institute at NYU, and did his postdoctoral training at MIT before joining the faculty at Penn Bioengineering in 2010. He is currently a professor of Bioengineering and of Genetics. His research focus is on the developed experimental techniques for making highly quantitative measurements in single cells and models for linking those measurements to cellular function. His ultimate goal is to achieve a quantitative understanding of the molecular underpinnings of cellular behavior.

    https://rajlab.seas.upenn.edu/