The Speakers

Dr. Tony Altar

Assurex Health

Dr. Paul Avillach
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Research Associate in Biomedical Informatics
Harvard Medical School & Children’s Hospital Boston

Paul Avillach holds an MD in public health and epidemiology, and a PhD in biomedical informatics. An assistant professor of pediatrics at HMS, he is based at the Center of Biomedical informatics https://cbmi.med.harvard.edu  and is on the faculty of Boston Children’s Hospital as part of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program http://chip.org.

His research focuses on the development of novel methods and techniques for the integration of multiple heterogeneous clinic cohorts, electronic health records data, and multiple types of genomics data to encompass biological observations.

http://avillach-lab.hms.harvard.edu

Dr. Glenn Braunstein
Chief Medical Officer
Pathway Genomics

Glenn D. Braunstein, M.D. is Chief Medical Officer at Pathway Genomics in San Diego, CA.  Previously he was Vice President for Clinical Innovation at the Cedars-Sinai Health System (2011-2015) and past Chair of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai (1986-2012) and Vice-Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCLA (1986-2012).  He is Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and Professor Emeritus at UCLA. 

Dr. Braunstein earned both his bachelor’s and medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his internship and residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Harvard Medical School.  In addition, Dr. Braunstein completed training in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health and Harbor General Hospital-UCLA School of Medicine. He is Board Certified in internal medicine and the subspecialty of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism.

Dr. Braunstein is a member of a number of academic organizations, including the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, American Thyroid Association, Endocrine Society, American Society for Reproduction, American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians.  He is a past Chair of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration and currently serves as Special Advisor to that organization.  Dr. Braunstein also served as Chair of the Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism Subspecialty Boards for the American Board of Internal Medicine and recently chaired the Recent Update SEP Committee for the ABIM Maintenance of Certification Program.

He is on the editorial boards for American Family Physician, American Journal of Medicine, Endocrine Practice and Reviews in Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, monographs, chapters and reviews dealing with human chorionic gonadotropin, pregnancy, testicular and ovarian physiology and pathophysiology, pituitary disorders, thyroid disease, and health care delivery.

Gen. Peter Chiarelli
Chief Executive Officer
One Mind

General Peter Chiarelli, USA (Ret.) was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of ONE MIND in 2012. He is a retired General with almost 40 years of experience.

As the 32^nd Vice Chief of Staff in the Army, Chiarelli was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Army and its 1.1 million active and reserve soldiers. This included the oversight of many of the Army’s R&D programs, and the implementation of recommendations related to its behavioral health programs, specifically its Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Program.

As commander of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, Chiarelli coordinated the actions of all four military services and was responsible for the day-to-day combat operations of more than 147,000 U.S. and Coalition troops. He was also the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates from March 2007 to August 2008. Chiarelli pioneered efforts to restore government, economic stability and essential services during two tours in Iraq; exercised command and control of combat operations; and trained, prepared and mobilized reserve forces for critical response operations. He retired from the Army in 2012.

In 2013, Chiarelli received the Patriot Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s highest honor for his dedication and ongoing efforts to help soldiers, civilians and families suffering from the invisible wounds of war.

As the CEO of ONE MIND, Chiarelli continues his advocacy to benefit all affected by brain disease and injury through eliminating the stigma and fostering fundamental changes that will radically accelerate the development and implementation of improved diagnostics, treatments, and cures. ONE MIND is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that believes in Open Science Principles and creates global public-private partnerships between health care providers, researchers, academics and the health care industry, while supporting groundbreaking new research.

Chiarelli holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Seattle University, a Master of Public Administration from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, and a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategy from Salve Regina University. He is also a graduate of the College of Naval Command and Staff, and the National War College.

Dr. David Cifu
Professor and Chairman
Virginia Commonwealth University

David Cifu, MD is Chairman and the Herman J. Flax, MD Professor (tenured) of the Department of PM&R at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine in Richmond, Virginia. He is also Chief of PM&R Services of the VCU Health System and Founding Director of the VCU-Center for Rehabilitation Sciences and Engineering (CERSE). He is the Senior TBI Specialist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

He has been funded on 37 research grants for over $128 million, including currently serving as Principal Investigator of the VA/DoD $62.2 million Chronic Effects of Neurotrauma Consortium (CENC). In his more than 25 years as an academic physiatrist, he has delivered more than 500 regional, national and international lectures, published more than 200 scientific articles and 65 abstracts, and co-authored 30 books and book chapters. He is also the Past President of the American Academy of PM&R.

Shannon Clark
Business Development
Palantir Technologies

Shannon is a Business Cultivation Engineer for the Silicon Valley-based start-up, Palantir. In her role, she is responsible for business development and outreach efforts for many of their federal clients.
 
Prior to joining Palantir, Shannon was a Director for Counterterrorism Policy on the National Security Staff at the White House. While at the White House, she worked closely with former Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, to plan, direct, coordinate and analyze the development of counterterrorism strategies in Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
 
Before joining the National Security Staff, Shannon was a special assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She helped plan and execute the Vice Chairman’s daily professional responsibilities and engagements and leveraged her expertise as an intelligence officer to provide analytic support to the Vice Chairman on intelligence matters.
 
Prior to working for the Vice Chairman, Shannon was a counterterrorism analyst with the Department of Defense, focusing on Central Asia and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Her time in the intelligence community included a deployment with a special forces unit in Afghanistan.
 
Shannon holds a B.S. from Georgetown University and a MPA from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.  She currently resides in Arlington, Virginia
 

Dr. Heather Dawes
Co-Director, DARPA SUBNETS University of California, San Francisco
UCSF

Heather Dawes is co-Director, with Dr. Edward Chang, of UCSF DARPA SUBNETS, one of the first research projects funded under the White House Brain Initiative. Bringing together researchers, clinicians and engineers from seven institutions and companies, SUBNETS aims to discover network-level mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorders and develop novel therapeutic approaches that engage brain plasticity.

Prior to joining UCSF, Heather was Vice President for Science at the Fidelity Foundations in Boston, working in the realms of neuroscience and cancer research funding. She was previously a scientific editor at Cell Press, a publisher of top-tier biological and biomedical research. Heather received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000. She is a native of Long Island, New York.

Dr. David Dodick
Professor, Director of Concussion
Mayo Clinic

David W. Dodick, MD, FRCP (C), FACP, is Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is the Program Director of the Mayo Clinic Neurology Residency Program and Headache Medicine Fellowship Program. He is the Medical Director of the Headache Program and the Sports Neurology and Concussion Program at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

Dr Dodick is board certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). He also holds United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties certification in headache medicine and ABPN certification in vascular neurology.

Dr Dodick has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and coauthored 8 books. He serves as Editor in Chief of Cephalalgia. He is Past-President of the American Headache Society, President of the International Headache Society, and Chair of the American Migraine Foundation.

Robin Elliott
Chair
American Brain Coalition (ABC)

Robin Elliott has led the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Inc. (PDF) since October 1996.  In the last 17 years, Mr. Elliott’s vision has ushered in a new age for PDF, fortifying PDF’s programs of research, education and advocacy for the Parkinson’s community. Under his leadership, the professional staff has grown from just four full-time employees to more than 20 and the PDF budget has more than tripled, rising from $2.7 million in 1996 to over $10 million in fiscal year 2014.  He has been active in fostering collaborations amongst Parkinson’s organizations, including negotiating a merger with the Chicago-based United Parkinson’s Foundation in 1998.  He also played an instrumental role in the creation and organization of the World Parkinson Congress in 2006 and in the conception of the PDtrials campaign, an initiative of the major Parkinson's patient voluntary groups to accelerate the development of new treatments for the disease.

Active in development, communications and nonprofit management in New York City for more than 30 years, Mr. Elliott has served as vice president for development and external affairs at Teachers College, Columbia University (1988-95) and (with the same title) at Hunter College, The City University of New York (1982-88); as deputy to the Chancellor for University Relations at the City University of New York (1979-82); and as director of information and education at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1971-79).

Mr. Elliott currently serves as Chairman of the board for the Community Health Charities of New York, Treasurer of the board for the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics (ASENT), Chair of the board for the American Brain Coalition (ABC) and board member of the Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB).  He was formerly Chair of New Yorkers for the Advancement of Medical Research, a pro-stem-cell research coalition of disease advocacy groups, scientists and universities, and citizens’ groups.

Michael Evers
Executive Vice President-Marketing and Patient Advocacy
PatientsLikeMe (PLM)

A consumer and technology marketing expert, Michael spearheads business to business marketing, member acquisition and patient advocacy. He has created the partnering and consumer marketing strategies that have produced high growth and rapid expansion for a range of companies.

Previously, Michael was President of BroadMap, a venture-backed provider of industry-leading geographic data products and services. He led BroadMap’s transition from a concept into a revenue-generating business, forging partnerships with industry leaders and successfully positioning the company as a geospatial data/infrastructure development expert.

Michael’s geospatial industry experience started at TomTom in 2005, where he was the Global Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for the company’s Tele Atlas business unit. In this role Michael was responsible for recruiting and leading a marketing team to develop marketing, product and communication strategies across the company’s diverse business units. Michael has also held key marketing positions at Motorola and AOL Time Warner. He holds a bachelor of science degree in management from Northeastern University

Dr. Greg Farber
Director of the Office of Technology Development and Coordination
National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH)

Dr. Farber has a B.S. from Penn State University in chemistry (1984) and a Ph.D. from MIT in physical chemistry (1988). Dr. Farber’s research in graduate school involved determining the three dimensional structure and mechanism of the enzyme xylose isomerase in the laboratory of Dr. Gregory A. Petsko. After graduate school, Dr. Farber received a Life Sciences Research Fellowship to work on mechanistic enzymology with Dr. W. W. Cleland at the University of Wisconsin. Following his postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Farber returned to Penn State as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and rose to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure by 1998. His research included work on structural movies of enzyme action, molecular evolution, and mechanistic enzymology.

 

Following a sabbatical year in the Division of Biological Infrastructure at the National Science Foundation, Dr. Farber decided to stay in government service. He moved to the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), part of NIH, in 2000. At NCRR, he managed a number centers and individual investigator awards in technology development and bioinformatics, as well as a cohort of interdisciplinary research centers.

 

Dr. Farber then became the Director of the Office of Extramural Activities at NCRR. The Office of Extramural Activities oversees the Office of Grants Management and the Office of Review. Dr. Farber also served as the Director of the Office of Construction Grants. That Office managed $1B in construction awards made using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

 

In June 2011, Dr. Farber became the Director of the Office of Technology Development and Coordination at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). That office is responsible for coordinating all technology development and bioinformatics activities at NIMH, overseeing the National Database for Autism Research, managing the Human Connectome project, managing the BRAIN Initiative for NIMH, and also overseeing the NIMH small business program.

Dr. Gwenn Garden
Professor, Dept. of Neurology; Co-Director, UW-CHDD
University of Washington

Gwenn Garden MD, PhD, is Professor and Vice Chair for Education of the Department of Neurology, Adjunct Professor of Pathology and a faculty member in the interdisciplinary graduate training programs in Neuroscience and Molecular Medicine at the University of Washington (UW).  She is also Associate Director of the UW Center on Human Development and Disabilities, co-PI on the supporting Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Center U54 from NICHD and Clinical Translational Core Director.

Dr. Garden obtained her M.D. and Ph.D. through the Medical Scientist Training Program at UW in 1994, trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1994-1996, Neurology at the Harvard-Longwood Program from 1996-1999 and did post-doctoral research training in the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  She joined the UW faculty in 2000.

Dr. Garden’s research program is focused on non-cell autonomous factors that contribute to neurodegeneration including glial cell responses and neuroinflammation.  Her work on neuroinflammation has identified novel molecular pathways that strongly influence the behavior of inflammatory cells and could serve as future targets for biomarker and therapeutic development for acute and chronic CNS injury.

Dr. Joseph Giacino
Director of Rehabilitation Neuropsychology; Project Director, Spaulding-Harvard TBI Model System; Associate Professor - Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School

Joseph T. Giacino, PhD is the Director of Rehabilitation Neuropsychology and Research Associate in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, consulting neuropsychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and Adjunct Professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions.

Dr. Giacino’s clinical and research activities are centered on the development and application of novel assessment and treatment methods for individuals with severe acquired brain injury (ABI) and disorders of consciousness (DOC). He served as co-chair of the Aspen Workgroup (responsible for developing the diagnostic criteria for the minimally conscious state (MCS) and was co-lead author of the Mohonk Report, which provided recommendations to the U.S. Congress for lifelong care of patients with DOC.

He currently chairs the Disorders of Consciousness Guideline Development Panel, co-sponsored by the American Academy of Neurology, American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, which is charged with revising existing clinical guidelines for management of patients with DOC. He serves as co-chair of the International Traumatic Brain Injury Common Data Element Steering Committee convened by the National Institute on Neurologic Disorders and Stroke to harmonize data collection across federally-funded TBI research studies.

He is currently Project Director of the Spaulding-Harvard TBI Model System funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) and Co-PI of the NIH-funded Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI project which will design and test a new platform of clinical, imaging, genomic and outcome biomarkers to enable more precise TBI diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. He has served as Principal Investigator on 4 different NIDRR-funded projects- three focusing on the development of novel fMRI paradigms for detection of conscious awareness in patients with DOC, and a recently-completed 12-site clinical trial which demonstrated that amantadine hydrochloride (AH) accelerates recovery in patients with prolonged disturbance in consciousness.

He was also Co-PI of an FDA-approved pilot study of deep brain stimulation aimed at restoring speech and motor functions in patients with chronic post-traumatic MCS. Regarding clinical activities, Dr. Giacino directs the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network Disorders of Consciousness Program and maintains numerous local, national and international collaborations aimed at improving care for patients with DoC.

 

Dr. John Greden
Executive Director / Rachel Upjohn Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
University of Michigan

Dr. John Greden is the Founder and Executive Director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Depression Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He also is the Rachel Upjohn Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences in the Department of Psychiatry, a Research Professor in the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, Past-President of various research societies including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and past Chair of Psychiatry at Michigan.

John has been at Michigan for more than three decades. He served as Department Chair from 1985 to 2007, and in 2001, proposed establishment of the University of Michigan Depression Center, the inaugural Center of its kind.  Because he also is passionate about the importance of working collaboratively, Dr. Greden led the founding of the National Network of Depression Centers (www.NNDC.org).  The NNDC is a collaborative network of 21 Centers of Excellence throughout America, comparable to the National Network of Cancer Centers.  By sharing and bringing experts together, the NNDC is integrating stronger voices to overcome stigma, conducting research to develop new and safer treatments and preventive strategies, and organizing global education efforts. 

During John’s career, he has focused on the role of stress in depressions, bipolar illnesses (sometimes called manic-depression), and anxieties, on their lifetime course, and on strategies for maintaining wellness.  He has more than 300 scientific publications and books and has given more than 400 invited lectures.  Knowing that these illnesses have their peak ages of onset during teenage years he has been a strong advocate of the need to think about detection, treatment and prevention in our youthful populations. 

Dr. Jeff Grethe
Associate Director, Center for Research in Biological Systems
University of California, San Diego

Jeffrey Grethe came on board as the Program Director for the One Mind Apollo Data Exchange Portal in 2014. He manages the development of the portal and works with domain scientists, largescale research initiatives, and the open source community to ensure that the portal will help to accelerate research by providing neurological and mental health researchers a data sharing and analytics platform.

 

While overseeing the One Mind Portal, Dr. Grethe also serves as a Principal Investigator for a number of large-scale data initiatives, such as the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) and the NIDDK Information Network (dkNET) within the Center for Research in Biological Systems (CRBS) at the University of California, San Diego.

 

He has more than 20 years of experience in enabling collaborative research, data sharing and discovery through the application of advanced informatics approaches. His career began at the University of Southern California with his involvement in the Human Brain Project. Dr. Grethe

went on to set up the first open repository for Functional MRI data at Dartmouth. His efforts continue today with his work on NIF, dkNET and with standards bodies such as the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility.

 

Following a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Grethe received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience with a focus on Neuroinformatics and Computational Modeling from the University of Southern California.

James Heywood
Co-Founder, Chairman
PatientsLikeMe

An MIT-trained mechanical engineer, Jamie entered the field of translational medicine when his 29 year old brother Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Today Jamie is a chief scientist and architect for PatientsLikeMe. Described by CNNMoney as one of the 15 companies that will change the world, Jamie co-founded PatientsLikeMe to ensure patient outcomes become the primary driver of the medical care and discovery process.

Jamie is also the founder and past CEO of the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), the world’s first non-profit biotechnology company. During his tenure at ALS TDI Jamie helped pioneer an open research model and industrialized therapeutic validation process that made ALS TDI the world’s largest and most comprehensive ALS research program. Jamie and his brother were the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Weiner’s biography His Brother’s Keeper and the documentary So Much So Fast.

Dr. Ramona Hicks
Chief Scientific Officer
One Mind

Ramona Hicks assumed the role of Chief Scientific Officer for One Mind in 2014 to further develop and implement opportunities to accelerate research and knowledge about neurological and mental health disorders.

Before joining One Mind, Dr. Hicks was the Program Director for the Extramural Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Research Program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). In her role, she managed the traumatic brain injury (TBI) research portfolio for nine years, and was responsible for providing programmatic and scientific leadership to promote progress in research on traumatic brain injury and neonatal hypoxic-ischemic injury.

During this time she participated in numerous interagency activities resulting in common data elements for TBI research, the Federal Interagency TBI Research Informatics System (FITBIR), the NIH-NFL Sports Health Research Program, and the International TBI Research Initiative (InTBIR).

Dr. Hicks grew up in Northern California, graduated from the University of California with a B.S. in Biology, and received a M.A. in Physical Therapy from Stanford University. Her early clinical experience as a physical therapist set the stage for a lifelong commitment to discover better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat persons with neurological disorders. She returned to school and obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Connecticut, followed by academic appointments at the University of Kentucky and the University of Washington.
 

Dr. Tom Insel
Director
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Thomas R. Insel, M.D., is Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating knowledge to understand, treat, and prevent mental disorders. His tenure at NIMH has been distinguished by groundbreaking findings on the genetics and neurobiology of mental disorders as well as efforts to transform the diagnosis and treatment of serious mental illnesses. In addition to his leadership of NIMH, Dr. Insel has served as Chair of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (since 2002), co-chair of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research (since 2004), and Acting Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (2011-2012). Currently Dr. Insel is one of the leaders for the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) effort, a Presidential initiative focused on developing new tools for understanding the brain.

Prior to his appointment as NIMH Director in the Fall 2002, Dr. Insel was Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. There, he was founding director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and director of an NIH-funded Center for Autism Research. From 1994 to 1999, he was Director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta. While at Emory, Dr. Insel continued the line of research he had initiated at NIMH, studying the neurobiology of complex social behaviors. He has published over 280 scientific articles and four books, including the Neurobiology of Parental Care (with Michael Numan) in 2003.

Dr. Insel is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and is a recipient of several awards , including the Outstanding Service Award from the U.S. Public Health Service and the 2010 La Fondation IPSEN Neuronal Plasticity Prize. Dr. Insel graduated from the combined B.A.-M.D. program at Boston University in 1974. He did his internship at Berkshire Medical Center, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and his residency at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

Mike Jarrett
Founder and CEO
QuesGen Systems, Inc.

Michael Jarrett is the founder and President of QuesGen Systems, Inc, a company that provides data management for clinical research. He has over 20 years of experience in developing and running organizations that provide data management technology to a specific requirement and for the last 11 years, he has been running QuesGen.

He has been involved with a number of start- up organizations and several large ones, including Andersen Business Consulting where he ran the Advanced Technology Practice for the western region and Informix software, where he was responsible for running all customer service and consulting functions. 

Stephen Johnson
Chief Intellectual Property & Policy Offier
One Mind

Stephen Johnson is the Chief Intellectual Property and Policy Officer for One Mind.

As One Mind's Chief Intellectual Property and Policy Officer, Stephen works on policy issues and intellectual property strategies that drive One Mind's goals of hastening cures for patients through encouraging and enabling data sharing within and across disciplines, addressing barriers to data sharing on policy and technology levels, creating efficient public private partnerships to leverage public, private and philanthropic resources to advance research and cures, and focusing on incentives to innovation in neuroscience.

Before joining One Mind, Stephen had over 30 years of experience in intellectual property law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he was a founding partner of its New York and San Francisco offices and the former head of its New York and San Francisco intellectual property groups. He began his career at Bird & Bird in London.  Stephen obtained a degree in Natural Sciences (Genetics) from Cambridge University in England, and graduated from law schools in London and Chicago.

Congressman Patrick Kennedy
Co-Founder & Board of Directors Member
OM & The Kennedy Forum

Patrick is the co-founder of One Mind and served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, Mr. Kennedy has turned his attention to his passion for mental health parity through the Kennedy Forum.

He is also predominantly known as the author and lead sponsor of the Mental Health Parity & Addiction Equity Act of 2008. This dramatic piece of legislation provides access to mental health treatment to tens of millions of Americans who previously were denied care.

Congressman Kennedy has authored and co-sponsored dozens of bills to increase the understanding and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders, including the National Neurotechnology Initiative Act, the Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act, the COMBAT PTSD Act, and the Alzheimer’s Treatment and Caregiver Support Act.

He is a winner of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Distinguished Service Award, the Society for Neuroscience Public Service Award, the Autism Society of America Congressional Leadership Award, the Depression and Bipolar Support Paul Wellstone Mental Health Award, and the Epilepsy Foundation Public Service Award.

He is also founder of the Congressional Down Syndrome Caucus and the 21st Century Healthcare Caucus.

Dr. George Koob
Director
National Institute on Alcohol, Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), National Institutes of Health

George F. Koob, is Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as of January 27, 2014.  As NIAAA Director, Dr. Koob oversees a wide range of alcohol-related research, including genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, prevention, and treatment. 

As an authority on alcoholism, drug addiction and stress, he has contributed to our understanding of the neurocircuitry associated with the acute reinforcing effects of alcohol and drugs of abuse and the neuroadaptations of the reward and stress circuits associated with the transition to dependence.  Dr. Koob has published over 650 peer reviewed papers and several books including the “Neurobiology of Addiction,” a comprehensive treatise on emerging research in the field, and a textbook for upper division undergraduates and graduate students called “Drugs, Addiction and the Brain.” He has mentored 11 Ph. D students and over 75 post-doctoral fellows.

He received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Physiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1972.  He spent much of his early career at the Scripps Research Institute as the Director of the Alcohol Research Center, and as Professor and Chair of the Scripps’ Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders.  He has also served as a researcher in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Arthur Vining Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Allison Kumar
MCM Senior Program Manager
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Allison Kumar is a Sr. Program Manager with the Emergency Preparedness and Medical Countermeasures (EMCM) Program in the Office of the Center Director at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) with over 15 years of combined experience with the US Food and Drug Administration and In Vitro Diagnostics industry.

In her Sr. Program Manager role, Ms. Kumar develops collaborations and works as a liaison between medical device developers in government agencies, DoD, academia, and industry and the CDRH review divisions to reduce the regulatory hurdles that often accompany bringing novel, high-risk, high-benefit innovative technology to market, by aligning early device development activities with FDA’s regulatory expectations.

Prior to joining EMCM, she spent 5 years in the CDRH Office of Device Evaluation as a sr. pre-market reviewer, providing primary contributions to regulatory management of 510(k), IDE, and PMA devices in the Division of Cardiovascular Devices.

Ms. Kumar holds a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, a graduate certificate in Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases from Georgetown University, and is an graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health’s National Preparedness Leadership Institute.

Dr. Becky Kush
President
Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC)

Rebecca Daniels Kush, Ph.D. is Founder, President and CEO of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), a non-profit (501c3) standards developing organization (SDO) with a focus on global clinical research standards and their link with healthcare; the CDISC vision is “Informing patient care and safety through higher quality medical research”.  She is also a Director on the Board of the CDISC Europe Foundation, which is a research partner in three consortia of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).

Dr. Kush has over 30 years of experience in the area of clinical research, including positions with academia, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, a global Clinical Research Organization and biopharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and Japan.  She earned her doctorate in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. She leads the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Coalition For Accelerating Standards and Therapies (CFAST), a partnership with the Critical Path Institute in collaboration with the FDA.

Dr. Kush currently serves as a member of the IT Workgroup of the U.S. NIH/NCI National Cancer Advisory Board and was appointed in 2011 to represent research on the U.S. Health Information Technology Standards Committee.  In 2013, she launched the Essential Standards to Enable Learning (ESTEL) Initiative for the Learning Health Community.  

Dr. Geoffrey Ling
Director, BTO
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Dr. Geoffrey Ling is the Director of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and attending neuro critical care physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He retired from the US Army in 2012 after serving as a military intensive care physician with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He formerly served in the Science Division at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

At DARPA, Dr. Ling’s started the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which developed a brain controlled prosthetic arm for amputees and has been featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, and the Preventing Violent Explosive Neuro Trauma program, which uncovered new understanding and treatments for blast brain injury.

Dr. Ling received his BA from Washington University in Saint Louis, Ph.D. in pharmacology from Cornell University, and M.D. from Georgetown University. He completed a neurology residency at Walter Reed and a neuro-intensive care fellowship at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Ling is board certified in both Neurology and Neuro Critical Care. He has published over 150 peer-review articles, reviews, and chapters, including the TBI chapter in Cecil's Textbook of Medicine, the VA-DoD Guidelines for Managing mTBI/concussion, and the DoD Guidelines for Prehospital Management of Combat Related Head Injury. 

Col. Rebecca Lorraine
Advisor, Ret. USAF
PatientsLikeMe (PLM)

Rebecca served for 25 years in the Army and Air Force Reserves as a Flight Nurse and Family Nurse Practitioner. Rebecca Deployed to St Croix following Hurricane Hugo, OPERATION Desert Shield/Storm, and as the Director of operations for strategic aeromedical evacuation for OPERATION Enduring Freedom and OPERATION Iraqi Freedom 2003/2004. Rebecca was then assigned as the Chief of the USSOCOM Clinic at MacDill AFB until her retirement in 2009. Additionally, Rebecca worked as a Family Nurse Practitioner for primary care and internal medicine clinics in the Tampa area for 15 years.

In 2008, Rebecca began having seizures and was diagnosed with a partial complex seizure disorder with secondary generalization. This resulted in a medical retirement from the military in 2009. In 2011, Rebecca was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer. One year ago, Rebecca was appointed as a Research Ambassador for “Patients Like me”. Currently, Rebecca is attending the University of South Carolina Aiken, as an Interdisciplinary Studies student focused on the Transition Experience and Role Adaptation of Military Women from an Anthropological and Sociological perspective. 

Dr. Andrew Maas
Professor and Chairman of Neurosurgery
Antwerp University Hospital

Andrew I.R. Maas is Professor and Chairman of the department of Neurosurgery at the Antwerp University Hospital and University of Antwerp. He holds positions as the Past President of the International Neurotrauma Society, Co-Chairman of the European Brain Injury Consortium and member of the Neurotraumatology Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies.

He is a general neurosurgeon with specific interest in Traumatic Brain Injury and neuro-intensive care. Main research interests are:

• Clinical trial design and analysis in Traumatic Brain Injury

• Prognosis in Traumatic Brain Injury

• Individualized Targeted Management in Neurocritical care

• Quality of Life after brain injury

• Standardization of data collection

Dr Maas was the principal investigator of the IMPACT study group (International Mission on Prognosis and Clinical Trial design in TBI), that was awarded an NIH grant (2003-2011) on the research project: “Clinical Trial Design and Analysis in Traumatic Brain Injury”. The IMPACT project consisted of a collaborative venture between the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Antwerp University Hospital, the University of Edinburgh and the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond USA. The IMPACT studies have resulted in over 55 publications and recommendations for improved trial design, have set the standard for prognostic analysis in TBI and proposed formats for standardization of data collection in TBI studies.

Dr Maas has also received funding from the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology for a project concerning Individualized Targeted Management in Neurocritical care (2009-2011).

Currently he’s coordinator of a large collaborative project CENTER-TBI: Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in TBI, funded by the European Commission.

Dr Maas is member of various editorial boards, review committees and is a reviewer for over 35 international journals. In total he has authored over 200 publications in peer reviewed international journals, most of these focussing on research in Traumatic Brain Injury.

Dr. Christine MacDonald
Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery
University of Washington School of Medicine

Dr. Mac Donald is an Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Washington.  She is a clinical research scientist and neuroimaging specialist with particular expertise in advanced MRI methods and the application of these imaging methods to traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Her current research focus includes advanced neuroimaging evaluation of mild traumatic brain injury in the US military, severe civilian brain injury, and pediatric sports concussion.

She has over 10 years of experience conducting both preclinical and clinical advanced MRI research 7 of which have been managing and directing large scale international clinical research studies in the United States, Italy, Germany, and Afghanistan.  

Dr. Geoff Manley
Professor and Vice Chairman of Neurological Surgery, Chief of Neurosurgery, San Francisco General Hospital, Co-Director, Brain and Spinal Injury Center (BASIC)
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Dr. David Menon
Head of the Anesthesia Department / Principal Investigator
University of Cambridge / Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre

I obtained my PhD in 2006 from London University. I am a Principal Investigator in the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and Co-Chair of the Acute Brain Injury Program at the University of Cambridge. I currently act as Vice-Coordinator of the CENTER-TBI project, a €30 million European multicentre study of precision medicine and comparative effectiveness research in TBI.

 

My research interests include neurocritical care, secondary brain injury, neuroinflammation, and metabolic imaging of acute brain injury, using positron emission tomography and high field magnetic resonance imaging. Research in my group has been supported by funding from several sources, including the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Medical Research Council, the European Commission’s FP7 Program, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the Evelyn Trust, and the Wellcome Foundation.

 

My publications include the first in vivo demonstration of neuronal loss in clinical AIDS; the first fMRI study of drug effects on regional cerebral blood flow; the first use of functional imaging to document cognitive processing in the persistent vegetative state; demonstration of the impact of specialist neurocritical care on outcome in head injury; the first conclusive demonstration of regional ischaemia in head injury.; the first documentation of diffusion barrier hypoxia as a pathophysiological mechanism in TBI; the current international definition of TBI; and the first validated use of [11C]PIB PET to image amyloid deposition in traumatic brain injury.

 

Dr. Suzana Petanceska
Program Director
National Institute on Aging

Dr. Petanceska is a program director in the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging. During her tenure at the NIA she has been overseeing and developing a number of research portfolios and programs in basic and translational research for Alzheimer’s disease.  She was instrumental for the development of NIA’s AD Translational Research program, the Epigenomics of AD portfolio and the Accelerated Medicines Partnership for AD (AMP-AD) – Target Discovery and Preclinical Validation Project.  Since 2012 she has been leading a number of NIA’s strategic planning activities related to achieving the research goal of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s: to prevent and treat AD by 2025.   In 2014 she was appointed as an Editor in Chief of the open access journal, Neuroepigenetics.

Dr. Petanceska is a graduate of the University of Belgrade, where she received a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and physiology. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from New York University. Following her postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University and Cornell University in New York, she established her independent research career at the Nathan Kline Institute in Orangeburg, N.Y., and joined the faculty of New York University Medical Center. Her research focused on the role of disrupted sterol metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and on the mechanisms by which estrogens and cholesterol-lowering drugs might exert neuroprotection.

Dr. John Povlishock
Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Neurotrauma and Virginia Commonwealth University

Dr. John Povlishock is Chair of Anatomy and Neurobiology on the Medical College of Virginia Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.  He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neurotrauma, as well as the Director of the Commonwealth Center for the Study of Brain Injury. 

His research focuses on traumatic brain injury, with emphasis on neuroprotection, targeting neuronal, axonal, and vascular change.  His work has been reported in over 200 papers, reviews, books, and chapters which, to date, have been cited over 17,000 times. 

For his research accomplishments, he has received two Javits Neuroscience Investigator Awards from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which also awarded him their Gold Medal for Brain Injury Research.  He has also received the Caveness Award from the National Head Injury Foundation, the Brain Trauma Lecture Award from the Joint Congress of Neurological Surgery, the Bass Lecturer Award from the Society of Neurological Surgeons, the Peter and Eva Safar Lecture Award from the University of Pittsburgh, and the Deborah L. Warden Lectureship from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. In 2006, Dr. Povlishock was the recipient of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist Award while in 2011, he was awarded a Doctor of Science Degree (honoris causa) from the University of Pécs in Hungary.  

Over his 42 year academic career he has served as a chartered member and chair of numerous NIH review panels, while also serving as chair of the VA merit review system in neuroscience and the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Research Trust review panel.  He recently completed four years of service on the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Susan Santangelo
Director, Psychiatric Research
Maine Medical Center and Maine Medical Center Research Institute

As a genetic epidemiologist, also trained in psychiatric epidemiology, Dr Susan Santangelo’s work is focused on elucidating the genetic architecture of diseases with complex genetic inheritance, particularly psychiatric diseases. Before moving to Maine Medical Center and Maine Medical Center Research Institute, she directed the Statistical Genetics and Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory in the Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit, Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health since 1994, and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School since 2002. In 2013, Dr. Santangelo assumed the positions of Director of Psychiatric Research at Maine Medical Center, Portland, Maine, and Faculty Scientist III at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine.

Dr. Santangelo has studied the genetics of autism spectrum disorders for over 20 years and this is now the major focus of her work. Recently, she has partnered with Dr. Matthew Siegel to organize a national research collaborative, the Autism and Developmental Disorders Inpatient Research Collaborative to establish the Autism Inpatient Collection (AIC).  The AIC project has received significant funding to build research infrastructure and collect pilot data within a consortium of specialized inpatient units serving the most severely affected children with autism. Behavioral data and biological samples are being collected from ~ 400 patients per year. DNA will be shared with the Autism Sequencing Consortium, which will provide exome sequencing of all the AIC samples.

Dr. Santangelo is a founding member of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), a confederation of scientists from over 80 institutions in 25 countries who are conducting meta-analyses of genome-wide genetic data for psychiatric disease. Dr. Santangelo is an active member of both the Autism Working Group and the Cross Disorder Working Group of the PGC, in which data from more than 170,000 subjects are currently being analyzed. Two recent publications from the Cross-Disorder group of the PGC reported on meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies of five major psychiatric disorders that identified common genetic risk factors shared by all five disorders, and others shared by subsets of the disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.

Dr. Michael Schoenbaum
Senior Advisor for Mental Health Services, Epidemiology, and Economics
National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH)

Michael Schoenbaum (PhD in Economics, University of Michigan, 1995) is Senior Advisor for Mental Health Services, Epidemiology, and Economics in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Office of Science Policy, Planning and Communications. Dr. Schoenbaum's work focuses particularly on the benefits and costs of interventions to improve health and health care, evaluated from the perspectives of patients, providers, payers and society.

He is currently a scientific principal in NIMH's Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (http://www.armystarrs.org), a study of risk and protective factors for suicidality in the US Army; and he has worked on initiatives with the Veterans Health Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Justice, the National Business Group on Health, and the WHO's World Mental Health Survey Initiative, among others, to increase the public health impact of NIMH-support research.

Garen Staglin
Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board
One Mind

Garen is the co-founder and co-chairman of One Mind and the co-founder, President and trustee of IMHRO/One Mind Institute.

During the past 20 years, IMHRO and the Staglin’s Music Festival for Mental Health ( http://music-festival.org ) event have raised more than $200 million for mental health charities and research. He is also co-founder and Director Emeritus of Bring Change 2 Mind, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the stigma of mental illness.

Garen has spent more than 35 years building and starting companies in the financial services and payment industries as a private equity investor and philanthropist. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Silicon Valley Bank, ExL Services, NVoice Payments, Profit Velocity Solutions and Specialized Bicycle Corporation. He is also a Senior Advisor to FTV Capital.

He earned his Bachelor of Science in Engineering from UCLA and his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a recipient of the Gold Spike Award, Stanford University’s highest award for volunteer service and the UCLA College of Letters & Science Fellows Award.

Garen, his wife Shari and their children, Brandon and Shannon, are founders of the Staglin Family Vineyard in Rutherford, California. Actively involved for 30 years in the wine industry, the Staglins’ motto is “Great Wine for Great Causes” and through the operation of their winery, business interests and support of various charitable causes, they have indeed lived up to that philosophy.

In the last ten years, causes they have chaired or donations from their wines have generated more than $800 million.

Ted Thompson
Chief Executive Officer
Parkinson's Action Network

Ted Thompson, J.D., is the chief executive officer for the Parkinson’s Action Network (PAN), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit focused on federal policy issues affecting people with Parkinson’s disease. Ted has more than 20 years of experience in public policy and government affairs, serving in several nonprofit leadership positions and as staff to two Members of Congress. He currently serves as an advisory board member for the Alliance for Connected Care and a board member for the American Brain Coalition. Prior to PAN, Ted was the vice president of federal government relations at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Ted holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and political science from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota and a law degree from the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach
President
Samaritan Health Initiatives

Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D. currently serves as President of Samaritan Health Initiatives, Inc.  and as an Adjunct Professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. From September of 2005 to January 2009 he served as Commissioner of Food and Drugs where he championed an agenda to modernize the FDA by process improvement of the regulatory pathway for drugs and medical devices and by fostering creative projects, including FDA’s Critical Path Initiative (designed to bring modern tools of science to the product development process); work plans like the FDA’s Food Protection Plan; and most especially the nurturing of the workforce through initiatives, such as an Agency-wide fellowship program and development of a new integrated campus for the Agency in White Oak, Maryland. Under his leadership, the FDA experienced dramatic increases in resources enabling implementation of many new programs designed to strengthen the FDA in its mission to protect and promote public health. He has emphasized FDA’s role in working with external partners to assure quality throughout the entire life cycle of the products it regulates.

Dr. von Eschenbach joined FDA after serving for four years as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health where he set an ambitious goal to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer by rapid acceleration and integration of the discovery-development-delivery continuum.  While at NCI, he committed resources to ensure the application to oncology of nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and other emerging technologies.  At the time of his appointment by President Bush to serve as Director of NCI, he was President-Elect of the American Cancer Society.  Dr. von Eschenbach entered government service after an outstanding career over three decades as a physician, surgeon, oncologist and executive that included numerous leadership roles from Chairman of the Department of Urologic Oncology to Executive Vice President and Chief Academic at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, an institution world renowned for the magnitude and excellence of its clinical and research cancer programs.  An internationally renowned cancer specialist and author of more than 300 scientific articles and studies, Dr. von Eschenbach has served in numerous leadership roles, including serving as one of the founding members of the National Dialogue on Cancer.   He has received numerous professional awards and honors.  In 2006, Dr. von Eschenbach was named one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people to shape the world,” and in both 2007 and 2008, he was selected as one of the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician’s “50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare.”

Dr. von Eschenbach earned a B.S. from St. Joseph’s University in his native Philadelphia and his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.   He served as a Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps.  After completing a residency in urologic surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, he was an instructor in urology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.  He completed a Fellowship in Urologic Oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

He has been married to his childhood sweetheart, Madelyn, for over 40 years, and they are proud parents of four children and elated grandparents of seven.

Dr. Steve White
Research Director
Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE)

Dr. H. Steve White is a Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Principal Investigator of the NIH-sponsored Anticonvulsant Drug Development Program at the University of Utah. This program was established in 1975 to aid in the early identification and development of novel anticonvulsant drugs using established animal seizure and epilepsy models. Over the years, over 30,000 investigational antiepileptic drugs have been evaluated in various seizure and epilepsy models. The efforts of this successful translational research program have contributed to the successful development of several new antiepileptic drugs for the treatment of partial epilepsy. Several other antiepileptic drugs are presently under clinical development.

 

In addition to his efforts as Director of the Anticonvulsant Drug Development Program, Dr. White has maintained an active basic research program that has been focused on providing a greater understanding of the factors which contribute to the initiation, propagation, and amelioration of seizure activity. In particular, Dr. White’s research has focused on the development and characterization of animal models of pharmacoresistance. Ongoing investigations in Dr. White’s laboratory are focused on the influence of genetics on seizure-susceptibility and antiepileptic drug pharmacology. In addition to their efforts at identifying new therapies for the symptomatic treatment of partial epilepsy, Dr. White’s laboratory is conducting research that may aid in the identification of novel therapeutics that may slow, halt or prevent the development of epilepsy in susceptible patients.

 

Dr. White has published over 170 original papers pertaining to the mechanism of action and the pharmacology of antiepileptic drugs. He has been a co-organizer of two NIH-sponsored workshops on models of refractory epilepsy and epileptogenesis and currently serves on the organizing committee of the biannual Eilat Conferences on Antiepileptic Drug Development. Moreover Dr. White has been actively engaged as a mentor for the next generation neuroscientist and epilepsy educator and is frequently invited to speak at national and international congresses. He is also one of two scientific co-founders of NeuroAdjuvants, Inc., a Salt Lake City based biotechnology firm that is focused on the development of blood-brain-barrier, metabolically stable, neuropeptides for the treatment of refractory epilepsy and pain.

 

Since November of 2011, Dr. White has also served as the Research Director for Citizen’s United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE). At CURE, Dr White aids in the development and execution of their strategic plan to fund transformative research that will hopefully guide in the development of improved treatments for patients with therapy resistant epilepsy and ultimately the prevention of epilepsy in the