SCIENTIFIC Advisory Board
Sangeeta N. Bhatia, MD, PhD
Dr. Bhatia is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies. She is a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, an Associate member of the Broad Institute, and a Biomedical Engineer at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. The research in her laboratory is focused on the applications of micro- and nanotechnology for tissue repair and regeneration.
Dr. Bhatia trained at Brown, MIT, Harvard, and MGH. She was a member of the Bioengineering Department at University of California at San Diego for 6 years. She has been awarded the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship given to "the nation's most promising young professors in science and engineering," the MIT TR100 Young Innovators Award, the Global Indus Technovator Award, and been named one of Massachusetts’ ‘Women to Watch’. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She co-authored the first undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering and is a frequent advisor to governmental organizations on nanobiotechnology, biomedical microsystems, and tissue engineering. She is the co-founder of two startup companies. She holds 15 issued or pending patents and has worked in industry at Pfizer, Genetics Institute, ICI Pharmaceuticals, and Organogenesis.
Ren Ee Chee, Ph. D.
Professor Ren Ee Chee currently holds the position of Principal Investigator at Singapore immunology network (SIgN) and is concurrently Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology of National University of Singapore. He also has an administration appointment as Director of Graduate Affairs Office (GAO) of the Biomedical Research Council, A*STAR and is responsible for deployment of PhD scholars to the various research institutes.
Prior to joining Singapore immunology network (SIgN), Assoc Prof
Ren was instrumental in helping to set up the Genome Institute of Singapore
(GIS) and was its Deputy Director from 2001 to 2007. He also built
the Biopolis Shared Facility and managed its operations as Director
from 2004 to 2007.
Outside of work, he is President of the Leukemia
and Lymphoma Foundation - a charity which he established in 2002, and
to date the foundation has provided more than $6 million in financial
aid to more than 150 needy patients for chemotherapy and marrow transplants.
George P. Lomonossoff, Ph.D.
Professor George P. Lomonossoff currently holds the position of Project Leader at the John Innes Centre (UK) where he leads a research group in the Dept. of Biological Chemistry. His research interests are in the molecular biology of positive-strand RNA plant viruses, particularly those which can infect legumes and the development of RNA plant virus-based vectors and their application for the expression of high-value proteins of pharmaceutical interest in plants.
His research interests also include the specificity of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions in the morphogenesis of macromolecular structures and the use of virus particles in nanotechnology. Professor Lomonossoff graduated with honors in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge (UK ) where he later obtained a PhD and a Post-Doctoral fellowship at the prestigious MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He subsequently moved to the John Innes centre and has also spent periods at Cornell University (as a Fulbright scholar) and The Scripps Research Institute in the USA. He is an honorary professor at the University of East Anglia and he has authored a large number of publications within his research field.
Binh Nguyen, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Binh Nguyen received his doctorate in organic chemistry from Georgetown University and was a clinical oncology fellow at the NIH-National Cancer Institute Investigational Drug Branch.
He also was a reviewer of Investigational New Drugs and New Drug Applications at the Division of Oncology of the US Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Nguyen worked at Eli Lilly and Co. for 10 years before joining Tigris Pharmaceuticals as Vice President of Clinical Research and Chief Medical Officer. His responsibilities at Lilly as Executive Director of the Global Oncology Platform team included the clinical registration efforts of Gemzar (for pancreatic, lung, breast and ovarian cancer), Alimta (for mesothelioma and 2nd line NSCLC) and Enzastaurin (for glioma and lymphoma). Dr. Nguyen is currently responsible for the clinical development and translational research of a variety of anti-cancer drugs as well as the overall business development at Tigris Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Nguyen is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association of Cancer Research, the Regulatory Affair Professional Society, the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Medical Marketing Association. He had been a program committee member for the Regulatory Affair Professional Society in the past and a visiting faculty member of the Vienna School of Clinical Research since 2006. He is also a peer reviewer of several cancer research journals including the Cancer Journal and the Journal of Translational Medicine.
Mark H. Einstein, MD, MS
Mark H. Einstein, MD, MS, Associate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Women’s Health and Director of Clinical Research for Women’s Health and Gynecologic Oncology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. Dr. Einstein received his Bachelors in Science and Medical Degree at the University of Miami in their combined BS/MD program. After completing his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in New Jersey he then had subspecialty training in Gynecologic Oncology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center. He joined the Einstein faculty after fellowship. Dr. Einstein’s primary research interests focus on the pathogenesis, therapy, and prevention of cervical cancer. Dr. Einstein has developed and has been leading numerous multi-institutional clinical trials in targeting HPV and cervical cancer as well as cervical cancer prevention. He is active in clinical trial cooperative groups as Co-Chair of the Gynecologic Oncology Group Vaccine Committee and sits on the GOG Cervix Committee. He is on the HPV working group of the NCI Aids Malignancy Consortium. He is also an active member and a program leader of the Gynecology Division of the New York Cancer Consortium- a Montefiore-based P01 Phase II clinical trial consortium and is the PI of many of its gynecologic cancer therapeutics trials accruing patients throughout New York hospitals. He is active in policy-making regarding cervical cancer prevention participating in the development of the American Cancer Society recommendations for HPV vaccines. He also was part of the working group for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) HPV vaccine recommendations as well. He also is Chair of the Gynecologic Oncology Foundation’s (GCF) National Cervical Cancer Public Education Campaign and sits on their Board of Directors. Dr. Einstein is also a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), developing their modules on the immunologic basis of HPV vaccines. He has received funding for cervical cancer-related translational research by the NIH, GCF, ACOG and the Berlex Foundation. He has been funded by and named an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. Dr. Einstein is a Fellow of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Jo Milner, M.A., Ph.D
Professor Jo Milner is currently Director of the YCR P53 Research Unit and Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Biology at the University of York, UK. Her research aims to identify targets for selective killing of cancer cells without damage to normal healthy tissues. Basal cellular control mechanisms are accessed using RNAi. Innovative methodologies are also being developed to enable RNAi-based therapeutics. Professor Milner has raised ~£8m funding towards this research. She has also served on numerous international and national advisory boards and committees, and promotes scientific research at the academic and public level.
Professor Milner was a State Scholar at the University of London and subsequently obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK). Following a post-doctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA) she was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research. This she held at the University of Cambridge (UK) where she was also awarded a college Fellowship at New Hall. She continued research at the University of Cambridge for some 20 years and also spent periods at the University of Ulm (Germany), and at the Salk Institute (USA).