Digital Biomarkers
Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Roozbeh Ghaffari
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari obtained his BS and MEng degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and 2003. He received his PhD degree in biomedical engineering from the Harvard Medical School-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology in 2008. Upon completion of his PhD, Dr. Ghaffari co-founded MC10 Inc and served as its Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Dr. Ghaffari led the development and launch of the BioStamp® and the My UV PatchTM wearable products. His contributions in soft bioelectronics, micro/nano-scale systems, and neuroscience have been recognized with the Helen Carr Peake PhD Research Prize (2008), the MIT100K Grand Prize (2008), the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Grand Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review Magazine's Top 35 Innovators Under 35 (2013), IEEE Emerging Technology Award (2016), and TEDx Gateway invited speaker (2016). Dr. Ghaffari has published over 90 academic papers and is inventor on over 50 patents issued. He joined the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics (CBIE) at Northwestern University in May 2017, where he is currently the Director of Translational Research and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. In his research translation role, Dr. Ghaffari serves on the Editorial Board of Digital Biomarkers Journal, and is Principal Investigator/Advisory Board Member of Neurolux, Rhaeos, and the University of Vermont BME Department. He is also co-founder and CEO of Epicore Biosystems, a CBIE spin-out commercializing wearable microfluidics technology.
Section Editor 'Network of Digital Evidence (NODE)'
Ashish Atreja
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
Dr. Atreja has received formal training in public health and is board certified in gastroenterology, clinical informatics and internal medicine. Over the last fifteen years, he has led many public health and informatics initiatives at Cleveland Clinic and Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY that includes developing online education modules, leading EHR implementation, performing analytics on healthcare data and developing enterprise-wide mobile apps. As Chief Technology Innovation and Engagement Officer, Medicine, he leads the Sinai AppLab that is one of the first collaborative hub within academic medical center to build and test disruptive mhealth technologies.
Dr. Atreja leads scientific registries for American Gastroenterology Association and serves in Innovation Advisory Board for American College of Cardiology. As an intrapreneur, Dr. Atreja has won innovation awards at Cleveland Clinic and Mount Sinai, successfully licensed technologies from academic centers and advises startups, accelerators and Fortune 500 companies in digital medicine. Recently, Dr. Atreja established Network of Digital Medicine to connect innovation centers worldwide and share best practices for digital medicine innovation and implementation between industry, payers and health systems. Dr. Atreja serves as Scientific Co-founder for Mount Sinai Spinoff, Responsive Health that aims to bring first enterprise-wide app curation, prescription and engagement platform to risk sharing hospitals and payers. Dr. Atreja has published more than 60 papers and has been a keynote speaker globally on topics related to digital medicine and health system transformation.
Associate Editor
Adam B. Cohen
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA
Adam B. Cohen leads the Health Technologies program within the National Health Mission Area of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. He is also a neurologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where he specializes in inpatient neurology. Prior to Hopkins, Adam was the Director of Inpatient Neurology and TeleNeurology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, where he specialized in neuro-ophthalmology, inpatient neurology, and neuroradiology. Adam works on varied health technologies and collaborates with companies focused on digital health and process innovation.
Advisory Board
Andy Coravos
Human First, San Francisco, CA, USA
Mark Frasier
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, New York, NY, USA
As Senior Vice President, Research Programs, Mark co-manages a team of research professionals who stay closely linked to the Parkinson’s research community in order to develop an aggressive and innovative agenda for accelerating research and drug development for Parkinson’s disease. This ensures that MJFF research priorities reflect and best serve the ultimate needs of patients. Mark regularly meets with academic and industry researchers around the world to identify promising proposals to support, providing troubleshooting and ongoing management of projects as they go forward. He also supports the Foundation’s priority interest in developing biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease that will accelerate clinical trials of new drugs.
Dr. Frasier earned an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Dayton and a PhD in Pharmacology from Loyola University Chicago. He completed his postdoctoral work in the Neuroscience Discovery Research Group at Eli Lilly, Inc., in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he worked on drug-discovery research in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Since joining MJFF in 2006 he has led innovative strategies to support Parkinson’s therapeutic development and address pre-clinical, clinical, and regulatory challenges.
Jennifer Goldsack
Digital Medicine Society, Boston, MA, USA
Jennifer C. Goldsack co-founded and serves as the Executive Director of the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to advancing digital medicine to optimize human health. Jen’s research focuses on applied approaches to the safe, effective, and equitable use of digital technologies to improve health, healthcare, and health research. She is a member of the Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Previously, Jen spent several years at the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public-private partnership co-founded by Duke University and the FDA. There, she led development and implementation of several projects within CTTI’s Digital Program and was the operational co-lead on the first randomized clinical trial using FDA’s Sentinel System.
Jen spent five years working in research at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, first in Outcomes Research in the Department of Surgery and later in the Department of Medicine. More recently, she helped launch the Value Institute, a pragmatic research and innovation center embedded in a large academic medical center in Delaware.
Jen earned her master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Oxford, England, her masters in the history and sociology of medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MBA from the George Washington University. Additionally, she is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality. Ms Goldsack is a retired athlete, formerly a Pan American Games Champion, Olympian, and World Championship silver medalist.
Ernst Hafen
ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
Ernst Hafen obtained his PhD from the Biocenter at the University of Basel in 1983. From 1984 to 1986 he worked at the University of California in Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the University of Zurich as an assistant professor in 1987. He was promoted to full professor in 1997. From 2005 to 2006 he served as president of ETH Zurich. Since 2005 he holds a professorship at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich.
Thomas Heldt
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Thomas Heldt holds the W.M. Keck Career Development Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is also an Associate Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, a core faculty member of the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, and a Principal Investigator with the Research Laboratory of Electronics. In addition, he is a member of the Affiliate Faculty at Harvard Medical School. Prof. Heldt studied Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany, Yale University, and MIT. He received his PhD in Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and commenced postdoctoral training at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.
Prof. Heldt's research interests focus on signal processing, mathematical modelling, and model-identification to support real-time clinical decision making, monitoring of disease progression, and titration of therapy in a variety of patient-care settings. In particular, Prof. Heldt's research focuses on developing a mechanistic understanding of physiologic systems, and in formulating appropriately chosen computational physiologic models for improved patient care.
Prior to joining the Advisory Board of Digital Biomarkers, Prof. Heldt served as Associate Scientific Advisor to Science Translational Medicine. He chairs the Cardiopulmonary Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and has served as an Associate Editor of the annual EMBS conference since 2011.
Dina Katabi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Dina Katabi is the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is also the director of the MIT’s Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a MacArthur Fellow. Professor Katabi received her PhD and MS from MIT in 2003 and 1999, and her Bachelor of Science from Damascus University in 1995. Katabi's research focuses on innovative mobile and wireless technologies with particular application to digital health. Her research has been recognized by the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the SIGCOMM test of Time Award, the Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, the NBX Career Development chair, and the NSF CAREER award. Her students received the ACM Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in Computer Science and Engineering twice. Further, her work was recognized by the IEEE William R. Bennett prize, three ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper awards, an NSDI Best Paper award, and a TR10 award. Several start-ups have been spun out of Katabi's lab such as PiCharging and Emerald.
Dan Karlin
HealthMode, New York, NY, USA
Dr. Karlin is the CEO of HealthMode.co, Industry Transformation Officer at Hu-Manity.co, and Director of Biotech Ventures with CEAi.io. He was previously the Head of Clinical, Informatics, and Regulatory Strategy for Digital Medicine at Pfizer, having passed through a number of roles on the way to this position including Senior Director, Quantitative Medicine, Group Lead for Human Biology and Medical Informatics with Pfizer's Neuroscience Research Unit in Cambridge, MA. He is an Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, and had been the Director of Psychiatry Informatics, and the Associate Training Director for Psychiatry. His primary research interests are neuropsychiatric drug development, medical informatics, cognition in clinical medicine, and methodologies for medical education, especially as these relate to decision-making strategies used by medical professionals. In addition, Dr. Karlin is actively involved in designing and implementing information systems and resources for clinical and research use. Dr. Karlin trained in Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, attended medical school at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and graduate school for Clinical Informatics and Cognitive Science as well as undergraduate studies in Neuroscience and Behavior at Columbia University. He is board certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Medicine, and Clinical Informatics.
Joseph Kvedar
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Joseph Kvedar, MD, is a board-certified dermatologist and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health, where he is creating a new model of healthcare delivery, and developing innovative strategies to move care from the hospital or doctor's office into the day-to-day lives of patients.
Dr. Kvedar established the first physician-to-physician online consultation service in an academic setting, linking patients from around the world with specialists at Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals.
He is internationally recognized for his leadership and vision in the field of connected health, and has authored over 90 publications on the subject. Dr. Kvedar serves as a Board member for a number of organizations, including Care Continuum Alliance. He serves as a strategic advisor at West Health Institute, and is a mentor at Blueprint Health and Rock Health, providing guidance and insight to developing companies.
Max Little
School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
I began my career writing software, signal processing algorithms and music for video games, then moved on by way of a degree in mathematics to the University of Oxford. After postdoc positions in Oxford and co-founding a web-based image search business, I won a Wellcome Trust fellowship at MIT to follow up on my doctoral research work in biomedical signal processing. I am currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham in the UK.
William J. Marks, Jr.
Verily Life Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA
Dr. William Marks is Head of Clinical Neurology at Verily Life Sciences (an Alphabet company, formerly Google Life Sciences), a translational research and engineering organization focused on improving healthcare by applying scientific and technological advances to significant problems in health and biology. Dr. Marks is responsible for developing and implementing strategies and initiatives that will advance the understanding of neurological disorders to ultimately improve patient outcomes. He is also Adjunct Clinical Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. Previously, Dr. Marks served as Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed his neurology residency and fellowship at UCSF. Dr. Marks also holds a Master of Science in Health Care Management degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.
John Wilbanks
Sage Bionetworks, Seattle, WA, USA
John Wilbanks is the Chief Commons Officer at Sage Bionetworks. Previously, Wilbanks worked as a legislative aide to Congressman Fortney “Pete” Stark, served as the first assistant director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, founded and led to acquisition the bioinformatics company Incellico, Inc., and was executive director of the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. In February 2013, in response to a We the People petition that was spearheaded by Wilbanks and signed by 65,000 people, the U.S. government announced a plan to open up taxpayer-funded research data and make it available for free. Wilbanks holds a B.A. in philosophy from Tulane University and also studied modern letters at the Sorbonne.
Editorial Board
Raolat Abdulai
Sanofi, Cambridge, MA, USA
Raolat Abdulai, MD, MMSc holds the role of Global Clinical Lead in the Immuno-Inflammation therapeutic area at Sanofi, serving as the clinical strategic lead on projects with a focus of bringing transformational medicines to areas of unmet need. In addition to her role in drug development, she works to advance digital health initiatives to transform the product life cycle for faster and more efficient clinical trials. In 2019, she was a featured panelist at the first ever MassBio Digital Health Impact Conference. She recently featured at the BIO 2020: Digital Health in Respiratory Care – The Next Frontier and at FierceAI Week 2020.
Dr. Abdulai received her Master of Medical Science in Biomedical Informatics from Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington D.C in 2010. After graduation she went on to train in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN and completed a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Harvard-Brigham and Women’s Hospital program in Boston, MA. Dr. Abdulai is a member of the American Thoracic Society and served on the Society's Healthy Equality and Diversity Committee.
Siddarth Arora
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Siddharth is currently on a departmental fellowship based at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his PhD on time series forecasting. His research is focused on developing statistical modelling tools having applications in biomedicine. Over the past few years, he has extensively worked on developing algorithms for remote technologies that could assist in detecting and monitoring the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. His research has been featured in leading international journals including Neurology, Cerebral Cortex, Physical Review E, and IEEE Transactions. He was awarded the title of most acclaimed lecturer in 2017 by the Oxford university student union, and in 2019 he won the Martin Black Prize.
Jitendra Barmecha
SBH Health System, New York, NY, USA
Dr. Jitendra Barmecha began his clinical and healthcare leadership career at SBH Health System as Chief Medical Resident after completing three years in the Internal Medicine Residency Program. Following his chief medical residency, he earned his MPH degree in Health Management and Policy at New York Medical College, while continuing to provide patient care and medical education services as faculty in the Department of Medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital.
Presently, as Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Information Technology, Health Care Data & Analytics and Clinical Engineering, is setting up the IT infrastructure for Population Health Management for his health system as one of the lead Provider Performing System (PPS) - DSRIP in the Bronx. His team has already completed the upgrade of electronic health records (EHR) to comply with Stage 2 Meaningful Use of EHR. He is also involved in upgrading the systems technical infrastructure; ensuring clinical information systems and patient monitoring devices are well integrated into the electronic health records for the future. As a board member and chair of the clinical committee, he provides clinical leadership to the Bronx Regional Health Information Exchange (RHIO) & Bronx Regional Informatics Center.
Dr. Barmecha serves on the advisory panel for the physician payment reforms and practice transformation at the American College of Physicians. He is a fellow of American College of Physician, Senior Fellow of Hospital Medicine and Fellow of New York Academy of Medicine. He is the past president and chairman of the Board of Bronx County Medical Society. While continuing his passion for bedside patient care as a hospitalist, he enjoys teaching clinical staff and medical students, and routinely provides lectures on health care management, technology and policy.
Kevin Biglan
Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Dr. Kevin Biglan is a Neurologist trained in Movement Disorders and Experimental therapeutics. He was most recently Professor of Neurology and the Associate Chair of Clinical Research at the University of Rochester. In that role, he was actively involved in the development and validation of remote technologies to improve care and facilitate research in movement disorders. Since 2017, he has been involved in early phase clinical development in neurodegenerative diseases at Eli Lilly and Company. In this capacity he has been active in incorporating digital biomarkers into drug development in order to speed the development of drugs for those with the greatest need.
Bastiaan Bloem
Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Professor Bas Bloem is a consultant neurologist at the Dept of Neurology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands. He received his M.D. degree (with honour) at Leiden University Medical Centre in 1993. In 1994, he obtained his PhD degree in Leiden, based on a thesis entitled “Postural reflexes in Parkinson’s disease”. He was trained as a neurologist between 1994–2000, also at Leiden University Medical Centre. He received additional training as movement disorders specialist during fellowships at ‘The Parkinson's Institute’, Sunnyvale, California (with Dr J.W. Langston), and at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London (with Prof. N.P. Quinn and Prof. J.C. Rothwell). In 2002, he founded and became Medical Director of the Parkinson Centre Nijmegen (ParC), which was recognised from 2005 onwards as centre of excellence for Parkinson’s disease. Together with Dr. Marten Munneke, he also developed ParkinsonNet, an innovative healthcare concept that now consists of 66 professional networks for Parkinson patients covering all of the Netherlands (www.parkinsonnet.nl). Because of the evidence-based quality improvement and significant cost reduction, ParkinsonNet has received multiple awards, including the prize ‘Best Pearl for Healthcare Innovation’ in 2011 and ‘Value Based Health Care’ prize in 2015. In September 2008, he was appointed as Professor of Neurology, with movement disorders as special area of interest. Prof. Bloem has published over 550 publications, including over 400 peer-reviewed international papers. His H-index is 49.
Kees van Bochove
The Hyve, Utrecht, Netherlands
Kees van Bochove is the founder and CEO of The Hyve. He studied Computer Science in Utrecht and Bioinformatics at VU Amsterdam, and studied lipoprotein metabolism at TNO in Zeist and Tufts University Boston. Kees is active in the Dutch startup scene, as StartupDelta advisor for Constantijn van Oranje, in the Advisory Boards of UtrechtInc and DTL, and patient organisations such as Movember Foundation. He is active in many international open source communities, including the community around FAIR principles. The Hyve is active as a major development and support party in CTMM TraIT, IMI eTRIKS, IMI EMIF, IMI Translocation and IMI RADAR-CNS projects.
Paolo Bonato
Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA
Paolo Bonato, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston MA. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston MA, an Associate Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and an Adjunct Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. He has held Adjunct Faculty positions at MIT, the University of Ireland Galway, and the University of Melbourne. His research work is focused on the development of rehabilitation technologies with emphasis on wearable technology and robotics. He received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from Universita` di Roma “La Sapienza” in 1995. A list of his publications can be found here.
Christopher Boone
Health Economics & Outcomes Research, Abbvie, North Chicago, IL, USA
Christopher (Chris) Boone, PhD has a career-long history as a dynamic, innovative thought leader and a public voice on the power of real-world evidence, health informatics, and big data analytics and its ability to radically transform the global health care system into a learning health system.
Chris currently serves as the Vice President, Global Head of Health Economics and Outcomes Research at Abbvie. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of health administration at the New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, an active board member of several influential organizations, and a co-founder of a few start-up companies. Most recently, he served as the vice president and head of global medical epidemiology and big data analysis at Pfizer.
Chris has been recognized as a 2019 Top 100 Innovator in Data & Analytics, a 2018 Emerging Pharma Leader by Pharmaceutical Executive, and a 2017 Top 40 Under 40 Leader in Minority Health by the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF).
Boone holds, or has held, appointments to some of the most influential national committees focused on health data and patient centricity, including the Board of Directors for the Stewards of Change Institute, the Executive Board of Directors for the Patient Advocate Foundation, the Executive Board of Directors for the National Patient Advocate Foundation, the Board of Directors for SHARE for Cures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) Initiative, the Interoperability Committee for the National Quality Forum, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) Working Group on HHS Data Access and Use, the Health IT Policy Committee (federal advisory committee), and the advisory group for the American Society of Clinical Oncologists’ (ASCO) CancerLinQ initiative.
Chris earned a B.S. from the University of Tulsa, a M.H.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington, a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas, and two executive certificates from the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a Fellow of the American College of Health Executives and a Fellow of the Healthcare Information Management & Systems Society.
Ernst Jan Bos
Roche, Basel, Switzerland
Ernst Bos is a Digital Health Leader at Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, where he focuses on the convergence of patient and clinicians needs with digital health solutions and translating these opportunities into daily life. Before he worked at the Center for Human Drug Research in Leiden developing digital measurement tools for clinical research trials. He graduated in Medicine at Leiden University and worked on cardiac tissue regeneration and biomolecular imaging at the Falk Cardiovascular Research Facility, Stanford, CA before obtaining a PhD from the VU University Amsterdam Medical Center on 3D bio printing for facial cartilage reconstruction. The synapse between engineers and health professionals has been his main focus since and led to several spin-off projects in various fields, including haptic feedback and virtual simulation.
Enrico Capobianco
University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA
Enrico Capobianco is the Head of the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program at the Center for Computational Science of the University of Miami, associated with the main campus and the Miller School of Medicine in Miami, FL, USA. He holds a Doctorate in Statistical Sciences from the University of Padua, in Italy. His core expertise is in Statistical Inference and Network Science, whereas his applications are especially in Systems Medicine approaches to Cancer and Digital Health. His most recent interests include Stochastics and Machine Learning methods for Big Data Analytics and Computational Imaging. Dr Capobianco has participated in academic and scientific activities at several US institutes, and received a Professorship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011, a Visiting Professorship in 2010 from the Fiocruz Foundation in Brazil, and was Visiting Scientist at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France.
Meenakshi Chatterjee
Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson, Cambridge, MA, USA
Meenakshi Chatterjee, PhD., is a Senior Scientist & Manager at Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson. Broadly, her interests lie in Digital Health, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for healthcare applications. Her research involves identification of novel digital biomarkers for disease diagnosis and intervention, through analytics of biosensor data from digital measurement technologies like wearable devices and smart phone sensors. She is leading several digital health research projects across the Immunology and Neuroscience therapeutic areas within Janssen R&D to develop novel and objective digital endpoints using signal processing and machine learning based methodologies. She is one of the industry leads for investigation of digital endpoints of fatigue and sleep in an IMI initiative, IDEA-FAST. She serves as the technical committee member of the IEEE Healthcare & Medical Systems, and the IEEE Systems & Synthetic Biology. She received her MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Yale University.
Ieuan Clay
Vivosense, Newport Coast, CA, USA
Ieuan Clay is Director of Science at Vivosense, where his work focuses on development and qualification of digital measures. He lectures at ETHZ and FHNW in Digital Health. Following his PhD at the University of Cambridge which focused on technology and analytics development, he joined Novartis Research in 2010, where he built and led the Digital Endpoints group within Translational Medicine (early clinical portfolio), implementing new digital measures into trials and advancing qualification of real-world gait speed with the EMA. In 2019, he joined Evidation Health, initially focusing on research strategy and then joining commercial to help build their Heart Health on Achievement health programs in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology. He then joined the Digital Medicine (DiMe) society in 2021 as Chief Scientific Officer, where he was responsible for scientific strategy and output. linktr.ee/ieuanclay
Ebony Dashiell-Aje
BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., Washington, DC, USA
Ebony Dashiell-Aje, PhD is currently the Senior Director of Patient Engagement and Outcomes Research in Regulatory Affairs, at BioMarin. Dr. Dashiell-Aje is a leading expert in clinical outcome assessment (COA) design and implementation, digital health technology implementation and data interpretation, and study endpoint issues. Dr. Dashiell-Aje has notably contributed her research expertise in academic, consulting, and regulatory environments to arrive at evidence-based solutions to shape health policy.
Dr. Dashiell-Aje has served as team lead and reviewer in the Division of Clinical Outcome Assessments (DCOA) in the Office of New Drugs at FDA and was a key player in shaping patient-focused drug development (PFDD) efforts, as technical lead and primary author on PFDD Guidance documents and as a key digital health technology policy development and implementation expert. She has also served as an expert consultant to pharmaceutical industry clients, providing scientific leadership in the design of studies to support regulatory decision-making.
Pronabesh DasMahapatra
Sanofi, Cambridge, MA, USA
Pronabesh DasMahapatra is the Director (Business Partner) for rare disease products in Health Economics and Value Assessment at Sanofi. A medical doctor and epidemiologist by training, Pronabesh held senior scientific roles in the healthcare industry and was an integral member of the PatientsLikeMe research team. Pronabesh specializes in health outcomes research and pharmacoeconomics with special interest in advanced biostatistical modeling, real-world data, patient-reported outcomes, and digital technologies for health assessment.
After medical school, Pronabesh served as a medical officer for three years. He subsequently began his research career at the Center for Cardiovascular Health, Tulane University, studying the evolution of cardiometabolic risk from birth to middle age. At Sanofi, Pronabesh leads the global evidence generation strategy for several investigational and marketed rare disease products that address high unmet medical needs. His ambition is to amalgamate clinical insights and machine learning techniques towards the advancement of patient-centered digital tools that evolve the scientific understanding of clinical, economic and humanistic aspects of disease. His work is documented in biomedical journals and books.
Martin Daumer
Sylvia Lawry Centre For Multiple Sclerosis Research, Munich, Germany
Dr. Martin Daumer is the Director of the SLCMSR e.v. – The Human Motion Institute in Munich and the managing director of the IT company, Trium Analysis Online GmbH. He is also a visiting lecturer for Telemedicine and Clinical Applications of Computational Medicine at the Technical University Munich.
Dr. Daumer received a diploma in Physics in 1990 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 1995, after having worked at CERN, Switzerland, and Rutgers University, USA.
Adam P. Dicker
Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Dr. Adam P. Dicker, MD, PhD is Senior Vice President, Professor and Chair, Department of Radiation Oncology at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University. He is a leading expert in prostate cancer and brain tumors with a focus on digital health and translational sciences applied to oncology.
Dr. Dicker leads a University-wide effort in Digital Health, using the convergence of mobile technology, platforms, networks, and machine learning to improve the lives of patients. His group created the first Apple ResearchKit app for patient reported outcomes (PROs) for prostate cancer patients “Strength Through Insight” and are conducting innovative, collaborative research to transform digital health into a standard part of modern cancer care relevant to the 21st century healthcare. Dr. Dicker’s current research is focused on collection of PROs and remote activity monitoring (i.e., Fitbit) for patient receiving chemo-radiation, molecular targeted therapies and immunotherapy.
His laboratory research coordinates an interdisciplinary team of oncologists, immunologists, physicists, data scientists and scientists participating in a multidisciplinary effort to define fundamental mechanisms and targets for cancer treatment and efficiently translate them to effective innovations for patients. His work has focused on how ionizing radiation can enhance molecular targeted therapies including immunotherapy.
Dr. Dicker is the author of four books and over 300 publications. His work has resulted in establishment of parameters for quality assurance in radiation oncology, novel therapeutic clinical trials utilizing targeted therapies, innovative models to evaluate radiation protectors and FDA approval of a genomic signature for management of prostate cancer.
Nationally, Dr. Dicker is Chair Emeritus, Integration Panel for the Prostate Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense, Co-Chair of the Translational Science committee for NRG Oncology (www.nrgoncology.org) and the Radiation Oncology Co-Chair of the NCI Genitourinary Cancers Steering Committee Prostate Cancer Task Force. He is a member of the National Cancer Institute Investigational Drug Steering Committee (CTEP) and a consultant on Cancer to the European Commission, and the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
Since 1996, Dr. Dicker has mentored over 40 students, residents and fellows. This includes career development grants/awards, ASCO-AACR Vail Course applications, biweekly meetings with trainees, and long-distance video-conferencing. His trainees are early and mid-career clinician researchers and clinician-scientists in academic medicine in the US and abroad.
Jeana Frost
360MedLink, Montreal, QC, Canada
Jeana Frost is the Director of User Experience at 360MedLink. She completed her PhD at the MIT Media Lab and a NIH Post-Doctoral fellowship in Clinical Informatics. Her work spans the areas of psychology and information technology to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying human behavior and build technologies that meet the needs of patients. She has led UX research efforts for a variety of health platforms including PatientsLikeMe, Kanker.nl and Huddol. Her research has been featured widely including JMIR, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Financial Times, and The NY Times.
Joseph P. Giuffrida
Troofully, Hinckley, OH, USA
Joseph P. Giuffrida, PhD, has expertise in medical technology, wearable sensors, and commercialization of software as a service for healthcare. Joe has commercialized multiple medical devices across several markets both in the United States and internationally. He successfully launched wearable sensor monitoring, cloud reporting, and mobile app technologies in the Parkinson’s disease and sleep markets, telemedicine in the respiratory therapy market, and developed strategies to restore motor control in spinal cord injury. Joe has significant experience leading product development and technical teams, implementing quality systems and regulatory requirements, building clinician support networks, and leading marketing and sales teams to grow and support product lines. His experience includes 13+ issued patents, 15+ clinical studies as principal investigator, and machine learning & algorithm development using sensor based networks with 50+ scientific publications. Joe received his PhD from Case Western Reserve University in 2004.
Jörg Goldhahn
ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
Prof Dr. med. Jörg Goldhahn works as the medical director of the new bachelor in medicine at the Swiss federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland. He is also one of the founding members of the new Institute for Translational Medicine at ETH. One of his research interests is the quantification of medical need, especially in the musculoskeletal area. In the past, medical need has been quantified mainly via questionnaires. Recently wearables and sensor technology is the main focus of research. New technology enables continuous, remote monitoring, and adds new information. However, it requires systematic research abut chances but also limitations of the new technology.
Christian Gossens
Roche, Basel, Switzerland
Christian is leading the Early Development Workflow department in Roche’s Research and Early Development Informatics (pREDi) organization - a bridge between digital technology and science.
Over the last decade he had a particular focus on driving technology innovation in clinical trials. His teams were pioneering the creative adoption of Digital media and mobile devices to translate patient and investigator recruitment and engagement tactics into the digital age.
Prior to this, Christian has worked extensively on innovation and information landscaping and R&D data integration projects across the traditional research and development borders as well as across Roche’s Pharma and Diagnostic divisions.
A computational biochemist (EPFL, Lausanne), chemical engineer (ECPM, Strasbourg) and MBA (CDI, Paris) by training, he started his career in a leading management consultancy.
Christian joined Roche as a director in the Emerging Technology team in Group Research to identify strategic, game changing trends in the pharma Omics & Digital Health space and to develop strategies to act on those. Now he is implementing them.
Peter Groenen
Idorsia Pharmaceuticals, Allschwil, Switzerland
Peter Groenen currently heads the Translational Science Group at Idorsia Pharmaceuticals, a newly established company after the acquisition of Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. by Johnson&Johnson. Having worked in academia and industry on multiple facets of disease he became fascinated by integrated approached using modern informatics and system approaches. He received his MSc in Biochemistry and Physiology from the Radboud University, Nijmegen the Netherlands. Before gaining his PhD in biomedical sciences at the Center for Human Genetics at the Gasthuisberg Medical Hospital, University of Leuven, Belgium he was a junior scientist at the National Institute for Health and Environmental Protection, Bilthoven the Netherlands and F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Basel Switzerland. Peter held several positions with increasing responsibility at Organon NV (part of Akzo Nobel), Schering-Plough and Merck Sharp & Dohme, Oss, the Netherlands. Peter Groenen has authored or co-authored over 30 peer reviewed articles in diverse areas of genetics, bioinformatics and biomarkers. He led two large national projects in the Netherlands on genomics and bioinformatics has been a member of several international consortia in biomarkers and pharmacogenomics.
Hossam Haick
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
Hossam Haick is a Full Professor in the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and head of three major European consortia, has received numerous prestigious Prizes and Awards and was included in several important lists, including the list of the world’s 35 leading young scientists published by MIT’s Technology Review, the Nominet Trust 100 list (London), which includes the world’s 100 most influential inventors and digital developments, and the Los Angeles-based GOOD Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Highly multi-disciplinary in nature, the research of Prof. Haick combines knowledge from diverse fields, including nanotechnology, microfluidics, machine learning, biochemistry, medicine and genetics. Borrowing from these different disciplines, his research team develops novel solid-state and flexible devices/sensors as well as electronic sensory nanoarrays non-invasive diagnosis of diseases via volatile biomarkers. Prof. Haick’s comprehensive approach comprises materials and device development, system integration, testing in lab and clinical environments and exploitation of project results/hardware.
Dustin Heldman
Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies, Cleveland, OH, USA
Dustin has expertise in neural engineering and neurophysiology, and has lead a biomedical team to develop and validate over 20 algorithms for quantifying movement disorder motor symptoms. He has been PI on 8 NIH programs totaling nearly $5 million and has managed over 15 multisite clinical trials. He has 4 issued US patents and has co-authored 15 peer-reviewed publications and 36 conference presentations.
M. Ehsan Hoque
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
M. Ehsan Hoque is an assistant professor of computer science and an Asaro-Biggar (‘92) Family Fellow in Data Science at the University of Rochester, where he leads the Rochester Human-Computer Interaction (ROC HCI) Group. His group’s research focuses on understanding and modeling the unwritten rules of human communication, with applications in business communication, health, and educational assessment technology.
Ehsan earned his Ph.D. in the MIT Media Lab in 2013, where his dissertation was highlighted by the MIT Museum as one of the most unconventional inventions at MIT. Ehsan and his group’s work has earned them four Paper Awards and Best Paper Nominations at the premier Human-Computer Interaction conferences. Ehsan has received an MIT TR35 (2016), a World Technology Award (2016), and Science News 10 early- to mid-career scientists to watch (the “SN 10”).
Jing Huang
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Jing Huang, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Her research focus on developing statistical and computational methods for large-scale healthcare data, including electronic health records (EHR) data, data from national surveillance systems, and mobile health data. She also has a keen interest in statistical inference, including developing methodology and theory that are motivated from real application and can be generalized to answer a broad set of questions.
Her research has involved both Bayesian analysis, especially hierarchical Bayesian modeling using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) computational methods, with applications to dynamic Bayesian mediation analysis, and frequentist inference, particularly on asymptotic theory for pseudolikelihood and composite likelihood based inference.
Adama Ibrahim
Novartis and DIA, Basel, Switzerland
Passionately raising awareness of technology enabled clinical trials with patients at the CORE.
A UK top 100 influential tech leader passionate about diversity and inclusion practices. Innovation award winning pharma industry advisory consultant, founder, operational strategy expert, blockchain advocate, technology enabled clinical trials and patient engagement thought leader with over 20 years in the NHS on commission by the DOH and in Industry (Hoffman La-Roche, Amgen, ALMAC, ICON, Biogen and Novartis). As a part of R&D transformation led the strategy and implementation of hybrid decentralized trials into the clinical development operating model at Biogen. Part of the DIA Patient Engagement Voluntary Community Leadership team. Driver for change through identifying unmet customer needs and opportunities, digital strategies, implementation and expansion of disruptive digital platform technologies across drug development and commercial lifecycles. Experience across various therapeutic areas and phases of trials in drug development including leading all phases of global clinical trials, developing electrophysiological clinical endpoints, creation and execution of successful strategies for research protocols and CRO oversight, patient and site feasibility, expertise in technologies such as eCOA, eConsent, telemedicine and IRT, creation of optimal drug packaging and administration concepts, mapping the patient journey, planning and executing effective global site and patient engagement campaigns using direct to patient methods, leading and coaching remote and complex global teams.
Elena Izmailova
Koneksa Health, Boston, MA, USA
Dr. Elena Izmailova is a clinical scientist with a unique background bridging technology innovation, scientific strategy, and business management. Her main interests lie in biomarker discovery, development, and utilization in the context of clinical trials.
Elena is currently Chief Scientific Officer of Koneksa Health, an innovative technology company that accelerates development of new medicines by leveraging wearable technologies to collect real world data, enabling the biopharmaceutical industry to execute more efficient and successful clinical trials. Prior to her appointment with Koneksa Health, Elena led the wearable device clinical innovation group at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where she created a comprehensive digital roadmap for technology-enabled clinical development.
Elena joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2003. At Millennium Pharmaceuticals she led cross-functional teams to develop and deploy clinical biomarker strategies, and directed the bio-analysis function responsible for biomarker assay development, validation and implementation across multiple therapeutic areas and in global clinical trials. She additionally established fruitful collaborations with investigators at several major teaching hospitals, leading to discovery and characterization novel disease biomarkers, and resulting in multiple publications and conference presentations.
Elena holds PhD in Biology. She completed postdoctoral training at Massey Cancer Center/MCV and at Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She has also held a visiting scientist position at the Whitehead Institute of MIT.
Ritu Kapur
Verily Life Sciences, South San Francisco, CA, USA
Dr. Kapur is the Head of Digital Biomarkers at Verily Life Sciences, a company focused on improving healthcare by applying scientific and technological advances to significant problems in healthcare. She serves as a cross-functional lead across teams of hardware, software, clinical and data scientists to develop and implement wearable and passive sensing technologies to help better diagnose, monitor, and intervene in disease.
Prior to joining Verily, Dr. Kapur was a Senior Clinical Research Scientist at NeuroPace, and part of the team that successfully completed a PMA for the world’s first brain-responsive neurostimulator for the treatment of epilepsy. Dr. Kapur received a Doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, where she specialized in signal processing and awake behaving electrophysiology to study the brain systems underlying reward and learning. She graduated cum laude from Stanford University (Human Biology).
Sean Khozin
ASCO’s CancerLinQ, Alexandria, VA, USA
Dr. Khozin is the Chief Executive Officer of CancerLinQ, LLC, and Executive Vice President of ASCO. He has more than a decade of leadership experience in health technology, regulation, clinical research, and data science, including the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in biomedical research, therapeutic development, and care delivery.
Dr. Khozin was previously the Global Head of Data Strategy and Data Science Innovation at Janssen R&D of Johnson & Johnson, managing a worldwide multidisciplinary team charged with the design and implementation of pioneering data science solutions to support the development of innovative medicines. Prior to this, he led the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence’s bioinformatics, regulatory science, and clinical trial innovation efforts. He was also the founding Executive Director of Information Exchange and Data Transformation (INFORMED), the FDA’s first data science and technology incubator that played a pivotal role in the agency’s technology modernization efforts and guiding the use of novel data science solutions in drug discovery and clinical development.
Before his tenure in federal government, Dr. Khozin was the cofounder of Hello Health, a technology company focused on developing integrated telemedicine, point-of-care data visualization, and advanced analytical systems for optimizing patient care and clinical research. The company’s core technology offerings were first operationalized in a multidisciplinary network of clinics called SKMD, which he founded and where he served as Chief Medical Officer.
Dr. Khozin received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, his Master of Public Health degree from George Washington University, and his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Following residency training in internal medicine, Dr. Khozin completed fellowship training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is a board-certified oncologist.
David J. Mitten
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Larsson Omberg
Sage Bionetworks, Seattle, WA, USA
As the Director of Systems Biology, Larsson Omberg oversees a research agenda that focuses both on genomics and participant centered research where data is being collected using remote sensors and mobile phones. The group focuses heavily on using open and team based science to get a large number of external partners to collaborate on data intensive problems. Dr. Omberg has a background in computational biology and has been developing computational methods for genomics analysis and disease modeling. Dr Omberg obtained a MSc in Engineering Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden and a PhD. from the University of Texas at Austin in Physics before performing a postdoctoral fellowship in Computational Biology and Biostatistics at Cornell University.
Michael Ong
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Michael K. Ong, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California, and a staff physician at the Greater Los Angeles VA Health Care System where he is the research leader for its section of hospital medicine. His research interests focus on improving the delivery of appropriate and efficient health care by general internal medicine physicians. His research has applied this focus in several areas of general medicine, including health system-based care, mental health, and tobacco control. Dr. Ong is the Director for UCLA Connected Health, which facilitates all telemedicine, telehealth, and mHealth activities for the UCLA Health System.
Sarah Ostadabbas
Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Sarah Ostadabbas is an assistant professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Northeastern University (NEU). Sarah joined NEU from Georgia Tech, where she was a post-doctoral researcher following completion of her PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2014. At NEU, Sarah has recently formed the Augmented Cognition Laboratory (ACLab) with the goal of enhancing human information-processing capabilities through the design of adaptive interfaces via physical, physiological, and cognitive state estimation. These interfaces are based on rigorous models adaptively parameterized using machine learning and computer vision algorithms. Sarah has over five years of experience developing human-machine interaction technologies successfully bridging artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligent amplification (IA) fields. With the support of an NSF SBIR grant in 2013, as the PI, she was involved in the commercialization of a decision-support software/interface to prevent pressure ulcers in bed-bound patients by suggesting a resource-efficient posture changing schedule. While being based on a theoretical/analytical framework, at the same time, her solutions aim to address the required system integration challenges presented in the human-centric designs. Professor Ostadabbas is the co-author of more than 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles, and is an inventor on two US patent applications. She is the co-organizer of the Multimodal Data Fusion (MMDF2018) workshop, an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, and has been serving in several signal processing and machine learning conferences as a technical chair or session chair. Professor Ostadabbas is a member of IEEE, IEEE Women in Engineering, IEEE Signal Processing Society, IEEE EMBS, IEEE Young Professionals, and ACM SIGCHI.
Spyros Papapetropoulos
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Spyros is a recognized researcher, an experienced biopharmaceutical and healthcare executive and a digital health pioneer. Spyros has held positions of increasing responsibility in biopharma, has filed multiple INDs and has overseen a wide spectrum of clinical development programs in various therapeutic areas leading to successful regulatory filings and new product launches. He has been a founding member and advisor to multiple digital health companies and has led efforts in developing and validating novel technology-based tools and solutions. Spyros is a board-certified Neurologist and holds appointments as Consultant with Massachusetts General Hospital and Voluntary Professor of Neurology with the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. He has authored impactful peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, presented and chaired meetings since 1998. Spyros is currently co-chairing the International Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Society’s (IPMDS) Taskforce on Technology and is a member of various US government and non-profit committees on healthcare and biomedical research innovation.
Ralf Reilmann
George-Huntington-Institute, Münster, Germany
Jane Rhodes
Forma Therapeutics, Watertown, MA, USA
Jane Rhodes is Executive Director of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Forma Therapeutics. Prior to this she was Senior Director of New Initiatives for the Value Based Medicine team at Biogen, leading a number of initiatives that employed digital solutions to help transform multiple sclerosis patient care. Dr Rhodes currently serves as an advisor to Qr8 Heath a software development company creating neurological assessment tools for patients.
Dr Rhodes began her scientific career in the field of neurology drug discovery research, and worked on novel therapies for stroke, MS, ALS, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular interest in the neuro-inflammatory components of these diseases. In this capacity, she published numerous peers reviewed papers and is named as an inventor on ten patents. After completing her MBA, Dr Rhodes led cross-functional teams working on products in all phases of drug development thorough commercialization and life cycle management.
Dr Rhodes earned her undergraduate Joint Honors degree in Pharmacology and Physiology from the University of Manchester, UK, and her PhD in Neurophysiology, also from the University of Manchester, UK. Dr Rhodes also holds a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College F.W. Olin School of Business, in Wellesley MA.
Sara Riggare
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Having experienced the first symptoms of Parkinson’s disease at age 13, Sara Riggare now, 30+ years later, utilizes her engineering training to conduct research that is truly patient-centered. She is one of the most influential self-trackers in the global Quantified Self movement and is also a member of the patient panel of the British Medical Journal.
Carlos Rodarte
Volar Health, Cambridge, MA, USA
Carlos Rodarte is the Founder & Managing Director of Volar Health, LLC — a operations-focused digital health consultancy that helps innovative health companies refine their product strategy and rapidly commercialize their solutions. Areas of expertise include digital biomarkers, digital therapeutics, consumer and clinical wearables, next-generation biosensors, and -omics technologies.
Previously, Carlos was co-founder & CEO of HealthRhythms, a AI-driven digital health startup utilizing smartphone sensors including light sensing, voice analysis and speech rate detection, and physical mobility patterns to better understand human behavior and mood anomalies. Beforehand, at PatientsLikeMe, the leading peer-to-peer research platform, he oversaw strategic partnerships with pharma and biotech, and developed the company’s wearables and biosensors capabilities. Importantly, he helped create a virtual research approach to help validate consumer wearables for research purposes.
Carlos is an active startup mentor, member of several advisory boards, and recognized speaker on health innovation, having spoken at notable venues such as Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit and more popular outlets such as Health 2.0. In 2015, Carlos was named a "40 under 40 Healthcare Innovator" by MedTech Boston and in 2016 a “Top 100 Digital Health Influencer” by Onalytica.
Jorge Rodriguez
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
Jorge A. Rodriguez is a hospitalist and Clinical Informatics fellow in the Division of Clinical Informatics at BIDMC whose research focuses on achieving digital health equity. His passion lies in the meaningful intersection of medicine, social justice, and technology. Jorge has presented his work revealing a new digital divide for limited English proficiency patients at local, regional, and national conferences. He was recently awarded the inaugural BIDMC UiM Fellow and Jr. Faculty Career Development Research Award. He continues to foster alliances with community stakeholders to use technology as a transformative tool for empowering underserved patients in their care.
For his undergraduate training, Jorge attended Brown University, where he majored in biochemistry. He also took his first computer science class at Brown, exposing him to the potential impact of technology. Jorge completed his medical training at Tufts University School of Medicine, where he participated in research exploring the human computer interaction. He recently finished residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, which provided critical insights into the clinical and social barriers many patients face in obtaining quality healthcare. His experiences as a resident also facilitated his keen understanding of how those barriers can be overcome with novel solutions.
Jorge was born in Cartagena, Colombia and immigrated to the US with his parents. He grew up in Queens, New York.
Amy Sheon
Public Health Innovators, LLC, Rocky River, OH, USA
Amy Sheon has, since 2011, served as the Founding Executive Director of the Urban Health Initiative at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. With a PhD in Health Management and Policy from Johns Hopkins University, her career-long focus has been on using multiple data sources to address health disparities. Prior work experience includes collection of Demographic and Health Surveys in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean; HIV vaccine and prevention trials at the National Institutes of Health, initiating large multicenter programs in clinical research and ethical issues in genetics at the University of Michigan, and co-Directing the Childhood Obesity Prevention Mission Project at the non-profit Altarum Institute. She founded and operates HealthDataMatters.org with hyperlocal data on health and determinants of health. Through Public Health Innovators, LLC, Sheon helps clients develop and use technology to address population health, community health, and wellness.
Ida Sim
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Ida Sim, MD, PhD is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and Co-Director of Biomedical Informatics at UCSF's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on computational methods for data sharing for mobile health and clinical research. She is Co-Founder of Open mHealth, a non-profit organization building open APIs and tools for integrating mobile health data.
She is also Co-Founder of Vivli, a non-profit building a global data sharing platform for participant-level clinical research data. Dr. Sim has served on multiple national advisory committees on health information infrastructure for clinical care and research. She is a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She is also a practicing primary care physician.
Komathi Stem
monARC Bionetworks, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Komathi is the Founder and CEO of monARC Bionetworks. As an entrepreneurial systems thinker, she is focused on sparking an ecosystem change that accelerates discovery through greater collaboration across clinical care and clinical research. She is currently leveraging digital technologies to empower patients and enable greater collaboration to exponentially transform clinical trials to be faster, more cost efficient and accessible to more patients. With over 25 years of biopharma experience from Genentech, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly, she has built and led high impact field and global corporate teams with up to 500 employees across multiple headquarter sites and functions (commercial, clinical operations, regulatory and innovation). As a senior executive she has driven numerous large scale clinical trial transformation to deliver patient centric solutions. Komathi received her MS in Biomedical Engineering from University of Virginia and her BA in Mathematics from St. Olaf College.
Gabriel Vargas
CuraSen, San Mateo, CA, USA
Gabriel obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley where he majored in anthropology & genetics. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of California at Irvine and went on to complete a research track residency in Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). After both a clinical and research fellowship he was appointed an assistant professor in the Psychiatry Department at UCSF where he spent 3 years leading a research group.
After leaving academia in 2006 he spent five years at Roche the last 3 in Basel, Switzerland as head of the Neuroscience Biomarker Group where he worked on biomarkers including digital approaches. He joined Amgen in 2011 and leads a group of physician-scientists in Neuroscience and heads the Digital Health activities in Medical Sciences. He co-leads the Digital Innovation lab and has conducted several digital health studies to test wearable sensors and devices and patient engagement technologies.
Lorcan Walsh
Novartis, Dublin, Ireland
Lorcan Walsh is a Director with the Data Science and AI team and the ad interim Digital Endpoint Lead with the Global Drug Development function at Novartis. This work focuses on bringing novel digital health solutions to patients and their clinicians from both a clinical trials and clinical practice perspective. Lorcan has a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering focusing on Sleep Monitoring Technologies from the National University of Ireland Maynooth. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue research at the Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Previously, Lorcan worked as a research engineer with the Digital Health group at Intel Labs and as a postdoctoral fellow focussing on home and community-based digital health interventions for older adults.
Katarzyna Wac
University of Geneva, Carouge, Switzerland
Katarzyna Wac, Ph.D. is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Geneva, Switzerland and Invited Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, also affiliated with Stanford University since 2013. Dr. Wac leads Quality of Life Technologies lab researching how mobile and emerging sensor-based technologies can be leveraged for an accurate, longitudinal personalized assessment of the individual’s behavior and life quality, as they unfold naturally over time and in context, and the improvement of the latter. She draws on new emerging models from computer science incorporating examination, diagnosis and treatment of daily life as an “organ” – much like a cardiologist examines heart. Her research appears in more than 140 to date peer-reviewed articles in computer science, human-computer interaction and health informatics. She is a PI/co-PI in several European, national and institutional projects. She contributes to the ITU European Regional Initiative for mHealth. She is also a Senior Member of ACM and of IEEE.
Sarah H. Ying
Shire, Lexington, MA, USA
Sarah H. Ying is a board-certified neurologist who specializes in vestibular and balance disorders, with a particular interest in modeling clinically relevant human biology to guide therapeutic approaches in clinical care. She received her undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. She stayed at Johns Hopkins for internal medicine internship and fellowship before heading to Washington University, St. Louis, for neurology residency. She then completed a combined research and clinical fellowship in neurotology and neuroimaging at UCLA before returning to Johns Hopkins Hospital for a combined research and clinical fellowship in neuroophthalmology. Now, she serves at Shire as a Global Clinical Development Lead in Neuroscience, Neurogenetic Products. Research interests include analysis of structure-function correlations in neurodegenerative disease, with a particular emphasis on quantitative approaches.
Lysimachos Zografos
Taka Apps, Edinburgh, UK
Dr. Zografos is a former Enterprise Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh with an academic background in neuroinformatics, complexity and systems biology. He is also the co-founder of Parkure Ltd and Taka Apps Ltd.
Parkure Ltd is an award-winning company that uses phenotypic drug discovery and computational biology to discover and develop new drugs for Parkinson’s disease. Taka Apps Ltd develops game-like digital therapeutics for movement disorders and stroke recovery. Taka Apps’ model is around highly personalised mobile applications, delivering tailored symptom management and providing a platform for the collection and analysis of digital biomarkers.
Dr. Zografos is driven by the potential social impact of research and is also involved in commercialisation and innovation consulting, mentorship and the development of socially impactful business models for life sciences and healthcare start-ups though the not-for-profit organisation EthosBio.