Virtual Conference

Dr. Edward “Ted” Graves is an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and, by courtesy, Radiology at Stanford University. He trained in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco before performing a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. Joining Stanford in 2003, he has built a research program focused on the development and application of novel molecular imaging methods to study tumor and normal tissue radiation biology and to improve clinical radiotherapy. He works within the Divisions of Medical Physics and Radiation and Cancer Biology and also collaborates extensively with the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford. Dr. Graves also serves as the first program director of the newly created Biomedical Physics PhD program sponsored by the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Radiology. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Kanyi Pu is an Associate Professor in School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB) and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University. He is a Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigator, a highly cited researcher listed by Clarivate Analytics, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and the associate editor for ACS Applied Polymer Materials and Biomaterials Research. He did his MS (2007) at Fudan University in China, and his PhD (2011) at National University of Singapore in Singapore. He moved to Stanford University School of Medicine for his postdoctoral study in 2011. With a h-index of 98, he has won several awards for his creative work, including 2020 Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award, 2019 distinguished lectureship award from the Chemistry Society of Japan, 2018 Wiley award for contribution in bioscience, 2017 young innovator award in nanobiotechnology by Nano Research, and young investigator travel award by WMIC. He is the member of board of directors of Chinese American Society of Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology (CASNN). He also sits on the editorial advisory board of many top journals such as Advanced Functional Materials, Biomaterials, Small, Bioconjugate Chemistry, ACS Applied Bio Materials, Journal of Nanobiotechnology, ChemNanoMat, Translational Oncology, View and Analysis & Sensing etc.

Shonit Punwani is Professor of Magnetic Resonance and Cancer Imaging and Consultant Radiologist at UCLH. His medical training, undertaken at UCL, was supplemented with a PhD in MRI Physics. He completed post-graduate training in Medicine at Northwick Park, before training as a radiologist at UCLH. He was awarded a Walport NIHR Clinical Lectureship, before being appointed as a Senior Lecturer at UCL and Consultant Radiologist at UCLH. 

He leads the 3T MRI research facilities that provide the infrastructure for imaging trials at UCLH. He is the research and development lead for radiology at UCLH, responsible for the provision of imaging services for clinical trials at UCLH. He is chair of the National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (a multi-institutional collaboration dedicated to the support of clinical trials involving new/novel imaging methods). 

He has a specialist clinical and research interest in the application and development of local and whole-body quantitative and functional MRI methods for imaging prostate cancer.

Heike Elisabeth Daldrup-Link, MD, PhD, is a tenured Professor of Radiology, Director of the Pediatric Molecular Imaging Program, Co-Director of the Cancer Imaging Program and Associate Chair for Diversity in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. Dr. Daldrup-Link is a Pediatric Radiologist with sub-specialization in cancer imaging. Her research program focuses on the development of novel imaging techniques for the detection and treatment monitoring of cancer in children. As a physician-scientist, she uncovered basic science principles in a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded basic science lab and brought the most promising medical imaging  innovations to her patients' bedside. Dr. Daldrup-Link has published over 170 peer-reviewed research articles, 20 book chapters and editorials, six textbooks, and six patents, pending or granted. Dr. Daldrup-Link is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI, honor society for clinician-scientists), fellow-elect of the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS) and fellow-elect of the the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Dr. Daldrup-Link significantly contributed to the diversification of the biomedical sciences through her tireless advocacy, mentorship and support of women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM field. She is widely known for her powerful reflections and opinion pieces on women in STEM (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-017-1124-4, Altmetric 90^th percentile of 278,392 tracked articles of similar age in all journals). Among her many activities as Associate Chair for Diversity in the Radiology Department at Stanford University, she provides training on cultural competence, she mentors and sponsors racial/ethic minorities and she identifies diverse candidates for career opportunities. She publishes a diversity newsletter, which educates interested readers on important topics related to diversity in the field of biomedical imaging (http://raddiversity.stanford.edu/news/). In 2020, she was awarded the Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award from the Stanford Biosciences Program. On a national level, Dr. Daldrup-Link is member of the diversity initiatives of the Society for Pediatric Radiology and the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS), she advances diversity in STEM through her LinkedIn discussion platform with more than 2,000 members and she organizes an annual conference on diversity in the biomedical sciences (https://www.wmislive.org/) with more than 1,000 participants from 30 Universities. She significantly influenced the career of her many underrepresented minority mentees at Stanford and many other Universities around the world, who are leading scientists, clinicians and entrepreneurs in North America and around the world today.

Jeremy Dahl, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University, School of Medicine.  His research focuses on diagnostic ultrasound technology, exploring novel beamforming technology to enhance imaging.  Recently, he has been developing a novel ultrasound molecular imaging that enables high-sensitivity, high-specificity imaging of breast and kidney cancer through the use of B7-H3 targeted microbubbles combined with real-time non-destructive contrast-enhanced imaging techniques.

Sarah Bohndiek completed her PhD in Radiation Physics at University College London in 2008 and then worked in both the UK (at Cambridge) and the USA (at Stanford) as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular imaging. Sarah joined the University of Cambridge in 2013, where she is jointly appointed as a Professor of Biomedical Physics in the Department of Physics and at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

The broad mission of Sarah’s interdisciplinary team, the VISIONLab, is to advance our understanding of tumour evolution using next-generation imaging sciences. They are particularly interested in the study of blood vessel formation in early cancer. The VISIONLab are also active in translating their findings into first-in-human clinical trials. Sarah was recently awarded the CRUK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize and SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in recognition of her interdisciplinary research innovation.

In addition to her research programme, Sarah also takes an active role in teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists. She has acted as an ambassador for public engagement and interdisciplinary research training throughout her career and acknowledging her generosity in this regard, Sarah has received the MSCA Award for Nurturing Research Talent and been invited to deliver numerous talks on career development at both national and international workshops.

A breast cancer survivor since 2000, Vivian Lee applies her personal experience as a patient and professional experience as a life science industry consultant to her cancer advocacy work. Vivian collaborates with research investigators at academic institutions across the US and abroad to provide patient perspective in shaping grant applications to, and research projects funded by, US Department of Defense (DoD), California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP), Susan G. Komen, Sidney Kimmel Foundation, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)’s Conquer Cancer Foundation and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She is an Advocate Advisor to the University of California’s Athena Breast Health Network, providing patient input for its WISDOM Study on personalized breast cancer screening, for which Athena has been awarded a $14 million Pragmatic Clinical Studies grant by PCORI. Vivian has served as a Consumer Reviewer for the DoD Breast Cancer Research Program, and as a Peer Reviewer for Komen grants on the national and local levels. She has served as an Advocate Observer on the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) Community Impact Review Panel. Vivian serves on the Volunteer Leadership Council of the American Cancer Society’s California Chinese Unit and is a member of Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS), mentoring newly diagnosed patients. Vivian is a member of Komen’s Advocates In Science program and a graduate Research Advocacy Network’s Focus on Science scholar program, as well as National Breast Cancer Coalition’s Project LEAD Institute, where she subsequently served as mentor, and has participated in its Advanced LEAD programs and Artemis Project.

Susie Brain’s involvement as a patient advocate is derived from her personal experience as a breast cancer patient. She has worked with both local and national advocacy organizations and serves on several research committees including risk-reduction/prevention, quality of life, and survivorship committees. She is an experienced and well-trained research advocate and a graduate of multiple cancer science and advocacy training programs, including the AACR Scientist↔Survivor Program and Research Advocate Network’s Advocate Institute. In addition, she has completed the National Breast Cancer Coalition cancer science training programs: “Project LEAD Institute”, “Clinical Trials Project LEAD” and “Quality Care Project LEAD”. She has served as a Stakeholder Reviewer for the American Cancer Society, a Consumer Grant Reviewer for the DOD Breast Cancer Research Program, and as a Komen “Advocate in Science” grant reviewer.

Susie has been a member of the UCSF Breast Science Advocacy Core since 2009 and is active on the Quality of Life/PRO Working Group for the I-SPY 2 Clinical Trial. She is a Patient Advisor for BreastCancerTrials.org and also serves on the Consumer and Community Advisory Committee of the ATHENA Breast Health Network and The WISDOM Study.

At the Stanford Cancer Institute Susie is a patient advocate on the Scientific Review Committee and the Community Advisory Board. She has participated in breast cancer-related observational trials and strongly supports clinical trials that represent the diverse communities of the United States. She provides direct support to breast cancer patients as a Helpline Volunteer with Living Beyond Breast Cancer and as a volunteer with the UCSF Cancer Center’s Peer Support Program. These experiences allow her to advocate for improved patient care and outcomes and to share important patient perspectives and quality of life concerns with scientists.

Susie received a B.Sc. in Biology and a post-graduate teaching credential from the University of Wales, Swansea, Great Britain.

As an active and highly trained volunteer research, patient and policy breast cancer advocate, Diane Heditsian combines her experience as a four time breast cancer survivor, her interest in science, and her expertise as a communications professional with her passion to improve healthcare, especially for those facing breast cancer.

She holds leadership roles in both local and national advocacy organizations and is a sought after speaker on healthcare topics for audiences ranging from physicians and researchers to advocates and patients to legislators, regulators and payers.

Since 2009 Diane has served as a research advocate at the University of California, San Francisco, Breast Oncology Program and at Stanford Health, helping researchers move advances in breast cancer imaging and diagnosis, treatment and prevention to the clinic. She currently serves as a research advocate for two nationwide clinical trials.

For twenty years she has served as a peer counselor for patients at all parts of their cancer experience, helping to support, educate and empower women across the country to advocate for their own healthcare.  

Diane serves on the National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship’s Cancer Policy and Advocacy Steering Committee, helping to guide the organization’s efforts to advance the survivor agenda.  She is secretary of the Board of Directors of the Armenian Healthcare Association of the Bay Area.

Professionally, Diane is founder and CEO of deClarity, a 40-year global communications consultancy serving the life sciences.

Bella Starling is Director of Vocal www.vocal.org which creates opportunities for people to find out about, and have a voice in, health research in Greater Manchester. She is a Clinical Chair in Inclusive Research for the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre; the Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement lead for the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre and Clinical Research Facilities, and a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow. Her career has spanned neuroscience, stem cell and genetic research, science writing, biomedical ethics, public engagement, patient involvement and science policy, both as a practitioner and strategic adviser. She is passionate about inclusion in, and democratisation of, research; her Fellowship explored how public engagement with research can act as a catalyst for social and scientific change.

As a Patient Advocate of Inspire2Live Peter Kapitein connects patients, researchers and clinicians to further research, treatments and care; in the Netherlands as well as international. He organizes congresses, lobbies the matrix of public authorities, health care organizations, insurance companies and health research institutes. Peter also gives lectures and talks to help patients and society to fight cancer where possible. He writes blogs, articles and books that contribute to these topics. Peter has studied the Medical Industrial Complex, the complex in which the stakeholders in healthcare work together in a way that does not necessarily benefit the patient. Health care is (without bad intention) distracted from its essence: the patient.

Peter is married to Marjolijn and has 2 sons: Milo and Jaron. He is one of the founders of Alpe d’HuZes, the foundation that is most famous for the annual cycling event on Mount Alpe d’Huez and that raised over 150 million euro for the fight against cancer. He works at the Central Bank of the Netherlands as a program manager and advisor for complex and politically difficult problems. His employer facilitates him in his job as a patient advocate. His job enables Peter to be genuinely independent and to work tirelessly for the interests of all patients globally. Peter was honoured with a doctorate in October 2012 at the Free University in Amsterdam for connecting patients, researchers and clinicians all over the world.

Website: www.peterkapitein.nl

Twitter: @milojaron

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/peterkapitein

Billy Boyle is an engineering graduate from the University of Cambridge. He is one of the original co-founders of Owlstone Inc, spun out of Cambridge in 2004 with the goal of developing the applications of field asymmetric ion mobility spectroscopy (FAIMS).

Billy started to focus on the medical applications of FAIMS technology after his wife, Kate, was diagnosed and later died of colon cancer as a result of a late diagnosis. He worked closely with clinical partners who integrated FAIMS technology across a broad spectrum of research studies.

Positive results helped to spin-out, and secure initial funding for, Owlstone Medical. With ongoing clinical and commercial success, Billy led this process and became the founding CEO upon the close of a $7M investment in March 2016. The mission of Owlstone Medical is to save 100,000 lives and $1.5B in healthcare costs. As of 2021, the company has secured over $150M of investment.

Owlstone Medical has developed Breath Biopsy with the goal of creating non-invasive breath tests to support early detection and precision medicine of diseases including cancer, asthma, COPD and liver disease. The company works with leading academic institutions and industry leaders such as Astra Zeneca, J&J and GSK.

Billy is also a judge for the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Pioneer award and a trustee of the Linacre Institute. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and an MBE in 2021.

Rebecca Fitzgerald MACantab. MD FMedSci EMBO is Professor of Cancer Prevention and Director of the Early Detection Institute at the University of Cambridge. She leads the Cambridge Early Detection Programme of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre which is part of the International Alliance in Early Detection (ACED) and practices medicine as Hon. Consultant in Gastroenterology and Cancer Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital. The focus of her own research group is to investigate the steps in malignant transformation in the oesophagus and stomach and to use this information to improve clinical early detection strategies. Her work to develop and implement the Cytosponge and related biomarker assays for detection of Barrett's oesophagus and associated dysplasia has been awarded a number of prizes including the Westminster Medal, the BMJ Gastro team of the year, an NHS Innovation prize, the CRUK Jane Wardle Early Detection Prize and the Don Listwin Early Detection Prize.  In 2013, she was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and in 2021 elected a Member of EMBO. Rebecca has contributed to evidence reviews and policy work around screening including for the Department of Health in the UK and recently for the European Commission. Rebecca is committed to teaching and is a Fellow of Medical Sciences at Trinity College Cambridge.

Dr. Wang is the Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering, Stanford University. He is a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and jointly a Professor of Electrical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Radiology (Stanford School of Medicine). He directs the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology and is a leading expert in biosensors, information storage and spintronics. His research and inventions span across a variety of areas including magnetic biochips, in vitro diagnostics, cancer biomarkers, magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic sensors, magnetoresistive random access memory, and magnetic integrated inductors. He has over 320 publications and holds 70 issued or pending patents in these and interdisciplinary areas. He was named an inaugural Fred Terman Fellow and was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),  a Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for his seminal contributions to magnetic materials and nanosensors. His team won the Grand Challenge Exploration Award from Gates Foundation (2010), the XCHALLENGE Distinguished Award (2014), and the Bold Epic Innovator Award from the XPRIZE Foundation (2017).

Dr. Wang cofounded five high-tech startups in Silicon Valley, including MagArray, Inc., Nvigen, Inc., and Flux Biosciences, Inc. Nvigen has produced high performance magnetic nanoparticle kits for extracting cell free DNA and rare cells from blood samples. In 2018 MagArray launched a first of its kind lung cancer early diagnostic assay based on protein cancer biomarkers and support vector machine (SVM), which is now covered by Medicare. In 2019, Flux Biosciences launched a human trial to offer at-home testing of fertility based on hormones and magneto-nanosensors. Through his participation in the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (as co-PI of the CCNE) and the Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP), he is actively engaged in the transformative research of healthcare and is developing emerging memories for energy efficient computing.

Dr. Wang obtained his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993, MS in Physics from Iowa State University in 1988, and BS in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1986.

Dr. Olivier Gevaert is an associate professor at Stanford University focusing on developing machine-learning methods for biomedical decision support from multi-scale data. He is an electrical engineer by training with additional training in artificial intelligence, and a PhD in bioinformatics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He continued his work as a postdoc in radiology at Stanford and then established his lab in the department of medicine in biomedical informatics. The Gevaert lab focuses on multi-scale biomedical data fusion primarily in oncology and neuroscience. The lab develops machine learning methods including Bayesian, kernel methods, regularized regression and deep learning to integrate molecular data or omics. The lab also investigates linking omics data with cellular and tissue data in the context of computational pathology, imaging genomics & radiogenomics.

Yipeng Hu is an associate professor with the UCL Department of Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering. His research is also affiliated with the Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC) and the Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional & Surgical Sciences (WEISS). He also holds a visiting fellowship in the Department of Engineering Science at University of Oxford. He previously received his PhD and MSc degrees from UCL (2013, 2007) and a BEng degree from Sichuan University (2005). His research area is computer assisted navigation, diagnosis and intervention, with a current interest in translating modern machine learning methods in medical image analysis and image-guided medical procedures.

Dr.  Ryan Spitler is the Deputy Director of the Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center (PHIND), Deputy Director of the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, and the Program Manager for the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED) at Stanford University. He completed his Post Doctorial Research Fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, conducting research in the field of Magnetogenetics for remote-controlled cellular reprogramming and developed smart MRI diagnostics tools for oncology. Additionally, Dr. Spitler has served as teaching faculty for the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign and completed executive training programs at Stanford school of business and Biodesign. He has developed a number of new approaches working across several scientific areas ranging from medical devices to gene therapies. Prior to his position at Stanford, Dr. Spitler received his Ph.D. in Cellular and Developmental Biology at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine. His research at the Beckman Laser Institute included developing and characterizing new nitric oxide-based drugs, as well as laser, and LED-based multimodal wound healing therapies. Dr. Spitler earned his B.S. in Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he worked in the areas of structural biology and biochemistry. Over the past two decades he has held a number of academic and industrial positions and has served as an investor, co-founder, board member and/or advisor for a number of Bay Area companies. Dr. Spitler is the recipient of the Top 25 Voices in Precision Medicine award from BIS research, Stanford Radiological Sciences Laboratory Innovation Challenge Award, the Stanford Cancer Imaging Fellowship Training Award, the Biophotas Research Fellowship, and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Imaging Achievement Award. He has numerous scientific articles and books across many different disciplines. 

Sadik Esener, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research (CEDAR) center and Wendt Family Endowed Chair at the Biomedical Engineering Department at OHSU. Prior to joining OHSU, Esener served in several leadership roles at the University of California, San Diego, in which he achieved results by bringing together scientists and technology across disciplines. He served as the director and principal investigator of the NanoTumor Center, a Nanotechnology Center of Excellence funded by the National Cancer Institute. He has also served as the director of the Center for Heterogeneously Integrated Photonics Systems (CHIPS) as well as the Opto-Electronic Stacked Processors (OESP) and the Fast Read-out Optical Data Storage Industrial Consortium, which were funded by DARPA. His research focus has involved projects in multiple scientific fields relevant to bioengineering, including electrical and optical engineering, nano-engineering and material sciences for biomedical applications.

Specifically, Professor Esener has been a pioneer in developing important capabilities to detect, manipulate and deliver biological components for both in vitro and in vivo applications. He has successfully applied forces generated by electrical, optical, and ultrasound means to detect, separate, sort, and position micron and nanoscale components including biological ones. His work has led to the demonstration of various types of biochips for in vitro diagnostics. He has successfully transferred these techniques developed in his laboratory to several successful start-ups including Nanogen (NGEN: Nasdaq) and Genoptix (GXDX:Nasdaq).

More recently he has developed various techniques to fabricate smart nanoscale delivery vehicles for in vivo applications. These vehicles can be activated on desired location by ultrasound to deliver their therapeutic payloads. They can be propelled at high speed like bullets; or they can be injected to disease areas to deplete locally nutrients that the disease needs to survive; or they can be made to adsorb toxins like a sponge while in circulation. These techniques have been successfully transferred to several start-ups. Most recently with collaborators he has demonstrated sensitive detection by ultrasound of ROS in deep tissue using surface modified echogenic particles, as well as delivery of payloads such as siRNA using silica cloaked virus. Since 2017, Prof. Esener has been hard at work establishing CEDAR as a major center of excellence with the mission to precisely detect and treat lethal cancers early.

 AbulKalam M. Shamsuddin, MD, PhD is a Founder and Vice-President for Research at Early Detection, Inc. (www.cancer.us) and President of IP-6 Research, Inc. (www.ip-6.net). He was a Professor of Pathology at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, till June 2020.

Prof Shamsuddin graduated from Dhaka Medical College, University of Dhaka in 1972. Following Internship in Massachusetts and Residency training in pathology in Maryland, he was certified by the American Board of Pathology in 1977. In 1980, he received Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland for his work on colon carcinogenesis. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland as an Instructor in 1977 and rose through the ranks of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor with tenure to become a full Professor in 1988.

He had invented a simple test for mass screening of cancers of the colon, breast, lungs, prostate, uterus and pancreas. He also performed pioneering experiments on the anti-cancer property of inositol and inositol hexaphosphate (IP₆) - natural constituents of cereals and legumes such as rice, corn, beans etc. to show the efficacy of IP₆ and inositol against different cancers in various experimental models. Prof Shamsuddin has written three books on the subject "IP₆: Nature's Revolutionary Cancer Fighter" (Kensington Publishing Corporation, New York, 1998); “IP₆ + Inositol: Nature’s Medicine for the Millennium” (Amazon.com, 2011); and “Inositol and It’s Phosphates: Basic Science to Practical Applications” (Bentham Science, Sharjah 2015). Aside from these Prof Shamsuddin has contributed numerous book-chapters and published over 200 scientific papers. He is a well sought-after lecturer nationally and internationally.

Marcel Gehrung is co-founder and CEO of Cyted, a company working on digital diagnostic infrastructure to enable the early detection of disease. Marcel holds a PhD in Machine Learning in Healthcare from the University of Cambridge. In 2020, he raised £8.7M for Cyted to develop pipelines of digital and molecular tests for risk stratification to streamline diagnostic and clinical workflows. Cyted is initially focused on the early detection of oesophageal cancer, where the combination of an identifiable at-risk population and excellent therapy options offers a unique opportunity to improve patient outcomes and relieve pressures on healthcare resources.

Dr. Kim Vanderlinden entered medicine after seeing his mother overcome a terminal Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis when he was a teenager. Then several years later, and only months after graduating as a Naturopathic physician (ND), his mother died of lung cancer. It is said that loss can lead to purpose, which it truly did for him, and ultimately led to him becoming one of the founders of Early Detection Inc. (EDI) and its CEO. Their technology can screen for several of our most deadly cancers. Outstanding accuracy, both in terms of sensitivity and specificity, has been demonstrated in more than 20 published clinical trials in 7 countries with more than 10,000 patients.

Dr. Vanderlinden also has degrees in Business and Chinese medicine. He practiced functional medicine for almost two decades in Vancouver BC.

He is also the founder of Hope Science (www.HopeScience.com), which is a supplement company with clinically proven products for pain (Active Again) and also IP6 (inositol hexakisphosphate), which is a vitamin-like product for general health. Dr. Vanderlinden is the author of a book on IP6 called "Too Good To Be True?

Jimmy Lin, MD, Ph.D., MHS was the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Oncology at Natera (NASDAQ: NTRA), where he lead the development of new diagnostic technologies for cancer. Dr. Lin is also a 2016 Senior TED Fellow and Founder & President of Rare Genomics Institute, the world's first platform to enable any community to leverage cutting- edge biotechnology to advance understanding of any rare disease. Previously, Dr. Lin led the ClinOmics program in the Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI). Before this, he led the computational analysis of the first-ever exome sequencing studies of cancer at Johns Hopkins and was a research instructor at Washington University in St. Louis. He has numerous publications in Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Genetics, and Nature Biotechnology, and has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, TIME, and the Huffington Post.

Johannes Reiter is an Assistant Professor at the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection at Stanford University. For the last year, he has also been leading Natera's Early Cancer Detection Bioinformatics team. His NCI and ACED funded laboratory has been focusing on the evolutionary dynamics of cancer to improve the detection and treatment of tumors. He is a trained computer scientist and obtained a PhD in Computational & Mathematical Biology from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

Vali Barsan, MD is an oncologist and bioengineer focused on the clinical development and implementation of novel diagnostics in early cancer detection and personalized medicine approaches. Dr. Barsan obtained his BS in Bioengineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and joined Illumina as a process development engineer to optimize next generation sequencing tools. He earned his MD at Baylor College of Medicine where he studied the biology of cancer metastasis through molecular techniques at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Barsan completed residency in Pediatrics at UC San Diego where he was a member of the weekly Molecular Tumor Board at Moores Cancer Center. He then completed fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at Stanford University School of Medicine where his research focus spanned biomarkers for Phase 1 CAR T cell therapy, molecular monitoring in leukemia therapy, and clinical CRISPR/Cas safety workflows. Dr. Barsan continues to develop and translate molecular technologies in oncology to implement personalized therapy at commercial scale and reveal mechanisms of effective cancer immunity. Since 2017 as a consultant to SoftBank, Dr. Barsan has led numerous life science investments in life science tools, molecular diagnostics, and next generation medicines including Umoja Biopharma, Neuron23, Arsenal Bio, Guardant, InterVenn, Synthego, Tessera Therapeutics, Vividion, Repertoire Immune Medicines, Lumicks, Leyden Labs, EQRx, and Pacific Biosciences / Omniome.

Dr. Parag Mallick is an Associate Professor at Stanford University. Originally trained as an engineer and biochemist, his research spans proteomics, computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology and nanotechnology. Dr. Mallick received his B.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in Chemistry & Biochemistry, where he worked with Dr. David Eisenberg. He completed his post-doctoral studies at The Institute for Systems Biology with Dr. Ruedi Aebersold. Dr. Mallick’s group has been pioneering systems-biology approaches towards understanding disease mechanisms, discovering biomarkers and enabling personalized medicine. Most recently, his group has been developing model-based and physics-based approaches to machine learning that enable learning over domains that span a wide range of time and length scales. Dr. Mallick has over 100 publications and holds patents in the fields of artificial intelligence, proteomics technology, biomarker development, and nanotechnology. Additionally, he is a co-founder of Nautilus Biotechnology and advisor to numerous biotechnology and diagnostics companies.

Jamie Blundell is a UKRI future leaders fellow at the University of Cambridge and a research group leader in the CRUK Early Cancer Detection Programme in Cambridge. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge before moving to Stanford for 5 years to undertake postdoctoral research with Daniel Fisher and Dmitri Petrov. His lab studies the somatic evolution that occurs in healthy tissues as we age and how this evolution is altered at the earliest stages of cancer. Jamie’s lab develops ultra-sensitive sequencing technologies and applies these to large cohorts of longitudinal blood samples collected before cancer diagnosis. Analyzing these data using quantitative principles from evolutionary theory, his lab aims to develop personalized “forecasts” of future cancer risk and identify those most in need of intervention. The lab also has an active interest in adaptive immune repertoire dynamics in cancer and other diseases.