Anne Lindblad, PhD, joined The Emmes Corporation in 1982 as a Biostatistician and is currently the President and CEO. She has supported clinical research throughout her career, serving as Principal Investigator of projects spanning diverse disease areas, including oncology, dialysis, transplantation, ophthalmology, speech and hearing, dentistry, and neurology. She has co-authored numerous publications in each of these areas and has witnessed first-hand the challenges in conducting sound research. From this experience, she has contributed to the literature in such fields as patient-reported outcome development, central monitoring as part of a risk-based approach, disease classification systems, and barriers to recruiting for clinical trials.

Dr. Lindblad has been an NIH reviewer on multiple project applications for NEI, NICHD, NIDCR, NIDDK, NINDS, and NCCAM and has served as a member or chair of several Data and Safety Monitoring Committees for NEI, NIAAA, NIDDK, and NINDS and Industry. She was a member of an Advisory Committee charged with drafting policy to shape the appropriate planning and conduct of intramural studies at NIH. She was elected to the Board of Directors for the Society for Clinical Trials (2003-2006) and served as Program Chair (2002), as an Officer (2006-2014), and as President (2012-2013). Dr. Lindblad was selected to serve on NIH’s National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council from 2004 through 2008. She has taught courses in best practices in clinical trial design and conduct for ophthalmologists, neurologists, and immunologists.

Merom Klein, PhD has 20+ years of experience advising innovation leaders how to build team and enterprise cultures that get innovation initiatives funded, get traction and accelerate career growth – with leadership practices that build inventive thinking in diverse cross-functional and cross-enterprise alliance teams and that reduce the impact of risk-averse defensive thinking traps.

Dr Klein is a business psychologist who has built assessments, simulations and inventive thinking tools – so angel investors, VCs and corporate portfolio managers can assess and build the potential of entrepreneurs and corporate innovation leaders to rally support and optimize value-creation in Volatile Complex Uncertain Adverse (VUCA) conditions.

Dr Klein is a serial entrepreneur who is a Principal with Courage Growth Partners, a human capital consultancy that plays an advisory and mentoring role with angel investment groups like Keiretsu Forum Mid Atlantic and iAngels, VCs like The Group, a Canadian investment fund that distinguishes itself by developing the leadership capabilities of their portfolio companies to accelerate growth, innovation accelerators like LifeArc (MRC-T) and ITI and corporate innovation portfolios at VWR, Johnson & Johnson, Solvay/Abbott, GSK, Third Rock companies, Sanofi, Merck, and Pacira. Dr Klein earned his PhD in Business Psychology at Temple University and has authored several books on Courage and Innovation Leadership.

Rachel King is co-founder and CEO of GlycoMimetics, Inc. (GMI).   Before founding GMI, she was an Executive in Residence at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the nation’s leading venture capital firms. Mrs. King came to NEA after serving as a Senior Vice President of Novartis Corporation. Before joining Novartis, Mrs. King spent ten years with Genetic Therapy, Inc. through the company’s early stage, initial public offering, and eventual sale to Novartis. After the sale to Novartis, she was named CEO and ran the company as a wholly owned subsidiary of Novartis. Mrs. King also worked previously at ALZA Corporation in Palo Alto, California, and at Bain and Company in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her B.A degree from Dartmouth College and her MBA from Harvard Business School. Mrs. King is the past Chair of the Emerging Companies Governing Board and of the full Board of the Biotechnology Innovation Association (“BIO”) and continues to serve on BIO’s Executive Committee. She also served as Chair of the Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board under Governor Martin O’Malley, and now serves on the board of directors of Warp Drive Bio, a Third Rock Ventures-funded biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also of the University of Maryland BioPark, Baltimore, Maryland.

Pete is a Managing Director of Inova Strategic Investments and the Inova Personalized Health Accelerator. He is responsible for leading Inova’s innovation investing and development for companies that are transforming Inova and global health services.

Pete has been a corporate officer for publicly traded high technology companies, founder of a venture funded startup company and CEO of a non-profit innovation investment and consulting company. Prior to joining Inova Strategic Investment, Pete served as the CEO of the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) where he created CIT’s seed stage venture funds, a portfolio of three funds containing over 135 companies, CIT’s research commercialization fund, a portfolio of 90 research investments and MACH37, the first cyber security accelerator.

Prior to CIT, he was Senior Vice President of ArcSight during company formation and product development. In 2008, ArcSight completed a successful initial public offering and was sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.5 billion. Prior to ArcSight, Pete was COO of Condor Technology Solutions (CNDR), a web and e-business solutions provider acquired by CACI. Pete began his career at Electronic Data Systems (EDS), where he worked for 20 years. His last position at EDS was Vice President and General Manager, responsible for large-scale integration, software development, and outsourcing services for government clients. Pete has 36 years of experience in the technology industry with experience in all aspects of business operations, including market assessment, strategic planning, product development, sales, merger and acquisition, and operational delivery.

Mr. Jobse is a graduate of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Praduman Jain is the principle investigator (PI) of the Participant Technology Systems Center (PTSC), Precision Medicine Initiative (AllofUs Research Program), at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a $85 Million grant to build a platform for bio-informatics research and health data insights for 10 Million consumers across the U.S. in their health journey. Mr. Jain is also the Chair of security board of the Committee on Access, Privacy & Security (CAPS) of NIH AllofUs program.

Mr. Jain is also the Founder and CEO of Vibrent Health, an organization providing consumer-centered Learning Health System (LHS) for precision medicine and digital therapeutics. This technology platform for personal and population health management enables applications in clinical research and healthcare delivery. Prior to founding Vibrent, Mr. Jain held various senior leadership roles at Sprint, Nextel, AOL, Time Warner and VTech and launched emerging products and services with revenues of $2+ Billion. Mr. Jain holds several patents and M.S., B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering. Mr. Jain is also leading a public private partnership around “Bringing Data to Life – Consumer Directed Precision Health”.

Dr. Jim Jackson is a senior vice president and the chief scientific officer for Emergent Biosolutions, a position he has held since 2008. From 2011 through 2015 Dr. Jackson also served as Head, Vaccines and Therapeutics Development Group located in Seattle as part of Emergent’s Biosciences Division. Since coming to Emergent in 2003, Dr. Jackson has held several management positions including: vice president, technical support and vice president commercial products development. Joining Emergent through the acquisition of Antex Biologics Inc., a biotechnology company focused on vaccine and anti-bacterial drug discovery and development, Dr. Jackson served as president, Antex Biologics Research and Development Corporation from 2004 to 2006. While at Antex Dr. Jackson led the company’s R&D programs in enteric, respiratory and STD vaccine development as vice president research and development; and as the senior director, molecular biology.

Prior to Antex Dr. Jackson was with W.R. Grace & Co at its corporate research center in Columbia, MD from 1987 to 1994, working on a variety of projects including novel enzyme engineering and expression for the production of specialty chemicals, animal therapeutics/vaccines for the agricultural market and nucleic acid-based diagnostic technologies. As a post-doctoral fellow at Exxon’s Research & Engineering Center, Dr. Jackson’s research was directed toward understanding the genetics and biochemistry of energy harvesting and transduction in photosynthetic bacteria.

Over his 30 year career in science and product development, Dr. Jackson has published numerous research papers and holds 37 patents. Dr. Jackson received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Georgia and a B.A. in Microbiology/Biochemistry from the University of Tennessee.

Andrew Ishizuka, Ph.D., is co-founder and CSO of Avidea Technologies. Avidea is a Maryland-based biotech focused on vaccines and immunotherapies. Avidea combines expertise in synthetic chemistry and immunology to systematically enhance the delivery and activity of immune-active drugs through its proprietary “Nanoscaffold” delivery platform. Andrew oversees the pre-clinical proof-of-concept animal testing and translational studies for Avidea’s lead program: a personalized cancer vaccine comprising patient-specific neoantigens delivered in self-assembling nanoparticles. Prior to joining Avidea, Andrew was a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Seder at the Vaccine Research Center, NIH. Andrew has a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Washington, attended medical school at Duke University, and has a Ph.D. from Oxford University through the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge program.

Over the past 20 years Tami has helped technology companies grow in the Mid-Atlantic region and nationwide from start up to public companies and beyond. Tami has been involved with the successful exits of over 150 companies and has represented technology companies, investors, SBICs and underwriters such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  Tami spent 13 years as a partner in distinguished law firms such as DLA Piper and Cooley and most recently was with a $75 Million technology government contractor where she served for 5 years as the General Counsel and most recently President. Tami has served on several organizational boards including most recently the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland and as counsel in her early career for the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association. In addition, she has served the tech community by participating as a speaker, committee chair or legal advisor for both the DC Tech Council and Tech Counsel of Maryland. Tami has been named one of America’s Top Lawyers and has received the Young Gun Award from the Washington Business Journal. Tami is active in the arts community in Annapolis both as an advisor and performer where she performs in bands and theater with her husband.

David Hilbert has spent the past 20+ years combining his disciplined approach to science with the business of effective drug development and corporate management.   He is currently President and CEO at Arcellx, Inc., a company focused on the development of regulated immune cell therapies for treatment of human disease. From 2009-2014, David was the CSO at Zyngenia, Inc., and led the company’s development of multi-specific antibody-based therapeutics.  From 2006 to 2009, David consulted with leading scientists, executives, and venture firms in assisting startup biotech companies with the many strategic and operational challenges associated with early stage drug development. In 2004, he served as Vice President of Research at Cellective Therapeutics, a start-up antibody company acquired by MedImmune in October 2005.  David began his biotech career in 1996 at Human Genome Sciences (HGS) where he spent 8 years guiding the preclinical development of antibodies and genomics-based therapeutics.