Bethany Mancilla is Vice President of Business Development for Amgen. Since joining Amgen in April 2012, Ms. Mancilla has led the execution of a number of deals including the clinical immuno-oncology collaboration agreements with Merck for Imlygic and Blincyto, the Novartis collaboration in neuroscience for Alzheimer’s disease and migraine and the multi-product cardiovascular collaboration with Servier. In 2015, she was selected as a top woman at Amgen who has helped build the company’s history and is impacting the world of science, technology, and business.

Prior to joining Amgen, Ms. Mancilla served as the Vice President of Business Development and Alliance Management for Micromet from April 2010 to March 2012. During this time she was responsible for negotiating the multi-target BiTE® immune-oncology antibody collaboration with Amgen which led to the acquisition of Micromet by Amgen.

From February 2008 until March 2010, Bethany was the Vice President of Business Development and Licensing for PharmAthene a developer of biologics and vaccines for the biodefense and emerging infectious disease markets. Prior to joining PharmAthene, Bethany was the head of Business Development for Gene Logic. During her ten year span with the company she spear-headed several multi-million dollar partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Roche, Wyeth, Lilly, Organon, Solvay and Abbott.

Ms. Mancilla began her career as the Director of Business Development for BCM Technologies, the for-profit subsidiary of Baylor College of Medicine, where she was involved in the creation and financing of four start-up biotechnology companies. Ms. Mancilla received an M.B.A. from the University of Houston and a B.A. from the University of Colorado.

Geoffrey Lynn, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of Avidea Technologies, a Hopkins-based start-up that is developing immunotherapies for cancer treatment and infectious disease prevention based on an immunotherapeutic delivery (“Nanoscaffold”) platform. Over the last 12 months, Avidea has raised over $1.5M in financing, primarily through R&D partnerships with Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies. These partnerships are helping to propel Avidea’s development of different assets based on the Nanoscaffold platform, including Avidea’s lead asset—a personalized cancer vaccine (PCV). Avidea has demonstrated that the PCV is safe and effective in non-human primates and has successfully completed a pilot GMP manufacturing run. Based on this compelling data, Avidea is now raising Series A financing to advance the PCV to first-in-human testing. Prior to joining Avidea, Geoffrey was a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Seder at the Vaccine Research Center, NIH. Geoffrey has a B.S. in chemistry from Elon University, attended medical school at Johns Hopkins, and has a Ph.D. (“D.Phil.”) in Biomedical Engineering from Oxford University through the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge program.

Wallace Loh has served as President of the University of Maryland since 2010. Previously, he was Executive Vice President and Provost, The University of Iowa; Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Seattle University; Director, Executive Policy Office and chief policy adviser to Governor Gary Locke, State of Washington; Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculties, University of Colorado-Boulder; Dean, University of Washington Law School.

At Maryland, he is Professor of Public Policy. Previously, he was Professor of Law at Washington, Colorado-Boulder, and Iowa; Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell, Peking University (China), Emory, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, and Vanderbilt. His scholarship and teaching are in the areas of law and social change and in criminal justice reform.

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; board of directors, American Council of Education; advisory board, U.S. Comptroller General; former advisory board chair, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; “Influential Marylander” (Daily Record); “Power 100” (Washington Business Journal); “Immigrant Achievement Award” (American Immigration Council); former President, Association of American Law Schools; recipient of three honorary degrees.

Born in China, Loh moved with his family to Peru. After high school, he immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized citizen.

Douglas Liu is the Senior Vice President Global Operations for QIAGEN. In this capacity he heads Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Regulatory and Clinical Affairs at QIAGEN. He joined QIAGEN in 2005 as Vice President Global Operations. Mr. Liu has 30 of experience in the life sciences industry and previously worked at Bayer Healthcare, Chiron, Abbott Labs and Washington University. He has worked in the United States and Europe with leadership roles in R&D, Manufacturing, Strategic Planning and Program Management. Mr. Liu has an MBA from Boston University and a BS from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He is active in supporting the development of the BioHealth industry and is chairman of BioHealth Innovation, Inc. a public private partnership focusing on developing the life science industry as well as being a member of the Maryland Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board.  

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”.