Speakers
Amrita Banerjee, Ph.D. is a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. State Department, Bureau of International Organization Affairs. Her work focuses on U.S. strategic engagement and leadership at the United Nations and international system.
Dr. Banerjee previously served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the State Department. She was also an AAAS Congressional Fellow and legislative aide to U.S. Congressman Derek Kilmer (WA-06) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dr. Banerjee received her doctoral degree in Cell and Developmental Biology from Vanderbilt University and her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Duke University. She speaks Bengali and Spanish.
Dr. Turner earned a B.A. in Psychology and Art History from Northwestern University (2012) and a Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences (Neuroscience) from Vanderbilt University (2017). Following her postdoctoral fellowship with the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium (2017-2019), Dr. Turner served as the Associate Director and then Executive Director of the Huntington’s Disease Regulatory Science Consortium (HD-RSC) at Critical Path Institute (2019-2022). Through that role, she led a global collaboration of drug developers, Huntington’s disease experts, non-profit science research and patient advocacy representatives, and global regulators, with the aim of creating new tools and methods to advance efficient clinical development and to inform regulatory needs for approval of HD therapeutics. Dr. Turner transitioned into the pharmaceutical industry in 2022, joining Xenon Pharmaceuticals in Boston, MA, where she currently is a Senior Manager of Medical Writing. In this role, she prepares a wide variety of regulatory documents, such as CSRs, CSPs, IBs, DSURs, briefing documents, and patient narratives, in the indications of epilepsy and major depressive disorder.
Dr Eric Johnson completed his BS degree in Biology at Dickinson College, and his PhD degree in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His diverse training includes post-doctoral studies at the Univ. of California San Diego and the National Institutes of Health where he focused on cell signaling in cardiac myocytes and the immune system, respectively. During his more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry Eric worked with a variety of corporations including large pharmaceutical companies such as Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck & Co. Through his on-the-job training in automation and its implementation in the hit finding process, Eric was able to advance his career and assume leadership roles for several highly efficient teams. His responsibilities included assay development for drug repurposing and genome-wide siRNA screening. After his tenure in big pharma, Eric helped to build successful screening groups at WuXi AppTec, a contract research organization (CRO) as well as Exelixis, a mid-size biotech company. These teams were responsible for high-throughput screening, alternative hit finding campaigns, automated weekly structure-activity-relationship (SAR) assays and determining mechanism of action. Eric recently entered the world of startups as the Executive Director of Discovery Science at Initial Therapeutics, a biotech company, where he leads assay development scientists to identify compounds that inhibit protein synthesis in the ribosome’s exit tunnel with the intention of developing novel cancer-fighting therapies.
Dr. Henry J. Henderson III is a trained cancer biologist and cancer health disparities advocate. He received his B.S. from Southern University and A&M College and his Ph.D. in Integrative Biosciences from Tuskegee University. Following his graduate studies, he completed his postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he also served as an FDA-AACR Oncology Educational Fellow.
Currently, Dr. Henderson is an Oncology Medical Science Liaison. From lobbying on capitol hill for cancer research funding to serving as an expert panelist and keynote speaker for several prominent patient advocacy organizations, Dr. Henderson has contributed ardently to his field.He has also serves as a frequent panelist for the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence’s Black Family Cancer Awareness Week. Most notably, Dr. Henderson is the co-founder of Black in Cancer, an organization aimed to increase cancer awareness and Black representation in cancer related fields.
Isaac Zike, Ph.D. is a Managing Director at RiverVest Venture Partners and has been with the fund since joining in 2019 as a Senior Associate. Isaac serves as a director on the boards of RiverVest portfolio companies SeQure Dx and a stealth biopharma company as well as a board observer for Glycomine, Sparrow Pharmaceuticals, and Wugen. He earned a B.S. from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, double majoring in Biochemistry and in Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development. Following his undergraduate studies, he completed a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, where he worked in the lab of Dr. Veenstra-VanderWeele, focusing his thesis work on the evaluation and validation of novel animal models for psychiatric disease.
Prior to joining RiverVest, Isaac worked as an associate within the Life Sciences practice at the Huron Consulting Group in New York City, where he assisted pharmaceutical and biotech clients on strategic projects ranging from early optimization of R&D processes to commercialization strategies for marketed products.
An engineer from the Louvain School of Engineering and PhD in applied physics from Stanford University, Jean-luc Doumont now devotes his time and energy to training researchers, engineers, managers, and other professionals in effective communication, pedagogy, critical thinking, and other themes of professional development.
With his rational background, Jean-luc approaches communication in an original, engineering-like way that contrasts sharply with the tradition of the field, rooted in the humanities. He is thus well received by students and professionals in search of a method they can apply with the same rigor they have come to value in every other aspect of their occupations.
An articulate, entertaining, and thought-provoking speaker, Jean-luc successfully reaches a wide range of audiences around the world, in English, French, Dutch, and Spanish—as a trainer or invited speaker at an array of companies, top-ranked universities, research laboratories, and international conferences.
Jessica M Overstreet, Ph.D. is a Senior Advisor in the Lilly Diabetes and Obesity-Cardiovascular Phase 3 Clinical Development team at Eli Lilly and Company. She is currently in the Talent Development Academy Experienced Employee Rotational Program, a two-year program that enhances the employee’s development through contribution to different business areas across the organization. Her previous roles were as a discovery scientist in Lilly Genetic Medicine and the Diabetes, Obesity, Complications therapeutic area as an expert on novel therapeutic modalities and disease biology. Jessica supports enterprise-level Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, mainly focusing on employees identifying as Black, Latinx, women and early career professionals.
Jessica received her B.S. in Biotechnology at Ferris State University, Ph.D. from Albany Medical College and completed her postdoctoral studies in nephrology with Ray Harris at Vanderbilt University. Her research at Vanderbilt was funded by the Lilly Innovation Fellowship Award (LIFA) and the Vanderbilt-Bayer partnership. She serves as an advisor to the Aspire Path of Molecular Medicine, acts as an Indianapolis Public School ambassador and is the board chair of a non-profit organization, El Sistema Indianapolis. She is a native of Grand Rapids, MI and likes to travel, attend performing arts shows, and watch college basketball.
Dr. Karissa Culbreath is Medical Director and Division Chief of Infectious Diseases at Tricore. Dr. Culbreath received a Ph.D in Microbiology and Immunology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN and completed a fellowship in Medical and Public Health Microbiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through the American Society of Microbiology. She is board certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiologists. She currently serves as the Chair of the American Board of Medical Microbiologists. Her research interests implementation laboratory automation in the clinical laboratory and advancing health equity through laboratory diagnostics in resource limited communities.
Keely Gilroy is a Senior Medical Director at Agios Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company committed to advancing healthcare for patients living with rare diseases. At Agios, she leads the medical strategy for an investigational development program in thalassemia; her responsibilities include overseeing medical education activities, investigator-sponsored research, and data communications, as well as serving as a scientific subject matter expert for internal and external colleagues. Keely joined Agios in 2017 as a Medical Science Liaison and then transitioned to a role leading Publications and Scientific Communications before moving into her current position. Prior to joining Agios, she was a Medical Science Liaison with Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she supported several different disease areas including diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and inflammatory bowel disease. Keely earned a B.S in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PhD from Emory University in Genetics and Molecular Biology, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. She lives in Charleston, SC, and in her free time, enjoys the coastal life with her husband, Pat, and their two sons, JP (10) and Connor (8).
Kristin Burnum-Johnson is a Science Group Leader for Functional and Systems Biology at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Burnum-Johnson earned her PhD in Biochemistry from Vanderbilt University with Professor Richard M. Caprioli and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at PNNL with Dr. Richard D. Smith.
Critical challenges in systems biology, ranging from environmental sustainability to human health, may be addressed through the comprehensive and informative view of underlying biological pathways provided by the integration of spatiotemporal multi-omic measurements (i.e., proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics). Her research is dedicated to achieving transformative molecular-level insights into environmental and biomedical systems by implementing advanced mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation. Burnum-Johnson has more than 20 years of experience and more than 80 publications dedicated to the development and evaluation of in situ imaging MS, structural characterization of molecules using ion mobility-MS, and analyses of molecules in complex matrices using high-resolution MS. Her research program is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Meagan Quinlan joined the Allen Institute as a Therapeutic Lead on the AAV Gene Therapy Team in the Human Cell Types Group in 2022. As part of the gene therapy program, Meagan designs and tests new therapeutic AAVs to treat brain diseases such as epilepsy. Before joining the Allen Institute, Meagan studied the impact of disease-associated gene variants at the molecular, neural circuit, and behavioral levels. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, she studied potassium channel variants identified in neurodevelopmental disorders and worked on developing a novel cell-type specific CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology. She got her Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University studying the structural and functional dynamics of serotonin transporter gene variants identified in autism spectrum disorder. Meagan received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with a minor in Pharmacology and Mathematics from the University of Vermont.
Tony Chen, Ph.D. is a Publisher in the npj portfolio at Springer Nature, managing a portfolio of Life and Health Science journals. Previously, he worked as an Associate Publisher at Wiley for nearly 6 years, managing a portfolio of Health Science and Life Science journals (2018-2024). He earned his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Vanderbilt University in 2015 and did postdoctoral work at the NIH studying the molecular mechanisms of Head and Neck cancer.