BioPolicy Summit 2017 - Nancy J Kelley + Associates

Global Biological Standards Institute:

BioPolicy Summit 2017 – Improving Reproducibility of Research Through Digital Tools, Technologies, and Laboratory Automation

October 16, 2017 • Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF

MEETING OVERVIEW

The nature of the laboratory is fundamentally changing. Science is being democratized and is now being performed not only in standard academic laboratories, but on single rented benches in incubators, in community laboratories, and in garages.

Clearly, the way scientists have worked in the past is not the way they will work in the future. In the laboratory, everything from experiment setup to the cleaning and washing of materials is becoming automated. New methods of data management, communication and integration are also improving every step in the scientific process from experiment design to execution, to data analysis and collection, publishing and sharing. Instrumentation improvements are helping to expand research capabilities. This will impact not only the quality of life for researchers, but the reproducibility of research, scale of research performed, and cost/quality of research.

This meeting brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of participants – from biologists, programmers, instrumentation manufacturers, the maker community, journals and funders – to examine innovations that are redefining the laboratory environment and workflow characteristics at every step of the scientific process, as well as the organizational strategies and information systems needed to capture the benefits of automation and democratization. The meeting produced important insights into the laboratory of the future, the specific new technologies that will revolutionize the way science is done, and the strategies that will help to propel innovation forward and make research more reproducible.

The meeting included exhibition space for companies to showcase their products.

Program Guide

Program Guide including a welcome letter from GBSI President Leonard Freedman, detailed agenda, and speaker bios. View the Program

Attendee List

The Attendee List is available by clicking this link: View the Attendee List

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STEERING COMMITTEE

Leonard P. Freedman, Ph.D
The Global Biological Standards Institute

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Dr. Freedman is the founding President of the Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI). He has held leadership positions in basic biomedical research, drug discovery, and science policy in both the private and non-profit sectors, as well as in academia.

Prior to starting GBSI, Dr. Freedman served as Vice Dean for Research and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Freedman also led discovery research efforts in the pharmaceutical industry as a Vice President at Wyeth and Executive Director at Merck. Before moving to industry, Dr. Freedman was a Member and Professor of Cell Biology & Genetics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weil Cornell Medical College. There, Dr. Freedman and his lab made several highly impactful discoveries in the area of nuclear hormone receptor structure and function.

Dr. Freedman has received numerous competitively funded grants, and has been the recipient of several research honors, including the Boyer Award for Biomedical Research, and a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. He was also the 2002 recipient of the Ernst Oppenheimer Award from The Endocrine Society. Dr. Freedman has published extensively and served on numerous scientific review panels and editorial boards. He was an editor of the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology for ten years. In addition, Dr. Freedman has served on the Board of Directors of the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC).

Dr. Freedman earned a B.A. degree in Biology from Kalamazoo College, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Rochester. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Keith Yamamoto at the University of California, San Francisco.

Nancy J Kelley, JD/MPP
Nancy J Kelley + Associates

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Nancy J Kelley, President and CEO of Nancy J Kelley & Associates, is a nationally recognized executive and lawyer who has driven key strategic initiatives in science and medicine for over twenty years. Nancy J Kelley + Associates (NJK+A) builds things that matter for science and medicine in order to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. Whether advancing translational genomic research that has the potential to cure human disease and improve quality of life or facilitating ways that we can feed, fuel and heal the world through technological innovation in biology, NJK+A is committed to delivering scientific and medical breakthroughs.

In recent representative projects, Ms. Kelley led a multi-disciplinary team effort to launch an advanced diagnostics testing company for Roswell Park Cancer Institute, receiving $25 million in financing commitments. She also led a one-year sustainability initiative to develop a strategic action plan to advance the field of synthetic biology in the U.S. This initiative was co-funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Synberc (the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center). Subsequently, she developed a strategic assessment and organization/financial overview for a new Personalized Wellness Research Institute emphasizing integrative medicine that incorporates mind-body practices to bring a holistic and proactive approach to healthcare. She is also working with the Global Biological Standards Institute on the development of global biological standards for research and partnered with the Biodesign Challenge to develop and launch the first biological competition that offers art and design students the opportunity to envision future applications of biology.

Before these most recent endeavors, Ms. Kelley was the Founding Executive Director of the New York Genome Center. From its establishment in 2010 by its 11 Institutional Founding Members, she led the Center from a start-up to a fully operational, world class genomics research center and provider of cutting edge sequencing and bioinformatics services, raising $110 million to do so.

Her prior leadership history includes work in scientific institutions, life science companies, and life science real estate development. She was a leader of the East River Science Park project in Manhattan and has overseen major development projects for clients such as the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University/ Boston Medical Center.

Ms. Kelley currently serves or has served on boards for the New York Genome Center, The Jackson Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Whitehead Institute. Earlier in her career, Ms. Kelley was appointed a White House Fellow and Truman Scholar. She holds a BA in Economics from Yale College, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Will Canine
OpenTrons

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Will comes from a background in community organizing and political campaign management, but decided to pursue technology as a more effective way to change the world. Obsessed with microbiology since an early age, Will became interested in open-source lab automation as a lever for accelerating scientific research while working at Genspace during his master’s degree at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 2014. When not working to make lab robots for everyone, he likes to read books (always physical copies, particularly sci-fi and evolutionary theory) and go for long runs.

Douglas Densmore, PhD
Boston University College of Engineering

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Douglas Densmore is a Kern Faculty Fellow, a Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow, and Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. His research focuses on the development of tools for the specification, design, and assembly of synthetic biological systems, drawing upon his experience with embedded system level design and electronic design automation (EDA). Extracting concepts and methodologies from these fields, he aims to raise the level of abstraction in synthetic biology by employing standardized biological part-based designs which leverage domain specific languages, constraint based device composition, visual editing environments, and automated assembly.

He is the director of the Cross-disciplinary Integration of Design Automation Research (CIDAR) group at Boston University, where his team of staff and postdoctoral researchers, undergraduate interns, and graduate students develop computational and experimental tools for synthetic biology. His research facilities include both a computational workspace in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as experimental laboratory space in the Boston University Biological Design Center (BDC). He is the lead PI for the NSF Expeditions “Living Computing Project” and a Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM.

His research interests include Computer Architecture, Embedded Systems, Logic Synthesis, Digital Logic Design, System Level Design, and Synthetic Biology.

James Inglese, Ph.D
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

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Dr. Inglese currently heads a laboratory focused on the development of assay and screening technology targeting rare and neglected disease within the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and is an Adjunct Investigator of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Prior to this he co-founded the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) acting as its Deputy Director.

Dr. Inglese received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Prof. Robert J. Lefkowitz at Duke University Medical Center.

Before coming to the NIH, Dr. Inglese led research teams at the Princeton-based biotech Pharmacopeia and Merck Research Laboratories.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Inglese has contributed to over 150 publications and patents; his efforts on the early drug discovery process have resulted in novel assay formats and high throughput screening paradigms.

Dr. Inglese is the Founding Editor (2002) and Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies and serves on the scientific advisory boards of several NIH-funded chemistry and screening centers and international chemical biology consortia.