Mark Chee, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert in genomics. He presently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of Prognosys Biosciences, Inc. Previously, he co-founded Illumina, Inc., and was Director of Genetics Research at Affymetrix, Inc. He has published scientific papers on microarray technology and applications and is an inventor on over 40 issued patents. He also serves on the External Scientific Committee of The Cancer Genome Atlas project. Dr. Chee received his B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of New South Wales and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge.

George Church, Ph.D., is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics. With degrees from Duke University in Chemistry and Zoology, he co-authored research on 3D-software & RNA structure with Sung-Hou Kim. His 1984 Ph.D. from Harvard in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology with Wally Gilbert included the first direct genomic sequencing method. He co-initiated the Human Genome Project a few months later as a Research Scientist at newly formed Biogen Inc. and was a Monsanto Life Sciences Research Fellow at UCSF. He invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods and array DNA synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing and software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori, 1994). He has served in advisory roles for 12 journals, five granting agencies and 22 biotechnology companies. His current research focuses on integrating biosystems-modeling with personal genomics and synthetic biology.

Dr. Leroy Hood is a pioneer in the systems approach to biology and medicine. His research has focused on the study of molecular immunology, biotechnology and genomics. Dr. Hood’s professional career began at Caltech, where he and his colleagues developed the DNA gene sequencer and synthesizer and the protein synthesizer and sequencer––four instruments that paved the way for the successful mapping of the human genome. A pillar in the biotechnology field, Dr. Hood has played a role in founding more than fourteen biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Darwin, The Accelerator and Integrated Diagnostics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Of the 6,000+ scientists world-wide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only fifteen people accepted to all three. He is also a member of the American Philosophical Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has been widely published, and he has coauthored numerous textbooks in biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology and genetics, as well as a popular book on the human genome project, The Code of Codes. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lasker Award for Studies of Immune Diversity, the Kyoto Prize in advanced technology, the Heinz Award for pioneering work in Systems Biology, and most recently, the coveted NAE 2011 Fritz J. and Delores H. Russ Prize for automating DNA sequencing that revolutionized biomedicine and forensic science. In addition to having received 17 honorary degrees from prestigious universities in the US and abroad, Dr. Hood has published more than 700 peer reviewed articles and currently holds 36 patents. He received the 2011 National Medal of Science, which was awarded to him during a White House ceremony in February 2013.

Douglas A. Lauffenburger, Ph.D., is the Uncas & Helen Whitaker Professor of Bioengineering and Director of the Biological Engineering Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also holds appointments in the Department of Biology and the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Lauffenburger received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1975 and the University of Minnesota in 1979, respectively. His major research interests are in cell engineering, the fusion of engineering with molecular cell biology. A central focus of his research program is in receptor-mediated cell communication and intracellular signal transduction, with emphasis on development of predictive computational models derived from quantitative experimental studies, on cell cue/signal/response relationships. These models have applications in drug discovery and development.

Larry Smarr became founding director in 2000 of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a University of California San Diego(UCSD)/University of California Irvine partnership. He holds the Harry E. Gruber professorship in the Jacobs School’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD. At Calit2, Smarr has continued to drive major developments in information infrastructure— including the Internet, Web, scientific visualization, virtual reality, and global telepresence— begun during his previous 15 years as founding Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Smarr served as Principal Investigator (PI) on the National Science Foundation (NSF) OptIPuter grant and is currently PI on the Moore Foundation’s CAMERA microbial metagenomics projects, as well as co-PI on the NSF GreenLight Project. Smarr was a member of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee for President Clinton and served until 2005 on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and the NASA Advisory Council. He served on Governor Schwarzenegger’s California Broadband Taskforce in 2007. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, he received the IEEE Computer Society Tsutomu Kanai Award for his lifetime achievements in distributed computing systems.