MDI BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Senior Partner
- Trustee
Alan Miller retired as Senior Partner in the Business Finance & Restructuring Department of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. His areas of expertise are business reorganizations, including Chapter 11 reorganizations and creditor's rights.
Mr. Miller has been named in Best Lawyers In America published by Woodward & White, and is a member of the Committees on Bankruptcy and Reorganization of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. He received his B.A. at Trinity College and his J.D. at Boston College Law School. He has lectured at New York University Law School and has served as guest lecturer and panelist at numerous national, state, and local seminars.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Trustees
- Senior Advisor at Marsh McLennan
Alan Kornberg is a senior advisor at Marsh McLennan and retired partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City.
Mr. Kornberg received his A.B., magna cum laude from Brandeis University and his J.D. from the New York University School of Law. He has extensive expertise serving on the boards of small nonprofit organizations. He is the former Chairman of the Board of Bennington College and understands both the challenges and opportunities presented to small organizations. Mr. Kornberg resides in New York City and Castine, Maine.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Stowers Institute
Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Ph.D. is the Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Stowers Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
The Sánchez Alvarado Lab explores the process and genetic control of regeneration and tissue maintenance. The group has developed the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea into a powerful research organism for the study of regeneration.
The Sánchez Alvarado group has identified dozens of genes and genetic programs that drive regeneration and ensure the anatomical and functional integration of newly-made parts into older, pre-existing tissues. They have also demonstrated that adult somatic stem cells are the only proliferating cell type and generate all the different cell types found in an adult flatworm.
Continuing work that began with studies of the planarian flatworm, the Sánchez Alvarado Lab has expanded their research to other organisms positioned further up the evolutionary tree. These organisms include the apple snail Pomacea cannaliculata and a new vertebrate model of regeneration, the turquoise killifish Nothobranchius furzeri as shown in a 2020 Science paper. By identifying and characterizing regeneration at the level of molecular genetics, the team aims to better understand how higher organisms, including humans, develop biologically.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- President
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
- Freelance Writer
Anne Lehmann is a freelance writer for various publications in and around the Boston Metro area.
Prior to her freelance work, Ms. Lehmann worked as a member of management at General Electric-Aerospace, Anderson Consulting and Fidelity Investments where she specialized in managing organizational change and oversaw teams of up to 40 staff with budgets exceeding $4 million.
Ms. Lehmann is also an active community volunteer, having served on the boards of Junior League of Boston, Emerson Hospital Auxillary, Concord Carlisle High School and the Concord Museum. She is an alumna of the MDI Biological Laboratory's summer fellowship program.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Barbara Beltz, Ph.D. is a professor of neuroscience at Wellesley College.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Benjamin Humphreys, M.D., Ph.D. is the Joseph Friedman Professor of Renal Disease in Medicine and Chief of the Division of Nephrology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The mission of the Humphreys Lab is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of kidney regeneration and thereby identify new therapeutic strategies for humans suffering from kidney disease. A primary focus is on stem cell-based therapeutic approaches. We use mouse as a model system as well as human pluripotent stem cells. The work encompasses two main areas:
Developing stem cell-based approaches to treat kidney disease in humans.
Understanding the mechanisms of kidney repair and recovery after injury.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch
Brad Thompson, M.D. is a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Bruce Stanton is the Andrew C. Vail professor and director of the Lung Biology Center at the Dartmouth Giesel School of Medicine.
He received his Ph.D. in physiology at Yale University in 1980 and did his postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine and served as an associate research scientist in the Department of Physiology at Yale before joining the Department of Physiology at Dartmouth as assistant professor in 1984. Dr. Stanton also serves as the associate director of the Center for the Environmental Health Sciences at Dartmouth and director of the Superfund Basic Research Program at Dartmouth. He is a visiting investigator at the MDI Biological Laboratory.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Director of Courses, Conferences, and Evaluation
- Education
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Administrative Director
- Member of the Executive Team
As Administrative Director, Claudine Lurvey oversees day-to-day operations of the MDI Biological Laboratory, including finance, human resources, safety and compliance, facilities and administration.
Claudine joined the MDI Biological Laboratory in 1999 at a pivotal point in the institution's 100-year history as it transitioned from seasonal to full-time operation. At that time the institution had nine full-time employees and an operating budget of $1 million. As Business Manager, Claudine developed the initial budgetary framework for a transformative $5 million grant that established the IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, a statewide research and education collaborative that is now in its 20 th year and includes 14 research and academic partners. In 2007 Claudine became the Director of Finance, acting as financial steward through a period of tremendous growth and expansion at the MDI Biological Laboratory. In 2020 she began serving in her current role as Administrative Director, well positioned to guide the institution through its next phase of anticipated growth.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor of Genetics at University Paris Descartes
Dr. Antignac is professor of genetics at University Paris Descartes and director of the INSERM (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) Laboratory of Hereditary Kidney Diseases at the newly established Imagine Institute, an interdisciplinary research center on rare genetic diseases at the Necker Enfants-Malades University Hospital in Paris.
Her research focuses on identifying and characterizing genes responsible for inherited renal disorders. Dr. Antignac has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the genetic basis of several renal diseases. Her group used positional cloning to identify gene mutations causing nephronophthisis, cystinosis, and steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome. They have also used candidate gene approaches and phenotype/genotype correlation to identify genes in other hereditary renal disorders, such as Bartter syndrome, Alport syndrome, and renal tubular dysgenesis.
Dr. Antignac's main contribution has been to understand the genetic bases of monogenic glomerular diseases. In 2001, Dr. Antignac identified the NPHS2 gene encoding podocin, one of the most frequently mutated genes in steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome. Podocin turned out to be a crucial protein for the development and maintenance of the glomerular filtration barrier; this and other pioneering work led researchers to focus on the podocyte as a major player in the development and diseases of the glomerulus.
Dr. Antignac has since cloned many other genes involved in steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome, including her recent discovery of an unexpected role for intraflagellar transport proteins in podocyte function.
Among her many contributions to her profession, she has served on the scientific committee of the French Medical Research Foundation and chaired the scientific review board of the Cystinosis Research Foundation. She served as associate editor of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and is currently on its editorial board, as well as the board of Kidney International.
Dr. Antignac has been awarded the Medical Research Prize from the French Medical Research Foundation, the Eloi Collery Prize from the French National Academy of Medicine, the Prize of the French Association of Patients with Nephrotic Syndrome, and the Lilian Jean Kaplan International Prize for Advancement in the Understanding of Polycystic Kidney Disease. She received her MD and her PhD (in human genetics) from Paris 6 University and trained as a pediatric nephrologist.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Director of the MGH Program
Dennis Brown, Ph.D. is the director of the MGH Program in Membrane Biology at Harvard Medical School.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Leonard I. Zon is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston.
He received a B.S. in chemistry and natural sciences from Muhlenberg College and an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College. He subsequently did an internal medicine residency at New England Deaconess Hospital and a fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Zon is President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Head of the external investigators of the Zebrafish Genome Institution and Chairman of the Harvard Stem Cell Institutes Executive Committee.
Dr. Zon is internationally recognized for his pioneering research in the new fields of stem cell biology and cancer genetics. His current research focuses on two critical avenues of investigation: identifying the genes that direct stem cells to become cancers or to develop into more specialized blood or organ cells and developing chemical or genetic suppressors to cure cancers and many other devastating diseases.
Job Titles:
- Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Position of Program Director for Medical Research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Elizabeth (Betsy) Myers is retired from the position of Program Director for Medical Research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, where she worked to advance the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of human disease by strengthening and supporting biomedical research.
She joined the foundation in 2005 and managed a portfolio of approximately $70 million in active research grants made to universities and research institutions and developed new grant programs.
She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Research Alliance from 2014-2020 (Chair of the Board from 2016-2018), which is a coalition of over 100 nonprofit funders of biomedical research that work together to maximize research impact.
She was also an active member of the following committees: Sharing Clinical Trial Data: An Action Collaborative at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; the Initiative for Women in Science and Engineering Working Group at the New York Stem Cell Foundation; and the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Before joining the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Betsy spent two decades as a researcher at academic medical centers. She has a BS from Duke University and PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She held academic appointments as instructor and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and associate professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Center of Matrix Biology
Billy Hudson, Ph.D. is the Director of the Center of Matrix Biology, Elliott V. Newman Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and Professor of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology
Elly Tanaka, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology
Eric Olson, Ph.D. is the Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research; Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects; and the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Eric Olson is the founding chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern. He also directs the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine and the Wellstone Center for Muscular Dystrophy Research. He holds The Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science and the Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research.
Eric Olson and his trainees discovered many of the genes that control heart and muscle development and disease. Among their discoveries were myogenin and MEF2, master transcriptional regulators of myogenesis, and Myomaker and Myomixer, the long-sought membrane proteins that control myoblast fusion. Olson's team also discovered the Hand transcription factors, which regulate ventricular growth, and myocardin, the activator of cardiovascular differentiation. Other discoveries include the stress-response pathways that underlie pathological cardiac remodeling and numerous microRNAs that modulate muscle development and disease. His most recent work has provided a new strategy for correction of Duchenne muscular dystrophy using CRISPR gene editing. Olson's discoveries at the interface of developmental biology and medicine have illuminated the fundamental principles of tissue formation and have provided new concepts in the quest for muscle and cardiovascular therapeutics. Many of Olson's trainees are emerging as the next generation of leaders in cardiovascular medicine.
Olson has published over 600 scientific articles that have been cited 100,000 times in the scientific literature. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The work from his laboratory has been recognized by numerous awards.
Olson has co-founded multiple biotechnology companies to develop therapies for heart and muscle disease, including Myogen, Miragen, Tenaya Therapeutics and Exonics. In his spare time, he plays guitar and harmonica with The Transactivators, a rock band inspired by Willie Nelson, the Texas troubadour who created the Professorship that supports his research.
Job Titles:
- Chief Communications Officer
- Contact Media Affairs
- Media Relations
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Member of the Executive Team
- President
- Trustee, Ex Officio
Job Titles:
- Director of Human Resources
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- HR / Careers
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Team
- Professor and Director, Kathryn W. Davis Center for Aging and Regenerative Biology
Job Titles:
- Honorary Trustee
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Job Titles:
- Secretary of the Board of Trustees
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Team
- Vice President of External Affairs and Chief of Staff
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- William Wikoff Smith Professor
Dr. Epstein is the William Wikoff Smith Professor, Executive Vice Dean and Chief Scientific Officer at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Epstein graduated from Harvard College in 1983, Harvard Medical School in 1988 and completed his Residency and Fellowship in Medicine and Cardiology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he also completed an HHMI Postdoctoral Fellowship in Genetics. In 1996 he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2006-2015, he served as Chairman of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and Scientific Director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute. He is currently the William Wikoff Smith Professor, Executive Vice Dean and Chief Scientific Officer at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Epstein has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sir William Osler Young Investigator Award from the Interurban Clinical Club (2001) and the Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Federation for Medical Research (2006). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association of Physicians, Past President of the Interurban Clinical Club, Past President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a member of the National Academy of Medicine (previously the Institute of Medicine). He serves on several editorial boards, and is a past Deputy Editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is a member of the NIH Council of Councils and the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program Advisory Committee. Dr. Epstein was a founding co-director of the Penn Institute for Regenerative Medicine in 2007.
Dr. Epstein's research has focused on the molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular development and implications for understanding and treating human disease. His group has been at the forefront of utilizing animal models of congenital heart disease to determine genetic and molecular pathways required for cardiac morphogenesis, with implications for pediatric and adult cardiovascular disease. Stem cell, angiogenesis and epigenetic studies have had direct implications for the development of new therapeutic agents for heart failure and myocardial infarction.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Kenneth Poss, Ph.D. is the James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology, Professor of Biology, Professor in Medicine, and Director of the Duke Regeneration Center at the Duke University School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Director of Facilities
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Peter Walter, Ph.D. is the Director of the Bay Area Institute of Science.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- President
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Director of Information Technology
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
Job Titles:
- Treasurer of the Board of Trustees
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Thomas Rando, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and director of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Deputy Director, Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL), Stanford University.
The main areas of interest of the laboratory are muscle stem cell biology (myogenic lineage progression, cell fate determination, asymmetric cell divisions, Notch signaling, Wnt signaling), muscle stem cell aging (epigenetic determinants, local and systemic influences, roles in age-related decline in regeneration and age-related atrophy), muscular dystrophies (disease pathogenesis, biomarkers and non-invasive imaging), tissue engineering (artificial scaffolds, regenerative therapies) and basic muscle cell biology (myogenic differentiation, muscle development). The Rando laboratory is a part of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging and the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Rehab R&D Center of Excellence at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. The laboratory is associated with the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor
Tom Rapoport, Ph.D. is a professor of cell biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Harvard Medical School.
Tom Rapoport, Ph.D., joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1995. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Humboldt University in East-Berlin for work in enzymology. He then focused on mathematical modeling of metabolism, for which he received his second degree (Habilitation) from the same institution. Before moving to the US, he worked at the Central Institute of Molecular Biology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and later at the Max-Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin-Buch. In 1997, he became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
The Rapoport Lab is interested in the mechanisms by which proteins are transported across membranes, how misfolded proteins are degraded, and how organelles form and maintain their characteristic shapes. Most of the projects center around the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). One project concerns the molecular mechanism by which proteins are translocated across the ER membrane or across the plasma membrane in bacteria and archaea. Much of the current work deals with ERAD (ER-associated protein degradation), a process in which misfolded proteins are retro-translocated across the ER membrane into the cytosol. Major questions concern the mechanism by which proteins move across the membrane and are extracted by the Cdc48 ATPase. Another project concerns the mechanism by which ER morphology, specifically the tubular ER network, is generated. More recently, the Rapoport lab has started to study how proteins are imported into peroxisomes, and how lung surfactant proteins generate lamellar bodies. The lab employs a variety of different techniques, including biochemical methods, such as reconstitutions with purified proteins, and structural biology methods, including X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy.