BENAROYA RESEARCH INSTITUTE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Director, Center for Systems Immunology Associate Member Principal Investigator, Lacy - Hulbert Lab
Dr. Burich received his BS degree in Zoology and DVM from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in laboratory animal medicine in the Department of Comparative Medicine, University of Washington and obtained a thesis-based MS degree in Comparative Medicine. In 2002, Dr. Burich achieved board-certification by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine. He was a Senior Clinical Veterinarian and Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, before joining BRI in 2005 as the Attending Veterinarian and Director of Animal Resources. Dr. Burich is also an Affiliate Instructor in the Department of Comparative Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Director and Banker, J.P. Morgan Private Bank
Job Titles:
- Director, Marketing and Communications
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President, Investment Management Division, Goldman Sachs & Co
Mr. Reiber's career is centered on investment management, strategic and tactical asset allocation, and financial risk management for individuals, foundations, and companies. He has been Vice President, Investment Management Division, Goldman, Sachs & Co., since 2010. He also worked for Barclays Capital and JP Morgan Chase as financial analyst and trader for commercial capital markets and in sales outreach, business development, and commercial real estate. Mr. Reiber has a BA in economics, political science, and Chinese from Whitman College and an MBA from the University of Washington. He is a member of the Finance Committee.
Dr. Khor received a Bachelor's of Science in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by an MD/PhD in Immunology from Washington University in St. Louis, studying basic features of T cell receptor recombination. He then completed a residency in Clinical Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in Transfusion Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He did postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital identifying novel pathways that regulate Treg differentiation. He joined Benaroya Research Institute in 2017 and is currently an Assistant Member.
Dr. Kwok received his bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin. After completing his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Washington in 1983, he remained in Seattle completing post-doctoral research work at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center before moving to the Virginia Mason Research Center (later renamed the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason), joining the laboratory of Dr. Jerry Nepom as a staff scientist in 1986. Since 1988, he has been a principal investigator at the Benaroya Research Institute. Dr. Kwok also oversees the operation of the BRI tetramer core.
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Clinical Investigator
- Director, Center for Interventional Immunology Member Affiliate Faculty, University of Washington Medicine
Dr. Greenbaum is Director of the Diabetes Program and Center for Interventional Immunology at Benaroya Research Institute. After medical school at Brown University, she completed her endocrinology fellowship at the University of Washington. Dr. Greenbaum served as Chair of Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet, an NIH sponsored international consortium to test disease modifying therapies in T1D for the past 6 years, and is currently Director of the TrialNet Clinical Hub.
Dr. Greenbaum is a clinical investigator who works to alter the course of T1D through understanding the causes of disease, and testing interventions to alter immune mediated beta cell dysfunction. She has led or participated in multiple clinical trials of disease modifying therapy sponsored by academia and industry as well as proof of mechanism clinical research studies. Dr. Greenbaum's expertise includes clinical trial design and implementation as well as discovery and evaluation of biomarkers for disease course and response to therapy.
Dr. Mikacenic earned her MD from the University of Washington School of Medicine and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She trained in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington and after fellowship rose to the rank of Associate Professor. She joined the BRI faculty in 2020 as an Associate Member in the Center for Translational Immunology. She is also a practicing pulmonary physician at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant
- Chairman of the Immunology Working Group for the NIDDK
- Member and Scientific Director of the BRI Center for Interventional Immunology
Cate Speake, PhD, is a Research Assistant Member and Scientific Director of the BRI Center for Interventional Immunology. From her initial work in infectious disease settings to her current work in diabetes and autoimmunity, Dr. Speake uses her expertise in analyzing large datasets to translate findings in the laboratory to help answer clinical questions.
She leads BRI's Experimental Medicine Unit, which conducts small clinical trials to investigate the mechanistic drivers of type 1 diabetes, and co-leads the BRI Biorepositories with Dr. Sandra Lord. With Dr. Jane Buckner, she directs the Sound Life Project, aiming to better understand the functional breadth of the healthy immune system. She also oversees BRI's Clinical Core Laboratory, which is responsible for sample processing and storage for the hundreds of thousands of samples currently stored in the BRI biorepository.
Dr. Speake is Chair of the Immunology Working Group for the NIDDK-funded Type 1 Diabetes in Acute Pancreatitis Consortium, and is a member of several committees in NIDDK's Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet network. She participates in the American Diabetes Association's Precision Medicine Review Committee, and is a member of the Editorial Board for Diabetes Care. She contributed to the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Treatment Guidelines for T1D Committee, and recently joined other scientists and JDRF in an effort to develop consensus guidelines for glucose monitoring in the clinical setting for multiple autoantibody positive individuals.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Mediator & Conflict Resolution Coach
Ms. Zimmerman retired from Merck & Co. in 2008, after 10 years in management as a Senior Human Resources Manager providing HR strategic consulting to various regional and national senior sales management and their teams. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Relations from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Prior to her relocation to the U.S., she was the Regional Director of Human Resources for Unisource Canada, a national distribution company. She also served on the Board of the Montreal JDRF chapter. She currently works as a mediator specializing in Foreclosure and Employment mediations.
Job Titles:
- Director, Clinical Research Program
Job Titles:
- Director, Research Integrity & Safety
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- CEO, Consultant and Coach of Ethos
Ms. Bonilla is the CEO, Consultant and Coach of Ethos. Prior to creating Ethos, Ms. Bonilla was the Strategic Advisor of Sightlife, Inc., a global health organization, focused on eliminating corneal blindness worldwide. Previously, Ms. Bonilla managed various areas in Microsoft for more than 15 years including governance, operations, compliance and disaster response. She is a graduate of Willamette University and the University of Munich and received her MSc. Political Economies of Transition & Change from the London School of Economics. Ms. Bonilla was formerly Vice Chair of the Washington Global Health Alliance, and served on Medical Teams International, and the Puget Sound Leadership Council.
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Director, Center for Fundamental Immunology Member Principal Investigator, Campbell Lab
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Physician, Section Head of Hematology / Oncology, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Following six years of active duty as a Navy fighter pilot and flight instructor, Mr. Williams joined San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Leasing Corporation. In 1976 he moved to Seattle to lead the equipment leasing subsidiary for Rainier Bank, igniting a 20-year career in corporate and retail banking. Mr. Williams last held the position of Vice Chairman for Security Pacific Bank Washington (now Bank of America). In 1996 Mr. Williams served as Chief Executive Officer of the Northwest Eye, a $7 billion ophthalmology practice, managing its sale and integration with a Toronto-based laser surgery company. Mr. Williams went on to direct recruiting and admissions for the University of Washington Master of Business Administration program until 2001. A trustee of AAA of Washington for 15 years, Mr. Williams led several committees and served as Chairman of the Board. He was past chairman of the University of Washington Development Fund; served on the Economics Visiting Committee of University of Washington School of Arts & Sciences; was a panel chair at United Way as well as past chair of AAA Washington. Mr. Williams received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and his MBA from Stanford University. He has been a member the Benaroya Research Institute Board since 2014 and is past chair of the Virginia Mason Health System and Virginia Mason Medical Center Boards. Mr. Williams is a member of the Finance Committee.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Owner, Human Resources Pacific Northwest, LLC
Ms. St. John is the owner of Human Resources Pacific Northwest, LLC. She has more than 20 years' experience working in biotech, at ICOS Corporation and at Seattle Genetics. Ms. St. John's experience is in the area of both human resources and business management. She serves on multiple boards, including The Arthritis Foundation, Wellspring Family Services, and the Board of Ambassadors, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Ms. St. John holds an MBA from the University of Washington's Executive MBA Program Foster School of Business. She is the BRI Advisory Board Secretary, and is also the liaison to the Virginia Mason Foundation.
Dr. Caroline Stefani received her master's degree in cellular biology and immunology from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France, graduating first in her class. She then completed her PhD in Dr. Emmanuel Lemichez's lab at the Mediterranean Center of Molecular Medicine, where she studied the effect of bacterial toxins on the actin cytoskeleton. During her thesis, she was the recipient of the Alexandre Joel Award from the French National Institute of Cancer for her work on metastasis and the Thesis of the Year award by the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis.
She moved to the United States in 2013, joining BRI in the Stuart and Lacy-Hulbert Lab for her post-doc. She used forward genetic screens to identify resistance genes to cellular damage induced by bacterial toxins. During her post-doc, she also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality as a 3D visualization tool for fluorescence images and helped developed multiple automated imaging analysis pipelines. She is currently a Research Assistant Member at BRI and Manager of the Imaging Core. She continues working in collaboration with the Lacy-Hulbert Lab.
Job Titles:
- Director, Grants & Contracts Administration
Job Titles:
- Member of the Fundamental Immunology Program Principal Investigator, Bettelli Lab Affiliated Professor, UW Department of Immunology
Dr. Bettelli received her BS in Cellular Biology from the University Pierre et Marie Currie (Paris 6) in 1995 and her PhD in Hematology/Immunology from the University Denis Diderot (Paris 7) in 2001. Following a postdoctoral fellowship and after serving as an Instructor in the Department of Neurology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, she served as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bettelli joined the faculty of the Benaroya Research Institute in 2009 and is now a full Member. She is also an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Associate Member, Center for Systems Immunology
Hamid Bolouri received his PhD in Microelectronics from Brunel University (London, UK). He joined the faculty of the Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle) in 2002. In 2010, Bolouri joined the Division of Human Biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Seattle) as a Research Faculty Member. Before joining BRI, he was Director of Informatics & Computational Biology at the Allen Institute for Immunology.
Dr. Bolouri is currently an Associate Member at BRI and Affiliate Faculty at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
In addition to co-editing three research monographs, Dr. Bolouri is the author of two graduate-level textbooks:
Personal Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Imperial College Press, 2010
Computational Modeling of Genetic Regulatory Networks - a primer, Imperial College Press, 2008
Job Titles:
- Director, Human Resources
James Lord received his PhD in Immunology through the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). He subsequently completed his MD at the University of Washington, where he remained for his internal medicine residency and clinical research fellowship in gastroenterology. During his fellowship, he returned to BRI to pursue a research project in the lab of Steven Ziegler, PhD, exploring the role of FOXP3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the pathogenesis of human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). He joined Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) in 2010 and has established his clinical practice at the Digestive Disease Institute, specializing in the care of patients with IBD.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Member of the Scientific and Administrative Leadership Team
- President
- President, BRI Member Principal Investigator, Buckner Lab
President Jane Buckner, MD, and Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Margaret McCormick, PhD, make up BRI's core leadership team. Drs. Buckner and McCormick guide and oversee BRI's work and progress, and are a driving force behind our vision of a healthy immune system for everyone. Dr. Buckner has conducted research at BRI and seen patients at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health for over 20 years. Dr. McCormick has been at the helm of life science and biotech organizations for much of her career. She has been with BRI since 2017 and also serves as the vice president of research at Virginia Mason Medical Center.
Dr. Buckner received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Carleton College, magna cum laude. She attended Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and after receiving her MD, she completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Buckner went on to complete a fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Washington. As a fellow she was honored with the American College of Rheumatology's Senior Rheumatology Scholar Award. After completing her medical training, Dr. Buckner continued her research training as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Nepom. In 1999, she was the recipient of the ACR Arthritis Investigator Award. Since 1999, Dr. Buckner has been an investigator at the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). She became the Director of the Translational Research Program at BRI in 2005, was named Associate Director of BRI in January 2012 and was appointed President of BRI in January 2016. Dr. Buckner serves as the Principal Investigator at BRI's award from NIAID for the Immune Tolerance Network
Dr. Buckner continues to care for rheumatology patients at the Virginia Mason Medical Center, and she is an affiliate professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Washington, an affiliate professor of immunology in the UW School of Medicine, an affiliate of the UW Diabetes Research Center, an active member of the Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet Biomarker and Mechanisms Panel, a board member of the national Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS), and a member of the Brehm Coalition.
Dr. Carlin received his medical degree from New York University and did his residency in Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He did a Rheumatology fellowship at the University of Washington and still maintains his teaching as Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Washington.
Dr. Carlin had been in clinical practice in rheumatology since 1980. He recently retired and is focusing on clinical research. He has been involved in clinical trials in rheumatology since the early 1990s. He previously was the head of the Section Of Rheumatology at Virginia Mason, and currently is the director of Clinical Rheumatology Research and Rheumatology Biorepositories at BRI.
Job Titles:
- Director, Academic Affairs Member, Center for Fundamental Immunology Principal Investigator, Hamerman Lab
John Ray received his BS in Molecular, Cellular and Development Biology at the University of Washington in 2007 and his PhD in Immunobiology at Yale University in 2014, working in the laboratory of Joe Craft, MD. He completed his postdoctoral research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the lab of Nir Hacohen, PhD, studying autoimmune disease genetic risk in non-coding regions and epigenetic regulation of immune cell subsets.
Dr. Ray joined the faculty of the Benaroya Research Institute in 2020 and is currently an Assistant Member. Dr. Ray has affiliate appointments at the University of Washington's Departments of Immunology and Genome Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Director, Center for Translational Immunology Associate Member Principal Investigator, Cerosaletti Lab
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- CEO, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health Division President, Pacific Northwest ( PNW ) of CommonSpirit Health
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mrs. Pangrazio has had a long history as entrepreneur, networker and community activist. She is the retired founder of Artful Gifting, an executive gift sourcing company, as well as founder of Mangetout - a legacy catering company in Seattle.
Mrs. Pangrazio served on and chaired the Hope Heart Institute Board, participating in the transfer of the Hope Heart Program to Benaroya Research Institute in 2003. She is past Chair of the BRI Board, serving the Board for 13 years. During that time, she concurrently served for 5 years on the VMHS Board. While on the VMHS Board, Kristi served on Governance Committee and Service Leadership Team. She took the opportunity to travel with the VM leadership team to Japan to study process improvement utilizing the Toyota Production System. With her husband, she co-chaired two increasingly successful Dreambuilder's Ball fundraisers. She is currently on the VMFH Foundation Board.
Mrs. Pangrazio has taken on many leadership roles at the Rainier Club, serving on the Board of Trustees for 8 years, during which time she was Vice President of Operations and chair of Membership. She culminated her leadership as President of the Rainier Club 2019-20, remaining as an active member today. Mrs. Pangrazio ran a successful election to serve on a public school board in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a retired Seattle 4 Rotarian.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director, Business Development, Cumming Group
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Executive Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Member of the Scientific and Administrative Leadership Team
- Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer, Administrative Services
Margaret McCormick, PhD, serves as executive director and chief operating officer of Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) and also as vice president of research for Virginia Mason Medical Center. Dr. McCormick joined BRI in 2017 and previously served as BRI's chief administrative officer.
Over the past two decades, Dr. McCormick's work has centered on launching, managing and investing in life science companies, frequently at the start-up level. Most recently, she served as CEO of Matrix Genetics, an industrial biotechnology company, spun out of Targeted Growth, Inc. Prior to that role, she held positions as chief operations officer at Targeted Growth, as a principal at Integra Ventures, as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and as Director of Business Development for the biomedical incubator and technology investment fund at Baylor College of Medicine.
Dr. McCormick received a PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor's of Science from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Dr. Altman received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Stanford University, his Master's in Biochemistry from Cambridge University, and his Medical Degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and his fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at the University of Washington. Dr. Altman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at University of Washington and head of the Allergy section within the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He has had a joint appointment at Benaroya Research Institute in the Systems Immunology Division since 2015.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Managing Director, Investment Banking, Blacktorch Capital
Peter Morawski received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) in 2013. He then performed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). During this time, he served as an Adjunct Instructor of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences and The Catholic University of America.
In 2017 he came to BRI to study human autoimmune disease, becoming a Staff Scientist in 2019, and joining the faculty in 2022. Dr. Morawski is currently a Research Assistant Member at BRI in the Center for Fundamental Immunology.
Job Titles:
- Visiting Scientist, Center for Interventional Immunology
Rebecca Partridge, MD, FAAP, is a physician, board certified in both pediatrics and pediatric emergency medicine, at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (VMFH). She joined VMFH in 2012, at which time she founded and began serving as director of VMFH's Down Syndrome Program - a position which she continues to hold today.
VMFH's Down Syndrome Program serves over 500 individuals with Down syndrome and their families, and is also a national referral center for Down syndrome regression disorder (DSRD). As director of the program, Dr. Partridge collaborates with BRI's Bernard Khor, MD, PhD, in enrolling patients in BRI's Down Syndrome Biorepository as well as providing clinical expertise. Dr. Partridge is also involved in DSRD research with Jonathan Santoro, MD, of Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
In her spare time, Dr. Partridge enjoys spending time with her 21-year-old son, Josh, who has Down syndrome as well as her 16-year-old daughter, Megan, who does not have Down syndrome.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Dr. Williams started his career as a research scientist with GE, and holds 10 US patents in the fields of silicone chemistry, organometallic catalysis, and polymer chemistry. He was a General Manager for GE Plastics and Silicones businesses in Europe, and President of GE-Toshiba Silicones in Hong Kong, before returning to the US and joining Microsoft. At Microsoft, he held leadership positions in the Windows and Windows Phone product groups. Dr. Williams was with Amazon for six years as Director of the Amazon Appstore. Dr. Williams holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Colorado State University. Dr. Williams serves on the External Advisory Board for the University of North Carolina Department of Chemistry, and the Finance and Sail Committees at the Seattle Yacht Club. He is the Chair of the Intellectual Property committee and a member of the BRI Scientific Review Committee.
Job Titles:
- Director, Information Technology
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director of External Collaboration Member, Center for Fundamental Immunology Principal Investigator, Ziegler Lab
Dr. Ziegler graduated with honors from the University of Michigan in 1979, and in 1984 received his PhD in molecular biology from UCLA. Following post-doctoral training at the University of Washington, Dr. Ziegler spent five years as a staff scientist at Immunex, followed by three years as the Director of Immunology/Molecular Biology at Darwin Molecular.
He joined the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) as an Associate Member in 1997. He is currently Director of External Collaborations and a Member of the Center for Fundamental Immunology. He is also an Affiliate Professor in the Immunology Department, University of Washington School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Chairman of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health Board of Directors
Dr. Chi is the chair of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health Board of Directors. He most recently served as the chair of CHI Franciscan's Board of Directors. Dr. Chi has a professional background in computer science and was the founder and co-owner of a boutique computer software company. He served on the Board of CHI Franciscan for seven years having begun his governance leadership at St. Anne Hospital as chair of the Board and holding multiple other chairmanships. Uli received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics, a Master of Science in computer science, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in computer science from the University of Washington.
Van Phan H, Tsitsiklis A, Maguire CP, Haddad EK, Becker PM, Kim-Schulze S, Lee B, Chen J, Hoch A, Pickering H, van Zalm P, Altman MC, Augustine AD, Calfee CS, Bosinger S, Cairns C, Eckalbar W, Guan L, Jayavelu ND, Kleinstein SH, Krammer F, Maecker HT, Ozonoff A, Peters B, Rouphael N, IMPACC Network, Montgomery RR, Reed E, Schaenman J, Steen H, Levy O, Diray-Arce J, Langelier CR