JCVI - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor in the Microbial and Environmental
Andrew E. Allen is a professor in the Microbial and Environmental Genomics Department. His research focus is related to genome biology, and comparative and functional genomics of eukaryotic marine phytoplankton. Other areas of interest include molecular microbial ecology and metagenomics of eukaryotic marine microbes and bacteria, molecular and genome evolution, chemical and biological oceanography, microbial metabolism, and bioinformatics. Primary areas of interest are based on understanding the molecular basis of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and iron (Fe) assimilation and metabolism in marine phytoplankton populations as well as the evolution and ecological relevance of molecular and regulatory and signaling/sensing mechanisms that mediate acclimation responses to nutrient and abiotic stress and control biotic interactions. Various ongoing physiological and functional genomics based wet-lab, computational, metagenomic, and metatranscriptomic research projects are centered on addressing hypotheses related to controls on the diversity and activity of marine microorganisms.
Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Allen was a postdoctoral fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France and at Princeton University in the labs of Chris Bowler and Bess Ward where he worked on phytoplankton genomics. He received his PhD in Ecology from the University of Georgia under the direction of Marc Frischer and Peter Verity where he studied the molecular basis of nitrogen assimilation in marine bacteria. Dr. Allen earned his bachelor's degree in Biology and English from Vassar College.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Research Administration
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor in the Genomic Medicine, Environment
Chris Dupont is a professor in the Genomic Medicine, Environment & Sustainability, and Synthetic Biology groups at JCVI. His primary research focus is microbial physiology and the environmental and evolutionary influence on physiological variation. This involves work with model organisms in laboratory systems, domestication of wild microbes for model studies, and sequencing based profiling of microbial communities in a variety of environments, including organismal microbiomes. This includes metagenomic and metatranscriptomic studies of the microbiomes found in the human gut, respiratory pathways, skin, and oral surfaces.
Dr. Dupont is also working on applying synthetic biology and machine learning techniques to solve unique problems in big datasets associated with the human microbiome and the environment.
Dr. Dupont began his career at JCVI as a postdoctoral fellow. He received his PhD in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as a bachelor's in natural resources and a master's of biological and environmental engineering from Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Clyde Hutchison, III, PhD, is a distinguished professor emeritus at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, where he is a member of the Synthetic Biology Group. He is also a consultant for Synthetic Genomics, Inc. In 1995 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He graduated from Yale University in 1960, with a BS in Physics. His graduate studies were in the laboratory of Robert L. Sinsheimer at Cal Tech where he finished his PhD in 1968. He was a member of the faculty of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1968 until 2005, where he now holds the title Kenan Professor Emeritus. He has worked on the molecular genetics of bacteriophage, bacteria, and mammals. In Fred Sanger's lab (1975-6) he helped determine the first complete sequence of a DNA molecule (phiX174). He developed site-directed mutagenesis with Michael Smith (1978). In 1990 he began work with mycoplasmas as models for the minimal cell. This led to collaboration with Smith and Venter, and his current work on synthetic genomics.
Job Titles:
- Professor in the Synthetic Biology
Daniel Gibson is an Professor in the Synthetic Biology group at the JCVI. Since joining the JCVI as a postdoc in 2004, Gibson led the JCVI efforts to synthesize two complete bacterial genomes. Those projects resulted in creation of the first synthetic bacterial cell and development of an enabling suite of DNA synthesis and assembly methods.
Prior to joining the JCVI, Gibson earned his PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California. While there, he used yeast as the model system for studying cell cycle surveillance mechanisms (checkpoints), which are significant in our understanding of cancer development. Before earning his Ph.D., he earned his Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Job Titles:
- Member of the JCVI Board of Trustees President and Chief Executive Officer, Sanford Burnham Prebys
- President and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys
David Brenner, MD, is the president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Brenner spent more than 15 years as vice chancellor for Health Sciences at UC San Diego. He is a leader in the field of liver research and is widely respected for his work advancing laboratory discoveries to the clinic setting. At Sanford Burnham Prebys, Dr. Brenner is continuing his research on fibrotic liver disease and liver cancer, using this as the foundation for preventing and treating liver disease. He is a former editor-in-chief of Gastroenterology, the premier journal in the field.
Dr. Brenner has been instrumental in starting several multidisciplinary efforts in San Diego, including the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, the Institute for Genomic Medicine, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, the UC San Diego Sanford Clinical Stem Cell Program, and the C3 Cancer Center Consortium (comprising UC San Diego, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Sanford Burnham Prebys).
Dr. Brenner earned his MD from the Yale University School of Medicine. He was chief of Gastroenterology at the University of North Carolina and Chair of Medicine at Columbia University, before joining UC San Diego in 2007. His professional memberships include the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians (of which he is a past president), and an NIH National Council. At UC San Diego, he led the unprecedented expansion of the medical school. He has also served as a Pew Scholar and as a Clinical Investigator in the Veteran Affairs system.
Job Titles:
- Professor at the Rockville Campus
Derrick Fouts is a Professor at the Rockville Campus. Dr. Fouts has extensive experience in viral and bacteriophage genomics, bacterial genomics, comparative genomics, and metagenomics of bacterial and viral communities.
Since joining Dr. Karen Nelson's group at TIGR/JCVI in 2001, Dr. Fouts has led several microbial sequencing projects, including animal, plant and human pathogens. Many of these projects were among the first to compare multiple strains. In addition to leading projects, Dr. Fouts has developed various software tools, including applications to perform multi-genome comparisons and heuristic software (Phage Finder) to identify prophage regions in bacterial genomes. He is currently leading the effort to sequence the human virome and reference viral and bacteriophage genomes as part of the NIH sponsored, Human Microbiome Project.
Dr. Fouts received his B.S. degree (1992) in Biology with honors from Indiana University, Bloomington, and his M.S. (1994) and PhD (1997) degrees in Microbiology from the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign Department of Microbiology. In 1997, he began postdoctoral work in Dr. Alan Collmer's lab at Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the JCVI Board of Trustees Founder and CEO of BADR Investments
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chief Executive Officer
- Founder
- 20 Years of Decoding the Human Genome
- Founder, Chairman and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, CA, United States
- Institute Education Program Fosters Learning Opportunities With Salisbury University Students and Faculty
- Institute Researchers Clone and Engineer Bacterial Genomes in Yeast and Transplant Genomes Back into Bacterial Cells
Dr. Venter's election was a significant honor and recognition of his "outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service in the fields of health and medicine.
J. Craig Venter was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama.
J. Craig Venter, PhD, is regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century for his numerous invaluable contributions to genomic research. Dr. Venter is founder, chairman, and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit, research organization with approximately 120 scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, synthetic, and environmental genomic research, and the exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics.
Dr. Venter began his formal education after a tour of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. After earning both a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and a PhD in physiology and pharmacology from the University of California at San Diego, he was appointed professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. In 1984, he moved to the National Institutes of Health campus where he developed expressed sequence tags or ESTs, a revolutionary new strategy for rapid gene discovery.
In 1992, Dr. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI), a not-for-profit research institute, where in 1995 he and his team decoded the genome of the first free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, using the new whole genome shotgun technique.
In 1998, Dr. Venter founded Celera Genomics to sequence the human genome using new tools and techniques he and his team developed. This research culminated with the February 2001 publication of the human genome in the journal, Science. He and his team at Celera also sequenced the fruit fly, mouse, and rat genomes.
Dr. Venter and his team at JCVI continue to blaze new trails in genomics. They have sequenced and analyzed hundreds of genomes, and have published numerous important papers covering such areas as environmental genomics, the first complete diploid human genome, and the groundbreaking advance in constructing the first self-replicating bacterial cell using synthetic DNA.
Dr. Venter is one of the most frequently cited scientists, and the author of more than 280 research articles. He is also the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, public honors, and scientific awards, including the 2008 United States National Medal of Science, the 2002 Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 2001 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, and the King Faisal International Award for Science. Dr. Venter is a member of numerous prestigious scientific organizations including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.
Dr. Venter is also a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded several companies including Synthetic Genomics, Inc., now Viridos and Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI).
The human genome is 99% decoded, the American geneticist Craig Venter announced two decades ago. What has the deciphering brought us since then?
Craig Venter is the founder, chairman and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, CA, United States. He will be giving the Mendel Lecture on Tuesday June 18 at 13.30 hrs. He talked to Mary Rice about his life and work.
New methods allow for the rapid engineering of bacterial chromosomes and the creation of extensively modified bacterial species; should also play key role in boot up of synthetic cell
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor and Leader of the JCVI Synthetic Biology Group
John Glass is a professor and leader of the JCVI Synthetic Biology Group. His expertise is in molecular biology, microbial pathogenesis, RNA virology, and microbial genomics. Dr. Glass is also an adjunct faculty member of the University of Maryland at College Park Cellular and Molecular Biology Program, and member of the Global Viral Network Scientific Leadership Board.
Dr. Glass is part of the Venter Institute team that created a synthetic bacterial cell. In reaching this milestone, the Venter Institute scientists developed the fundamental techniques of the new field of synthetic genomics including genome transplantation and genome assembly. Dr. Glass was also leader of the JCVI project that rapidly made synthetic influenza virus vaccine strains in collaboration with Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Inc., and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. At the JCVI he has also led the bacterial outer membrane vesicle based vaccine, genome transplantation, and Mycoplasma genitalium minimal genome projects, and projects studying other mycoplasma and ureaplasma species. Glass and his Venter Institute colleagues are now using synthetic biology and synthetic genomics approaches developed at the JCVI to create cells and organelles with redesigned genomes to make microbes that can produce biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and industrially valuable molecules.
Prior to joining the JCVI, Dr. Glass spent five years in the Infectious Diseases Research Division of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. There he directed a hepatitis C virology group and a microbial genomics group (1998-2003).
Dr. Glass earned his undergraduate (Biology) and graduate degrees (Genetics) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His PhD work was on RNA virus genetics in the laboratory of Gail Wertz. He was on the faculty and did postdoctoral fellowships in the Microbiology Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in polio virology with Casey Morrow and mycoplasma pathogenesis with Gail Cassell (1990-1998). On sabbatical leave in Ellison Chen's lab at Applied Biosystems, Inc. (1995-1997) he sequenced the genome of Ureaplasma parvum and began his study of mycoplasma genomics.
Dr. Yu "Max" Qian is an associate professor specializing in single cell cytometry informatics. After PhD graduation, he joined the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (UT Southwestern) as a postdoctoral senior research associate, where he was trained on immunology informatics, bioinformatics, and clinical informatics. He was appointed as an assistant professor of Department of Clinical Sciences and Department of Pathology of UT Southwestern in 2010. Before joining JCVI in 2013, he was leading the natural language processing project at the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), Parkland Health and Hospital System at Dallas on real-time disease identification for re-admission reduction.
As an informatics researcher, Dr. Qian leads and co-develops a suite of standards, models, algorithms, and software systems for computational cytometry data analysis, including FLOCK/ImmPort FLOCK, FCSTrans, FuGEFlow, MIFlowCyt, and GenePattern FCM suite. These systems have been used by informatics researchers and immunologists to improve the management of experiment metadata, explore cellular phenotypic profiles, identify novel cell subsets, and quantify immune responses to clinical treatments. Collaborating with UC San Diego, Stanford, UC Irvine, and San Diego Supercomputer Center, he is leading the technical development of a computational infrastructure for improving precision diagnostics of certain types of blood cancers through identifying cell-based biomarkers from polychromatic flow cytometry (FCM) experiment data. He was one of the previous leading developers of the FCM component of ImmPort, the NIAID/DAIT-funded immunology database and analysis portal. He has been customizing analytical pipelines and performing computational analytics of big FCM data for multiple NIH-funded research projects, including the Respiratory Pathogens Research Center (RPRC) at University of Rochester and the Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) center at La Jolla Institute for Allery and Immunology.
Dr. Qian had been a teaching assistant of UT Dallas for Computer Science classes on computer graphics, machine learning and natural language processing, software architecture, and computer architecture. He also taught classes at the Pathology Department of UT Southwestern on applied bioinformatics and DNA microarray data analysis.
Dr. Qian received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) in 2006, and an ME and a BS degree in Computer Science from Nanjing University, in 2001 and 1998, respectively.
Job Titles:
- Vice Chairman, J. Craig Venter Institute Professor at the Center for History of Science, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Erling Norrby has an MD and PhD from the Karolinska Institute, the School of Medicine, Stockholm. He was the professor of virology and chairman at the Institute for 25 years. During that time he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for 6 years and was deeply involved in the work on Nobel prizes in physiology or medicine for 20 years.
After leaving the Institute he became Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for six years. During this time he had overriding responsibility for the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry and was a member of the Board of the Nobel Foundation.
Presently he is at the Center for the History of Sciences at the Academy and in 2010 he published the book Nobel Prizes and Life Sciences, in 2013 by a second book Nobel Prizes and Nature's Surprises and in 2016 a third book entitled Nobel Prizes and Notable Discoveries. In addition he is currently Vice-Chairman of the Board of the J. Craig Venter Institute. He also has one of the leading functions at the Royal Swedish Court as Lord Chamberlain in Waiting.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor at the J. Craig Venter Institute
Gene Tan is an assistant professor at the J. Craig Venter Institute working in the Infectious Disease group. The focus of his research is on virus-host interactions by defining the immunological, molecular and genetic determinants that govern immunity and disease. The aim is to better understand how viruses manipulate the host machinery to replicate and in turn elucidate the mechanisms by which the host counteracts the pathogen. Analyses of virus-host interaction can then facilitate the development of better diagnostic tools, novel therapeutics and vaccines.
Prior to his appointment at JCVI, Dr. Tan was a postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai working on characterizing the immunological and structural determinants of protection against influenza virus and Zika virus. He received his doctorate from Thomas Jefferson University and his undergraduate degree from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus
- Nobel Laureate, Named Scientific Director of IBEA
Hamilton Smith, M.D. is a distinguished professor emeritus at the J. Craig Venter Institute and former director of the Synthetic Biology and Bioenergy Group that created the first synthetic cell in 2010 and designed and synthesized the first minimal bacterial genome in 2016. He received an A.B. degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952 and the M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1956. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine in 1962. From 1962-67, he did research on lysogeny in phage P22 at the University of Michigan. In 1967, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Johns Hopkins. In 1970, he discovered the first Type II restriction enzyme, HindII. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1978 for that work. From 1975 to 1998, he studied the DNA transformation mechanism in Haemophilus Inflluenzae Rd. In 1993, Dr. Smith began his long association with Craig Venter. In 1995, they collaborated to sequence the genome of H. Inflluenzae Rd, and from 1998 to 2002, at Celera Genomics they sequenced Drosophila and the human genome. After leaving Celera, Smith and Venter began their work in synthetic biology.
After saving countless lives, Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith retires as his own health falters
He has been a fixture in San Diego science for decades
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Chief Operating Officer / Member, JCVI Board of Trustees
Heather Kowalski is JCVI's chief operating officer. She was most recently chief administrative officer at Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI). In this role she oversaw marketing, public relations, human resources, IT, facilities, and security. Prior to this role she was head of public relations and marketing at HLI from the inception of the company in 2014. She was also instrumental in the formation of HLI.
Before joining HLI, Heather was a public relations consultant working for a variety of not-for-profit, academic organizations, and several start up biotechnology companies all focused in the life sciences arena, which is Heather's area of expertise. Prior to consulting she was Chief of Staff and VP of Communications for the J. Craig Venter Institute from 2003 until 2006. She began to hone her genomics communications experience at Celera Genomics where she was Director of Communications during the company's historic sequencing of the human genome. Heather also held leadership positions at two public relations agencies, Edelman in Washington, DC and Feinstein Kean in Cambridge, MA, where she and her teams led strategic PR and marketing programs for a diverse portfolio of healthcare, life sciences and global corporate clients including Novartis, Personalized Medicine Coalition, AdvaMed, and Walmart.
She began her career in the 1990's in pharmaceutical sales working for the Upjohn Company and transitioned to public relations within a large academic medical center in her home state of Pennsylvania. She has a BA in Political Science from Muhlenberg College.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Philanthropy & Alliances
Jill is a graduate of the University of Southern California where she received a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Business Administration.
Job Titles:
- General Counsel
- Vice President
Julie Gross Adelson has devoted her career to the practice of health sciences and health care law as an in-house attorney. She is the Vice President and General Counsel for the J. Craig Venter Institute, a world leader in genomic research with more than 200 scientists and staff, and locations in Rockville, Maryland and La Jolla, California. Prior to joining the Institute in 2006, Ms. Adelson served for six years as Vice President and General Counsel for SoftMed Systems, Inc., a medical records software innovator that has since been acquired by 3M Corporation.
From 1977 to 2000, Ms. Adelson served as Medical Center Counsel for Georgetown University Medical Center which then was comprised of the Georgetown University Hospital, the Georgetown University Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Georgetown University physicians practice group.
Ms. Adelson received her juris doctor degree from The National Law Center of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and her bachelors degree from the University of Rochester.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Finance
Katharine Wardle, MBA is JCVI's vice president of finance. She was most recently the CFO of Francis Parker School. She has over 20 years of experience in financial and operational management in not-for-profit and for-profit organizations, including CFO for the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, the Mingei International Museum, the technology startup Skinit, and Waldo's, one of Mexico's largest dollar store chains.
Ms. Wardle has a Master of Business Administration in international management, concentration in finance, from the Garvin International School of Business, Thunderbird; a Master of Science in political science from the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, England; and a Master of Arts (MA Hons) in politics and international relations from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She is a Certified Management Accountant and a Certified Treasury Professional. She is fluent in Spanish and Italian and also speaks French and Mandarin. Ms Wardle is currently enrolled in the PhD program at SOLES, USD.
Ms. Wardle has involved herself extensively in community service work including as board member and treasurer for The Institute for Effective Education, formerly as a board member and treasurer for the Elementary Institute of Science and audit committee member for Planned Parenthood, San Diego. She is also a LEAD graduate.
Having worked in China, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Brazil, Ms. Wardle now resides permanently in San Diego. She and her spouse, Patricia Brennan, are raising three daughters, Aisling, Eva, and Keira. Ms. Wardle's passions include her children, effective education for all, benefits of being multilingual, cultural competency, maximizing impact of mission-oriented organizations, and running.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor in the Genomic Medicine
- Scientist Spotlight
Marcelo Freire is an associate professor in the Genomic Medicine and Infectious Disease Department at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Freire was an assistant faculty member at The Forsyth Institute and Harvard University (Division of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity). Early in his career, he worked on tissue biology of infectious diseases, biofilm-induced bone diseases and antibody engineering. As a dual-scientist and clinician, Dr. Freire's initial training provided insights in human physiology and unmet clinical needs. As a current president of the Clinical and Translational Science Network (IADR), Dr. Freire is focused on applications of scientific innovations to health care. His research focuses on investigating biological deficiencies in chronic diseases.
Dr. Freire has extensive experience in host response, inflammation biology, transcriptomics and antibody engineering. Inflammation is a fundamental physiological process of normal and pathological conditions. He has led studies that developed novel therapeutics in control of chronic diseases. At JCVI, Dr. Freire is working on investigating links integrating microbiome, metabolism and immune response. In particular his lab is studying mechanisms controlling innate recognition, phagocytosis and activation signals of adaptive immune responses.
Dr. Freire received a DDS from College of Dentistry, Campos, Rio de Janeiro, a PhD in Craniofacial Molecular Biology from University of Southern California, and DMedSc in Oral Medicine and Infectious Diseases from Harvard University.
JCVI Associate Professor, Marcelo Freire, DDS, PhD, DMSc, continues to lead the field as he investigates the critical role the human microbiome plays in inflammation as the pathway to chronic disease.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer
- Information Technology Executive
Marty Stout is a seasoned information technology executive with over 20 years of life science / biotechnology industry experience and over 30 years in the Information technology field. Mr. Stout currently serves as J. Craig Venter Institute's (JCVI) chief technology officer, where he oversees all IT, facilities, and security services. This portfolio includes multiple data centers, offices, and a state-of-the-art LEED-Platinum genomics laboratory facility.
Mr. Stout first joined JCVI at what was then known as The Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG) as an IT manager and systems administrator. As TCAG merged with other Venter-affiliated nonprofit entities and became the JCVI, he was appointed vice president of information technology, and later its CTO.
During his time at JCVI, the IT department built out a 60k square foot, large-scale DNA sequencing and data center in Rockville, Maryland and a second 125k square foot building and data center also in Rockville, Maryland. He also directed a data center move and worked closely with the engineering team that designed and built JCVI's LEED-Platinum headquarters on the campus of UC San Diego which is heavily integrated with computer systems for services from lighting to HVAC.
Prior to JCVI, Mr. Stout was a computer systems administrator at Celera Genomics, where under the direction of Dr. Venter the first draft sequence of the human genome was published. He also previously worked as a systems administrator at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Mr. Stout studied computer science and received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland College Park.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Human Resources
Mary Yumul serves as the Vice President of Human Resources with 20 years of experience in Human Resources with 18 years in non-profit organizations.
Prior to joining JCVI, Mary was the Vice President of Human Resources / CHRO for The Arc of San Diego, one of the largest agencies in San Diego that provides services to people with disabilities with 12 locations and 1,200 employees. Prior to The Arc of San Diego, she held the position of Corporate Director of Human Resources at the YMCA of San Diego County with 16 locations and 4,000 employees. Mary began her career in research at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in La Jolla.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO of Elemind Technologies, Inc
- Member of the JCVI Board of Trustees Chief Executive Officer, Elemind Technologies, Inc.
Meredith Perry is the co-founder and CEO of Elemind Technologies, Inc. Elemind is developing noninvasive neurotechnology to augment sleep, attention, and ultimately the human experience. Prior to Elemind, she founded uBeam, Inc., where she designed and built the most powerful and efficient ultrasonic transducer, transmitter, and receiver ever created. She has been awarded 25 patents with an additional five pending.
Meredith received her Bachelor of Arts in geology, paleobiology, and astrobiology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. She has been granted many honors and awards including being named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list twice and to the Fortune 40 under 40 Mobilizers list.
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Scientist Member, JCVI Board of Trustees
Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe is an associate professor working in the Infectious Diseases and Genomic Medicine Group. Currently, he is focused on the host responses that occur during co- and secondary bacterial infections to influenza.
Dr. Gonzalez-Juarbe began his science career researching the habitability of primary producers in the field of astrobiology. Later while working on his PhD, his research was one of the first to establish that bacterial pathogens use pore-forming toxins to deplete the lungs of alveolar macrophages through activation of necroptosis (programmed necrosis).
As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Orihuela, Dr. Gonzalez-Juarbe focused on the study of Streptococcus pneumoniae-induced cardiac damage during invasive pneumococcal disease and expanded his graduate work on how bacterial pore-forming toxins cause cell death and the immunological implications of these mechanisms.
Dr. Gonzalez-Juarbe earned his BS in microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo and his PhD in microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Health-San Antonio under the supervision of Dr. Molly A. Bergman.
Richard H. Scheuermann is adjunct faculty at the J. Craig Venter Institute. After completing his doctoral research, he accepted an independent research position at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland. In 1992, he joined the faculty in the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where he rose to the rank of Professor with tenure. In 2001, he made a career shift into the discipline of bioinformatics, initiated with a sabbatical year at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. In 2012, Dr. Scheuermann moved to San Diego to become the Director of Informatics at JCVI, and in 2016 was promoted to Director of the La Jolla Campus.
Dr. Scheuermann has applied his deep knowledge in molecular immunology and infectious disease toward the development of novel computational data mining methods and knowledge representation approaches, including the development of biomedical ontologies and their use in data mining, novel methods for the analysis of gene expression, protein network and flow cytometry data, and novel comparative genomics methods. These computational methods have been made available through several public database and analysis resources, including the Influenza Research Database (IRD), the Virus Pathogen Resource (ViPR), and the Immunology Database and Analysis Portal (ImmPort) supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
He received a BS in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Member of the JCVI Board of Trustees Equity Portfolio Manager, Capital Group
Robert Friedman is adjunct faculty at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Friedman directs JCVI's Policy Center, helps to facilitate JCVI's affiliation with UC San Diego, and is also active in several projects ongoing in the Institute's Environmental Genomics Group. Prior to joining the Venter Institute, Friedman was Vice President for Research at The H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, a nonprofit policy research organization that brought together collaborators from government, industry, environmental organizations, and academia. Earlier, Friedman was a Senior Associate at the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress (OTA). For 16 years, he advised Congressional committees on issues involving environmental and natural resources policy.
Dr. Friedman received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in Ecological Systems Analysis, concentrating in ecology, environmental engineering, and systems analysis. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator
- Director, Rockville Campus
- Director, Rockville Campus Professor
- Professor in the Synthetic Biology Group
Sanjay Vashee is a Professor in the Synthetic Biology Group and the Rockville, MD Campus Director at the J. Craig Venter Institute. After joining JCVI in 2003, Dr. Vashee helped the Synthetic Biology Group develop synthetic genomics methods and technologies that led to the creation of a synthetic organism based on Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies capri. His research interests leverage these synthetic genomics technologies to better study and develop therapeutics for human and animal diseases.
Currently, Dr. Vashee is the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the NSF under the BREAD program to develop a more effective vaccine for contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), an economically very important cattle disease that affects much of Africa, restricting trade and limiting the availability of protein sources for nutrition. He and his colleagues at INRA, France and UBERN, Switzerland are adapting the JCVI synthetic genomics technology to allow genetic manipulation of the CBPP pathogen, M. mycoides subspecies mycoides, expanding the mycoplasma genetic toolbox and using the latest genome sequencing platforms to identify virulence factors.
Together, these advances should help develop a more effective and safe vaccine based upon a rationally designed attenuated strain. Dr. Vashee also helps lead ongoing NIH funded projects that leverage synthetic genomics approaches to engineer large DNA viruses, including human herpesviruses on a genome-wide and combinatorial scale. Collaborators in these efforts include researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Herpes simplex virus 1 and Epstein Barr virus) as well as researchers at Tomegavax and Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, Inc. to develop a synthetic human cytomegalovirus vaccine. More recently, Dr. Vashee leads IDRC-funded efforts to develop genetic tools to manipulate African swine fever virus and DARPA-funded efforts to develop a Forensic Microbial System.
Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Vashee was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University-School of Medicine where he was the first to characterize the in vitro DNA-binding properties of the human origin recognition complex, the initiator protein of eukaryotic DNA replication. Dr. Vashee holds a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master's degree in Chemistry from Western Illinois University and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Scientist Spotlight
Sinem Beyhan is an associate professor working in the Infectious Disease group. She is also an adjunct professor at UC San Diego and San Diego State University.
Dr. Beyhan's research focuses on microbe-host interactions. She is particularly interested in the discovery of anti-fungal molecules, elucidation of gene pathways in Burkholderia and discovery of anti-Burkholderia drugs, and fungal genome assembly and annotation. Prior to her appointment at JCVI, Dr. Beyhan was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded American Lung Association Senior Research Training Fellowship, American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship and NIH-NIAID Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).
She received her PhD in Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her BS in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
Job Titles:
- Genomics to Engineer Large DsDNA Viruses
Rapid engineering of large dsDNA viruses using synthetic genomics assembly tools.
Job Titles:
- Member of the JCVI Board of Trustees Executive Chairman, Human Longevity, Inc.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor in the Informatics Department at the J. Craig Venter Institute
- Scientists
Yun Zhang, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Informatics Department at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). She received an MMath in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Oxford, UK, and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Rochester Medical Center. She also has industrial and research experience in Novartis Oncology and Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Zhang's research interest includes statistical modeling and methodology development for big data produced by advanced biotechnologies. She is experienced in analyzing time-course microarray data, DNA methylation data, and microRNA sequencing data. She is also a professional developer of R and Bioconductor packages. Her recent focus is on applying statistical approaches to single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) data.