ACCELERATED CURE PROJECT - Key Persons

Aakruti Gorde

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Directors

Arun Venkatesan

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Member of the Oversight Committee
Assistant Professor of Neurology / Johns Hopkins Hospital

Augusto Miravalle

Job Titles:

Member of the Oversight Committee
Assistant Professor and. Associate Director / University of Colorado

Ben Thrower

Job Titles:

Member of the Oversight Committee
Medical Director / Multiple Sclerosis Institute at Shepherd Center

Colin Hill

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CEO, Gene Network Sciences
Chairman of the Board of Fina Technologies

In his professional career, Colin is currently the Chairman of the Board of Fina Technologies, a subsidiary of Via Science, and Chairman and CEO of GNS Healthcare, a leading healthcare analytics company that matches drugs to patients in clinical trials and in patient care. A valued supporter of Accelerated Cure Project, Colin has helped to make introductions that have opened many doors for us and increased our understanding of how data-oriented approaches and technologies such as those developed by GNS can contribute to curing complex diseases like MS. He believes that technology combined with ACP's data resources could significantly advance research findings in MS. Colin serves on the boards of the New York Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) and of a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of a new treatment for sickle cell disease. In 2004, he was named to MIT Technology Review‘s TR100 list of the world's top innovators under the age of 35. He graduated with a degree in physics from Virginia Tech and earned master's degrees in physics from McGill University and Cornell University.

David Gwynne

dg..@acceleratedcure.org

Deepak Grover

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Member of the Board of Directors
Director of Computational Biology

Dr. Amit Bar-Or

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Associate in Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University / MUHC

In addition to serving on the scientific advisory boards of ACP and the Guthy-Jackson Greater-Good Foundation for NMO research, Dr. Bar-Or is on the editorial boards of Neurology, and Clinical and Experimental Neuroimmunology, is a member of the MS Monitoring Guideline Committee of the American Academy of Neurology, an advisor to the NIH Immune Tolerance Network (MS, Assay Development), and serves on the German National Neuroimmunology Kompetenz Network. Dr. Amit Bar-Or is Associate Professor of Neurology and Associate in Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University/MUHC and serves as Scientific Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI). He also founded and directs the Experimental Therapeutics Program at MNI. He is holder of a McGill William Dawson Scholar Chair and recipient of an MNI Killam Award, FRSQ 'Chercheur Boursier Clinicien' Award and the MSSC Don Party 'Career Scientist' Award. Dr. Bar-Or completed undergraduate studies in biopsychology at McMaster University (1988) and received his medical degree cum laude from McGill University (1993). He then pursued Internship and Neurology Residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University Medical School. He subsequently pursued postdoctoral fellowship training in Neuroimmunology at the Center for Neurologic Disease, Harvard, while also completing the prestigious Clinical Investigator Training Program (CITP) in Translational Research at Harvard and MIT. He was recruited to the MNI as a clinician scientist in 2000.

Dr. Benjamin Greenberg

Job Titles:

Director of the Transverse Myelitis and Neuromyelitis Optica Program

In January of 2009 Dr. Benjamin Greenberg was recruited to the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he was named Deputy Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Program and Director of the new Transverse Myelitis and Neuromyelitis Optica Program. He also directs the pediatric demyelinating disease program at Children's Hospital. His research interests include the diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis and neuromyelitis optica. He is actively involved in developing better ways to diagnose and prognosticate for patients with these disorders. Dr. Greenberg led an effort to improve biorepository development and has created uniform protocols for sample handling and analysis. As part of this initiative his research has identified novel biomarkers that may be able to distinguish between patients with various neurologic disorders. He also coordinates trials that study new treatments to prevent neurologic damage and restore function to those who have already been affected. Dr. Benjamin Greenberg received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and his Masters Degree in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dr. Greenberg completed his residency in neurology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Timothy Vollmer

Job Titles:

Director of Neuroscience Clinical Research / University of Colorado / Physician of Distinction Award ( 2011 )

A member of ACP's Repository Oversight Committee, Dr. Timothy Vollmer is currently the Director of Neuroscience Clinical Research and Professor of Neurology at the University of Colorado Denver. Dr. Vollmer is involved as Principal Investigator or Sub Investigator in 30 clinical studies and has completed over 130 clinical studies in MS to date. In his previous role at Yale School of Medicine in the Department of Neurology, Dr. Vollmer was involved in both basic and clinical research in MS. Later, while at the Barrow Neurological Institute, he established the BNI Neuroimmunology Program, which includes one of the largest centers for clinical studies including experimental therapies for MS in the world. In collaboration with the Consortium of MS Centers, Dr. Vollmer started NARCOMS, an international database containing information on over 30,000 MS patients which serves as a resource for investigators from around the world.

Elliot Frohman

Job Titles:

Member of the Repository Oversight Committee
Director of Department of Neurology
Professor of Neurology / University of Texas Southwestern / Medical Center
Professor With Tenure With the Departments of Neurology

Dr. Frohman is a Professor with tenure with the Departments of Neurology and Ophthalmology, holder of the Kenney Marie Dixon-Pickens Distinguished Professorship in Multiple Sclerosis Research and the Irene Wadel and Robert Atha Distinguished Chair in Neurology and Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Program in the Department of Neurology at the Univer- sity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Frohman received his undergraduate training in biochemistry and cell biology at the University of California at San Diego and later completed the Physician Scien-tist Training Program for his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California at Irvine. Dr. Frohman has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships and has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of neuroimmunology and neuro-ophthalmology, and he serves as a reviewer for numerous journals. Dr. Frohman is married to Teresa Frohman (his principal research collaborator), and they have four children.

Hollie Schmidt

ho..@acceleratedcure.org

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Member of the Oversight Committee
VP of Scientific Operations

Jan Weaver

jw..@acceleratedcure.org

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Operations Manager

Jerry Kinard

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Member of the Board of Directors
Senior Project Manager

Kristy DosReis

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Member of the Board of Directors
Director of Communications / Brown University

Larry Jacobs

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Researcher

Larry Tiffany

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President / CEO, DioGenix
President, CEO and Co - Founder of DioGenix

Larry Tiffany is president, CEO and co-founder of DioGenix, an early-stage diagnostics company that engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of non-invasive monitoring tests to improve the diagnosis of immune-mediated neurodegenerative diseases. Its lead program is designed to provide neurologists with a set of clinical tests to diagnose early-stage MS, segment MS patients into clinical sub-types, and predict response to treatment using non-invasive blood tests. Larry's team has made considerable progress in the race to cure MS-their blood test for diagnosing MS has the potential to improve the quality of care for patients who currently must endure a long, costly and invasive medical work-up, even in cases where MS cannot be definitively diagnosed. Over time, DioGenix plans to use its strengths and capacity to develop additional tests for indications of significant clinical value.

Lawrence Steinman

Job Titles:

Member of the Oversight Committee
Chairman, Interdepartmental Program in Immunology / Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences

Linda Kanner

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Member of the Board of Directors
Retired Entrepreneur

Linda Kanner's 30-year career includes senior positions in marketing and general management at large multinational companies including Bank of Boston, Bank of New England and J. Baker, Inc. She is an active board member of both private and nonprofit organizations such as the board of The Commonwealth Institute and the Research Advisory Board of the Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital/Care Group. Most recently Linda was CEO of HBN Shoe, a venture-funded footwear technology company. Prior to that, she was involved in two venture-funded Internet companies, first as CEO of First Business Financial (now OneCore.com) and then as COO of edu.com, which she co-founded in 1998 with her son, raising $40 million and growing the company to 125 people before it was sold. Linda is a long-standing overseer of the Huntington Theatre and is actively engaged as an Executive in Residence at Babson College. Linda received her BA from Cornell and her MBA from Harvard. She was diagnosed with MS in 2007.