Biographies - CCNEs
 Sadik Esener, Ph.D.
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
James R. Heath, Ph.D.
Rudolph L. Juliano, Ph.D.
Robert Langer, Ph.D.
|
Chad Mirkin, Ph.D.
Shuming Nie, Ph.D.
Jonathan W. Simons, M.D.
Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D.
Samuel Wickline, M.D.
|
Sadik Esener, Ph.D.
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jacobs School of Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Professor Esener is an internationally known expert in photonics and opto-electronics, and he has been closely involved with five startup companies based on technology developed in his laboratories. His research interests include light modulation, detection, and amplification, heterogeneous integration of optoelectronic components, optical data storage, optical interconnects and related computing architectures, and biophotonics as applied to gene chips. Esener is a pioneer in the fields of free-space optical interconnects, parallel access volumetric optical data storage, DNA-assisted heterogeneous integration and optical cell sorting, and holds many patents in these areas...Esener's research team is working on diverse projects pushing the limits of the state of the art. They include active and passive photonic device processing and hybrid integration techniques; photonics sub-systems assembly such as optically interconnected Fast Fourier Transform accelerator boards; and parallel light tweezer systems for handling and characterization of biological entities.
Sadik Esener joined the UCSD faculty in 1987, after receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering from UCSD the same year. He leads UCSD's OptoElectronic Computing Group, and is the director of: the DARPA-funded multi-university Center for Chips with Heterogenously Integrated Photonics (CHIPS); the 3D-Opto-Electronic Stacked Processors industry/university consortium; and the Fast Read-out Optical Storage (FROST) Industry consortium. He has authored more than 100 journal publications and 200 conference abstracts. Esener is a member of IEEE, OSA, and SPIE, and co-founded San Diego-based Nanogen, Optical Micro-Machines, Parallel Solutions, Genoptix, and Call/Recall Inc.
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford
Head, Nuclear Medicine
Professor, Departments of Radiology & Bioengineering
Bio-X Program
Stanford University
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir is a Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering at Stanford University. He is the Head of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS). He trained at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Scientist Training Program, where he obtained both his M.D. and Ph.D. He completed his Medicine and Nuclear Medicine training at UCLA and was a Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Vice-chair of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology and Director of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging before moving to Stanford University in 2003.
Dr. Gambhir has a translational laboratory that focuses on molecular imaging including new probe development for positron emission tomography (PET) and multimodality molecular imaging including the use of optical imaging. His laboratory has developed methods to image gene/cell therapy in living subjects including humans. He has developed many strategies for imaging basic cell/molecular events including signal transduction, gene expression, and cell trafficking. Dr. Gambhir also has extensive experience with clinical FDG PET and has developed many of the management algorithms for cancer patients including cost-effectiveness models.
Dr. Gambhir currently oversees the activities of over 20 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in his own lab and over 100 scientists/staff in the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford. He is funded by the National Institutes of Health and several Foundations. He recently received the 2006 Hounsfield Medal, 2004 gold medal award by the Society of Molecular Imaging, the 2004 distinguished scientist award by the Academy of Molecular Imaging, and the 2003 Holst Medal for his contributions to the field of molecular imaging. He is President of the Academy of Molecular Imaging (AMI) and associate editor of several journals.
James R. Heath, Ph.D.
Gilloon Professor and Professor of Chemistry
California Institute of Technology
James R. Heath received a B.Sc. degree in chemistry from Baylor University in 1984, and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Rice University in 1988, where he studied in the group of Richard E. Smalley. Heath was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley from 1988-91, where he worked in the laboratory of Richard J. Saykally. He was a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Labs. in Yorktown Heights, New York from 1991-94. In 1994 he left IBM to join the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. He was promoted to tenure in 1996, and to Full Professor in 1997. He is currently the director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), which was formed by California's Governor Grey Davis in December 2000. Heath was a David and Lucile Packard Fellow (1994-1999), and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1997). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and has received the Jules Springer Award in Applied Physics (2000); the Feynman Prize (2000); and the Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences (2001). Heath's research interests focus on 'artificial' quantum dot solids and quantum phase transitions in those solids, molecular electronics architecture, devices, and circuitry, and the spectroscopy and imaging of transmembrane proteins in physiological environments.
Rudolph L. Juliano, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Pharmacology
University of North Carolina
Rudy Juliano obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the University of Rochester and then did postdoctoral work in Experimental Pathology at Roswell Park Memorial Institute. He has served on the faculty of the University of Toronto, the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and the School of Medicine of the University of North Carolina. At Carolina he served as Chair of Pharmacology for 16 years and is now a Professor in that department. His research interests include cell adhesion proteins, signal transduction, drug delivery systems, and the molecular therapeutics of cancer. He was involved in some of the earliest work using lipid nanoparticles (liposomes) as delivery agents for therapy of infectious diseases and cancer. He has served on numerous NIH study sections as well as the editorial boards of Cancer Research, Pharmaceutical Research, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Journal of Drug Targeting, Oligonucleotides, Molecular Pharmacology, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, and the Journal of Cell Biology.
Robert Langer, Ph.D.
Institute Professor, Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert S. Langer is one of 14 Institute Professors (the highest honor awarded to a faculty member) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Langer has written over 840 articles. He also has over 500 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 100 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies; a number of these companies were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 -- 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.
Dr. Langer has received over 130 major awards. In 2002, he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the world’s most prestigious engineering prize, from the National Academy of Engineering. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 64 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005) and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research. In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and to the National Academy of Engineering. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.
Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America. Parade Magazine (2004) selected Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” He has served, at various times, on 15 boards of directors and 30 Scientific Advisory Boards of such companies as Wyeth,
Alkermes, Mitsubishi Pharmaceuticals, Warner-Lambert, and Momenta Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England), the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University, and Uppsala University (Sweden). He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.
Chad Mirkin, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry, Medicine, Materials Science & Engineering
Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology
Northwestern University
Dr. Chad Mirkin's research focuses on developing methods for controlling the architecture of molecules and materials on the 1-100 nm length scale, and utilizing such structures in the development of analytical tools that can be used in the areas of chemical and biological sensing, lithography, catalysis, and optics. Mirkin has pioneered the use of biomolecules as synthons in materials science and the development of nanoparticle-based biodiagnostics. Many of the concepts and materials developed within his laboratories are now the basis for commercial detection and lithography systems.
Chad A. Mirkin received his undergraduate training at Dickinson College (B.S., 1986) and his graduate training at the Pennsylvania State University where he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1989. That same year he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Mirkin joined the faculty at Northwestern in 1991 as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry. In 1997 he became Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry. His current positions are the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the NU Institute for Nanotechnology.
Mirkin has won numerous awards for his research in these areas, including: The NIH Director's Pioneer Award, The Collegiate Inventors Award from the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2003, 2004), The ACS Nobel Signature Award, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the Feynman Prize, the Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award, Crain's Chicago 40 under 40 Award, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the Discover 2000 Innovation of the Year Award, the Materials Research Society's Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the E. Bright Wilson Prize, the Phi Lambda Upsilon Fresenius Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, an NSF Young Investigator Award, an A. P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a DuPont New Professor Award, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. He recently was elected as a fellow of the AAAS. In 1997, he was co-recipient of a prestigious BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award for one of the three most outstanding collegiate inventions in all of medicine, science, and engineering. He holds an honorary doctorate from Dickinson College. Professor Mirkin is the author or coauthor of over 230 publications and 50 patents. He serves on the editorial advisory board of 13 scholarly journals, and is an active consultant with several major chemical companies. He is founder of two companies, Nanosphere and NanoInk, and he is the co-founder of the journal, Small.
Shuming Nie, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Georgia Cancer Coalition Eminent Scientist
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
Director of Cancer Nanotechnology, Winship Cancer Institute
Emory University
Shuming Nie is the Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering and a Professor of Chemistry, Hematology and Oncology at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. He is also the Associate Director for Nanotechnology and Bioengineering at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute (WCI). He is the author of nearly 100 papers, the inventor of 15 patents, and the speaker of more than 270 invited talks and keynote lectures. After serving on the chemistry faculty at Indiana University for 8 years, he and his group moved to the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory in 2002. His research interest is primarily in the areas of biomolecular engineering and nanotechnology, with a focus on bioconjugated nanoparticles (including surface-enhanced Raman nanotags) for cancer molecular imaging, molecular profiling, pharmacogenomics, and targeted therapy. Professor Nie has received many awards and honors including the Rank Prize ( London, UK), the Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) Distinguished Scholar Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the National Collegiate Inventors Award, and the Distinguished Young Scholar Award (Natural Science Foundation of China). Professor Nie received his BS degree from Nankai University ( China) in 1983, earned his MS and PhD degrees from Northwestern University (1984-1990), and did postdoctoral research at both the Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University (1990-1994).
Jonathan W. Simons, M.D.
Director of the Winship Cancer Institute
Professor and Chairman of Hematology and Oncology
Emory University School of Medicine
Jonathan W. Simons, M.D. is the Director of the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and Professor of Hematology & Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine. He also holds a joint appointment with the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Simons was named Director of the Winship Cancer Institute in February, 2000. A highly acclaimed investigator in translational cancer research, he was Director of the Genetic Pharmacology Program and Cancer Gene Therapy Laboratory at The Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Simons is internationally recognized as a widely published and cited leader in molecular oncology of prostate cancer. He is the first investigator to successfully use human gene therapy to create clinically measurable immune responses against metastatic prostate cancer using vaccines.
Young investigators in Dr. Simons’ laboratory have identified four new genetic targets and mechanisms for genetic therapy approaches to the treatment of prostate cancer and other common human cancers. All four approaches have now entered early human clinical trials in the United States.
Dr. Simons is a B.S. graduate of Princeton University (1980) and received his M.D. degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1984). Before entering medical school he was a Rotary International Postgraduate Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, and a Nuffield Foundation Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. Dr. Simons completed his residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He began his career in cancer research as a fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Dr. Bert Vogelstein at The Johns Hopkins Oncology Center.
Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Harvard Medical School; Director, Center for Molecular Imaging Research
Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Weissleder is a Professor at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Attending Interventional Radiologist at MGH, member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Associate Member of the Broad Institute (Chemical Biology Program). Dr. Weissleder has published over 380 peer reviewed articles, has authored and co-authored several textbooks, is currently the principal investigator of several RO1 NIH grants (including a P50 Center grant, a R24 grant, and a UO1 consortium focusing on nanotechnology) and has 20 active or pending US and international patents. He is a founding member of the Society for Molecular Imaging Research and has served as its President in 2002. His work has been honored with numerous awards including the J. Taylor International Prize in Medicine, the Millenium Pharmaceuticals Innovator Award, the AUR Memorial Award, the ARRS President's Award and The Society for Molecular Imaging Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Weissleder’s research interests include the development of novel molecular imaging techniques, tools for detection of early detection of cancer and development of nanomaterials for sensing. His research has been translational and some of his developments have led to advanced clinical trials with anticipated major impacts when these methods become routinely available.
Samuel Wickline, M.D.
Professor, Internal Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Physics
Molecular Cell Biology Program
Computational Biology Program
Washington University
Samuel A. Wickline is Professor of Medicine, Physics, Biomedical Engineering, and Cell Biology and Physiology at Washington University. He received the B.A. degree from Pomona College, Claremont, CA in 1974 and the M.D. degree from the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, Honolulu, HI, in 1980. He completed post-doctoral training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, MO in 1987 and joined the faculty of the School of Medicine in the Cardiovascular Division before becoming Director of the Cardiovascular Division at Jewish Hospital and subsequently Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Division at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He is Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Bioengineering graduate Program at Washington University and a member of the executive faculty of the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering.
Dr. Wickline initiated the Cardiovascular Ultrasound Laboratory in 1987 and the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Laboratories in 1995 at Washington University School of Medicine. These laboratories are devoted to both basic and translational clinical research focused on image-based detection and quantification of physiologic and pathologic structure and function of heart and vascular system. He also initiated a program in molecular imaging in 1994 following the development of a novel nanoparticulate contrast agent useful for multiple imaging modalities that can be targeted to molecular ligands for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in cancer and cardiovascular disease. He recently established the “Center for Applied Nanomedicine” at Washington University as a consortium for multidisciplinary translational nanoscience involving academic, corporate and venture partners.
Dr. Wickline has served as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He also has served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Cardiovascular MR, and currently is Councilor of the Society of Molecular Imaging . He is a founder of Kereos, Inc., a biotech startup company devoted to molecular imaging and targeted therapeutics.
He is the author of over 140 research papers in these and related fields. He currently is Principal Investigator on 2 RO1 grants and a Biomedical Partnership Grant (BRP) from the National Institutes of Health. He also holds more than 30 issued or filed U.S. patent applications.
|
|
Back to Top
