2021 Speaker Profiles

Dr. Parag Mallick is an Associate Professor at Stanford University. Originally trained as an engineer and biochemist, his research spans computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology and nanotechnology. Dr. Mallick received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in Chemistry & Biochemistry, where he worked with Dr. David Eisenberg. He completed Post-Doctoral studies at The Institute for Systems Biology, in Seattle, WA with Dr. Ruedi Aebersold. Beyond studying fundamental disease mechanisms, his group has been pioneering novel approaches for enabling personalized and predictive medicine.  Most recently, his group has been developing model-based and physics-based approaches to machine learning that enable learning over domains that span a wide range of time and length scales.
 Paraq Mallick,Canary Center at Stanford Cancer

Erin F. McCaffrey, Stanford University

Erin McCaffrey received her B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Maryland-College Park where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Rohan Fernandes at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation on engineering bacteria-nanoparticle bioconjugates for targeted tumor immunotherapy applications. She was also a 2015 Amgen Scholar in the lab of Dr. Owen Witte at UCLA. Erin is now a graduate student in Computational and Systems Immunology at Stanford University in the lab of Dr. Michael Angelo where she is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Her work focuses on employing multiplexed imaging and computational tools to better understand mechanisms of immune regulation in human tuberculosis granulomas and related inflammatory conditions.

Mercedes K. Meyer, Ph.D., JD,  Faegre, Drinker, Biddle, LLP

Mercedes Meyer draws on her doctorate in virology and degree in chemistry to apply a deep understanding of complex biotechnology and scientific research in advising life science clients on commercializing and protecting product innovations as well as performing diligence for investing in new technologies. She oversees global patent portfolio development, patent portfolio due diligence and war games, strategy and management on behalf of clients and counsels on innovation monetization. Mercedes maintains an extensive biotechnology and pharmaceutical patent management and prosecution practice, particularly in corporate joint development projects. Mercedes also advises and speaks frequently on patent ethics.
 

Denis Schapiro, Harvard Medical School and The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

 
Dr. Denis Schapiro obtained his PhD from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich in the laboratory of Prof. Bernd Bodenmiller where he worked on Imaging Mass Cytomerty and corresponding analysis tools focusing on highly multiplexed image analysis. Denis is the lead developer of the histology topography cytometry analysis toolbox (histoCAT). 
Prior to this, he received his diploma (Dipl. Biol. (t.o)) at the University of Stuttgart and Harvard Medical School working with Prof. Peter Sorger and Prof. Alfred Goldberg. He was also an intern at the Complex Systems Modeling Group at Bayer AG in Leverkusen focusing on PBPK modeling. 
Denis is currently an Independent Fellow at the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and the Klarman Cell Observatory at the Broad Institute focusing on spatial transcriptomics and proteomics analysis. He is supported by the SNFS Mobility Fellowship and mentored by Prof. Peter Sorger and Prof. Aviv Regev.
 
Xun Shi, Ph.D., Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College, specializes in geospatial analysis and modeling based on geographic information systems (GIS). He develops methodologies and technologies of geospatial analysis for environmental health studies and communicable disease modeling, and applies them in projects sponsored by NIH, CDC and other agencies. He has a long-time collaboration with biomedical and public health researchers. He has published more than 70 journal papers and was the Chair of Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group of American Association of Geographers (AAG, 2015-2016).

Xun Shi, Dartmouth College