Brenda Eskenazi, PhD

Maxwell Professor of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology Chair, Community Health and Human Development School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology University of California, Berkeley

Brenda Eskenazi, PhD directs the Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH, cerch.berkeley.edu) at the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley. She is the Distinguished Jennifer and Brian Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology. Dr. Eskenazi is a neuropsychologist and epidemiologist whose long-standing research interest has been the effects of the environmental factors on human reproduction (both male and female) and child development. Her work has included the potential health effects of numerous toxicants on a wide spectrum of child health outcomes. Her work has a community-based participatory research focus, and, she has been instrumental in illustrating the health conditions of farmworker families through the long-standing CHAMACOS project. She has conducted, collaborated, or advised on birth cohort studies in almost every continent. Professor Eskenazi was awarded the prestigious John R. Goldsmith award from the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology for lifetime achievement in environmental epidemiology and this year, the Child Health Advocate in Science Award from Children’s Environmental Health Network.

Hank Greely, JD

Director, Center for Law and the Biosciences Stanford Law School

Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law; Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics; and Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from the biosciences, particularly genetics, neuroscience, stem cell research, and assisted reproduction. He chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; is a founder and a past President of the International Neuroethics Society; and chaired the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Committee of the Earth BioGenome Project from 2020 to 2024. For six years, until August 2022, he served on the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Multi-Council Working Group while co-chairing the Initiative’s Neuroethics Work Group. He is the author of THE END OF SEX AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN REPRODUCTION (Harv. Univ. Press 2016) and CRISPR PEOPLE: THE SCIENCE AND ETHICS OF EDITING HUMANS (MIT Press 2021).

Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and Yale Law School in 1977. He clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Potter Stewart, then served in the Departments of Defense and Energy in the Carter Administration. He litigated at the Los Angeles firm of Tuttle & Taylor before joining the Stanford faculty in 1985.

Muin Khoury MD, PhD

Division of Blood Disorders and Public Health Genomics, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Dr. Khoury is the founding Director of the Office of Public Health Genomics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Office was formed in 1998 to assess the public health implications of the Human Genome Project. Dr Khoury served as the only director of this office until his retirement in 2024. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of Epidemiology at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia, and affiliate professor in the Public Health Genetics Institute at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

Dr. Khoury received his B.S. degree in Biology/Chemistry and medical degree and Pediatrics training from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He received a Ph.D. in Human Genetics/Genetic Epidemiology and training in Medical Genetics from Johns Hopkins University.

During his 40-year career in public health, he led numerous national and international initiatives to help translate advances in genomics and other technologies into effective and ethical interventions that can improve population health and reduce health inequities. Throughout his career, he helped identify evidence-based genomic testing, family health history, and other -omic applications that can save lives and prevent disease, inform and educate public health, healthcare providers and the general public, about evidence-based genomic and precision health applications, and help integrate evidence-based applications into clinical practice and public health programs.

Dr. Khoury has published extensively in the fields of genetic epidemiology, public health genomics and precision public health (pubmed). Dr Khoury is also the author of 4 books in genetic epidemiology and public health genomics. He is widely cited in the scientific literature and has won multiple scientific and service awards. He also serves on the editorial boards of multiple scientific journals.

Barbara Koenig, PhD

Professor, Institute for Health and Aging University of California, San Francisco

Barbara A. Koenig, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Bioethics and Medical Anthropology, University of California, San Francisco, where prior to her retirement she directed the UCSF Program in Bioethics. Prior to that she helped found bioethics programs at the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University. A medical anthropologist by disciplinary background, Prof. Koenig pioneered the use of empirical methods in the study of ethical questions in science, medicine, and health. That work targets emerging genomic technologies. Her work on deliberative democracy as a strategy to engage communities in biobank design and governance informed the creation of the Mayo Clinic Biobank. Throughout her career, Prof. Koenig has been an active participant in health and science policy, having served on the ethics committee that advises the director of the CDC as well as the Department of Health and Human Services “Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing.” Data sharing practice is another long-standing interest: she served on a university-wide “Health Data Governance Task Force” that advised the University of California’s president; that report argued for a justice-based approach to health data use. The dynamic intersection of cultural and biological categories of human difference led to the publication of the volume: Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. That interest continues in her work with the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium—an NIH project that seeks to build a novel reference genome reflecting the full range of human diversity. Koenig is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center, was a faculty fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, a residential fellow at the Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center, and a visiting scholar at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland.

Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD

Chief, Division of Ethics Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics (MHE) Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons Columbia University

Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD, is Professor of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Chief of the Division of Ethics at Columbia University. Trained as a medical anthropologist, Dr. Lee’s research focuses on the ethical and social dimensions of emerging biotechnologies, including the use of race, ethnicity and ancestry in genomics, governance of biobanking, and equity of precision medicine and AI applications in healthcare. Dr. Lee is Co-Director of the NHGRI funded Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) and is Past President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors. She serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Bioethics and Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and is a member of the US Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections.

Christa Lese Martin, PhD, FACMG

Chief Scientific Officer, Geisinger Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute

>Dr. Christa Lese Martin, PhD, FACMG, is Chief Scientific Officer at Geisinger, Vice Dean for Research at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, and Professor and founding Director of Geisinger’s Autism & Developmental Medicine Institute. She is a Board-certified clinical genetics laboratory director, who has played a leading role in developing Geisinger as a learning health system, bridging research discoveries and clinical medicine to bring precision health into everyday health care.

Her research focuses on using a “genetics-first” approach to characterize neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders with an ultimate goal of developing precision health-driven treatments to improve patient outcomes. At Geisinger, she is part of the leadership team for the MyCode Community Health Initiative – one of the largest healthcare-based biobanks in the world driving genomic-informed discoveries.

Dr. Martin received her BS degree from Penn State University and her PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Pittsburgh. She did her clinical and research postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago and remained on faculty there as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory in the Department of Human Genetics. Before joining Geisinger, she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University and Senior Cytogenetics Laboratory Director and Operations Director of Emory Genetics Laboratory. Dr. Martin has been continually funded by the NIH for >25 years and has authored more than 170 publications, including 10 milli-pubs cited more than 1,000 times in the scientific literature.

Tiffany Oliver, PhD

Associate Professor and Chair of the Biology Department Carnegie and Rockefeller Distinguished Research Scholar Spelman College

Dr. Tiffany Oliver holds the distinction of Carnegie and Rockefeller Distinguished Research Scholar and serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of the Biology Department at Spelman College. She has a Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory University (Atlanta, GA) and has broad expertise in application of data science and computational approaches to the understanding of genetic phenomena.  With millions of dollars in scientific research and programmatic funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she currently serves as a 2023-2024 Jefferson Science Fellow in the Office of Global Food Security, a prestigious honor bestowed by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).

Dr. Oliver brings with her extensive experience providing scientific expertise to the US government.  Her understanding of genetic epidemiology enabled her to contribute to the research efforts of the US Navy’s Biological Defense Research Directorate during the Ebola outbreak, and since she has engaged in research with both the US Navy the United States Airforce.  Her work in the Office of Global Food Security at the US State Department has been instrumental in the advancement of the objectives of the Vision for the Advancement of Crops and Soils (VACS) initiative.

Alpa Patel, PhD

Strategic Director, CPS-3 American Cancer Society

Dr. Alpa V. Patel earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida, her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and her Doctoral degree in Preventive Medicine with a concentration in Epidemiology from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She has been with the American Cancer Society for more than 25 years and is the Senior Vice President of Population Science at the American Cancer Society where she oversees a team of approximately 55 research and study operations staff. She serves as the principal investigator of the Cancer Prevention Studies (CPS) II and 3 that are long-term, large-scale, epidemiologic cohort studies established by the American Cancer Society. Combined, these two cohorts include over 1.5 million participants with a variety of over 400,000 biologic samples (such as blood, buccal cells, saliva, stool, and tumor tissue). Recently, as the co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Patel and team launched the largest ever cancer cohort of Black women in the U.S. aimed to enroll at least 100,000 Black women to understand the multi-level drivers of cancer risk and outcomes in this population. Dr. Patel is a recognized leader in cancer epidemiology with particular emphases on the role of physical inactivity, obesity, sedentary behavior and cancer as well as blood-based markers of cancer detection. She serves on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors along with several other national and international scientific advisory committees. She has published over 250 scientific articles and book chapters, and her research has contributed significantly to national and international cancer prevention guidelines, such as the US Physical Activity Guidelines for Health and the American Cancer Society’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines for both cancer prevention and cancer survivorship.

Daniel Schaid, PhD

Professor of Biostatistics Department of Health Sciences Research Mayo Clinic

Dr. Schaid is the Curtis Carlson Professor of Genomics Research and Chair of the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences. He is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of statistical genetic and genetic epidemiology. After receiving an MS in human genetics and a PhD in biostatics in 1986, both from the University of Pittsburgh, he began a successful career as a faculty member at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. After working in cancer clinical trials for six years, the Mayo Clinic sponsored Dr. Schaid as a Mayo Clinic Scholar to receive additional training in statistical genetics at Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans (1992-1993). Upon his return to Mayo, he was appointed as a faculty member.

Dr. Schaid has devoted his career to developing new statistical and computational methods for genetic analyses, many of which were motivated by his collaborations in a wide variety of human genetic studies. With over 400 publications, areas of genetic collaboration have included breast, and prostate cancers, cardiovascular diseases, pharmacogenomics, and response to vaccinations. His main areas of funded research are the development of novel statistical genetic methods and software and the genetics of prostate cancer. Dr. Schaid is a past Editor-in-Chief of Genetic Epidemiology, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Marc Weisskopf, PhD, ScD

Associate Professor Departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology Harvard School of Public Health

Marc G. Weisskopf, Ph.D., Sc.D., is the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology and Director of the Harvard TH Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Weisskopf received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, and his Sc.D. in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He also spent two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention working on environmental health issues in the Wisconsin State Health Department. His work focuses on the influence of environmental exposures on brain health across the life course and epidemiological methods to improve causal inference from observational environmental health studies.

Clayton Yates, PhD

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine John. R. Lewis Endowed Professor Professor of Pathology, Oncology, and Urology Director for Translational Health Disparities and Global Health Equity Research Program Co-Leader for Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Clayton Yates is a recognized expert in health disparity research. Dr. Yates earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in molecular pathology, as well as a certificate of training in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative medicine from the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine Department of Urology.

After completing his post-doctoral training, Dr. Yates started as a tenure track Assistant Professor at Tuskegee University in the Department of Biology and Center for Cancer Research. Dr. Yates was promoted through the ranks to Full Professor. Cell-MENTOR recognized Dr. Yates (an online resource from Cell Press and Cell Signaling Technology) among the 100 most inspiring Black Scientists in America. Dr. Yates’s lab focuses on prostate and breast cancer, particularly in African Americans. His lab has established several models derived from African American and Native African prostate cancer patients. Additionally, Dr. Yates identified a subtype of Breast cancer called “Quadruple Negative Breast Cancer” (QNBC), which is more frequent in women of African Ancestry. This novel approach used genetic admixture analysis and identified a specific ancestry-associated immune-related signature in both Breast and Prostate Cancers.

Dr. Yates was featured on NCI’s website for the NCI Annual Plan & Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2023 which was provided to Congress President Joe Biden and the public. He has also received numerous research honors and awards totaling over 50 million dollars. He has authored over 100+ peer-reviewed publications and is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Reports and AACR-Cancer Research Communications.

Dr. Yates also serves as Co-Director for the Transatlantic Prostate Cancer Consortium, which focuses on understanding the tumor biology in native African men in Nigeria. In addition, Dr. Yates was the 2022-2023 Chair of the Minorities in Cancer Research Council (MICR) within (AACR), which serves 7,000+ minority cancer-focused scientists. Dr. Yates currently serves as MPI of U54- NCI CPACHE-Cancer Health Disparities Partnership with Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and the Howard University Cancer Center.