Keynotes

Leroy Hood

Co-founder, Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle, Washington)

Dr. Hood’s research has focused on fundamental biology (immunity, evolution, genomics) and on bringing engineering to biology through the development of five instruments—the DNA and protein sequencers and synthesizers and the ink-jet oligonucleotide synthesizer (to make DNA arrays)—for deciphering the various types of biological information (DNA, RNA, proteins and systems). Those instruments constitute the technological foundation for modern molecular biology and genomics. The DNA sequencer in particular revolutionized genomics by allowing the rapid automated sequencing of DNA, which contributing to the successful mapping of the human genome. Hood has applied the technologies he developed to diverse fields including immunology, neurobiology, cancer biology, molecular evolution and systems medicine.

Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in 2000. He has since worked on delineating the systems approach to biology and disease, and worked on new technologies (microfluidics/nanotechnology and molecular imaging) in collaboration with colleagues at the California Institute of Technology.

Hood is now pioneering the idea that the systems approach to disease, the emerging technologies and powerful new computational and mathematical tools will move medicine from its current reactive mode to a predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory mode (P4 medicine) over the next 5-20 years.

Hood received the Lasker Prize in 1987, the 2002 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology and the 2003 Lemelson–MIT Prize for Innovation and Invention. He is also the recipient of the 2004 Biotechnology Heritage Award, the 2003 Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics, the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment (2006), and the Pittcon Heritage Award (2008). In 2007 Hood was elected to the Inventors Hall of Fame.

Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering.

Hood recently co-founded Integrated Diagnostics, which he hopes will become a platform company for P4 medicine, and has played a role in founding more than 14 other biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin and Rosetta.

Hood received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

Jamey Marth

Director, UCSB-Burnham Institute Center for Nanomedicine, John Carbon Chair in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in Systems Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Marth joined the faculty in UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, as well as the faculty of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, on July 1, 2009. His research laboratory is renowned in the interdisciplinary application of molecular and cellular biology to discovering the origins of grievous disease. Dr. Marth is also co-founder and the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Abaron Biosciences, Inc., an early-stage biotechnology company that is focused on developing a new class of therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of grievous disease. Abaron has licensed multiple patents of which Dr. Marth is the inventor.

Dr. Marth's research includes collaborative projects with UC Santa Barbara and Burnham Institute scientists to develop nanotechnology platforms for the next generation of diagnostics and therapeutics, using "smart" devices that can seek out, image, and intervene in the origin and progression of the common and mysterious grievous diseases of our time. The Marth laboratory has enumerated and integrated the four fundamental components of all cells into a research platform thereby discovering pathophysiologic origins of autoimmune disease, sepsis, and Type 2 diabetes. His laboratory also developed Cre-loxP technology that is now used throughout the world as a mainstay technique in biomedical research. His discoveries have spanned multiple fields including immunology, hematology, metabolism, glycobiology, neurobiology, and infectious disease, and are unique in combined breadth and accomplishment.

Dr. Marth was trained in Pharmacology, Immunology, Biochemistry, and Genetics in the laboratories of Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, now Executive Vice-President of Research and Development at Amgen; and Dr. Edwin G. Krebs, a 1992 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine. In 1995, Dr. George Palade, then Dean of Medicine and the recipient of the 1974 Nobel Prize in medicine, recruited Dr. Marth to San Diego. Dr. Marth was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California San Diego prior to his current position.

Marth received a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Washington.