Previous Trailblazing Speakers
Chris McChalicher
Vice President, CMC Technical DevelopmentSeres TherapeuticsKen Blount
VP of Microbiome Research, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and CSO, Rebiotix Inc., a Ferring CompanyKen Blount, PhD, is a seasoned director of collaborative research programs in biotech, pharma, clinical, and academic research settings, and his scientific expertise includes antibiotics discovery and development, fecal microbiome analysis, translational medical oncology, and RNA-targeting therapeutics. Prior to joining Rebiotix, Dr. Blount coordinated translational urologic oncology research for the Yale Cancer Center. Previously, he was a cofounder and the Director of Biology at BioRelix, a venture-backed Connecticut biotech that developed new antibiotics to target structured bacterial messenger RNAs. At BioRelix, Dr. Blount led a combined force of internal scientists and external resources that delivered development candidates for treating Clostridium difficile infections. Dr. Blount received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas and earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Colorado Boulder, after which he completed an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California San Diego.
Terri Young
Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial and Strategy OfficerSeres TherapeuticsTrent Munro
Senior Vice President of TherapeuticsMicroba Life SciencesStaffan Stromberg
Chief Executive OfficerInfant Bacterial TherapeuticsHervé Affagard
Chief Executive OfficerMaaT PharmaDaniel Cuoto
Chief Operating OfficerVedanta BioNikole Kimes
Chief Executive OfficerSiolta TherapeuticsBrice Le François, Ph.D
Senior R&D ManagerDNA GenotekCaroline Mitchell
ProfessorHarvard UniversityAndrew Nealon
Partner and Chief AnalystJoyanceBharat Dixit
Chief Technology OfficerAdiso TherapeuticsPaul Carlson
Principal InvestigatorFDAEllen Turner
Medical OfficerFDA - Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Office of Vaccines ResearchBenjamin Hadida
Chief Executive OfficerExeliom BiosciencesHannah Wastyk
Chief Executive OfficerInterface BiosciencesJeffrey Zhao
Chief Executive OfficerNotitia BiotechnologiesSam Possemiers
Chief Executive OfficerMRM HealthTonya Ward
Senior Director, Microbiome Data ScienceRebiotix Inc., a Ferring CompanyPeter Nara
Chief Scientific OfficerKeystone BioDr. Nara is currently on of the co-founders, the Chief Scientific Officer and President Business Development for Keystone Bio Inc. in St. Louis, Mo., a Systemic-Oral Health Biomedical company that is targeting precision microbiome bio-therapeutics for the elimination of a specific oral bacterial associated with systemic inflammation. He is also the former co-founder, President, Chairman and CEO (1997-2017)and now Chairman Emeritus at Biological Mimetics, Inc. and cofounder of Lantern Pharma Inc. He holds a M.Sc. in Immuno-pharmacology, a combined Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Ph.D. (retro-virology/oncogenesis) from The Ohio State University, 4 year combined residency in Comparative Pathology and NIH post-doctoral Fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and a NIH respectively. Dr. Nara currently holds the Endowed Eugene Lloyd Chair, Professor in Vaccinology, founding Center Director for the Center for Advanced Host Defense, Immunobiotics, and Translational Comparative Medicine in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University and also the Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman & co-founder of Biological Mimetics, Inc.,. He is also an distinguished Alumni of The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine 2014, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. His comparative medical research interests are to more fully understand how early and pre-determined events in the host innate and acquired immune systems are sculpted and bias the development of protective long lasting responses against infectious pathogens and cancer. More importantly he and his team are interested developing new technologies and strategies to circumvent the non-protective immune responses for the development of novel classes of immunobiotics and vaccines focused on the prevention of disease and are translating these into viably products via a new academic- private-commercial model. He has been and continues as National and International member of numerous programs at the National Academy of Science, Institutes of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Centers for Disease Control AIDS, World Health Organization, United Nations Global AIDS Characterization program–related and infectious diseases national planning, human and animal agricultural biodefense, vaccine development & policy reporting meetings involving pathogenesis, vaccine discovery, standardization, correlates of protection committees and consults and serves on numerous scientific advisory boards of corporate, private foundations and academic initiatives in the area of national biodefense, comparative medicine and immunology, vaccine discovery and immuno-therapeutics and a recent member of the U.S. State Department Bio-Industry Initiative Program, The Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CDRF) and The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) for non-proliferation of biological agents.
Julius Goepp
Chief Scientific OfficerEvimeroGabriel Levanthal
Chief Scientific OfficerPharmaBiomeTodd Krueger
President & CEOAOBiomeCassandra Isley
FounderMicrobiome Alliance for Disease PreventionJun Terauchi
Steering Committee ChairJapan Microbiome ConsortiumBecca Senter
Vice President and Head of Preclinical Research and DevelopmentAxial TherapeuticsMary Poor
Vice President of Quality and CMCSiolta TherapeuticsKyongsub Song
Chief Technology OfficerLISCure BiosciencesAlicia Szretter
Director, CMC OperationsVedanta BioRussel Wyborski
Director, VenturesCrohns and Colitis FoundationNicolas Pichon
Head of ManufacturingServatusBob Hettich
ProfessorOak Ridge National LaboratoryCraig Cohen
ProfessorUniversity of California San FranciscoTagbo Niepa
Associate Professor of Chemical EngineeringCarnegie Mellon UniversityAndrea Facciabene
Associate ProfessorUniversity of PennsylvaniaCaleb Bell
Venture PartnerCSBLaurel Lagenaur
Head of ResearchOselNik Sharma
Chief Executive OfficerBioCortexDaniel van der Lelie
Chief Executive OfficerGusto GlobalCarole Schwintner
Chief Technical OfficerMaaT PharmaAkshata Udyavar
Senior Director Immunology and Translational SciencesActymJames Morton
Simons FoundationVivek Lal
Chief Scientific OfficerAlveolus BioCheri Ackerman
CEOConcerto BiosciencesLorenz Rindisbacher
Chief Quality OfficerBactheraNeil Stollman
Chairman, Division of GastroenterologySutter HealthRyan Wilson
Head of LBTSGS-Quay PharmaBernat Olle
CEOVedanta BiosciencesDr. Olle is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vedanta Biosciences. He has been a member of the founding teams of several companies of the PureTech portfolio and served as a member of the Board of Directors of Vedanta Biosciences and Follica Biosciences.
In 2013 Dr. Olle was named "Innovator of the Year" in MIT Technology Review Spain's "Innovators under 35" awards. He completed his doctoral work at the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT, where he developed a novel method for large-scale bacterial culture. During his graduate work, Dr. Olle was awarded the "la Caixa" fellowship. Dr. Olle received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in the Republic of Catalonia, his M.S. and PhD. in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT, and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has published his work in journals including Nature and Nature Biotechnology.
Amine Zorgani
FounderMicrobiome MavericksFelix Faupel
Chief Commercial OfficerBactheraSonia Timberlake
Former SVP of ResearchFinch TherapeuticsSonia is the Senior Vice President of Research at Finch Therapeutics. Sonia is an expert at designing NGS-based algorithms for applications in microbial genomics, immunogenomics, and evolution. Prior to joining Finch, she built and managed AbVitro's computational algorithms and infrastructure, supporting high throughput single-cell immune phenotyping and repertoire sequencing technology. This technology platform was acquired by Juno Therapeutics, where Sonia led a multidisciplinary team to harness native adaptive immune responses for developing engineered cell therapies in oncology.
Sonia graduated from Caltech with a B.Sc in Molecular Biology and received her Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT.
Jason Ryan
Head of Scientific DevelopmentSacco SystemAnders Gron
Chief Executive OfficerCosmosID, Clinical MicrobiomicsYvonne Nyavor
Principal Scientist, MicrobiomeBoston AnalyticalJeffrey Heiser
Chief Scientific OfficerBoston AnalyticalMelanie Eldridge
Head of Microbiome SciencesArranta Bio / ReciBioPharm
Commercial, Collaboration and Investment Speakers
Moreno Perugini
Terri Young
Daniel Cuoto
Andrew Nealon
Caleb Bell
Brice Le François, Ph.D
Elran Haber, PhD
Cassandra Isley
Jun Terauchi
Jacquelin Gaulin
Russel Wyborski
Neil Stollman
Paul Moayyedi
Therapeutic and R&D Speakers
Ken Blount
Ken Blount, PhD, is a seasoned director of collaborative research programs in biotech, pharma, clinical, and academic research settings, and his scientific expertise includes antibiotics discovery and development, fecal microbiome analysis, translational medical oncology, and RNA-targeting therapeutics. Prior to joining Rebiotix, Dr. Blount coordinated translational urologic oncology research for the Yale Cancer Center. Previously, he was a cofounder and the Director of Biology at BioRelix, a venture-backed Connecticut biotech that developed new antibiotics to target structured bacterial messenger RNAs. At BioRelix, Dr. Blount led a combined force of internal scientists and external resources that delivered development candidates for treating Clostridium difficile infections. Dr. Blount received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas and earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Colorado Boulder, after which he completed an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California San Diego.
Hervé Affagard
Nikole Kimes
Benjamin Hadida
Jeffrey Zhao
Sam Possemiers
Peter Nara
Dr. Nara is currently on of the co-founders, the Chief Scientific Officer and President Business Development for Keystone Bio Inc. in St. Louis, Mo., a Systemic-Oral Health Biomedical company that is targeting precision microbiome bio-therapeutics for the elimination of a specific oral bacterial associated with systemic inflammation. He is also the former co-founder, President, Chairman and CEO (1997-2017)and now Chairman Emeritus at Biological Mimetics, Inc. and cofounder of Lantern Pharma Inc. He holds a M.Sc. in Immuno-pharmacology, a combined Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Ph.D. (retro-virology/oncogenesis) from The Ohio State University, 4 year combined residency in Comparative Pathology and NIH post-doctoral Fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and a NIH respectively. Dr. Nara currently holds the Endowed Eugene Lloyd Chair, Professor in Vaccinology, founding Center Director for the Center for Advanced Host Defense, Immunobiotics, and Translational Comparative Medicine in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University and also the Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman & co-founder of Biological Mimetics, Inc.,. He is also an distinguished Alumni of The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine 2014, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. His comparative medical research interests are to more fully understand how early and pre-determined events in the host innate and acquired immune systems are sculpted and bias the development of protective long lasting responses against infectious pathogens and cancer. More importantly he and his team are interested developing new technologies and strategies to circumvent the non-protective immune responses for the development of novel classes of immunobiotics and vaccines focused on the prevention of disease and are translating these into viably products via a new academic- private-commercial model. He has been and continues as National and International member of numerous programs at the National Academy of Science, Institutes of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Centers for Disease Control AIDS, World Health Organization, United Nations Global AIDS Characterization program–related and infectious diseases national planning, human and animal agricultural biodefense, vaccine development & policy reporting meetings involving pathogenesis, vaccine discovery, standardization, correlates of protection committees and consults and serves on numerous scientific advisory boards of corporate, private foundations and academic initiatives in the area of national biodefense, comparative medicine and immunology, vaccine discovery and immuno-therapeutics and a recent member of the U.S. State Department Bio-Industry Initiative Program, The Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CDRF) and The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) for non-proliferation of biological agents.