Stephen H. Friend MD, PhD
Board Chair and Sage Co-Founder
Dr. Friend is the Chairman of the Board and Past-President of Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit organization that provides the tools and environment to conduct dynamic, large-scale collaborative biomedical research. He is an authority in the field of cancer biology and a pioneer in the field of the genetics of gene expression, integrating system biology approaches to complex diseases. Dr. Friend co-founded Sage Bionetworks in 2009 on the belief that successful biomedical research requires the active participation of all stakeholders. Through Sage Bionetworks, he has worked to reimagine the role of citizens in the research process and to build the tools to empower citizens to contribute both their data and expertise as they see fit. Under his leadership, Sage Bionetworks initiated it’s efforts to address pressing questions in biomedical research by strengthening interactions between scientists, participants, and advocates. His tireless advocacy for open science has helped to foster the collaborative research ecosystem that exists today.
Dr. Friend is currently designing a virtual institute to explore fundamental issues around how to make individual symptom predictions and how to return agency to individuals so they might navigate their own paths between health and disease. Dr. Friend was most recently at Apple Inc. where he worked on ways to impact people’s lives in health and disease. Prior to co-founding and leading Sage as President, Dr. Friend was Senior Vice President and Franchise Head for Oncology Research at Merck & Co., Inc. where he led Merck’s Basic Cancer Research efforts. Formerly Dr. Friend along with Dr. Hartwell founded and co-led the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s “Seattle Project” , an advanced institute for drug discovery and later they co-founded Rosetta Inpharmatics with Drs Hartwell and Hood. Dr. Friend also held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School from 1987 to 1995 and at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1990 to 1995. He received his M.D/Ph.D. from Indiana University. Dr. Friend was named an Ashoka Fellow for his work at Sage Bionetworks.
Cecilia Arradaza
Board Member
Cecilia Arradaza is a communications strategist and is the founder of C.A. Collaborative. For more than 20 years, Arradaza has worked to develop, design and deliver communications strategies that provoke discourse, engage broad audiences, and inspire action. She works on a portfolio of thought leadership and public engagement projects and serves an advisor to a number of other organizations. She served as the senior director of communications at the Biden Cancer Initiative. Previously, Arradaza held leadership roles at global advisory firm Brunswick Group; the Milken Institute and its centers, FasterCures and the Center for Financial Markets; and public affairs firms Chandler Chicco Agency, Hyde Park Communications, and Powell Tate. She is on the board of Bright Focus Foundation, Sage Bionetworks, and WomenAgainstAlzheimer’s. She graduated from George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Women’s College.
Anthony W. Ford-Hutchinson, PhD
Board Member
Tony Ford-Hutchinson has more than 30 years of experience in pharmaceuticals, drug and vaccines discovery, research and development, business development, emerging markets and scientific strategy from his time working with Merck in increasing roles of global responsibility in R&D. Prior to being recruited to Merck, he worked at King's College Hospital Medical School, in London, for nearly 10 years in the field of inflammation and arachidonic acid metabolism where he made some fundamental discoveries on leukotrienes, work that was put into practice at Merck Frosst, Canada, which eventually leading to Singulair® (leukotriene D4 receptor antagonist) and the Cox-2 inhibitors (Vioxx® and Arcoxia®). Subsequent career highlights at Merck relating to infectious disease include the development of HIV integrase inhibitor Isentress® and development & licensing of therapies to tackle drug-resistant bacterial infections. Tony's most recent responsibility at Merck as head of Vaccine R&D led to commercialization of 4 vaccines; Gardasil®, Zostavax®, Proquad® and Rotateq®. After retiring from Merck Tony has been either an Independent Board Member, Scientific Advisory Board member or Chief Scientific Officer for a number of biotechs and non-profit organizations.
Kathy L. Hudson, PhD
Board Member
Kathy L. Hudson, PhD, is a strategic advisor to nonprofits, biotech, and technology companies. She was founding CEO of the People-Centered Research Foundation, a nonprofit that leads PCORnet, a large national clinical research network. She stepped down in February 2019 after leading the transition into a new and sustainable phase. Dr. Hudson is the former Deputy Director for Science, Outreach, and Policy at the NIH. She led policy, legislation, communications, and outreach efforts, and served as senior advisor to the NIH director. She created major new strategic and scientific initiatives, including the BRAIN Initiative and the All of Us research program. She was a key force in modernizing the regulations governing human subjects research. Hudson holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley, an MS in microbiology from the University of Chicago, and a BA in biology from Carleton College.
Tetsu Maruyama, PhD
Board Member
Tetsu Maruyama is the Chief Scientific Officer for the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), an innovative venture fund managed by SV Health Investors and dedicated to creating novel and innovative treatments for dementia. Tetsu’s background is in neuroscience, having received his PhD from Stanford University and conducting post-doctoral research at Yale University. Tetsu has worked in academia in the US and the UK, and at major pharmaceutical companies such as Merck Sharpe and Dohme, GSK (where he was the Director of the GSK Centre for Cognitive and Neurodegenerative Disorders in Singapore) and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company in Japan. At Takeda, Tetsu held positions as Head of CNS Research and later Head of Global Drug Discovery. Tetsu is on the board of a number of biotech companies and public-private partnerships including the Structural Genomics Consortium, and is a member of the World Dementia Council.
Dr. Eric Schadt
Board Member
Dr. Schadt is the Dean for Precision Medicine and Mount Sinai Professor in Predictive Health and Computational Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He was previously Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. Dr. Schadt is also founder and CEO of Sema4, a patient-centered predictive health company. He is an industry leader in network biology with numerous high-profile publications over the past five years and is the Editor-in-Chief of the new journal Open Network Biology. Dr. Schadt was a founding member of Sage Bionetworks, Chief Scientific Officer at Pacific Biosciences, and Executive Director of Genetics and Chief Scientist at Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck Research, where he founded its Research Genetics Department after Rosetta was acquired by Merck in 2001. His extensive applications in systems biology have helped define the genetics of gene expression as a new field in statistical genetics. Prior to joining Rosetta, Dr. Schadt was a Senior Research Scientist at Roche Bioscience. He received his BS in applied mathematics/computer science from California Polytechnic State University, and his MA in pure mathematics and his PhD in bio-mathematics from UCLA.
Gustavo A. Stolovitzky, PhD
Board Member
Dr. Gustavo Stolovitzky is and IBM Fellow and the Director of the Translational Systems Biology and Nano-biotechnology Program at IBM Research, and an adjunct Professor at Columbia University. He has led many industry projects at IBM Research while also being heavily involved in academic pursuits through University collaborations. In 2006, Dr. Stolovitzky founded the DREAM Challenges, an open science effort that nucleates a community of researchers to assess the performance of systems biology methods, to foster collaborative models of research and to accelerate the solution of important translational problems. Besides the organization of scientific challenges, Dr. Stolovitzky has published over 150 papers and patented over 60 inventions on high-throughput biological-data analysis, reverse engineering biological circuits, the mathematical modeling of biological processes and nano-biotechnology.
Dr. Stolovitzky joined IBM Research in 1998. Previously he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at The Rockefeller University. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Yale University (1994) and his MSc in physics from the University of Buenos Aires (1987). Dr Stolovitzky has received Yale University’s Henry Prentiss Becton Prize award (1994), the HENAAC’s Pioneer Award for Great Minds in STEM (2013), the World Technology Awards (2013), and was distinguished as a Master Inventor in IBM Research (2013). Dr. Stolovitzky has been elected Fellow of the NY Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the World Technology Network, Fellow of the American Physical Society and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. In 2019, he was appointed IBM Fellow, the highest technical honor awarded by IBM.