Paul Boutros, PhD, MBA
SAB Chair
Dr. Boutros began his independent research career at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research as principal investigator in informatics and biocomputing, and assistant professor in the departments of pharmacology and toxicology and medical biophysics at the University of Toronto. In 2018, Paul relocated to the University of California, Los Angeles, taking on leadership roles at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Institute for Precision Health. As a professor in the departments of human genetics and urology, Dr. Boutros’s research focuses on personalizing therapy for cancer by developing novel statistical methodologies. He leads the ICGC-TCGA DREAM Somatic Mutation Calling Challenge that is setting global standards for analyzing cancer genomic data, and drives programs in cancer genomics, data science and biomarker translation. He was received numerous awards, including the Dorval Prize by the Canadian Cancer Society, recognizing the best early career investigator nationally. He has a degree in chemistry from the University of Waterloo; a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research; and an MBA from the University of Toronto.
Anna Barker, PhD
SAB Member
As co-director of CAS-Biomedicine, Dr. Anna Barker designs and implements new research knowledge networks, projects, and models to address major problems in biomedical research and biomedicine. She currently focuses on complex systems science as applied to the discovery and systems development of biomarkers, next-generation clinical trials, and the applications of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics for biomarker discovery. Prior to ASU, she served as the deputy director and deputy director for strategic scientific initiatives for the National Cancer Institute (NCI)/National Institutes of Health (NIH). Previously, she was a senior executive at Battelle Memorial Institute for 18 years, and also was the co-founder and CEO of a public biotechnology company focused on novel strategies to control reactive oxygen damage in inflammatory diseases and cancer. She serves on a number of boards of for-profit and non-profit organizations. She received her MA and PhD at Ohio State University, where she trained in immunology and microbiology.
Laura Germine, PhD
SAB Member
Dr. Laura Germine is assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Health Technology at McLean Hospital. She is also technical director of the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry. She earned a BA in molecular and cell Biology from UC Berkeley in 2004, a PhD in experimental psychopathology from Harvard University in 2012, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Germine’s research is oriented around understanding cognitive functioning in health and disease, as well as building technology for studying cognition and behavior using the web and mobile devices. She created one of the first digital neuropsychological laboratories in 2005, which was based on a citizen science model of participant engagement. This later became TestMyBrain.org, where over 2.3 million people have participated in research studies on cognition and perception since 2008.
Lawrence Hunter, PhD
SAB Member
Dr. Lawrence Hunter is the director of the University of Colorado’s Computational Bioscience Program and a professor of pharmacology (School of Medicine) and computer science (Boulder). He received a PhD in computer science from Yale University in 1989. He then joined the National Institutes of Health as a staff scientist, first at the National Library of Medicine and then at the National Cancer Institute, before moving to Colorado in 2000. Dr. Hunter is widely recognized as one of the founders of bioinformatics. He served as the first president of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), and created several of the most important conferences in the field, including ISMB, PSB and VizBi. Dr. Hunter’s research interests span a wide range of areas from cognitive science to rational drug design. He has published more than 100 scientific papers, holds two patents, and has been elected a fellow of both the ISCB and the American College of Medical Informatics. His primary focus recently has been the integration of natural language processing, knowledge representation, machine learning, and advanced visualization techniques to address challenges in interpreting data generated by high-throughput molecular biology.
Jeffrey Kaye, MD
SAB Member
Dr. Jeffrey Kaye is the Layton professor of neurology and biomedical engineering and the director of the Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, as well as director of the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH). Dr. Kaye received his medical degree from New York Medical College and trained in neurology at Boston University. He completed fellowships in Movement Disorders at Boston University and in brain aging at the National Institute on Aging. He moved to Oregon in 1989 to develop the Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. Dr. Kaye has received the Charles Dolan Hatfield Research Award for his work. He is listed in Best Doctors in America. He serves on many national and international panels and review boards in the field of geriatrics and neurology. He is an author on over 400 scientific publications and holds several major grant awards from federal agencies, national foundations and industrial sponsors. Dr. Kaye serves as a member of the OHSU Healthy Aging Alliance Executive Committee.
Amanda Tan, PhD
SAB Member
Dr. Amanda Tan is the cloud technology lead for Research Computing at the University of Washington, where she facilitates strategies for collaborative, open-source tools and cloud-native solutions to big-data research problems. Amanda completed her doctorate at the University of Washington in 2015, with a focus on developing decision support systems for water resources management in Central Asia and South America. She is also a contributor to multiple open-source software projects in the scientific Python ecosystem and has an appointment as a data scientist at the UW eScience Institute.
Jennifer Wagner, JD, PhD
SAB Member
Dr. Jennifer K. Wagner is associate director of bioethics research and assistant professor in the Center for Translational Bioethics & Health Care Policy at Geisinger, and is a licensed practicing attorney in Pennsylvania. She earned her JD at the University of North Carolina in 2007 and PhD in anthropology at Pennsylvania State University in 2010 before completing post-doctoral research appointments at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Integration of Genetic Healthcare Technologies. Prior to joining Geisinger, Dr. Wagner served in a U.S. Senator’s office in Washington, DC, as a 2014-2015 AAAS Congressional Fellow. She is the 2019 chair of the ASHG Social Issues Committee and member of the AAPA Science Policy and Ethics Committees. Dr. Wagner’s research has been funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. She is on Twitter as @DNAlawyer.
Joon-Ho Yu, PhD
SAB Member
Dr. Joon-Ho Yu is a research assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He studies, develops, and evaluates emerging strategies to benefit under-represented communities in research, healthcare, and public health from an interdisciplinary perspective. Before academia, Dr. Joon worked for over a decade in the non-profit sector to advance minority health and today continues to work with diverse communities and community-based organizations on a range of capacity building and policy advocacy efforts. He received his MPH and PhD in the interdisciplinary field of public health genetics from the University of Washington and is a graduate of both Carleton College and San Francisco State University.