Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Mauro Ferrari serves as a Professor & Director, Center for NanoMedicine, Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, Chairman, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Professor of Experimental Therapeutics, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Professor of Bioengineering, Rice University, and President of the Alliance for NanoHealth, Houston TX. Dr. Ferrari received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Ferrari is a founder of biomedical nano/micro-technology in biomedical applications with more than 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, six books, more than 20 issued patents and about thirty more pending in the US and internationally. His career research and development portfolio totals over $50 million. Dr. Ferrari served as Special Expert on Nanotechnology at the National Cancer Institute in 2003-2005, providing leadership into the establishment of the NCI's Alliance for Nanotechnology.
Dr. Lee Hartwell is a well-known expert in cancer biology and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2001 for his ground-breaking work in cell cycle regulation. Dr. Hartwell is President of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. His insights into cell cycle control are being used at the Hutchinson Center and elsewhere to develop treatments for cancer and other diseases. Dr. Hartwell is involved in national and international projects to increase the number of laboratories working in protein diagnostics, develop more team science, improve the availability of informatics for data sharing, provide standardized reagents and stimulate new technology development. Dr. Hartwell is the recipient of many national and international scientific awards. His honors include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award in cancer research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He earned his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1968 and has been a genetics professor there since 1973. In 1996, he joined the faculty of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and, in 1997, became its president and director.
Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 2005 until 2009 where he engaged an agenda to modernize the FDA. Under his leadership, many new programs were designed to strengthen the FDA, including the establishment of a nanotechnology initiative. He emphasized the FDA’s role in working with external partners to assure quality throughout the entire life cycle of the products it regulates while internally fostering, through process improvements, a regulatory pathway that is transparent and efficient while still rigorous and science led. Currently, Dr. von Eschenbach serves as Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at the Center for Health Transformation, founded by Newt Gingrich, and leads the 21st Century FDA Modernization Project. Dr. von Eschenbach joined the FDA after serving for four years as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health where he set an ambitious goal to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer by rapid acceleration and integration of the discovery-development-delivery continuum. While at NCI, he committed resources to ensure the application to oncology of nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and other emerging technologies.
Dr. von Eschenbach entered government service after an outstanding career over three decades as a physician, surgeon, oncologist and executive that included numerous leadership roles from Chairman of the Department of Urologic Oncology to Executive Vice President and Chief Academic at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, an institution world renowned for the magnitude and excellence of its clinical and research cancer programs. An internationally renowned cancer specialist and author of more than 200 scientific articles and studies, Dr. von Eschenbach has served in numerous leadership roles, including serving as one of the founding members of the National Dialogue on Cancer. He has received numerous professional awards and honors. In 2006, Dr. von Eschenbach was named one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people to shape the world”, and in both 2007 and 2008, he was selected as one of the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician’s “50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare”.
Dr. von Eschenbach earned a B.S. from St. Joseph’s University in his native Philadelphia and his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. He served as a Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. After completing a residency in urologic surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, he was an instructor in urology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He completed a Fellowship in Urologic Oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Dr. Chad Mirkin has been recognized for his accomplishments with over 50 national and international Awards. These include a iCON Innovator of the Year Award (2007), NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the Collegiate Inventors Award (2002, 2004), an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Dickinson College, the Pennsylvania State University Outstanding Science Alumni Award, the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, a Dickinson College Metzger-Conway Fellowship, the 2003 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the Leo Hendrick Baekeland Award, Crain’s Chicago Business “40 under 40 Award,” the Discover 2000 Award for Technological Innovation, I-Street Magazine’s Top 5 List for Leading Academics in Technology, the Materials Research Society Young Investigator Award, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the PLU Fresenius Award, the Harvard University E. Bright Wilson Prize, the BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award, the NSF Young Investigator Award, the Naval Young Investigator Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over twenty scholarly journals. At present he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, BioMacromolecules, Macromolecular Bioscience, SENSORS, Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Chemistry-A European Journal, Chemistry & Biology, Nanotechnology Law & Business, The Scientist, Journal of Materials Chemistry, and Journal of Cluster Science, Plasmonics. Dr. Mirkin is the founding editor of the journal Small, one of the premier international nanotechnology journals, and he has co–edited two bestselling books on the field of nanobiotechnology.
Dr. Mirkin holds a B.S. degree from Dickinson College (1986, elected into Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University (1989). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to becoming a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in 1991.
Thomas A. Tombrello, Ph.D. is the Chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics. He has served as Caltech's Technology Assessment Officer since 1996. In this role, Dr. Tombrello is responsible for identifying and evaluating new and promising technologies for the Institute. From 1987 to 1989, Dr. Tombrello was Vice President and Director of Research at Schlumberger-Doll Research.
Among his many honors, Dr. Tombrello is a fellow of the American Physical Society. His research has primarily focused on applications of nuclear and ion beam physics to problems in materials science, geochemistry, and technology. Dr. Tombrello earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at Rice University in Houston.