Susan L. Solomon is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF).

Ms. Solomon serves on the Executive Committee of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, is a founder and current Chair of NYAMR (New Yorkers for the Advancement of Medical Research) and is a Trustee of the Regional Plan Association.

In 2008, she received a New York State Women of Excellence Award from the Governor, and the Triumph Award from the Brooke Ellison Foundation for her work in establishing NYSCF. In December 2012, she received the Stem Cell Action Leadership Award from the Genetics Policy Institute.

Prior to founding NYSCF, Ms. Solomon was an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton, served as founding Chief Executive Officer of Sothebys.com, Founder and President of Sony Worldwide Networks, and held executive positions at MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings and MMG Patricof and Co.

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Chief Commercial Officer
Healios K.K., Japan

Mr. Smith joined Cambrex Bioproducts in January 2002 as the Business Unit Director of the emerging Cell Therapy business. In 2004, he was promoted to Vice President, Business Development, and in December 2005 to Vice President, Cellular Therapeutics. In this role, he assumed responsibility for contract manufacturing, process development, contract sales, and the introduction of PermaDermTM. Following Lonza’s acquisition of Cambrex Bioproducts in 2007, Mr. Smith became Head of Therapeutic Cell Solutions in 2009 with additional responsibilities for biotherapeutic media, process development, viral vaccines and gene therapies. David now runs the Therapeutic Cell Solutions business unit worldwide. Since his arrival, the cell therapy business has seen significant growth each year.

Prior to joining Lonza, Mr. Smith was Vice President, Corporate Development at Claragen, Inc. and Business Unit Director at Invitrogen. Mr. Smith spent 14 years at The Upjohn Company in various sales and marketing roles, including leading the launch of the Parkinson’s therapeutic, Mirapex. He holds a BS in Pharmacy from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA and a MBA from Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV.

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President, Carpenter Group, Stem Cell Strategies, USA.

Dr. Carpenter received a Ph.D. in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine. For the last 15 years, she has worked on the development of cell therapies using human adult and embryonic stem cells, in academia and industry, in the United States and Canada. This work involved discovery research and the translation of this research into therapies for regenerative medicine, including developing strategies for preclinical development and navigating the regulatory issues surrounding stem cell therapies. This diversity provides a unique perspective concerning the successful development of cell therapies.

At CytoTherapeutics (now StemCells, Inc), Dr. Carpenter derived human neural stem cells and successfully developed the media formulation used for scale-up of these cells. Dr. Carpenter has been involved with human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research since the field was established. She was Director of Stem Cell Biology at Geron Corporation where she was responsible for managing discovery research and preclinical programs aimed at developing therapies for Parkinson’s Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, Cardiac Disease, Liver Disease and Diabetes.

After leaving Geron, Dr. Carpenter held the position of Principal Investigator and Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute and Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. Her Canadian laboratory focused on the epigenetic status of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells and the signaling mechanisms involved in self-renewal.

As Vice President of Research and Development at Novocell Inc, Dr. Carpenter was responsible for the translation of the research program to preclinical development and developing the regulatory strategy for the delivery of an encapsulated human embryonic stem cell derived product into Diabetes patients.

Dr. Carpenter is credited with more than 20 issued patents and over 45 publications in stem cell biology and related fields.

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Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Dr. Duncan Stewart is a pioneering Canadian cardiovascular researcher, who is recognized for his many important discoveries in blood vessel biology as well as his dedication to translating these discoveries into benefits for patients and society. After beginning his career in academic cardiology at McGill University in Montreal, he moved to Toronto in 1994 as Head of Cardiology at St. Michael’s Hospital and later Director of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Toronto. In 2004 he assumed the role of the executive Director of the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine at the University of Toronto and in 2007 he was recruited as the CEO and Scientific Director of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) in 2007.

Dr. Stewart has made a number of seminal discoveries elucidating the importance of endothelial factors in health and disease, notably the role of the nitric oxide system in angiogenesis and the role of endothelin-1 in pulmonary hypertension. He is also a leader in developing cell and gene based therapies for cardiovascular disease. He led the first Canadian clinical trials testing angiogenic gene therapy using VEGF to stimulate blood vessels growth and heart repair after heart attacks. He is also spearheading the world’s first clinical trial of a gene-enhanced cell therapy for pulmonary hypertension, using endothelial progenitor cells engineered to over-express endothelial nitric oxide synthase. He is also poised to launch the first gene-enhanced progenitor cell therapy trial for post heart-attack repair, and he is leading a Canadian effort to initiate the world’s first trial of mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Dr. Stewart has published more than 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has received a number of distinctions and prizes, including the Dexter Man Chair of Cardiology and Research Achievement Award of the University of Toronto, and the Research Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. Throughout his career, Dr. Stewart has demonstrated leadership in bringing diverse groups of clinicians and scientists together to put Canada on the world stage for translational cardiovascular and regenerative medicine research.

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Director of Technology Licensing Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Ms. Nelsen earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. and an M.S. in Management from M.I.T. as a Sloan Fellow.

Lita Nelsen is the Director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been since 1986.  This office manages over 500 new inventions per year from M.I.T., the Whitehead Institute, and Lincoln Laboratory.  Typically, they negotiate over 100 licenses, and start up over 20 new companies per year

Prior to joining the M.I.T. Technology Licensing Office, Ms. Nelsen spent 20 years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology, at such companies as Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Applied Biotechnology.

Ms. Nelsen was the 1992 President of the Association of University Technology Managers and serves on the board of Mount Auburn Hospital, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Foundation.  She serves as the intellectual property advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is a founding and current board member of the Center for Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research.

Ms. Nelsen is widely published in the field of technology transfer and university/industry collaborations and was a CMI Fellow at the University of Cambridge with the Cambridge MIT Institute studying university/industry/government partnerships in technology transfer and local economic development. She is a co-founder of Praxis, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme.

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Senior Consultant in Cellular Sciences and Regenerative Medicine
Director, SLM Blue Skies Innovations LTD.

In the summer of 2013, Dr. Stephen Minger was appointed Chief Scientist for Cellular Sciences, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, and was responsible for long-term global research strategy for technology development in cell therapy, regenerative medicine, cellular technologies, in vivo diagnostic imaging and precision diagnostics.  He left full-time employment with GE in Feb 2015 but is still a part-time Senior Consultant in Cellular Sciences and Regenerative for GE Healthcare Life Sciences.  He also serves as the Director of SLM Blue Skies Innovations Ltd, providing expert analysis in emerging healthcare technologies for the life sciences investment community.  

Stephen was appointed the Global Director for Research and Development for Cell Technologies at GE Healthcare in September 2009. Stephen received his PhD in Pathology (Neurosciences) in 1992 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. After post-doctoral work in central nervous system gene therapy, neural transplantation and neural stem cell biology at UCSD with Professor Fred “Rusty” Gage, he moved to the UK in 1996 and was appointed a Lecturer in Biomolecular Sciences at King’s College London in 1998. He was appointed a Senior Lecturer in Stem Cell Biology in 2005 and was the Director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory from 2002 until joining GE Healthcare in 2009. 

Over the past 20+ years, Stephen’s research group has been at the forefront of human stem cell research. In 2002, his research team was awarded one of the first two licenses granted by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for the derivation of human embryonic stem (hES) cells and his group was the first to deposit a human ES cell line into the UK Stem Cell Bank.  Stephen was also one of the first two groups in the UK to be granted a research license by the HFEA in 2008 to pursue Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) to generate “hybrid human embryos” for fundamental research into genetic forms of neurodegenerative conditions.  He was actively involved with the UK Department of Health and with the Minister for Public Health in the consultation with both Houses of Parliament that led to the passage of the Human Embryo Bill of 2009 and the inclusion of new forms of animal-human embryos within primary legislation. 

Stephen was the Stem Cell Expert and a Member of the UK Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) at the Department of Health from 2006-2012 and was the Focal Point for Regenerative Medicine, Drug Discovery and Modernisation of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China for the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills from 2006-2009. He has been an external consultant and reviewer to the European Commission Framework Programmes (FP6, FP7 and Horizon 2020) since 2003 to promote European-wide biomedical research, a member of the Grants Working Group of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine since 2004, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for the Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM). 

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Senior Vice President of Pfizer,

President of Icagen Inc., 
Chief Scientific Officer Neusentis Unit

Ruth McKernan is a Senior Vice President of Pfizer, President of Icagen Inc. and Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer’s Neusentis Unit. Based in Cambridge, UK, Neusentis is a consolidation of Pfizer’s Pain & Sensory Disorders and Regenerative Medicine & Epigenetics units.

Born in Scotland, Ruth graduated from the University of London with a first in biochemistry and pharmacology. She gained her PhD at London’s Institute of Psychiatry studying the mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs. A Fulbright Scholarship took her to the University of California in San Diego for two years and thereafter Ruth joined the pharmaceutical Industry. In her 20 years of experience she has held many posts including Head of the Merck Neuroscience Research Centre in the UK.

Prior to leading Neusentis, Ruth was Site Head and Head of Research at the company’s former European R&D site in Sandwich, UK and before that held positions as Vice President of Biology in Sandwich, Head of the Research Technology Centre in Boston, MA and Vice President for External Research in Europe. She is a member of the UK board of Pfizer Ltd.

Ruth contributes broadly to further science outside of Pfizer. She sits on the Scientific Advisory Board for the British Neuroscience Association, the Advisory Board of the Cambridge Stem Cell Centre and the advisory group of the UK’s Cell Therapy Catapult Centre. She is a trustee of the ISRT and a visiting Professor at Kings College, London as well as a member of the Medical Research Council and Trustee of the International Spinal Research Trust. Thereafter she fits in as much gardening as can be squeezed into daylight hours.

In the scientific world, Ruth is best known for her neuroscience research on ligand-gated ion channels with over 130 publications and 15 patents. In the real world, she is better known for her first book, “Billy’s Halo,” which was short-listed for the 2007 MIND awards.

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President & Chief Executive Officer
AVROBIO, USA & CANADA

Geoff is an experienced CEO with proven success leading innovative businesses. While CEO of Organogenesis Inc., the company treated 1 million patients with living cell therapies, received the first FDA CBER allogeneic cell-therapy approval and achieved an unparalled position within regenerative medicine. Geoff is also Managing Director of eGenesis, applying CRISPR Cas-9 gene editing to xenotransplantation. Geoff spent 11 years at Novartis in senior leadership positions within the Global Transplantation & Immunology franchise. Past activities include Chairman of the Board of MassBio, Chairman of the Board of the Alliance of Regenerative Medicine, and Advisory Council to the Health Policy Commission for Massachusetts. Through his public and private enterprise work, Geoff is dedicated to applying innovation to reshape and improve the quality of healthcare.

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President and Chief Executive Officer
Mars Innovation, Canada

Dr. Hofstein received his PhD and Master of Science degrees in Life Sciences and Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. His Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Physics was attained from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Awards received while completing post-doctoral training and research at the Harvard Medical School in Boston in the Departments of Biological Chemistry and Neurobiology include the Hereditary Disease Foundation Fellowship in 1982-83, and the Chaim Weizmann Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1980-82.

From 1999 to June 2009 Dr. Hofstein held the position of President and CEO of Hadasit Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem. He serves as Chair of Hadasit BioHolding Ltd., a holding company for a cluster of companies engaged in drug development and medical diagnostics. Hadasit BioHolding Ltd. has been publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) since 2006. Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein joined MaRS Innovation as President and CEO in June 2009.

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