Bruce Alberts, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and BioPhysics
University of California-San Francisco

Bruce Alberts, a prominent biochemist with a strong commitment to the improvement of science education, began service as editor-in-chief of Science on March 1, 2008. Dr. Alberts is also a professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California-San Francisco, a position he returned to in 2005 after serving two six-year terms as the president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

During his tenure at the NAS, Dr. Alberts was instrumental in developing the landmark National Science Education standards that have been implemented in school systems nationwide. The type of “science as inquiry” teaching we need, says Dr. Alberts, emphasizes “logical, hands-on problem solving, and it insists on having evidence for claims that can be confirmed by others. It requires work in cooperative groups, where those with different types of talents can discover them – developing self confidence and an ability to communicate effectively with others.”

Dr. Alberts is also noted as one of the original authors of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, a preeminent textbook in the field now in its fifth edition. For the period 2000 to 2009, he serves as the co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, a new organization in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 national academies of sciences and established to provide scientific advice to the world.

Committed in his international work to the promotion of the “creativity, openness and tolerance that are inherent to science,” Dr. Alberts believes that “scientists all around the world must now band together to help create more rational, scientifically-based societies that find dogmatism intolerable.”

Widely recognized for his work in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology, Dr. Alberts has earned many honors and awards, including 15 honorary degrees. He currently serves on the advisory boards of more than 25 non-profit institutions.  He joined the BWF Board on October 2009.

Nancy Andrews, M.D, Ph.D.
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Dean of the School of Medicine
Duke University

Nancy Andrews, M.D, Ph.D., is the vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. She is also a professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology & Cancer Biology.

Dr. Andrews received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, her Ph.D. in biology from MIT, and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston, and her hematology/oncology fellowship at Children's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

After she completed her training, Andrews stayed on at Harvard and Children's Hospital Boston, rising through the academic ranks to become the George Richards Minot Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard, senior associate in medicine at the Children's Hospital Boston, and a distinguished physician of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

She served as an attending physician in hematology and oncology at Children's Hospital until 2003. She was director of the Harvard-MIT MD-PhD program from 1999 to 2003 and dean for basic sciences and graduate studies at Harvard Medical School from 2003 to 2007.

Andrews has maintained an active NIH-funded research laboratory studying mouse models of human diseases. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1993 to 2006. She has authored well over 100 peer-reviewed articles and 16 book chapters, and has received many awards and honors for her research, including membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.  She joined the BWF Board in October 2011.

J. Michael Bishop, M.D.
Director
G.W. Hooper Research Foundation

Prior to joining the G.W. Hooper Research Foundation, Dr. Bishop was chancellor, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and University Professor at the University of California-San Francisco.  He was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, and educated at Gettysburg College and Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Bishop began his research career working on the replication of poliovirus.  After arriving in San Francisco, he shifted his attention to Rous sarcoma virus, hoping to explore the fundamental mechanisms of tumorigenesis.  In 1970, he was joined by Dr. Harold Varmus.  Together, they directed the research that led to the discovery of proto-oncogenes – normal genes that can be converted to cancer genes by genetic damage.  This work eventually led to the recognition that all cancer probably arises from damage to normal genes, and provided new strategies for the detection and treatment of cancer.  Drs. Bishop and Varmus have shared numerous awards for this work, including the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and both have received the National Medal of Science.   Dr. Bishop has devoted his subsequent research to the study of proto-oncogenes – their functions in normal cells and the manner in which they become cancer genes.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.  Dr. Bishop joined the BWF Board in October 2007.

Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D.
Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia
Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital

Professor Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Emery N. Brown is the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an anesthesiologist at MGH.

Dr. Brown received his B.A. (magna cum laude) in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College, his M.A. in statistics from Harvard University, his M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University. He is an anesthesiologist-statistician whose methodology research develops signal processing algorithms to characterize how the brain represents and transmits information. His experimental research has helped characterize how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia.

Dr. Brown has served on the BWF, Careers at the Scientific Interface Advisory Committee, the NIH National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council and the Board of Mathematical Sciences and Its Applications of the National Research Council. He is currently a member of the NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee, the Board of Directors of the International Anesthesia Research Society and the Associate Director of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT.

Dr. Brown is a fellow of the IEEE, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Brown is the recipient of a 2007 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the 2011 Sacks Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and a 2012 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award. He joined the BWF Board in October 2012.

John E. Burris, Ph.D.
President
Burroughs Wellcome Fund

John E. Burris became president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in July 2008.  He is the former president of Beloit College. Prior to his appointment at Beloit in 2000, Dr. Burris served for eight years as director and CEO of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. From 1984 to 1992 he was at the National Research Council/National Academies where he served as the executive director of the Commission on Life Sciences.

A native of Wisconsin, he received an A.B. in biology from Harvard University in 1971, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison in an M.D.-Ph.D. program, and received a Ph.D. in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego in 1976. A professor of biology at the Pennsylvania State University from 1976 to 1985, he held an adjunct appointment there until coming to Beloit.  His research interests were in the areas of marine and terrestrial plant physiology and ecology.

He has served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and is or has been a member of a number of distinguished scientific boards and advisory committees including the Grass Foundation, the Stazione Zoologica “Anton Dohrn” in Naples, Italy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, Japan. He has also served as a consultant to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Science and Human Values.

Geoffrey Gerber, Ph.D.
TWIN Capital Management, Inc.

Dr. Gerber founded TWIN in 1990 and is the president and chief investment officer overseeing the entire quantitative investment process and general management of the firm.   Recognized as a specialist in institutional quantitative investment management, he is often quoted in the financial press.  Two of his more recent publications appear in Market Neutral: State-of-the-Art Strategies for Every Market Environment as a chapter entitled “Using a Nonparametric Approach to Market Neutral Investing” and in Global Asset Allocation as a chapter entitled “Equity Style Allocations: Timing Between Growth & Value”.  Outside of TWIN, Dr. Gerber is a faculty member for the Aresty Institute’s Wharton Executive Education Program on Investment Strategies and Portfolio Management.  He also serves as chairman of the Pittsburgh United Jewish Federation Foundation Investment Committee and is the chair of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investment Committee.  Dr. Gerber holds a Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  He joined the BWF board in October 2007.

George Langford, Ph.D. (Chair)
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
Syracuse University

Dr. Langford is the dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Distinguished Professor of Biology.  He was formerly the Ernest Everett Just Professor of Natural Sciences and Professor of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and adjunct professor of Physiology at the Dartmouth Medical Center from 1991 until 2005.  Dr. Langford received his Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral training as an NIH fellow in the cell biology program at the University of Pennsylvania. He was professor of physiology in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill before joining the faculty at Dartmouth College.  A cell biologist and neuroscientist, Dr. Langford studies cellular mechanisms of learning and memory. His research program seeks to understand how the brain remembers and how this process is impaired by Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.  In 1998, he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the National Science Board (NSB), the governing board of the National Science Foundation, to advise the president and Congress on national science policy. He served on the NSB from 1998 to 2004, as Chair of the NSB Education and Human Resources Committee from 2002 to 2004 and as vice-chair for the NSB National Workforce Taskforce Subcommittee from 1999 to 2004.  Dr. Langford joined the BWF board in February 2008.

Roderick R. McInnes, M.D., Ph.D.
Director of the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital
Canada Research Chair in Neurogenetics
Professor of Genetics and of Biochemistry
McGill University

Roderick R. McInnes is the Director of the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital, Canada Research Chair in Neurogenetics, and Professor of Genetics and of Biochemistry at McGill University, where he has succeeded Charles Scriver as the Alva Chair in Human Genetics.  Until recently, he was a University Professor of the University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children.  Dr. McInnes received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Dalhousie University, and his Ph.D. from McGill. Previously he was the Head of the Program in Developmental Biology at the Research Institute of the Hospital for Sick Children, an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and, from 2000-2010, the inaugural Scientific Director of the Institute of Genetics of CIHR.  He has made important contributions to the understanding of the molecular basis of retinal and eye development, and to the identification of genes and processes associated with inherited retinal degenerations. Recently, he and collaborators identified an important protein, Neto1, required for learning and memory, and established that it is possible to correct an inherited learning defect in mice with a drug, a finding with important implications for human learning disability.  He is a coauthor of the 5th, 6th and 7th editions of Thompson and Thompson’s Genetics in Medicine, and of the CIHR Guidebook for New Principal Investigators.  Amongst other honours, Dr. McInnes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and was the recipient of an honourary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie University in 2007.  He was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2008, and a member of the Order of Canada in 2009.  In 2010, Dr. McInnes was the President of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Carla Shatz, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology and Neurobiology
Director, Bio-X
Stanford University

Dr. Shatz's research aims to understand how early developing brain circuits are transformed into adult connections during critical periods of development. Her work, which focuses on the development of the mammalian visual system, has relevance not only for treating disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, but also for understanding how the nervous and immune systems interact.

Dr. Shatz graduated from Radcliffe College in 1969 with a B.A. in Chemistry. She was honored with a Marshall Scholarship to study at University College London, where she received an M.Phil. in Physiology in 1971. In 1976, she received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard Medical School, where she studied with Nobel Laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. During this period, she was appointed as a Harvard Junior Fellow. From 1976 to 1978 she obtained postdoctoral training with Dr. Pasko Rakic in the Department of Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Dr. Shatz moved to Stanford University, where she attained the rank of Professor of Neurobiology in 1989. In 1992, she moved her laboratory to the University of California, Berkeley, where she was Professor of Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2000, she assumed the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School as the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology.

She returned to Stanford in 2007, where she directs Bio-X, Stanford's pioneering biosciences program that brings together faculty from across the entire university- Clinicians, Biologists, Engineers, Physicists, Computer Scientists- to unlock the secrets of the human body. Dr. Shatz has received many awards including the Gill Prize in Neuroscience in 2006. In 1992, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1995 to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1997 to the American Philosophical Society, and in 1999 to the Institute of Medicine. In 2009 she received the Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Neuroscience. Most recently, Dr. Shatz was awarded an honorary degree from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

She joined the BWF Board on October 2009.

Michael J. Welsh, M.D.
Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in Internal Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Director, Cystic Fibrosis Research Center
Director, Institute for Biomedical Discovery
University of Iowa

Dr. Welsh is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in Internal Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Professor of Neurosurgery, Director of the University of Iowa Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, and Director of the University of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Discovery at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine of the University of Iowa. He earned his M.D. degree from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, where he completed his residency. He held clinical and research fellowships in pulmonary disease at the University of California, San Francisco, and did postgraduate research in physiology and cell biology at the University of Texas, Houston. He then returned to the rolling hills of Iowa, where he has restored the native tall grass prairie. Dr. Welsh has served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and president of the Association of American Physicians. His clinical activities are focused on pulmonary diseases.

Dyann F. Wirth, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Director, Harvard Malaria Initiative
Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Wirth directs the Harvard Malaria Initiative.  Her work has focused on the mechanisms of drug resistance and her group was the first to discover multidrug resistance mechanisms in these organisms.  Her current work includes both fundamental investigation and field-based studies, primarily in Africa.  Dr. Wirth graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin, spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow, and then completed her Ph.D. in cell biology and virology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She was awarded a Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship for her postdoctoral work in molecular biology at Harvard.  She joined the faculty of Harvard School of Public Health in 1982 and was promoted to full professor in 1990.  Dr. Wirth is the past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.  She has served on numerous committees and advising boards, including those for the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund. In 2004, she was elected to The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Wirth is codirector of the Harvard University Global Infectious Diseases Program.  She is Senior Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and co-director of the Broad’s Infectious Disease Initiative. At the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Wirth is the Richard Pearson Strong Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases.  Dr. Wirth joined the BWF board in October 2007.

Stephen D. Corman
Founder PharmaLink

Mr. Corman is a graduate of Indiana University and a certified public accountant. He has worked for Price Waterhouse and as chief financial officer and treasurer of Cooper, USA Inc., which merged with Burroughs Wellcome Co. in 1975. Mr. Corman joined the company and was named vice president of finance in 1986 and chief financial officer in 1989. After Burroughs Wellcome Co. was acquired by Glaxo Inc. in 1995, he founded Pharmalink, and he remains a board member and consultant to the company. Mr. Corman served on BWF's board from 1990 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2007.

Philip R. Tracy
Of Counsel
Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, L.L.P.

Mr. Tracy received his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska and law degree from George Washington University. He joined Burroughs Wellcome Co. in 1974 as assistant general counsel, and he served as the company's president and chief executive officer from 1989 until its sale to Glaxo in 1995. Mr. Tracy currently is associated with the North Carolina-based law firm of Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, L.L.P. and is a Venture Partner with InterSouth Partners, an early stage Venture Fund located in Durham, North Carolina. He serves on the board of directors of several companies and non-profit organizations. Mr. Tracy served on the BWF board from 1989-1996 and again from 2001-2008.