Rachel Salazar, DHSc, is the SVP, R&D Strategy & Operations at Bicara Therapeutics. A passionate and adaptive organizational leader, Dr Salazar brings more than two decades of experience as a strategic drug development executive in both early and late-stage clinical development. Skilled in strategy development, portfolio management and prioritization, over the past 15 years, Dr Salazar has driven various clinical-stage assets in the oncology and immuno-oncology space to advance therapeutically meaningful and differentiated assets to patients.

Prior to joining Bicara, Dr Salazar has held various leadership roles with increasing responsibility in both R&D and Portfolio Management at Pfizer, Takeda Oncology and EMD Serono.

Dr Salazar holds both a Bachelor and Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and Tufts University and earned her DHSc from Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Matthew Silver, PhD, serves as Head of Oncology Precision Medicine and Companion Diagnostics at Takeda. Dr Silver established and built the centralized CDx function at Takeda, where he and his team are accountable for global diagnostic strategy development and execution across the Oncology pipeline.

Before joining Takeda, Dr Silver was with EMD Serono where he was Director of Companion Diagnostics and Immuno-Oncology CDx Team Lead. In this role, Dr Silver had broad responsibility for Immuno-Oncology CDx strategy and served as CDx Lead for multiple late-stage programs. Prior to EMD, Dr Silver led the translational assays group at Cell Signaling Technology where he was responsible for product development to support their growing translational portfolio and external collaborations.

Dr Silver earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire, which was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Wyeth Research. Dr Silver also holds a BS in Molecular and Cell biology from the University of Connecticut.

Diana Stoycheva, PhD, is a principal scientist with a Masters in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Heidelberg. She holds a PhD in immunology from HU Berlin and pursued postdoctoral studies in Immunology at the ETH Zurich. Dr Stoycheva’s strong scientific background reflects her personal passion for immunology, immuno-oncology and specifically cell therapies. She joined Scailyte in 2020, evaluating opportunities to apply our AI to new projects in immunology and immuno-oncology.

Allison Kaeding, MD, is a Senior Director of Early Clinical Development for IO and Cell Therapy at BMS. Dr Kaeding leads early clinical development for BMS’s GPRC5D-targeted CAR T cell therapy, now entering pivotal and novel combination trials, since its lead nomination, and has conducted Phase 1 trials and clinical development for numerous other clinical-stage and pre-clinical cell therapy, cell engager, biologics and targeted degrader programs. She is the Clinical lead for the BMS partnership with Century Therapeutics to develop off-the-shelf induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived, engineered allogeneic cell therapies.

Dr Kaeding co-leads the BMS Cell Therapy Correlative Research Team, with bioinformatics expert Dr Julie Rytlewski, Director of Predictive Sciences, to apply cutting-edge data analytics including statistical modeling and machine learning to address pressing, clinically relevant questions impacting BMS. Cell Therapy portfolio development (and beyond). Leveraging BMS’s unparalleled breadth of cell therapy clinical trial experience, including curated data from 4700+ patients treated on 24 cell therapy trials with 6 distinct CAR T assets including Breyanzi and Abecma, the Cell Therapy Correlative Research Team uses big data to shape current and future BMS Cell Therapies.

Dr Kaeding is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist and stem cell transplant physician. She earned her Medical Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed her fellowship training at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Prior to joining industry at Juno Therapeutics/Celgene, she was an early career physician-scientist as an attending physician on the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant service and bench researcher at Fred Hutch developing novel AML antibody-drug conjugates and other targeted therapeutics.

John Simmons, PhD, currently leads oncology biopharma partnerships at Natera. Before joining Natera, Dr Simmons completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and served as Vice President of Translational Medicine at Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx). He received his PhD in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University.

Jennifer Shaw Gibson Levy is Vice President, Education and System Academic Enterprise for Henry Ford Health. In this role, she provides system-wide strategic, operational, and financial management support for the academic mission of Henry Ford Health and works to identify and implement operational strategies and initiatives to address system, hospital, and medical education and research programmatic goals to ensure program quality and consistency.

David E. Lanfear, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine, is System Vice President for Clinical and Translational Research, and Co-Director of the Center for Individualized and Genomic Medicine Research (CIGMA). Dr. Lanfear is a practicing transplant cardiologist, a clinician scientist focused on precision medicine and genomics, and an active clinical trialist with experience in single and multicenter trials. 

Lani Hashimoto is dedicated to connecting trials to patients with 25 years of clinical trial experience, operational expertise, and extensive industry relationships. Joining Novartis in October 2013, she has worked on innovation and operations teams. this year including grassroots efforts to engage with patients. In 2018, she joined the TransCelerate Patient Experience initiative and has been co-leading the team for the last two years. Ms Hashimoto recently transitioned to a patient engagement role in US late phase trials focused in the US.

Shelly Barnes is the UCB Global Innovations Lead . She is accelerating innovative strategies and solutions driving the improvement of the patient experience within the conduct of their clinical trials. Ms Barnes is delivering solutions using novel technologies, transforming from traditional clinical trials to patient preferred clinical trials while maintaining quality, compliance and stakeholder commitments. Ms Barnes actively represents UCB on several industry consortiums including DTRA, CTTI, TransCelerate and IMI.

As Vice President of Site Solutions & Engagement for WCG Clinical, Jamie Harper develops and executes strategical solutions mitigating the challenges experienced at clinical research sites around the globe. Ms. Harper is driven to help sites meet critical study endpoints and reach important milestones to accelerate clinical research.

Scott Stout has been recognized as one of the top healthcare innovators of 2021.  While working as a professional investor in high-finance, He identified a large gap in the clinical trial marketplace and seized the opportunity to build a team of healthcare, high tech, and venture capitalists to turn his concept of expanding clinical trials, “Beyond Clinical Trial Sites,” into a reality.  Prior to founding MedVector, Mr Stout worked with notable companies such as Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo Private Bank.  His entrepreneurial spirit has driven him to help numerous start-ups develop their market-fit, revenue models, capital raises, and go-to-market strategies.

Lucy R. Langer, MD, MSHS, is the National Medical Director of Oncology and Genomics at UnitedHealthcare. Dr Langer earned her medical degree at Stanford and completed fellowship in hematology and oncology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, where she also earned a master’s degree in Health Services Research. She has been a practicing oncologist with Compass Oncology in Portland, OR since 2007.