Jan ter Meulen, MD, PhD, is Obsidian’s Chief Scientific Officer. A veteran researcher in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic settings, Dr ter Meulen brings more than 25 years of operational and strategic research experience to Obsidian. Previously, as Chief Scientific Officer of Immune Design, Seattle, he was responsible for devising and communicating the immuno-oncology research strategy of the company, building its pipeline, and participating in the IPO and later sale of Immune Design to Merck & Co. in 2019. Before Immune Design, Dr ter Meulen was Head of Vaccine Basic Research at Merck Research Laboratories, where he had operational responsibility for the entire vaccine discovery pipeline, and before that, Head of Antibody Discovery at Crucell N.V., Leiden, The Netherlands. He has held appointments at the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, and the Institute of Virology at the Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany. Dr ter Meulen was an International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute, and a consultant for scientific agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Africa and for the European Commission.

Bahram (Bob) Valamehr, PhD is the Chief Development Officer at Fate Therapeutics, overseeing the company’s early development activities including “off-the-shelf” cell therapy product candidates derived from the company’s induced pluripotent stem cell platform. Previously, Dr Valamehr was the Vice President of Cancer Immunotherapy at Fate and prior to that played key scientific roles at Amgen, the Center for Cell Control (a NIH Nanomedicine Development Center) and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center developing novel methods to control pluripotency, to modulate stem cell fate including hematopoiesis and to better understand cellular signaling pathways associated with cancer. He has co-authored numerous studies and patents related to stem cell biology, oncology and materials science. Dr Valamehr received his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA, his MBA from Pepperdine University and his BS from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA.

Raluca Verona, PhD, is currently Head of Precision Medicine Oncology at AbbVie, where she leads clinical biomarkers and translational research strategies across solid tumors, heme malignancies and immune-oncology.

Prior to AbbVie, Dr Verona was at Janssen R&D, where she gained over 16 years of experience in drug discovery and development at. Her expertise extends across heme and solid tumor indications, encompassing a diverse range of therapeutic modalities including small molecules, checkpoint inhibitors, T cell bispecific antibodies, and CAR-T cell therapies. Dr Verona played a pivotal role within the Jannsen Oncology Discovery group, building Janssen’s Immune-Oncology (IO) portfolio in solid tumors by advancing a number of IO agents to IND-enabling studies and early clinical development, as well as by leading next-generation T cell redirectors and cell therapy strategies.

After her tenure in Discovery, Dr Verona has led both the IO and Heme Translational Research groups at Janssen, overseeing the development of 20+ early and late-stage clinical development compounds, including antibodies and small molecules, across solid and heme indications. Under her leadership, these teams made crucial contributions to clinical proof of mechanism, dose selection, correlatives for response/resistance, safety, and clinical combination strategies and achieved significant portfolio milestones, including multiple entries into First-in-Human (FIH) and late-stage development, as well as numerous successful regulatory submissions and approvals.

Dr Verona has been a dedicated advocate for mentoring and diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives at J&J. She has also been instrumental in establishing and building the Oncology Post-Doc and Summer Intern programs at Janssen.

Dr Verona obtained her BS from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and her PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Subsequently, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in epigenetics.

Loïc Vincent, PhD, is Chief Scientific Officer at Affini-T Therapeutics. He is an oncology scientist with 20+ years’ international experience in academia/biotech/pharma industry, dedicated to advancing transformative therapies to patients suffering from cancer. Previously, Dr Vincent was the Head of Takeda Oncology Drug Discovery Unit and Immunology Unit, responsible for building the Immuno-Oncology portfolio with a global network of outstanding biotech and academic collaborators, and for leading Takeda Cell Therapy Discovery. Prior to joining Takeda in 2016, Dr Vincent spent nine years at Sanofi, where he led Oncology Drug Discovery Pharmacology, Immunotherapy and Oncology External Innovation teams. Before that, he was the Head of Pharmacology and Oncology programs at Endotis Pharma. Dr Vincent is a former board member of the French-American Biotechnology Springboard and former Board Director at Adaptate Biotherapeutics. During his career, Dr Vincent’s teams advanced more than 20 oncology drugs in the clinic based on various therapeutic modalities including small molecules, biologics, oncolytic viruses and cell therapies. Dr Vincent is author and co-author of 30+ peer-reviewed publications, and 50+ poster and oral presentations.

Dr Vincent obtained his PhD in pharmacology from the University of Rouen, France, and received the Young Scientist Award from the Bettencourt-Schueller’s Foundation for his work. He carried out his postdoctoral fellowship in oncology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY.

Dr Carlin holds a Bachelors in Pharmacology and PhD in Molecular Radiopharmacology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Prior to taking over the role of Principal Scientist at Invicro, he held faculty positions at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The University of Pennsylvania. With over 25 years of pre-clinical and translational radiopharmaceutical research experience, Dr Carlin has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, and has served as principal investigator and co-principal investigator on multiple US federal grants and sponsored projects. An expert in radiation biology, he has a particular emphasis on the design and evaluation of radioligands, and in advanced preclinical nuclear imaging techniques. He is also established in the use and clinical translation of radioisotopes as oncologic therapies, incorporating the use of beta-, alpha- and Auger-emitting radionuclides. Dr Carlin has a long-standing research interest in the combination of tissue-based histologic techniques for evaluation of quantitative target expression and heterogeneity in combination with radiopharmaceutical distribution at the cellular level. The combination of these techniques can be employed to bridge the gap in resolution between the ex vivo and non-invasive imaging modalities.

Stuart Cotter is the Vice President of Product Strategy and Innovation at Advarra. In this role, he collaborates with current customers and the research community to understand their challenges and translates those challenges into solution-based enhancements to our product offerings. Prior to joining Advarra's strategic team, Cotter worked as a Product Manager for Longboat and Advarra eRegulatory Management System, where he supported dozens of study teams and research sites to help them overcome their operational hurdles.

Pierre Bourdage is the Chief Operating Officer of Sandoz, a division of Novartis, driving high quality off-patent medicine accessibility and affordability for millions of patients. He is a member of the Sandoz Executive Committee. His previous roles at Sandoz include Global Head, Biopharmaceuticals Business Unit and Global Head, Sandoz Biopharmaceuticals Strategy and Portfolio.

Derk Arts, MD, PhD, has over fifteen years of experience in medicine, research and technology. He founded Castor to solve the biggest issues in clinical research: a lack of inclusivity, patient focus and impact of data. Castor enables sponsors worldwide to run patient-centric trials on a unified platform that helps them maximize the impact of research data on patient lives.

Dr Derk Arts believes the key to achieving lasting change in the industry is through scalability and standardization. Technology to run better trials and maximize the impact of data should be available to all researchers. 

Over the past 12 months, Castor provided pro-bono support to over 300 COVID-19 trials, and provided the entire infrastructure for the World Health Organizations’ Solidarity Trials.

Andy Iverson is the Clinical Outcomes Solutions lead on the Evidence Optimization Center of Expertise team at Medtronic. In this role he functions as a subject matter expert and project team leader for initiatives related to artificial intelligence, decentralized clinical trials, and interoperability. His career includes 10+ years working with provider and payer systems and data. Andy serves as the Co-Chair of HL7s Biomedical Research and Regulation workgroup and is on the Operations Committee of the HL7 Vulcan FHIR Accelerator. He received a BA in Healthcare Management at Concordia College and an MS in Data Science at Northwestern.

John Reites is CEO of THREAD. Executive intrapreneur turned digital health entrepreneur, his career includes 18 years leading global drug development, clinical trials, decentralized studies and clinical research innovation. As CEO of THREAD, he’s led the company’s efforts to change the way clinical research is conducted, focused on decentralized approaches and enabling the use of their platform to conduct modern research studies while supporting partnerships with their customers.