Richard Weinshilboum, M.D. (Chair of EAC)
Professor of Medicine
Professor of Pharmacology
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
weinshilboum.richard@mayo.edu

Dr. Weinshilboum received B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Kansas, followed by residency training in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital, in Boston. He was also a pharmacology research associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Julius Axelrod. He began his affiliation with the Mayo Medical School and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1972, where he is presently Professor of Molecular Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and Internal Medicine as well as Mary Lou and John H. Dasburg Professor in Cancer Genomics Research. He is Co-PI with his Mayo faculty colleague Dr. Liewei Wang for the over 20 year-running NIH Clinical Pharmacology T32 at Mayo. His research has focused on pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics, and he has authored over 470 scientific manuscripts which address those topics.

Roy Jensen, M.D.
Professor, Cancer Biology
Director, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
William R. Jewell, M.D. Distinguished Kansas Masonic Professor of Cancer Research and Director, Kansas Masonic Cancer Research Institute, University of Kansas Medical Center
rjensen@kumc.edu

Dr. Jensen was appointed the director of The University of Kansas Cancer Center (KU Cancer Center) in 2004. As a result of a broad-based university, community, and regional effort, The University of Kansas Cancer Center was designated as a cancer center by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in July 2012 and as a comprehensive cancer center in 2022. Dr. Jensen is currently Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Professor of Cancer Biology, and the William R. Jewell, M.D. Distinguished Kansas Masonic Professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Prior to his appointment at KU Cancer Center, Jensen was a member of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and a faculty member in Pathology, Cell Biology, and Cancer Biology for 13 years.

Dr. Jensen graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1984, and remained there to complete a residency in Anatomic Pathology and a Surgical Pathology fellowship with Dr. David Page. Following his clinical training he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the NCI in the laboratory of Dr. Stuart Aaronson. After he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Jensen focused his research on understanding the function of BRCA1 and BRCA2 and their role in breast neoplasia, and in the characterization of premalignant breast disease at both the morphologic and molecular levels. He currently has over 150 scientific publications and has lectured widely on the clinical and molecular aspects of breast cancer pathology.

Dr. Jensen has served on numerous grant review panels, study sections, and site visit teams for the NIH, the Department of Defense-Breast Cancer Research Program, the Medical Research Council of Canada, the California Breast Cancer Research Program, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Jensen has served on the Science Policy and Governmental Affairs Committees for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and as a member of the AACR Pathology Task Force, AACR Publications Committee, and the AACR Nominating Committee. Jensen also serves as a director-at-large for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Board of Directors. In 2013, he was elected to the Board of Directors for the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) and served as the vice president (2016-2018), president (2018-2020), and past president of AACI from 2020-2023. Jensen served as a member of NCI’s Subcommittee A from 2014-2018, chair of Subcommittee A from 2018-2020, and also served on the Director’s Working Group for the Board of Scientific Advisors to the National Cancer Institute.

Howard L. McLeod, PharmD, is the Executive Clinical Director of Precision Health and Professor of Medicine at Intermountain Healthcare. He is an internationally recognized expert in precision medicine, having made novel contributions at the discovery, translation, implementation, and policy levels. Dr McLeod has been recognized as a Fellow of both the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. He has also been an active Board Member and/or Founder for over a dozen privately held and publicly traded companies. Howard has published over 600 peer reviewed papers on pharmacogenomics, applied therapeutics, or clinical pharmacology and continues to work to advance innovative healthcare. Dr. McLeod was a member of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Committee on Clinical Pharmacology (2002-2013) and the NIH Human Genome Advisory Council (2010-2014). Dr. McLeod was also vice chair for pharmacogenomics for ALLIANCE clinical trials group, overseeing the largest oncology pharmacogenomics portfolio in the world. He was a founding member of the NHGRI Genomic Medicine Working Group.

Matthias Salathe, M.D.
Professor, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
Department Chair, Internal Medicine
Vice Chancellor, Research
msalathe@kumc.edu

Matthias Salathe (MD from the University of Basel, Switzerland) trained in anesthesiology, internal medicine, pulmonary and critical care (one-year support from the Swiss National Science Foundation), and basic science (HHMI funded). IN 1999, he received his first NIH award and has been continuously funded by the NIH, the State of Florida, the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and several other foundations. With initial seminal observations in the area of cilia and mucociliary function, he brought together a diverse group of scientists to broaden interactions, resulting in him proposing and chairing the inaugural, ongoing Gordon Research Conference on “Cilia, Mucus and Mucociliary Interactions”. He contributed to innate airway host defense and airway ion transport. As a translational researcher, he actively repurposes approved medications for airway inflammation and contributed to patient reported outcomes measures. Most recently, his vaping research reveals how vapors cause mucociliary dysfunction via activation of TRP channels and airway inflammation. As an advocate, he actively fights teen vaping. As an educator, he developed and taught the respiratory system module in Miami, receiving 11 student awards for excellence in teaching from 2002-2018. As an academic leader, he was division chief of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine (Miami) and is now chair of internal medicine (Kansas), rapidly expanding the departmental NIH portfolio. He was recently named the vice chancellor for research at KUMC and held/holds leadership roles in national societies and foundations.

Shannon Stott, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Assistant in Genetics,
Massachusetts General Hospital
sstott@mgh.harvard.edu

Shannon Stott, Ph.D., is a mechanical engineer who has been working at the interface of technology, imaging and medicine. Dr. Stott has a broad background in microfluidics, optics, tissue engineering and cryopreservation, with a focus on their applications in clinical medicine and cell biology. Her group is comprised of bioengineers and chemists focused on translating technological advances to relevant applications in clinical medicine. Specifically, they are interested in using microfluidics and imaging technologies to create tools that increase understanding of cancer biology and of the metastatic process. Dr. Stott will provide input and advice regarding liquid biopsies, precision medicine and engineering.

Susan M. Lunte, Ph.D.
Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Kansas
Director of the NIH COBRE Center on Molecular Analysis of Disease Pathways
Director, Adams Institute for Bioanalytical Chemistry
slunte@ku.edu

Susan M. Lunte is the Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Director of the Adams Institute for Bioanalytical Chemistry and Director of the NIH COBRE Center for Molecular Analysis of Disease Pathways at the University of Kansas. She received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Kalamazoo College and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry in 1984 from Purdue University. Dr. Lunte's expertise is in bioanalytical chemistry and microfluidics. She has served as the editor-in-chief of Analytical Methods and was recently chair of the NIH Instrumentation and Systems Development Study Section. She is a fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Lunte's research interests include new methodologies for separation and detection of peptides, amino acids, neurotransmitters and pharmaceuticals in biological fluids. She is well versed in microfluidics and running a core focused on microfabrication and brings valuable experience in administering a COBRE grant.

Alison Motsinger-Reif, Ph.D.
Chief, Biostatistics & Computational Biology Branch and Principal Investigator
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
alison.motsinger-reif@nih.gov

Dr. Alison Motsinger-Reif is the Branch Chief and a Senior Investigator in the Biostatistics and Computational Biology Branch at the NIEHS.  She received her M.S. in Applied Statistics and Ph.D. in Human Genetics – both from Vanderbilt University in 2006 and 2007 respectively.  She was a faculty member at North Carolina State University from 2007-2018, where she built a research program to address important challenges in the “Big Data” space, and received a mid-career endowment.  The primary goal of her research is the development of computational methods to detect genetic risk factors of complex traits in human populations.  As environmental health increasingly accepts a complex model of phenotypic development that involving many genetic and environmental factors, her methods development is focused on strategies that incorporate this complexity.  The methods she develops include artificial intelligence methods such as genetic algorithms, and machine learning tools like neural networks, etc., Her methods and corresponding software tools support are designed to detect gene-gene and gene-environment interactions.  She has published over 190 peer-reviewed publications as a result of this work, in a broad range of journals that reflect the interdisciplinary nature of her work.