The 2022 KPBMA - MIT Life Science Conference will feature trends of research and highlight advances in the areas of Oncology and Neurology by leading MIT and Korean faculty.
It will also include presentations by MIT-connected startups and Korean companies to showcase their innovative technologies.
The conference will be held on March 31 and April 1, starting at 8:30 AM Korea Standard Time (March 30 & 31 starting at 7:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time).
한국제약바이오협회에서는 MIT와 협력하여 제약바이오분야 최신 지견을 공유하고 MIT 연계 스타트업과의 BD기회 발굴을 위해 다음과 같이 컨퍼런스를 개최합니다.
한영 동시 통역 서비스 (Simultaneous Translation Service)
We are offering Zoom based simultaneous translation service for this conference.
In order to use simultaneous translation feature during Zoom webinar, you will need the version of Zoom that is higher than version 5.2.1. If you do not already have this version, please update your Zoom client/application before joining the discussion. Follow the instructions here to update Zoom.
Please visit Language interpretation in meetings and webinars on Zoom for more details.
Won is the 21st president of the KPBMA. He has a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology from Seoul National University and a doctor of pharmacology degree from Kangwon National University. He served as the 34th chairperson of the Korean Pharmaceutical Association in 2006 and was a member of the 18th National Assembly in 2008 in the then-conservative ruling party, Grand National Party.
John Roberts has been Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations (Interim) since February 2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at MIT and returned to the university after a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, joining the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in 2013. Prior to his return, John worked at small, medium, and large companies, holding positions that allowed him to exploit his passions in synthetic chemistry, project leadership, and alliance management while growing his responsibilities for managing others, ultimately as a department head. As a program director at MIT, John built a portfolio of ILP member companies, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry and headquartered in Japan, connecting them to engagement opportunities in the MIT community. Soon after returning to MIT, John began to lead a group of program directors with a combined portfolio of 60-80 global companies. In his current role, John oversees MIT Corporate Relations which houses ILP and MIT Startup Exchange.
Dr. Tyler Jacks is a world leader in the field of cancer genetics and is known for his ground-breaking work on the development of genetically-engineered mouse models of cancer (GEMMs). Over the course of his academic career, he has published over 200 peer- reviewed papers along with numerous review articles and book chapters. Dr. Jacks graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Biology in 1983 from Harvard College before becoming a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco, where he showed that ribosomal frameshifting during translation gives rise to the gag-pol protein of the Rous sarcoma virus, HIV-1 virus and mouse mammary tumor virus. He went on to demonstrate that a stem-loop structure and RNA sequence making up the frameshift site are required for efficient frameshifting in vitro. In 1998, Dr. Jacks returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to join Dr. Robert Weinberg’s group as a post-doctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, where he developed several GEMMs, including the Rb, p53 and Nf1 mice. In 1992, Dr. Jacks became an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Biology and a member of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, which became the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT in 2011. In 1994, he became an Assistant Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and was promoted to Investigator in 2002. In 2001, Dr. Jacks became Director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, later the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and recently stepped down as Director after leading the Koch Institute for 20 years. He also resigned as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in order to take the role of President at Break Through Cancer. Currently, Dr. Jacks is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT.
Marcus Dahllöf leads MIT Startup Exchange, which facilitates connections between MIT-connected startups and corporate members of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP). Dahllöf manages networking events, workshops, the STEX25 accelerator, opportunity postings, and helps define the strategic direction of MIT Startup Exchange. He is a two-time tech entrepreneur (one exit in cybersecurity), and has previously held roles in finance, software engineering, corporate strategy, and business development at emerging tech companies and Fortune 100 corporations in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Marcus was a member of the Swedish national rowing team and he is a mentor at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service.
Roy is Founder & CEO of Modulus Discovery. He has over 20 years of computational drug discovery experience, including 10 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Connecticut, two years at Variagenics, a personalized medicine company formerly in Cambridge, MA, and three and a half years at Schrodinger, Inc., where he was responsible for launching collaborative research projects with global pharmaceutical firms and top academic laboratories. Roy also previously served as Visiting Associate Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he lectured in drug discovery and biotechnology entrepreneurship. Roy received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Boston University, and completed his post-doctoral studies at MIT.
Andrew A. Radin is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aria Pharmaceuticals. Andrew created the company’s first drug development algorithms as part of his studies in biomedical informatics at Stanford University in 2014. Since co-founding Aria, Andrew was named an Emerging Pharma Leader by Pharma Executive magazine, was invited to give a TEDMED talk, and was named a Top 100 AI Leader by Deep Knowledge Analytics. In addition to his duties as CEO at Aria, Andrew serves as an advisor to Stanford University’s SPARK drug development and Stanford University’s StartX startup accelerator programs. Prior to co-founding Aria, Andrew served as Chief Technology Officer at several successful internet startups. His prior projects have reached tens of millions of people in telephony systems, advertising networks, video games, and geographical mapping systems. Andrew studied Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University’s SCPD graduate program and holds a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Thanos Kosmidis received his MEng in Computing from Imperial College (UK), his MS in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), and has been an Advanced Study Fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (USA).
He has 20 years of experience in the technical and commercial divisions of high-tech companies in USA and Europe. His last post, which he left to build CareAcross, was that of deputy director at a large telecommunications' firm strategic commercial planning department.
He has solid experience in managing multiple local and remote teams, including growing a team of 5 to reach 180 people across three countries and five timezones. He has led multimillion dollar projects from inception to delivery, and is experienced in the full lifecycle of products and services.
Mr Kosmidis is an active member of the international Health 2.0 organisation promoting the application of technology in healthcare, and a frequently invited speaker and presenter at international conferences in digital health.
Finally, Mr Kosmidis is serving as a Assembly Member for the European Commission’s “Mission on Cancer”, and as a technology expert for the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC), and the Quality Assurance Scheme Development Group (QASDG) in particular.
Jewan John Bae comes to MIT Corporate Relations with more than 20 years of experience in the specialty chemicals and construction industries. He facilitates fruitful relationships between MIT and the industry, engaging with executive level managers to understand their business challenges and match them with resources within the MIT innovation ecosystem to help meet their business objectives.
Bae’s areas of expertise include new product commercialization stage gate process, portfolio management & resource planning, and strategic planning. He has held various business leadership positions at W.R. Grace & Co., the manufacturer of high-performance specialty chemicals and materials, including Director of Strategic Planning & Process, Director of Sales in the Americas, and Global Strategic Marketing Director. Bae is a recipient of the US Army Commendation Medal in 1986.
Gloria Choi is an investigator at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and an associate professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Choi completed her Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology where she worked in the laboratory of David Anderson. She was a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Richard Axel at Columbia University. Choi’s lab studies the interaction of the immune system with the brain and the effects of that interaction on neurodevelopment, neural circuit function and behavior.
The beneficial effects of infection and the ensuing inflammation on neurological disorders have previously been noted. For example, a subset of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibits temporary but considerable improvements in their behavioral symptoms during episodes of fever, a sign of systemic inflammation. However, a mechanistic understanding of how fever-associated immune responses translate into behavioral relief—both at the molecular and neural level—is lacking. We show that the social behavioral deficits in offspring exposed to maternal immune activation can be temporarily rescued by the inflammatory response elicited by the administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We demonstrated that the behavioral rescue requires peripherally-produced IL-17a, which engages its cognate receptor (IL-17Ra) to modulate the neural activity of S1DZ, the brain regions we have identified to be central to the manifestation of sociability deficits in the MIA model. Therefore, elevated IL-17a levels are critical for rescuing sociability deficits during an immune challenge. We observed that several monogenic models for autism displayed no discernable increase in IL-17a production or rescue of sociability deficits upon an immune insult. However, direct delivery of IL-17a into the S1DZ restored social behaviors just as in MIA mice. This study provided the first insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying transient behavioral improvement observed in a subset of individuals with ASD and also suggested that the variation in inflammatory responses might stratify responders from non-responders.
Mr. Jaspaul “Paul” Singh is Chairman and CEO of Interon Laboratories, Inc, a drug discovery platform focused on developing a therapeutic for the treatment of Autism, and other neuro-developmental disorders. Paul is also Lead Director of Natural Order Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ: NOAC), a $230mm special purpose acquisition corporation which completed its IPO in November 2000.From 2014 to 2020, Paul was the Founder, Managing Partner, and Portfolio Manager of Fort Warren Capital Management. Fort Warren is a Boston-based hedge fund that invests opportunistically long/short across the capital structure. Paul launched Fort Warren in 2014 and raised regulatory assets of $300mm+. Paul managed the origination, research, structuring and trading of all healthcare investments at Fort Warren throughout the life of the fund.
Previously, Paul was Head of Distressed/Special Situations at Regiment Capital Advisors, a $5bln credit hedge fund that was spun out of Harvard Management Company. While at Regiment, Paul led investments in industrials, life science, and healthcare sectors. Paul also led the Special Situations/Distressed effort at Regiment and had primary responsibility for managing hedges across the portfolio. Paul initiated and was responsible for several of the firm’s largest and most profitable trades including: the subprime mortgage short, the European sovereign CDS short, swaptions and CMS treasury shorts, distressed bank loan longs and the structured products longs. Prior to Regiment, Paul was a Senior Analyst at Hammerman Capital Management, a capital structure arbitrage fund. Paul also worked in the Corporate Development Group at Microsoft Corporation, where he was on the team developing the business plan for the X-Box gaming console. Paul began his career as an Analyst in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. Paul initiated and led both formal and ad-hoc activist roles in a range of healthcare/life science businesses throughout his career. Indicative Healthcare Investments include: Elan/Biogen (Perrigo), ViroPharma (Shire), Alexion Pharmaceuticals, HCA Healthcare, Health Management Associates, Tenet Healthcare, Community Health Systems, Quorum Health, Lifepoint Health (RCCH Healthcare Partners), Quest Diagnostics, Covance (LabCorp) Hanger Orthopedic, Bausch Health.
Paul is a member of the National Board of Advisors of the Sikh Coalition, a civil rights advocacy group. He is also a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul has an MBA from Harvard University, an MPHIL from the University of Cambridge (UK), and a BA with Honors from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a University Scholar. Paul is a graduate of Milton Academy and lives in Braintree, Massachusetts.
Dr. Paul Le Floch obtained his Ph.D. in Materials Sciences and Mechanical Engineering from Harvard University (2021). His thesis focused on the use of soft materials to reduce the mechanical mismatch between soft tissues and electronics, which prevents further improvements of brain-electronics interface. After his Ph.D., he immediately started Axoft with Tianyang Ye (CTO) and Prof. Jia Liu (Scientific Advisor), to develop a novel technology of neural implant that is made of materials 10,000x softer than the current flexible probes, and have the potential to scale up the number of neurons accessible with implantable brain-machine interface. They received support from The Engine at MIT, and Axoft’s technology will be used to restore motor or sensory functions in patients suffering from paralysis. Paul Le Floch was named Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Science category (2022) and received the Graduate Student Gold Award from the Materials Research Society (MRS).
Kinovi, founded by Joseph Azzarelli in 2021, is devoted to accelerating small molecule drug discovery with a novel high-throughput drug-protein binding kinetics platform. Dr. Azzarelli has been a deep tech entrepreneur with a focus on commercializing innovative diagnostic and therapeutic technologies since completing his Ph.D. at MIT (Chemistry '16).