Ron Cohen, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, founded Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. in 1995. Previously he was a principal in the startup and an officer of Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company engaged in the growth of human organ tissues for transplantation. Dr. Cohen received his B.A. with honors in Psychology from Princeton University, and his M.D. from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. Dr. Cohen is a member of the Executive Committee and Vice Chair of the Health Section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), and serves on the Board of Directors of Dyax Corp. He previously served as Director and Chairman of the New York Biotechnology Association (NYBA). He also serves as a member the Columbia-Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council and was awarded Columbia University’s Alumni Medal for Distinguished Service. Dr. Cohen was named NeuroInvestment’s (now called NeuroPerspective) CEO of the Year and was recognized by PharmaVoice Magazine as one of the 100 Most Inspirational People in the Biopharmaceutical Industry. He is a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York Metropolitan Region and is an inductee of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association’s “Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame.” In 2010, Dr. Cohen was recognized by the New York Biotechnology Association as the NYBA “The Cure Starts Here” Business Leader of the Year.
Dr. Brian Alexander was named Chief Executive Officer of Foundation Medicine in March 2021. He previously served as the company’s Chief Medical Officer since 2019, and is a practicing radiation oncologist specializing in neuro-oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Since joining the company in September 2018 as a Senior Vice President of Clinical Development, Dr. Alexander has played a pivotal leadership role in Foundation Medicine’s decision insights strategy, helping oncologists, both in community and academic settings, determine the right treatment, at the right time, for each unique patient. Under his leadership, Foundation Medicine’s medical team has expanded its molecular tumor board program to include over 90 leading oncology centers globally, launched a cross-functional genomics and health disparities effort, and has developed hundreds of studies and publications to advance the clinical utility of genomic profiling.
Dr. Alexander was the founding director of the Program in Regulatory Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard/MIT Center for Regulatory Science. He also co-founded the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research, a non-profit organization focused on clinical trial innovations to accelerate the discovery and development of cures for patients with rare and deadly diseases, and served as chair of the FDA/Project Datasphere task force on external control arms. Dr. Alexander is an affiliated researcher at the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and affiliated faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School Healthcare Policy Program. He was named to Boston Magazine’s “Top Doctors List” in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Previously, Dr. Alexander served as a White House fellow and Special Assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, where he helped prepare the VA for the transition of administrations, worked to develop a public reporting system for quality, and served as a health policy advisor to the Secretary. Dr. Alexander organized the standup of the VA’s Coordinating Council on National Health Reform and directed the activities of its multi-team Health Reform Working Group. He was also a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Governance and Financing of Graduate Medical Education.
Dr. Alexander’s research interests focus on innovations in clinical evidence generation to support the development of therapeutics, biomarkers, and novel endpoints. He co-authored a book titled “Diagnostic Test Interpretation and Reasoning Under Uncertainty,” detailing the use of Bayesian approaches to clinical decision-making. Dr. Alexander was the founding principal investigator of INSIGhT, a multi-institutional genomic biomarker-based Bayesian adaptively randomized trial for patients with glioblastoma. He is the recipient of the Burroughs-Wellcome Innovations in Regulatory Science Award for his work applying such approaches to clinical trial design.
Dr. Alexander received his B.A. from Kalamazoo College, M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School, and M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his training in radiation oncology at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program.
John A. Scarlett M.d
Geron
John 'Chip' Scarlett is a Co-Founder at Covance and Board Member at CYTOMX THERAPEUTICS, INC. and is based in Menlo Park, California. He has worked as Board Member at GERON CORP, Board Member at Chiasma Inc, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. John works or has worked as Various Positions at Mcneil Pharmaceuticals and Dir:Medical Research & Svcs at Mcneil Pharmaceuticals. He studied at University of Colorado Boulder between 1980 and 1982, University of Chicago - The Pritzker School of Medicine between 1973 and 1977, and Earlham College between 1969 and 1973.
Reshma Kewalramani (born 1973), is the president and chief executive officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company based in Boston, Massachusetts, as of April 1, 2020. She is the first female CEO of a large US biotech company. She was previously the chief medical officer and vice president of global medicines development and medical affairs at Vertex.