Behind the Scenes of Drug Discovery and Development

Andre Esteva is a researcher and entrepreneur in deep learning and computer vision. He currently serves as Head of Medical AI at Salesforce Research.He obtained his PhD in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford, where he worked with Sebastian Thrun, Jeff Dean, Stephen Boyd, Fei-Fei Li, and Eric Topol. His research was in deep learning and computer vision, with applications built for dermatology, drug screening, neuroscience, and psychiatry.Notably, his work showed that computer vision algorithms could match the performance of dermatologists at classifying skin cancer from images. His work has made the cover of Nature, as well as Cell, Nature Medicine, NeurIPS, and other venues. It has been widely covered by the WSJ, Fortune, BBC, The Economist, and similar news outlets. He interned at Google Research, Sandia National Labs, and GE Healthcare, and has co-founded two tech startups.He finished undergraduate degrees with highest honors in Electrical Engineering and Pure Math from UT-Austin and was awarded Engineering Valedictorian (formally, the Outstanding Scholar-Leader Award).

Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where she leads investments for the a16z bio + health fund across digital health, care delivery, biotech, and life sciences tools/diagnostics. She was previously a consultant at McKinsey, scientist at the Broad Institute, director of product management at Flatiron Health, and venture partner at GV (Google Ventures). She has a special interest in companies leveraging unique datasets to improve healthcare delivery as well as drug development. Vineeta holds a B.S. in biophysics from Stanford, and MD/PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School/MIT. She is board certified in internal medicine, and continues to see patients at Stanford as an adjunct clinical professor in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health. Vineeta serves on a number of healthcare portfolio company boards, including Memora Health, Thyme Care, Pearl Health, and Waymark.

Robert is Senior Vice President, Research & Early  Development and Head of Immunology, Cardiovascular, & Fibrosis Thematic Research Center (ICF TRC) and Translational Medicine (TM) at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). Within the ICF TRC, Robert is responsible for the strategic vision, implementation, and partnership of novel therapies from discovery through proof-of-concept clinical trials for immunologic, CV and fibrotic diseases. Within TM, Robert is responsible for diagnostics and late development translational plans across all therapeutic areas at BMS, including oncology and hematology. Together, he manages a team of ~450 individuals across multiple geographies.Robert joined BMS as part of the acquisition of Celgene in November 2019. At Celgene, Robert was Vice President in Research & Early Development, responsible for the Immunology & Inflammation portfolio. Prior to joining Celgene in May 2017, Robert was Vice President and Head of Translational Medicine at Merck & Company. His team was responsible for translating basic science into therapeutic trials across all therapeutic areas, with areas of emphasis such as: identifying novel targets and pathways based on causal human biology (e.g., human genetics, pharmacological perturbations); deploying molecular and imaging biomarkers into clinical trials; and conducting first-in-human studies, clinical proof-of-concept trials, and additional Phase I/IIa studies to support registration. Robert graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science from the University of California San Diego in 1992; received his MD and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University in 2000; completed his Internal Medicine residency as a Molecular Medicine Fellow at University of California San Francisco in 2002; and served as rheumatology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 2002-2006 and post doctoral research fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard from 2003-2007. Between 2007-2013 he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute while practicing clinical rheumatology and running a research laboratory at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Robert’s original research has been published in Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature Genetics, and other top-tiered medical journals (>125 publications with >35,000 citations to date). In recognition of his accomplishments, Robert has received numerous awards, including: Pre-doctoral Clinical Award from The American Society of Human Genetics (1995); The Young Investigator Award from the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2008); Career Award for Medical Scientists from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2008); and election to The American Society for Clinical Investigation (2012). He lives with his wife and three daughters in Wellesley, MA. He enjoys outdoor activities, socializing with friends and family, Boston sports, and participating in any activities that his kids want him to do. 

Priti Hegde, Ph.D., joined Foundation Medicine as the Chief Scientific Officer in August 2019. Dr. Hegde oversees clinical product development, cancer genomics, and early-stage research, as well as regulatory and quality assurance, to accelerate advancement of the Company’s leading comprehensive genomic profiling portfolio. She is passionate about innovation in cancer research and translating innovations to precision medicine tools to advance care for patients.Dr. Hegde has spent nearly two decades in the biopharmaceutical industry, with a proven track record in drug development, registration, and commercialization of therapeutics with companion diagnostics in cancer immunotherapy.Prior to joining Foundation Medicine, Dr. Hegde spent 12 years at Genentech, a member of Roche Group, where she held roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, Dr. Hegde served as senior director and principal scientist in oncology biomarker development at Genentech, during which she established and led the biomarker group accountable for translational science strategies in cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Hegde was instrumental in the approvals for atezolizumab in both the United States and European Union, as well as its forthcoming diagnostic filings.Before joining Genentech, Dr. Hegde was the manager of disease and biomarker transcriptomics at GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Hegde completed her post-doctoral fellow at The Institute for Genomic Research and holds a Ph.D. in Biochemical Pharmacology from SUNY Buffalo, as well as a B. Pharmacy from Mumbai University, India.

Dr. Joel Dudley serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus. Dr. Dudley was Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He also served as Executive Vice President for Precision Health for the Mount Sinai Health System. Prior to Mount Sinai, he held positions as co-founder of NuMedii, Inc. developing machine learning technologies for drug discovery and Consulting Professor of Systems Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. His more than 200 peer-reviewed research publications established novel precision medicine paradigms at the nexus of -omics, digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), scientific wellness, and healthcare delivery. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, CNBC, and other popular media outlets. He was named in 2014 as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. He is co-author of the book Exploring Personal Genomics from Oxford University Press. Dr. Dudley received a BS in Microbiology from Arizona State University and an MS and PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University School of Medicine.