Reza Dana is Professor of Ophthalmology and the Claes Dohlman Chair in Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He is an ophthalmologist and an immunologist, with a particular interest in the molecular and cellular mechanisms of inflammation and immunity in the eye and ocular surface. In addition to his position as Senior Scientist and W. Clement Stone Scholar in The Schepens Eye Research Institute, Dr. Dana also serves as Director of the Cornea Service at The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and is a member of the Committee on Immunology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Dana has authored over 250 peer-reviewed articles and reviews, and is on the editorial board of the journals Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS), Cornea, The Ocular Surface, Ophthalmologica, and UpToDate (Rheumatology and Allergy), in addition to serving as Senior Editor to the Encyclopedia of the Eye. Dr. Dana is a recipient of multiple awards, including the Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) William and Mary Greve Special Scholar Award, the RPB Physician-Scientist Award, the RPB Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award, the Achievement Award of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the Cogan Award of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, for his many contributions to the field of ophthalmology and ophthalmic science.
Dr. Dana received his bachelor's, graduate, and medical degrees at Johns Hopkins University, and his Master of Science degree from Harvard University. He performed his residency in Ophthalmology at the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary in Chicago, followed by fellowship training at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia (Cornea), Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (Ocular Immunology and Uveitis) and Schepens Eye Research Institute (Transplantation Immunology) at Harvard Medical School.
Stanford University School of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
K. Christopher Garcia is a leading scientist studying the structural biology of cytokine receptor recognition and activation, and probing cytokine signaling mechanisms using protein engineering. Dr. Garcia's laboratory also has a longstanding interest in the structural biology of adaptive immunity, mainly focused on understanding on how the T cell receptor recognizes MHC molecules.
Dr. Garcia has been a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, and of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine since 1999, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005. There he has identified new paradigms for recognition and activation of a variety of receptors that play critical roles in autoimmunity, cancer, neural growth and repair, and blood pressure regulation.
Dr. Garcia holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Tulane University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Genentech and Scripps Research Institute.
Greg Verdine is a thought leader in the field of chemical biology and an accomplished drug discovery entrepreneur, who joined Third Rock Ventures in 2009 as a Venture Partner to provide scientific due diligence for the firm’s potential portfolio investments. Dr. Verdine currently serves as the Director of the Chemical Biology Initiative and the Program in Cancer Chemical Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and is the Erving Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University.
Dr. Verdine has co-founded a number of biotechnology companies and serves as a founding scientific advisor to Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Variagenics, Inc., in addition to Eleven Biotherapeutics.
He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University, a B.S. in Chemistry from St. Joseph’s University, and served as a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School. He is currently a Scientific Advisor to the Board of Directors of the Ibusuki Medipolis Research Institute; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Board of Scientific Consultants of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Research Institute; and the Scientific Advisory Board of the SMA Foundation.
Casey Weaver is a leading scientist studying T cell development and function, who is recognized for his contributions in defining the Th17 cell pathway and its importance to autoimmune disease, as well as mechanisms that give rise to memory T cells.
Dr. Weaver is the Wyatt and Susan Haskell Professor of Medical Excellence in the Department of Pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where his lab is using transgenic mouse models and molecular biological approaches to define the signals that control the fate of T cells and to understand how alternative T cell developmental pathways lead to distinct immune responses.
Prior to joining the University in 1992, Dr. Weaver was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at Washington University. He received his B.S. and M.D. from the University of Florida.
His residency and postdoctoral training were completed at Barnes Hospital and Washington University in 1989.
K. Dane Wittrup is a pioneer in protein engineering methodologies and tumor targeting theory. He is currently the C.P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Associate Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, as well as co-founder and acting Chief Scientific Officer at Adimab.
Dr. Wittrup has also served as the J. W. Westwater Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biophysics, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Wittrup co-founded BioDisplay Technologies, which was acquired by Abbott Laboratories 2001. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate in Amgen’s Yeast Molecular Biology Group.
Dr. Wittrup is a fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Mexico.