Speaker Bios

Hengchu Cao
Zhongping Chen
Jay Dong
Hau Duong
Peggy Fu
Ming Guo
Yun He
Jason Jin
Goran Matijasevic
Bob Molinari
Lisa Marie Ryan
David Schetter
Frederick Wagner
Jackson Wan
Ying Zhao

Orange County/Los Angeles Biomedical Forum, 2006
by SABPA

Speakers and Panelists

Dr. Cao has over 13 years of experience in medical device research and product development, and over 5 years of academic and consulting experience in advanced material research. Currently, Dr. Cao is a Distinguished Engineer, leading the advanced modeling group at Edwards Lifesciences. He directs projects focused on the design and development of next generation bioprosthetic heart valves, interventional cardiology devices, and minimally invasive cardiac prosthesis. Previously with a startup company, Kriton Medical, Dr. Cao invented a ceramic blood pump as a ventricular assist device to treat congestive heart disease (CHF). Prior to that, Dr. Cao was Senior Materials Scientist at Carbomedics (a Sorin company). He pioneered the fracture mechanics and cyclic fatigue design methodology in pyrolytic carbon for the company that made the world’s first mechanical heart valves. Dr. Cao holds a BS in chemical engineering from South China University of Technology, and a PhD degree in materials science from University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Cao is listed in American Men and Women of Sciences.

Zhongping Chen, Ph.D., Cofounder, Director, OCT Medical Imaging, Inc

Dr. Zhongping Chen is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of OCT Imaging Laboratory at UCI. He is a Co-Founder of OCT Medical Imaging Inc. Dr. Chen’s research interests encompass the areas of biomedical photonics, microfabrication, biomaterials and biosensors. His group has developed functional optical coherence tomography, a new medical imaging modality that allows cross-sectional imaging of tissue structure, blood flow, and birefringence simultaneously with high spatial resolution. Dr. Chen has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds a number of patents in the fields of biomaterials, biosensors, and biomedical imaging.

Dr. Chen received his B.S. degree in Applied Physics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1982, his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1987, and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 1992. He is the fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Jay Dong, Ph.D., Pacific Asian Business Manager, Instruments and Reagents, BD Biosciences

Dr. Jay Dong has substantial combined life science experience in academia and biotech industry; in R&D, product development, project management, marketing and sales, and business management from Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Becton Dickinson (BD). He is currently managing a business Unit of BD Bioscience with P&L responsibilities. Jay was trained as a Post Doctoral Fellow at Tufts Medical School in Boston, received Masters in international business from Tufts University, in cooperation with Harvard Business School, and medical degrees from Peking Union Medical College. He services as a Director on the Board of Directors of Sino-American Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SABPA), and as Co-Chair of its Pacific Committee.

Hau Duong, Ph.D., Vice President, Product Development and Manufacturing, Nanostream

Dr. Duong has over 18 years of experience in instrumentation and engineering development of analytical systems ranging from DNA-based medical devices to thermonuclear fusion diagnostics. As VP of Engineering, Dr. Duong oversees all facets of Nanostream's instrumentation development and manufacturing. In addition, he manages the company's customer service and support organization. His background spans the entire product development process from basic research and engineering to manufacturing and quality assurance of instrumentation and medical devices. Prior to joining Nanostream, Dr. Duong served as Senior Scientific and Engineering Manager at Motorola, Inc., where he led the engineering group and managed customer services for the life sciences business unit. He was also a director at Clinical Micro Sensors, a DNA diagnostics company (acquired by Motorola in 1999). Dr. Duong has a PhD in physics from the University of California at Irvine and a MBA from the University of Ottawa.

Peggy Fu, Attorney, Paul Hastings

Peggy Fu is a corporate attorney with Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP, an international law firm with over 1,000 attorneys in seventeen offices worldwide. Ms. Fu represents U.S. and international clients in a variety of business transactions including mergers and acquisitions, cross border transactions, equity and debt financing, private equity investments, venture capital financing, restructuring, corporate governance, technology licensing, and general corporate and securities matters. Industries represented include hi-tech, healthcare, manufacturing, banking, services and real estate.

Ms. Fu is the author of the article entitled "Developing Venture Capital Law in China: Lessons Learned from the United States, Germany and Japan" which was published in the Loyola International and Comparative Law Review in May 2001.

Ms. Fu was born in Beijing, China. She came to the United States upon graduation from high school in Beijing. She received a BA in Economics from Hamilton College and a JD from Loyola Law School. Prior to joining Paul Hastings, Ms. Fu was a Senior Consultant with Ernst & Young. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

Ming Guo, Ph.D., Vice President, Ascenta Therapeutics

As a co-founder of SABPA among many others, Dr. Guo served for three years as the first Chairman of the Board of Directors from its inauguration on 8 June 2002 until 2005. Professionally, Dr. Guo joined Ascenta Therapeutics in April 2005 as Vice President. He came to Ascenta from Pfizer, where, for eight years, he led many aspects of drug development activities, both in-house and outsourced, for multiple clinical drug development candidates in oncology, metabolic diseases, and infectious diseases (anti-viral agents). In addition to his technical leadership in process chemistry and manufacturing, Dr. Guo was also responsible for project management of exploratory drug candidates focusing on CMC issues. One of the oncology project teams he led was the recipient of a Team Recognition Award. Prior to Pfizer, Dr. Guo was responsible for process chemistry research and development of pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals at Monsanto and ABC Laboratories for seven years.

Before his industrial career started at the beginning of 1991, Dr. Guo was an organic chemistry research associate at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and the Institute of Materia Medica (IMM) in China. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from UCSD and an M.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from IMM.

Yun He, Ph.D. Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry, GNF

Dr. Yun He has over ten years of experience in small molecule drug discovery. Dr. He joined the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in 2002 and is currently an Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry. He was responsible for the initial setup of the medchem department at GNF, and has managed a number of drug discovery programs related to infectious disease, oncology, inflammation and metabolic disease. From 2000 to 2001, Dr. He served as a Group Leader and Project Leader at ISIS Pharmaceuticals, where he discovered novel, small-molecule antibacterial agents via the proprietary MSbased screening technologies. Prior to ISIS, he worked for Abbott laboratories for four years and was a key contributor to the discovery of three clinical candidates for Alzheimer’s Disease and pain. Dr. He received his Ph.D. degree in synthetic organic chemistry from the Scripps Research Institute. He has published over 50 research papers and is an inventor of more than 30 patent and patent applications. He is the president of the Sino-American Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SABPA), San Diego.

Jason Jin, Ph.D., Sr. Vice President of Business Development, Shanghai Biochip

Dr. Jason G. Jin is President/CEO of MaxyBio Corporation and Senior VP of Shanghai Biochip Ltd. Dr. Jin is developing globalization solutions to American and Chinese pharmaceutical/biotech industries for broad collaborations in R&D and product manufacturing. He also serves as Professor and Director of Technology Transfer Office (USA) for Shanghai Institutes of Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Jin has extensive experience in identifying new drug targets and biomarkers using microarray technologies. He held positions as Director of Genomics Lab at Purdue Pharma, Functional Genomics at Salk Institute, National Engineering Center for Biochip at Shanghai, and radiologist at Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital. Dr. Jin received postdoctoral training, Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Bioengineering from U.C. San Diego, and medical training from School of Medicine at Fudan University.

Goran Matijasevic, Ph.D., Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility, UC, Irvine

Dr. Goran Matijasevic is the Research Coordinator of the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility at UC Irvine. He is working on development of new projects that involve industry and academia in the fields of RF/wireless and photonic communications, BioMEMS, and Nanotechnology. In this capacity, he works closely with industry partners on making them aware of the available university resources as well as how to establish collaborations with university researchers. Prior to UCI, he worked as a senior engineer at QPlus, a telecommunications start-up company and at Ormet Technologies, where as Director of Research he was working on development of polymer and metal materials and structures for electrical interconnect of high density circuits, new metal alloys for use in conductive adhesives, materials for embedded passive components and heat sensors, and high thermal efficiency electronic substrates. He has 4 U.S. patents, 3 book chapters, and over 40 conference and journal publications and has served on the NEMI Industry Roadmap committee. He is currently on the OCTANe (Orange County Technology Action Network) Steering Committee as well as the LARTA Tech Transfer Conference Organizing Committee.

Dr. Matijasevic received his PhD from UC Irvine in Electrical and Computer Engineering and his MBA from Pepperdine University. He is also a member of the TriTech Advisory Board, OC Innovation Organizing Committee, AeA OC Operations Committee, Tech Coast Venture Network, Life Sciences Industry Council (LINC), IEEE, and ASME.

Bob Molinari, Ph.D., President and CEO, CODA Genomics

Since 1988, Dr. Molinari has been a successful founding CEO or a managing officer of companies developing research tools for drug discovery. Dr. Molinari spent his early career at Raychem Corporation and McKinsey and Company where he specialized in technology management and completed extensive work for early biotechnology research companies. In 1988, Dr. Molinari left McKinsey to become the founding CEO of a technology spin-out of SmithKline Beckman, which then developed market leading products to improve the productivity of DNA sequencing. In 1993, Dr. Molinari started a custom DNA synthesis company, Protogene Laboratories, out of Stanford University Medical School. Within 18 months, Protogene became the largest manufacturer of custom DNA reagents in the world, and was acquired by Life Technologies, Inc, its marketing partner for custom DNA shortly thereafter. Dr. Molinari then led a spinoff of Protogene that developed extensive technology in chemical synthesis of custom DNA chips, gene assembly from oligonucleotides, and high throughput chemical synthesis.

At Medstars Biotech, his own angel investment and venture advisory firm, Dr. Molinari has helped start companies focusing on multi-disciplinary genomics and proteomics tools for drug discovery, including companies involved in high-throughput, mass spec proteomics, multiplexed single molecule detection, DNA chip intellectual property, and cancer therapy. In the past few years, Dr. Molinari has published perspectives on technology transformations in healthcare and the future of pharmaceuticals as part of the Institute for the Future's HealthCare Horizons program. In late 2004, Dr. Molinari joined CODA to assist the founders in setting up the company and commercializing the CODA technology.

Dr. Molinari received his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1974, where he earned the status of Rufus Choate Scholar, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Brown University in 1977, with a thesis elucidating the dielectric behavior of DNA. Immediately following his Ph.D., Dr. Molinari earned an MBA at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Lisa Marie Ryan, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Alpha Technics

Lisa Ryan has her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Lafayette College and her MBA from UCLA. She has been working in high technology change management for over 20 years. After graduating with an engineering degree in 1983, she started her career with Procter & Gamble where she received excellent technical management training. In 1988, she joined Dexter Electronic Materials where she was promoted through several operations positions. In 1991, she was promoted to Global Product Manager for Dexter’s Advanced Semiconductor Materials group where she lead the team responsible for the evolution of semiconductor materials used in several of Intel’s highest performance semiconductor packages. In 2001, Ms. Ryan joined Nordson’s Advanced Semiconductor Equipment Group as General Manager of their European Operations. During the two year assignment, she transitioned the group into a stable, profitable operation. In 2003, Ms. Ryan accepted the position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing with Alpha Technics where she has been instrumental in increasing Alpha Technics sales by more than 40% while significantly improving Alpha’s profitability.

David G. Schetter, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Research & Technology Alliances, University of California, Irvine

David G. Schetter established UCI’s Office of Technology Alliances (OTA) in 1990 to serve as a focal point for campus intellectual property administration and corporate/university interactions involving research and technology transfer. During this period, he has helped UCI improve its NSF national ranking for industry funding for research from 109 to 38, fostered the creation of 40 start-up companies founded on UCI technology, constructed a number of multi-site research consortia (including a $56 million neuropsychiatric research program among Stanford, Michigan, UC Davis and UC Irvine), built the UCI patent portfolio to over 700 active intellectual properties and, over the last ten years, has increased patent income from $500k per year to nearly $12 million in 2005. He has negotiated over $150 million in industry technology development research awards to UCI. He serves on the boards of a number of industry trade groups and is an advisor to the UC President on technology transfer matters.

Mr. Schetter's career spans 32 years at the University of California in various research and administrative capacities, including Assistant Director of a large interdisciplinary Organized Research Unit and 10 years as Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies & Research for the UCI campus. His research interests are in information technology, its use and impact in organizations. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an M.S in Administration from the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management.

Frederick Wagner, Ph.D., Business Area Manager – In vivo Imaging, Invitrogen Corporation

Dr. Frederick Wagner has over 20 years of experience in the development and marketing of imaging systems for clinical diagnostic imaging and pre-clinical imaging for applied research. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. at Stanford University in Electrical Engineering with a focus on image processing techniques for medical imaging systems (CT, MR, PET, etc.) followed by a post-doctoral year at the Advanced Research Lab at General Electric – CGR in Paris. He then spent thirteen years at Toshiba America Medical Systems taking on increasing responsibilities in marketing clinical diagnostic imaging equipment and image management systems, leading the growth of different business segments (from sizes of $20M to $75M) in both mature and emerging markets. He joined Invitrogen in 2004 as Business Area Manager – In vivo Imaging to lead its entry into the emerging market of in vivo imaging with the development of imaging reagents for application in pre-clinical and basic research. He also holds a B.S. in Physics from Xavier University.

Jackson Wan, Ph.D., Director of Bioinformatics, Johnson and Johnson

Dr. Jackson Wan obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UCLA in 1994. He then joined Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development L.L.C. as a postdoctoral fellow to work on differential gene expression technologies. In 1996, JJPRD hired him to establish a Bioinformatics group at the La Jolla site. Since then, his team developed numerous software and databases to aid drug discovery. Dr. Wan was given an Achievement Award from JJPRD for these efforts. He helped established the La Jolla site as the Center of Excellence for Bioinformatics within Johnson and Johnson, and also helped create one of the most successful and highest throughput microarray operations in the world at J&J. In 2001, he became Director of Bioinformatics and is currently the Chair of the Center of Excellence for Bioinformatics at J&J. His team’s latest project is to work with the Chemoinformatics and IM groups to create a global drugscreening database and to integrate Bioinformatics with chemoinformatics within J&J.

Ying Zhao, Sales Manager, Alpha Technics

Ying Zhao earned her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University where her research focus was in Ultrafast Laser Photonics and Terahertz Spectroscopy. Prior to that she earned a Master’s Degree in Microbiology from Boston University School of Medicine, where she was a full time researcher worked on cloning genes of mycobacteria and investigating pathogenesis of mycobacteria in immune compromised patients. She also holds a B.S. in Molecular & Cell Biology from University of Connecticut. Currently she is the Sales Manager at Alpha Technics in charge of OEM sales and new business development with biotech instrument companies, clinical diagnostics labs and worldwide distributors. Prior to Alpha Technics, she was the Life Science Market Manager at Newport / Spectral Physics, responsible for the marketing of lasers, optics and robotics subassemblies to the biotech instrument (biochip chip printing & imaging instruments, flow cytometer, cellular imaging instruments, sequencer, etc), biophotonics (multiphoton microscopy, spectroscopy) and medical device (laser surgery, optical imaging) markets.