Dr. Kung-Yee Liang is an international leader in biomedical research and education. From 1982 to 2010, he was a faculty member in Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he became one of the most important and highly cited biostatisticians of his generation. Liang developed seminal theories for conditional likelihood inference, inference on the boundary of a parameter space, and estimating equations. He co-developed a widely used regression method called GEE for correlated responses from genetic, cohort, and sample survey studies, and has also made distinguished contributions in genetic epidemiology and mental health science.

Deeply dedicated to his students and teaching, many of Liang’s advisees went on to high-ranking positions in academia. He directed the Department of Biostatistics’ Graduate Program and was an outstanding mentor to junior faculty.

After serving three years as vice president of Taiwan’s National Health Research Institute, Liang was appointed president of National Yang-Ming (medical) University, where he was instrumental in educating Taiwan’s medical leadership, as a precursor to the creation of a National Health System. His Center for Health and Welfare Policy Research is now an Asian leader in evidence-based health policy. In 2017, Liang was appointed president of Taiwan’s National Health Research Institute

Ethan Tu (born 27 September 1976 in Taiwan) is a computer scientist and entrepreneur, known for his work on Microsoft Cortana and influential social network, BBS, in Taiwan.

Ethan was the internet leader who founded the nonprofit open-source organization of BBS Club in National Taiwan University. The organization, including its major sites such as NTUBBS, PTT, SOB and Izero, were leading the BBS systems from year 1990s to 2000s. It established the standard for BBS in Asia. Till now, PTT(ptt.cc) named after his internet ID is still the most influential social network in Taiwan.

In 2003, Ethan joined Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at National Institue of Health (NIH) in United States as senior program lead. He reported to CIO of Human Genome Institute and worked on bioinformatic and cancer auto-detection projects.

In 2006, he joined Microsoft and became the Research Developer in Internet Service Research Center (ISRC) for "Bing" core engine. Later, he became the founding team of Microsoft's AI assistant Cortana and promoted as the principal engineering director for Microsoft Cortana for global market. He delivered Cortana and promoted Cortana as Microsoft AI agent across Microsoft's product and platform.

In 2017, Ethan returned to Taiwan and founded Taiwan AI Labs for boosting AI researches and software industries in Taiwan.

Dr. Shen joined Vivo Capital in 2016 as a Venture Partner. She is an international pharmaceutical executive with more than 40 years of experience in the industry. Dr. Shen was the President and CEO, Board Member, and co-founder of ScinoPharm Taiwan, Ltd, a publicly listed leading process R&D and API manufacturing service provider to the global pharmaceutical industry.

Prior to establishing ScinoPharm in 1997, Dr. Shen was previously Corporate Vice President of Pharmaceutical Operations and Technology for Syntex from 1981, where she served for 14 years responsible for worldwide pharmaceutical manufacturing, operations, and technology transfer.  Before that, she worked at Monsanto for 8 years in various technical and management positions in the synthetic fibers and semiconductor materials divisions.

Dr. Shen is a former board member of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Association (PhRMA), where she chaired the Production Group. She currently serves on a number of boards including the Development Center for Biotechnology, Taiwan Bio Industry Organization, China Chemical Society, and Taiwan Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association (TPMA) where she chairs the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Committee.   

Dr. Shen holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Lehigh University, an M.S. in Chemistry from University of Iowa and a B.S. of Chemical Engineering from National Taiwan University.  Dr. Shen is the recipient of the “Women in Industry” award from the YWCA in California.

Dr. Chien serves as Bioinformatics/data science staff scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Dr. Chien has extensive knowledge of A.I., machine learning, bioinformatics, biotechnology, and clinical diagnostic technology. Prior to current roles, Dr. Chien founded a sequencing service company and then joined Bayer AG to develop a machine learning based biologics product screening method. Dr. Chien is a board of advisors for start-up companies and SlingHealth start-up incubator as well as a board member of Formosa Enterprise Institute and Bay Area Taiwanese Biotechnology Association. Dr. Chien received his Ph.D. in computer science and M.S. in data science from Emory University and his B.S. in medical technology from China Medical University, Taiwan.

Alan Dabney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics, having been a tenure-track member of the department since 2006. Dr. Dabney received his Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Washington in 2006. Dr. Dabney has over 20 peer-reviewed publications, mostly in the area of bioinformatics. In addition, he was featured in a series of 36 video lectures by the W.H. Freeman publishing company in 2010, and he co-authored the Cartoon Introduction to Statistics in 2013. Dr. Dabney has received three teaching awards from Texas A&M (the Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Teaching Scholar award in 2009, the Distinguished Achievement College-Level Award in Teaching from the Association of Former Students in 2011, and the 2016-2019 Eppright Professorship in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence). Dr. Dabney was instrumental in the development of the new bachelor of science degree in statistics in 2016. Dr. Dabney is also active in promoting diversity and inclusion on campus. In 2016, he delivered a seminar series titled Rational Learning that combined probability, scientific inquiry, philosophy and common sense to argue for an inclusive, compassionate worldview; this work evolved into a special topics class offered through the College of Liberal Arts in fall 2017.

Dr. Peter Yu is a Research Scientist and Chief Information Officer at the A&M Rural & Community Health Institute (ARCHI), and a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Primary Care Medicine, Texas A&M University Health Science Center. His research areas are information security, data science, electronic record exchange platform and database systems. He also has over 15 years of technical experience in system programming, networking, database, and online web application development.

He joined ARCHI in 2005 as part of the research and development group and oversees the IT department. He is responsible for the design and development of dynamic web applications, medical record abstract and exchange system, a Physician Peer-review project and US Army Ranger Pre-Hospital Trauma Registry.

Dr. Albert Huang is a general surgeon that has done research at world class institutions and under leaders and innovators both in and out of surgery. He did his medical training first in San Antonio and then most recently in the Department of Surgery at Houston Methodist before he founded his company Allotrope Medical Inc in 2016. Since then, he has raised investor funding, built up a team, and has received accolades both in academic medicine (receiving Top Innovation during the 2017 SAGES conference earlier this year) as well as in the field of medtech through acceptance into the competitive Johnson & Johnson J-Labs innovation space, and the prestigious Y-Combinator.

James Lai is currently a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at University of Washington.  He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from New York University – Tadon School of Engineering, with emphasis in the field of nanomaterials for biomedical applications.  A major focus of his research is the development of “smart” polymer reagents to streamline the separation for target cells, particles, and analytes in manufacturing, bioanalytics, and in vitro diagnostics applications.  Dr. Lai has extensive experience in biomedical research, which is intrinsically multidisciplinary in nature, requiring contributions from experts in various fields. His research has been supported by National Institute of Health, Washington State Life Sciences Discovery Fund, Coulter Foundation, etc.  

Dr. Lai is highly interested in benefiting the standard of care received by patients via converting the technologies developed in research laboratories to potential clinical applications.  He is a co-founder of Nexgenia, Inc., a biotech startup in Seattle that aims to commercialize stimuli-responsive polymer technologies from his group for biomedical applications such as in vitro diagnostics, immunotherapy, etc.  His training and experience enable communication across diverse disciplines, including clinicians, entrepreneurs, patent attorneys, etc. He was also a fellow of Leaders In Future Trends, supported by Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology to explore opportunities in technology development, commercialization, and research collaboration.

Dr. Onur Fidancer has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Onur brings has several years of experience in product design and development in Silicon Valley startups with responsibilities ranging from engineering, management, and business development. His technical expertise includes data science, machine learning applications as well as semiconductor devices. As the CEO of Inpro Medical, he leads the development of  a patient tracking system to help hospitals, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities prevent bedsores. Their solution integrates wearables and digital health data to monitor patient risk in real time.

Li-Da Huang received the Ph.D. degree in computer sciences from the University of Texas, Austin, 2003. From 2000 to 2006, he was a Senior Mixed-Signal IC Designer with Texas Instruments, Austin, TX. From 2006 to 2010, he was leading the projects for the router in design for manufacturing with Magma Design Automation. From 2010 to 2012, he served as the director of product engineering in Customer Design Business Unit, Magma Design Automation. He was in charge of analog design optimization and device modeling. Afterwards, he was with Analog Mixed-Signal Group in Synospys as Senior Research Staff. Currently, he is the founder and CEO of Calex Tech Inc. at Taiwan, Calex LLC at United States. He is the CEO and Founder of CytonSys Inc. and also the President of Foot Pain Relief Store LLC that focus on the orthotic solutions and gait analysis for the medical and professional athletic cases. Dr. Huang's research includes circuit design, design automation, computer vision, signal processing and neural sciences. He published more than 30 papers and patents. Several papers are regarded as pioneer works in design for manufacturing in OPC-friendly routing, Antenna effects in routing, and Redundant via insertion, which was nominated as the Most Influential Paper in the Past Decade in ASPDAC 2015. Recently, he is focusing on brain modeling, cognitive function enhancement, aging process and bio-modulation. He is a member of Upsilon-Pi-Epsilon, the international honor society for the computing and information disciplines.

Dr. Chia-Ling (Sariel) Li is a Sr. User Researcher at Bose Corporation in the Wellness Division. She designs and executes research projects to support front-end development and production for wellness products. Her main research goals are to help people sleep better, and live more fulfilling life through technology. She got her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. She received her Master’s degree in Veterinary Medicine in 2011 and Bachelor of Science degree in Life Science in 2009, both from National Taiwan University. She did an internship at SensoMotoric Instruments, GmBH in the summer of 2015 and supported the R&D work for eye tracking in virtual reality.

Ho-Chou graduated from National Taiwan University, department of Zoology. She holds a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied the mechanisms of apoptosis, autophagy and necrotic cell death in normal and cancer cells. Her post-doctoral training was done at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where her research focused on investigating the role(s) of stem cell factors in solid tumor development and progression. In 2015, she joined Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, one of the leading companies focusing on developing RNAi therapeutics. Earlier this year (2018), FDA approved the very first siRNA therapy developed by Alnylam, targeting hereditary TTR amyloidosis. Ho-Chou is in the Next Wave disease biology team, her responsibility is to characterize early stage programs, including target identification and validation, screening for developmental candidates, biomarker assay development and establishing in vitro and in vivo disease models. Ho-Chou is also one of the founding members of BTBA (Boston Taiwanese Biotechnology Association), she served as the co-chair of the BTBA symposium in 2014, and BTBA board member from 2014-2016.

Kai is a senior product manager in Thermo Fisher Scientific, CE platform. She is in charge of high-throughout CE platform development and management, vendor management and marketing and operation management across CE reagent and instrument products. Previously, she was a management consultant and a product manager in Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ion Torrent platform. She holds a MBA degree from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and a MS degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Yeemay Griffin is the co-founder and the chair of StarFab Accelerator, Inc., a startup spun off from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in 2016.

Yeemay graduated from the University of Oregon with a master’s degree in computer science in 1979 and started her career as a software engineer at Tektronix, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon. She was the software project leader for the 91HS8 logic analyzer, the world’s fastest logic analyzer in the early 1980’s with a 32 to 64 channel sampling rate of 2 gigahertz.

After the success of the 91HS8, Yeemay left Tektronix and joined several 91HS8 team members to start Integrated Measurement Systems, Inc. (IMS). IMS manufactured integrated circuit validation systems to test microprocessors, application-specific ICs and memory devices. It also developed Virtual Test Software that permitted design and test engineers to automate test program development and to conduct simulated tests of electronic device designs prior to fabricating prototypes. Yeemay’s responsibilities included software development platform, network architecture, software architecture, UI, OS and software/hardware integration for the new generation products. IMS was very successful and was acquired by Credence Systems Corporation in November of 2001.

In1989, Yeemay and her husband founded Griffin International Enterprises, Inc., a multi-function company with one branch focused on real estate development, and the other branch to provide consulting services to small businesses.

In 1998, the Griffin’s moved from Oregon to Austin, Texas where they continued their real estate investment, started a real estate management firm and a mortgage firm. Exacta Mortgage established good reputation in the Central Texas lending industry for its professionally trained loan officers, high quality services, process efficiency and honest business practices. Exacta was acquired by Well Fargo Bank. Yeemay remained as Wells Fargo’s emerging market branch manager until she returned to Taiwan in 2007 to take care of her mother who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

During her time in Taiwan, Yeemay has actively supported startup companies, shared her experiences with and providing consultation to ITRI colleagues and startups. Yeemay also provides consultation to manufacturers to help them go smoothly through industrial transformation and to develop competitive strategies for new product lines and sales.

Barbara Gastel, a physician specializing in biomedical writing and editing, is professor of integrative biosciences, humanities in medicine, and biotechnology at Texas A&M University, where she coordinates the master's degree program in science and technology journalism. Gastel earned a BA from Yale and an MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins. After medical school, she did an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) mass media fellowship at Newsweek. She then worked in communication and administration at the National Institutes of Health. She also has taught science writing at MIT. Before joining the Texas A&M faculty in 1989, she was assistant dean for teaching at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Gastel is author, with Robert A. Day, of the most recent editions of the book How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. She also is the author of the books Presenting Science to the Public, Teaching Science: A Guide for College and Professional School Instructors, and Health Writer's Handbook. In addition, she has written many articles and chapters on writing, editing, teaching, and medical topics. For a decade she edited Science Editor, the periodical of the Council of Science Editors. Since early in her career, Gastel has worked to promote international communication of science. She was visiting professor of technical communication from 1983 to 1985 at what is now Peking University Health Science Center, and she later led the US aspect of a program to teach English-language biomedical writing and editing in Asia. She also has played lead roles in AuthorAID, an international program to help researchers in developing countries write about and publish their work. Gastel has received awards from the American Medical Writers Association and the Council of Science Editors, and she is a fellow of AAAS. She also has received the John P. McGovern Science and Society Award, given by the scientific research society Sigma Xi. In 2012 she received the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Extension, Outreach, Continuing Education, or Professional Development, and in 2015 she received the Texas A&M University Bush Excellence Award for Faculty in Public Service.

Annie is the fifth-year PhD student in Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics from UC Riverside. She obtained her internship opportunity in AstraZeneca in South San Francisco this summer.  In AZ, she leaded the challenge research project to rescue the virus and monitor the genome variance from the clinical viral isolates in order to support the phase II vaccine development. She got the promotion from AZ and further won the Rising-Star Award of Internship in San Francisco site this summer.

Currently, she focuses on dissecting the molecular mechanism of brain cancer. Her research is set up with cross-functional cooperation with Keck School of University Southern California. She was served as the program chair in 2nd SoCal TBS (Southern California Taiwanese Biotech Symposium) this year. She obtained her BS degree in National Taiwan University.

Dr. Hsin-Pei Shih obtained his Ph.D. in biology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his B.S. in Botany in National Taiwan University. He is now a senior manager at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Shih specializes in

I.Data science-driven drug discovery in competitive intelligence, therapeutic hypothesis evaluation, and chemogenomics

II. Informatics tool development deciphering small molecule-target-indication relationship

III. Drug discovery experiences in CNS and immune/inflammatory diseases (14 years of experiences)

IV. Broad drug discovery disciplines in neuroscience, chemogenomics, chemical genetics, systems biology, pharmacology, cell biology, genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and immunology

Eric is a senior engineer in Biogen focusing on biologics process development in Multiple Sclerosis, Hemophilia, and Alzheimer. His main role is to ensure large-scale manufacturing’s success in upstream and downstream as well as in clinical and commercial campaign (2000L to 15,000L). He also supported next-generation facility design focusing on continuous perfusion process. He leads several cross-companies projects including CMO partnership, raw material investigation, cell line robustness, medium optimization, instrument automation, product quality comparability, assay alignment in BIIB’s internal high titer development. Aside from the lab, he works closely with external partners in supporting domestic or international vendor qualification, raw material analysis and trace metal impurity to ensure supply chain consistency. Eric published several papers in mitigating the cell-damaging and raw material qualification in collaboration with AD, QC, regulatory, supply chain, and external partners/vendors. He obtained BS degree in National Taiwan University and PhD in SUNY Buffalo in gene therapy, regenerative medicine, and preclinical animal model.

Allen Lin started a new venture in 2015, and the company is specialized in the optical imaging system for skin cancer diagnosis. The system was developed by Dr. S.L. Huang from NTU, and it was based on the platform of OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography). He joined Taiwan Global Biofund in 2007 and the most successful cases of his portfolio companies are Taiwan Liposome Company (4152), TaiMed Biologics(4147), and Somnics Inc. (6633). He got a licensing deal from University of Washington, and incubated a start-up IVD company, MiCareo Inc. It’s focused on the developing of liquid biopsy platform.

He received his MBA degree at National Cheng-Chi University and MSc degree at Chang-Gung University.

Dr. Yu-Chun Maria Chen received her B.S. from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan in 2000, before entering Stony Brook University in New York to pursue her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology. During her PhD, she finished her thesis work in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory focusing on the dynamic of PML nuclear bodies during mitosis and received her PhD in 2007. She moved on to her postdoctoral training in University of California San Francisco and Genentech, where she built up extensive experiences in immunology research, including T and B cell activation signaling pathways. In 2015, Maria joined Immunwork, Inc. as a director of business development. Now she leads the company by predicting market trend and competitive environment, developing business strategies for multiple programs, building new partnerships, promoting Immunwork technology platform, and raising funding.

Dr. Mark Chen is an immunologist with expertise in antibody design for therapeutic use and novel vaccine discovery for the treatment of human cancers and infectious disease. He completed his Ph.D. in Texas A&M University and has a track record of successful leadership roles in R&D, business development and the marketing of therapeutic antibodies. Dr. Chen has been an active contributing Chinese Bioscience Association (CBA) board member since 2014. He has enthusiastically served CBA in the capacities of Secretary (2014, 2015), Vice President (2016, 2017) and President (2018). Dr. Chen is currently working as Chief Scientific Officer in AbVision Inc. where he is responsible for business development and novel antibody drug discovery.

Dr. Tang-Long Shen received his BS and MS degrees from National Taiwan University and PhD from Cornell University in Department of Molecular Medicine. Dr. Shen joined the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at the National Taiwan University since 2004. His research explores varied subjects from microbes, plants to human to understand the mode of action of various physiologic and pathologic as well as how to utilize the metabolites of microbial metabolites and phytomedicine to human health. Among of which, firstly, he is interested in understanding the molecular mechanism of cancer progression, especially to elucidate how cancer cells and tumor microenvironment participate in cell migrate, the formation of pre-metastatic niches and contributing to metastatic organotropism. Several key targets, including integrins, receptor tyrosine kinases, and cytokines as well as extracellular vesicles such as exosomes, are main focuses in his studies. Additionally, Shen lab is also seeking useful natural products and de novo protein components in human cells including critical secondary metabolites from traditional Chinese medicinal fungi, Cordyceps spp, Antrodia cinnamomea, and metallothioneins, to apply on anti-cancer, anti-aging or other complication therapeutics.