James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at UC San Diego

Dr. Fowler describes the exciting young field of genopolitics, which is the study of the genetic basis of political behavior.

James H. Fowler earned a PhD from Harvard in 2003 and is currently Professor of Medical Genetics and Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. James was recently named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Most Original Thinker of the year by The McLaughlin Group. His research has been featured in New York Times Magazine's Year in Ideas, Time's Year in Medicine, Discover Magazine's Year in Science, and Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Business Ideas. Together with Nicholas Christakis, James wrote a book on social networks called Connected. Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award, named an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review, and featured in Wired, Oprah's Reading Guide, Business Week's Best Books of the Year, and a cover story in New York Times Magazine.

Jaime Humara, director of market development for agriculture biotechnology at Life Technologies Corporation

The genomic revolution has expanded our understanding of plant biology considerably and the pace of discovery will continue to increase. We are now starting to understand the complexity of the challenges ahead and translating this knowledge into added value in agriculture biotechnology and other plant biotechnology applications. Researchers are working to answer question like how to create crops that increase yields, grow in unfavorable conditions, and produce compounds of interest. Dr. Humara will walk over some of the challenges we face and how genetic analysis technologies are helping address these.

Jaime M Humara obtained his Ph.D. in Plant Genetic Engineering from the University of Oviedo (Spain) in 1998, and did his postdoctoral studies at Purdue University (Indiana) working on the molecular interactions between plant cells and pathogenic bacteria. In 2001 he joined JR Simplot to develop intellectual property enabling novel transformation systems for plants as well as leading a production lab geared towards the commercialization of improved varieties of potato. After over 20 scientific publications, Jaime decided to leave the bench and moved to San Diego to join Life Technologies. In the last 6 years, Jaime has managed global custom and catalog businesses within Life Technology’s Genomics Sector, focusing on Strategy and Development for Synthetic Biology and launching the first DNA assembly tools. Since March of 2011, he leads Life Technologies’ global marketing efforts in Agriculture Biotechnology.

Stanley Maloy, dean of College of Sciences and professor of microbiology at San Diego State University

New, emerging infectious diseases are arising at an alarming frequency. Because the global transportation system is so well developed, a disease that arises in the far corners of the world can reach our neighborhood within days. Most new human diseases are transmitted from animals, often following disruption of the environment. Although the health of humans, animals, and the environment are closely interconnected, practices in human and veterinary medicine and environmental sciences rarely recognize these linkages. The "One Health" initiative integrates these three disciplines to develop upstream approaches to prevent disease -- stopping the spread of diseases before they start instead of treating them afterward. Several examples will be presented that demonstrate how implementation of One Health principles can prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

Stanley Maloy obtained an MS in Microbiology from CSU, Long Beach, and a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the UC Irvine. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah, then moved to a faculty position at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. While at UIUC, he served as Director of the UIUC Biotechnology Center. In August, 2002 he moved to SDSU as founding Director of the Center for Microbial Sciences and Professor of Biology. He became Dean of the College of Sciences in 2006. He has published extensively, and has written numerous books. In addition to his experience in academia, from 2004-2007 he served first as President-Elect, President, then Past-President of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). He is currently chair of the ASM committee on communicating science to the public and has testified before Congress about federal funding for scientific research.

Yan Poon, director of biotechnology at Sapphire Energy

San Diego-based Sapphire Energy is pioneering an entirely new industry – Green Crude Production – with the potential to profoundly change America’s energy and petrochemical landscape for the better. Sapphire’s products and processes in this category differ significantly from other forms of biofuel because they are made solely from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae), using sunlight and CO2 as their feedstock; are not dependent on food crops or valuable farmland; do not use potable water; do not result in biodiesel or ethanol; enhance and replace petroleum-based products; and are low carbon, renewable and scalable.

Yan is one of the scientific co-founders at Sapphire Energy.  His background includes platform molecular biology tool development, structural biology, protein and metabolic engineering.  Prior to Sapphire Energy, he was a consulting scientist at Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, a startup company developing novel prescription products for the aesthetic market.  At Sapphire, Yan has focused on strain transformation, strain improvement, bioflocculation, and trait gene discovery.  Yan received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology where he studied the structure and function of prokaryotic mechanosensitive channels.

Katherine Kantardjieff, dean of College of Science and Mathematics at Cal State University San Marcos

Practically everything we know about the structure of molecules at or near the atomic level of detail comes from the analysis of crystal structures determined by the methods of X-ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography plays a significant role in the design and development of effective drugs, as a method for elucidating the structures of protein-ligand complexes. These structures then enable study of interactions between potential drug molecules and specific protein molecules, and can guide drug discovery and optimization. We will look at some selected examples of successful crystallographic studies.

Katherine A. Kantardjieff  is founding Dean of the new College of Science and Mathematics at California State University San Marcos and Director of the Keck Center for Molecular Structure. She is a biophysical chemist whose research utilizes combined experimental and computational approaches to better understand how structure controls chemical and physical properties of biomolecules. The knowledge gained is applied in drug design and development, as well as in engineering molecules with defined properties. As Director of CMolS, she has been a pioneer in remote enabling of instrumentation in chemistry. Kantardjieff is past Chair of the United States National Committee for Crystallography, past chair of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource User Organization Executive Committee, Vice Chair of the National User Facility Organization Steering Committee, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Applied Crystallography.

Jay Short, CEO of Ciris Energy and Chairman, CEO and Principal at BioAtla

Natural gas is a cleaner hydrocarbon fuel that is likely key to transition to clean tech energy sources.  Ciris Energy has developed technologies to stimulate microorganisms that naturally exist in unmineable coal deposits to convert coal to natural gas without many of the harmful environmental contaminates associated with coal mining and burning, such as mercury and sulfur containing compounds.  The proprietary Ciris process does not require fracking and offers the opportunity to substantially expand US natural gas production potential at industrially competitive prices.

Dr. Short is a founder, Chairman and CEO of BioAtla, CEO of Ciris Energy and a Principal at Capia IP. He is founder of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and is a founder of Diversa (now British Petrolium and Verenium) where he completed the largest biotech IPO in history at that time. Dr. Short also served as President of Stratacyte and VP R&D and Operations for Stratagene (now Agilent). He has authored more than 100 publications and is inventor of over 100 issued patents and several hundred pending patents.

Dr. Short received San Diego's 2001 E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Health Sciences and was the recipient of two first place UCSD-Connect MIP awards. In 2003 he received the ABL Innovations in HealthCare Gold award and in 2004 he received the Henry F. Whalen, Jr. Award from the ACS. In 2006 Dr. Short was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as a personality making the most significant contribution to biotech in the past decade. In 2010 he received YPO’s International Best-of-the-Best award.

Serafin Diaz, senior director of engineering at Qualcomm Corporate Research and Development

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology where computer-generated objects are viewed in the context of the world. This can add information and meaning to a real object. Recent developments in mobile technology have enabled this computational intensive technology to be deployed in mobile devices. AR, originally limited to the lab and fixed setups, is now free to enhanced the experience of mobile users.

Serafin Diaz is a Senior Director of engineering at the Corporate R&D Division of Qualcomm, San Diego,  where he leads Computer Vision (CV) and Augmented Reality (AR) research as the project engineer of the "Blur" project. Serafin started CV/AR R&D at Qualcomm with the goal to research Virtual environments and Computer Vision based technologies that had the potential of becoming the next generation user interfaces for mobile devices. Prior to that, he worked in a variety of projects from wireless multimedia (VoIP, Video Telephony) to core data services for mobile devices (3G and 2G). He joined Qualcomm in 1997.