ABOUT BAYBIOGET INVOLVEDEVENT CENTER
MEMBER CENTERINFORMATION CENTERMEDIA CENTER |
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BayBio2008 Plenary Sessions Plenary Sponsor:
Closing Reception Sponsor:
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| Thomas G. Brewer, MD
Dr. Brewer is a Senior Program Officer, Infectious Diseases, Global Health Program, at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He received his medical education at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine (cum laude1974) with subsequent training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at Fitzsimons and Walter Reed Army Medical Centers, respectively. He served in numerous clinical and academic assignments until transferring to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in 1985 completing the Medical Research Fellowship in1986. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and board certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology. Following additional training at the FDA Staff College – Uniformed Services University in Health Sciences in clinical pharmacology and pharmacokinetics, he formed a drug metabolism and preclinical drug development laboratory at WRAIR for antiparasitic, antimalarial and chemical defense drugs. He has had numerous overseas assignments working in Korea, and research laboratories in Egypt, Kenya, and Brazil. From1995 to 2000, he was Commander and Scientific Director of the Army’s largest overseas laboratory in Bangkok, Thailand. In that position, he managed an interdisciplinary laboratory and clinical research development program with a staff of 300 and operations in eight South Asian countries. After return to the US, he served as principle medical advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Science and Technology) and was assigned as a program liaison to the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency. Following retirement (2002), he worked as a program officer at NIAID in the Parasitology and International Programs Branch before joining the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in July 2003.
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| Donald P. Francis, MD, DSc
A third-generation California physician, Dr. Francis did his undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, received his M.D. from Northwestern University and his Doctor of Science in Virology from Harvard. He did his internship and residency in pediatrics at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles and his fellowship in infectious diseases at Harvard.
Dr. Francis has been in the front lines of the battle against AIDS since 1981 and was one of the first scientists to suggest that the then-mysterious disease was caused by an infectious agent. His efforts to call attention to the threat of AIDS and warn of the inadequacy of the public health response were chronicled in And the Band Played On, journalist Randy Shilts’ seminal account of the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
Throughout his professional life, his passion in fighting the spread of infectious diseases took him from India to Africa, and from Atlanta to San Francisco during a 21-year career with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
As a young CDC doctor working with the World Health Organization during the early 1970s, Dr. Francis played a key role in eradicating smallpox from regions of India, Bangladesh, Sudan and the former Yugoslavia. He battled the cholera epidemic in Nigeria and in 1976, he fought the Ebola virus in Sudan during what was the first outbreak of that deadly disease.
Dr. Francis’ current efforts to develop a vaccine to prevent the spread of AIDS rests on the foundation laid in his earlier work in the successful development of a Hepatitis B vaccine, and his doctoral work on feline leukemia virus. (Much like HIV in humans, the feline leukemia virus develops slowly in feline hosts, which display no outward signs of infection as the virus destroys their immune systems.)
He was one of the first scientists to grasp the significance of the AIDS epidemic and to realize the impact it would have on the United States. Always outspoken, he has been an indefatigable advocate for a swift and logical public health response.
From 1985 to 1992, Dr. Francis served as the Centers for Disease Control’s AIDS Advisor to the State of California. From 1988 to 1992, he also served as Special Consultant on AIDS to then-San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, and chair of the mayor’s HIV Task Force.
He retired from the CDC in 1992 and began work with Genentech, Inc., of South San Francisco, in 1993. Genentech had made significant breakthroughs in research towards a vaccine against AIDS, including development of a vaccine shown to protect chimpanzees against HIV infection.
In 1995, Dr. Francis co-founded a spin-off of Genentech called VaxGen. He has been President of VaxGen since its founding. During this time, VaxGen has become a leader in the world’s effort to develop and AIDS vaccine.
In 2004, Dr. Francis retired from VaxGen to establish a not-for-profit foundation, Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, dedicated to developing vaccines and other preventive medical products for the less developed parts of the world.
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| Vinod Khosla
Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite growing up in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. Since age 16, when he first heard about Intel starting up, he dreamt of starting his own technology company.
Upon graduating with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, he failed, at age 20, to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. He came to the US and got his Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. His startup dreams attracted him to Silicon Valley where he got an MBA at Stanford University in 1980.
Upon graduation he was one of the three founders of Daisy Systems, which was the first significant computer aided design system for electrical engineers. The company went on to significant revenue, profits and an IPO, but Khosla, driven by the frustration of having to design the computer hardware on which the Daisy software needed to be built, started the standards based Sun Microsystems in 1982 to build workstations for software developers. At Sun he pioneered "open systems" and RISC processors. Sun was funded by long time friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In 1986 he switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. There, through the years, with other partners, he took on Intel's monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28% of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco's dominance of the router market, to formulate the very early advertising based search strategy for Excite, and to transform the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B), and many other ventures. He helped in creating value, having fun, succeeding, failing (remember Dynabook?) and driving impact in partnership with entrepreneur, and the partners at KPCB.
In 2004, Khosla, driven by the need for flexibility to accommodate four teenage children and a desire to be more experimental, to fund sometimes imprudent "science experiments", and to take on both "for profit" and for "social impact" ventures, formed khoslaventures, funded entirely with family funds. His goals remain the same - work and learn from fun and knowledgeable entrepreneurs, build impactful companies through the leverage of innovation, and spend time as a partnership making a difference. He has a passion for nascent technologies that can have a beneficial effect and economic impact on society.
Vinod's greatest passion is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology based businesses. Vinod assists or serves on the boards of a number of the companies including EASIC (programmable ASIC platform), Infinera (optical communications), Kovio (printed electronics), Skyblue (internet PC), Spatial Photonics (Micromirror displays), Xsigo (datacenter switch), among others.
Khosla’s current passion is Social Entrepreneurship with a special emphasis on Microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool. He is a supporter of many microfinance organizations in India and Africa. He has been experimenting with global housing.
Vinod is also passionate about alternative energy, petroleum independence, and the environment. Vinod has been named the #1 VC by Forbes and Fortune recently hailed him as one the nation's most influential ethanol advocates, noting "there are venture capitalists, and there's Vinod Khosla."
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