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  • Biography: Rob Henderson (President/CEO, BioTalent Canada)

    Rob Henderson is a seasoned executive with more than 25 years of private and public sector management experience. He has led the transformation of BioTalent Canada into an in-demand partner, policy influencer, and project leader that brings together the largest national bio-economy network in Canada. Under Rob’s leadership, BioTalent Canada’s national portfolio has expanded, with the mandate to increase student job-readiness matched to health and bioscience related career opportunities.

    Since 2011, Rob has grown BioTalent Canada from an initial staff count of five to its current contingent of more than 40 team members. Under Rob’s guidance, BioTalent Canada has engaged with government, employers, industry associations, post-secondary institutions, immigrant serving agencies, and service providers. Together, this dynamic network strengthens skills, connects job-ready talent to industry, and creates opportunities.

    Fluently bilingual and a Quebec native, Rob is a respected biotech HR thought leader who provides counsel to all levels of government. He’s a member of the National Stakeholders Advisory Panel for the Labour Market Information Council. Previous to that, at the request of the federal Minister, Rob was a member of the Government of Canada’s Blue Ribbon Panel titled Survival to Success Transforming Immigration. In 2013, Rob presented BioTalent Canada’s talent solutions, in Brussels at the European Union headquarters, to an international audience of global biotech firms.

    Prior to his role as President and CEO of BioTalent Canada, he served as President, Quebec and Vice-President, Eastern Canada for Canada NewsWire. Throughout his career, Rob has held Executive Director and Board leadership roles at various associations. In this capacity, Rob shaped numerous Board functions under several different models of governance. Earlier in his career, Rob led the Canadian Association of Journalists through a complex revenue/partnership exercise guided by ethics principles and Board participation and retains strong friendships with Canada’s top journalists to this day.

    Rob earned a BSc Honours in Biology from the University of Ottawa. He is active as a volunteer and performer in the Nation’s Capital performing arts community.

    Rob shares his lessons along the way and insights on leadership and communications and how his organization is supporting talent development through experiential learning opportunities.

    About BioTalent Canada

    BioTalent Canada™ is the HR partner of and catalyst for growth in Canada’s bio-economy. BioTalent Canada engages with employers, associations, post-secondary institutions, immigrant serving agencies and service providers and has built a dynamic network that is strengthening skills, connecting job-ready talent to industry and creating opportunities. Recently awarded a Great Place to Work® Certification, BioTalent Canada practices the same industry standards they recommend to their stakeholders.

    For more information on BioTalent's programs, please visit BioTalent Canada's website at https://www.biotalent.ca/programs/

  • Biography: Leah Cowen, PhD
    Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto
    Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Bright Angel Therapeutics

    Dr. Leah Cowen obtained her BSc in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia and pursued doctoral research with Jim Anderson and Linda Kohn at the University of Toronto focused on the genomic architecture of adaptation to antifungal drugs. As a postdoctoral fellow with Susan Lindquist at the Whitehead Institute, Dr. Cowen investigated how the molecular chaperone Hsp90 impacts on fungal evolution and phenotypic diversity. Since 2007, Dr. Cowen has been a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Infectious Disease in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Her laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand what allows some microbes to exploit the host and cause disease, and to develop new strategies to treat life-threatening infectious disease. Dr. Cowen co-founded Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that leverages state-of-the-art technologies for development of novel antifungal therapeutics.

    About Bright Angel Therapeutics:

    Bright Angel Therapeutics is a Toronto-based, pre-clinical company committed to developing new drugs to address the growing global public health crisis of antifungal resistance. The company's discovery efforts are focused on molecules that inhibit stress response pathways that are believed to be central to the emergence of fungal resistance. Bright Angel was co-founded by Schrödinger and is leveraging the Schrödinger computational platform to design potent and fungal-selective inhibitors. Other co-founders include Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (formerly MaRS Innovation), a nonprofit supporting the commercialization of research breakthroughs from Toronto's leading academic institutions; Dr. Leah Cowen, Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, co-Director CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities Program, and Chief Scientific Officer, Bright Angel Therapeutics; and company consultant Dr. Luke Whitesell.

    Visit brightangeltherapeutics.com for more information.

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  • Bruce Seet, Founder and CEO of the Science to Business Network (S2BN), hosts the Science to Business Network Podcast to showcase the stories, advice and insights of individuals working at the interface of science, innovation and business.

  • Biography: Grant McFadden (Professor, Arizona State University)

    Dr. Grant McFadden is one of the top global leaders in oncolytic viruses with a specialization in pox viruses, including myxoma. Grant is a Founder, Research Advisor & Director of Oncomyx Therapeutics which is developing oncolytic immunotherapies based on the myxoma virus (MYXV) platform to orchestrate an immune response and treat cancer. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2005 and the American Academy of Microbiology in 2007. Dr. McFadden is currently a Professor at Arizona State University and is the Director of the Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines, and Virotherapy (B-CIVV). He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal PLoS Pathogens, a Senior Editor at Journal of Molecular Therapy – Oncolytics and was the President of the American Society for Virology 2015-16. Grant’s lab studies how poxviruses that cause immunosuppression interact with the host immune system. The McFadden lab pioneered the field of viral immune subversion (also called “anti-immunology”) and is credited with the discovery of a wide spectrum of virus-derived inhibitors of the immune system. His lab also investigates host-virus tropism, and the deployment of poxviruses for oncolytic virotherapy for the treatment of cancer, particularly with a rabbit-specific poxvirus called myxoma virus (MYXV). Grant has published over 340 scientific papers and reviews. He earned a BSc and PhD in Biochemistry from McGill University.

  • Biography - Marianne Stanford, PhD (Vice-President, Research and Development, IMV Inc.)

    Dr. Marianne Stanford oversees all preclinical research activities and clinical immunology assessment of cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines. She also serves as adjunct professor in Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie University, as a member of the Vaccine Discovery group of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology, and as an Associate Member of the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute. Before joining the Company in 2010, Marianne conducted her postdoctoral training at the Robarts Research Institute and at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), focusing her research on the use of viruses in the development of novel cancer treatments. While at the OHRI, she worked with Jennerex Biotherapeutics (now SillaJen) in the development of Pexa-Vec for human clinical trials. She received her BSc and MSc from Memorial University of Newfoundland and her PhD from Dalhousie University. In her spare time, Marianne is involved in science outreach and policy and is the former Chair of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars.