Drew is Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University and he co-founded the BioBricks Foundation as a public-benefit charity supporting free-to-use standards and technology that enable the engineering of biology.

David Singh Grewal is a Professor at Yale Law School and holds a secondary appointment in the Yale Political Science Department. His teaching and research interests include legal and political theory; global economic governance, particularly international trade law; intellectual property law and biotechnology; and law and economics.

Thane Kreiner, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University. The Center promotes the use of science and technology to benefit underserved populations worldwide. Its signature Global Social Benefit Incubator program has supported more than 140 socially-minded entrepreneurs build sustainable and scalable ventures that deliver essential goods and services to base of pyramid markets. Thane was formerly Founder, President, and CEO of PhyloTech, Inc., (now Second Genome), which conducts comprehensive microbial community analysis for environmental and human health applications. He was Founder, President and CEO of Presage Biosciences, Inc., a Seattle-based company dedicated to bringing better cancer drugs to market. Thane was the start-up President & CEO for iZumi Bio, Inc. (now iPierian), a regenerative medicine venture based on the break-through iPSc (induced pluripotent stem cell) technology.

Prior to his efforts as a “parallel entrepreneur”, Thane spent 14 years in various senior leadership roles at Affymetrix, Inc., which pioneered the DNA chip industry. Thane also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the BioBricks Foundation and the FDA Innovations Entrepreneurs in Residence program. Thane earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business; his PhD in Neurosciences from Stanford University School of Medicine; and his BS in Chemistry from the University of Texas, Austin.

Pamela Silver, Ph.D., currently researches the logical engineering of biology and the use of genomics, genetics, and cell-based screens in the study of diseases and drug action. She is one of the founders of the new area of synthetic biology, where she is building cell-based machines, developing protein-based logic for design of novel therapeutics, and engineering cells as sources of bio-energy and optimization of carbon dioxide fixation.

Silver, Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, received her B.S. in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, where she was a Fellow of the American Cancer Society and The Medical Foundation. Subsequently, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. In 2004, she became one of the first members of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and the first Director of the Harvard University Ph.D. Program in Systems Biology.

Her work was recognized by an Innovation Award at BIO2007 and has been funded by grants from the NIH, DoD, NSF, Novartis, Merck, and The Keck Foundation. She currently holds an NIH MERIT award. She also initiated and co-directs the Harvard undergraduate team for the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition (iGEM).

Dr. Natalie Kuldell teaches in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. She develops discovery-based curricula drawn from the current literature to engage undergraduate students in structured, reasonably authentic laboratory and project-based experiences. She is also the director of a web-based resource called BioBuilder.org that offers animations, classroom/lab activities and online forums to teach synthetic biology in late high school/early college settings. She completed her doctoral and post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School, and taught at Wellesley College before joining the faculty at MIT.

Mark A. Fischer’s law practice is focused on solving problems and making deals for innovative companies, institutions and individuals. Mr. Fischer’s clients are typically in the creative industries such as new media, social networking, music, interactive entertainment, information technology, software, television and publishing. He has particular experience in U.S. and international copyright, licensing, copyright litigation, arbitration, open source, privacy and trademarks. He has a growing client base in the biotechnology and medical industries.

Mr. Fischer teaches Advanced Copyright at Suffolk University Law School and has previously served as an adjunct faculty member, teaching entertainment law and IP courses, at Berklee College of Music, Boston College Law School, Northeastern University School of Law and New England School of Law. Mr. Fischer is a 1980 graduate of Boston College Law School and a magna cum laude graduate of Emerson College.

Tom Knight is a Senior Research Scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Tom is well-known for numerous seminal contributions to electrical engineering and computer science. He has over 30 patents and has started several companies including Symbolics, Exa, Polychip, Tenedos, Silicon Spice, High Speed Solutions, Permabit, Microdisplay, and Scalable Display Technologies.

Considered by most to be a father of the field of synthetic biology, Tom Knight co-launched the Registry of Standard Biological Parts and the iGEM competition. He also invented the BioBrick™ standard for physical composition of genetic parts that underpins the Registry and iGEM competition.

Randy Rettberg is a principal research engineer in biological engineering division at MIT. Rettberg is staunch evangelist for synthetic biology. An engineer by training, he worked for years at Internet pioneer BBN (now Genuity), later moved to Sun Microsystems, where he was CTO for storage systems, and then came to MIT.

Randy is coordinator of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. IGEM is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition, started at MIT in 2003 by Rettberg, Tom Knight, and Drew Endy, and now drawing 180 student teams who use existing and newly created BioBrick™ parts to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.

Rettberg is also the manager of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing collection of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems. Founded in 2003 at MIT, the Registry is part of the Synthetic Biology community’s efforts to make biology easier to engineer. It provides a resource of available genetic parts to iGEM teams and academic labs.