PANEL 3 • 12:40-1:20pm
Dawn Barry is a veteran of the biotech industry and an advocate for girls and women in STEM professions. Her current company, Luna, has received numerous awards from notable institutions including the Word Economic Forum and Fast Company for redesigning the biomedical research model by bridging collectives of people with industry and researchers for dynamic studies and trials. Prior to Luna, Barry spent 12 years helping build Illumina, where she ultimately served as the Vice President of Applied Genomics. Dawn’s accomplishments include being named PharmaVoice100 Life Science Leaders 2022, San Diego Business Journal’s 2017 Business Woman of the Year, TEDxSanDiego 2016 speaker, and Girl Scouts San Diego Cool Women 2019 recipient.
Dr. Stanley Crooke is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation focused on providing treatments for patients with nano-rare disease patients (1 to 30 patients worldwide), which he initiated in January 2020. Prior to n-Lorem, Dr. Crooke founded and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Lead Scientist of Ionis Pharmaceuticals. During his tenure at Ionis, he led the scientific development of a new platform for drug discovery, antisense technology and the creation of one of the largest and more advanced development pipelines in the biotechnology industry, and commercialized several antisense drugs including, SPINRAZA® (nusinersen), TEGSEDI™ (inotersen) and others.
Dr. Crooke has also contemporaneously led a successful academic career becoming a full professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He has been an active scientist throughout his career. Dr. Crooke has published nearly 600 scientific publications, edited more than 20 books, has numerous patents, and led the development of more than 23 drugs that have been commercialized.
Jeff is Founder and CEO of La Jolla Labs, a new company developing technology for RNA therapeutics. Prior to this Jeff was Head of Data Sciences at Arcturus Therapeutics where he worked on several rare disease programs including both RNA-targeting and mRNA modalities. Jeff served as Director of Functional Genomics and Drug Discovery at Ionis Pharmaceuticals where he led teams in bioinformatics and screening technology. Prior to this he worked in the Bioinformatics Department at Genentech. Jeff currently serves as an advisor to his alma mater, the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Kelley Dalby has worked at Praxis Precision Medicines for four years and her current role is Director of Natural History and Diagnostics in Epilepsies in Global Medical Affairs. Kelley worked as a high school English teacher in San Diego until her second son Connor was born with a severe form of epilepsy caused by a mutation in the SCN2A gene. When he was diagnosed, she co-founded a biotechnology company, RogCon, focused on discovering and developing therapies for SCN2A mutations. Kelley served as Vice President and contributed to the companies’ success, including licensing the primary program to Praxis Precision Medicines.
