EDUCATIONAL TOPICS
Each day’s conference session will feature a speaker renowned in their field:
October 11th - Dr. Michael West
Extending Healthy Lifespans: Is aging a disease?
Dr. West is Chief Executive Officer of BioTime, Inc. and Embryome Sciences, Inc. of Alameda, California. The companies are focused on developing an array of research and therapeutic products using human embryonic stem cell technology. He received his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989 concentrating on the biology of cellular aging. He has focused his academic and business career on the application of developmental biology to the age-related degenerative disease.
October 15th - Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D.
Personalizing Diagnosis and Treatments: Tailored medicine for your genetic makeup
Dietrich Stephan, co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Navigenics, is a human geneticist on the faculty of the Translational Genomics Research Institute and chairman of the National Institutes of Health Neuroscience Microarray Consortium. He has identified genes that predispose to disorders such as autism, exercise-induced heart attacks and sudden infant death syndrome, and contributed to understanding a multitude of common disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
October 16th - Professor Martha J. Farah
Building a Better Brain: Can we become smarter, happier people?
Martha Farah is a Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1983. Dr. Farah has received a Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Psychological Science.
Daily programs will consist of a 10:00 am to 12:00 noon session and a 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm session featuring the expert presenters shown above.
The curriculum also will include film screenings and discussions of future medicine topics moderated by our Supplemental Faculty:
James Hughes, the IEET’s Executive Director, is a bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut where he teaches Health Policy and serves as Associate Director of Institutional Research and Planning. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, and is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.
Ana Lita, Director of the Appignani Bioethics Center, serves as a key representative of the American Humanist Association to the United Nations, attending regular briefings and interfacing with other NGOs, country delegates, and diplomatic missions. She sits on the Ethics Committee of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering, the UN NGO Health Committee, and the Ethics Committee of the Values Caucus.
Mike Treder, Managing Director of the IEET, is a writer, speaker, and activist with a background in media and communications. As an accomplished presenter on the societal implications of emerging technologies, Mr. Treder has addressed conferences and groups around the world, including in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil.
