Three New Representatives Elected to the SLAS Board of Directors

Eight outstanding candidates were presented to the SLAS membership for consideration, and these three candidates earned the positions by receiving the most votes.

Director, Lead Discovery

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Cambridge, MA (USA)

Josh Bittker is currently the director of Lead Discovery in the Chemical Biology Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is responsible for the HTS, automation, analytical chemistry, and compound management groups. His teams coordinate assay execution, instrumentation, and sample management aspects of the screening operation. He is also involved in projects focused on high-throughput cell line profiling and the development of public chemical biology informatics resources. He has been at the Broad Institute since 2008 when he joined the group as the manager of HTS. Josh has been involved in SLAS over the past five years through podium presentations, publishing in and reviewing for the Society’s journals, poster presentations and judging, and Special Interest Groups. Previously he was at Ensemble Discovery Corporation (now Ensemble Therapeutics) as a principal scientist, working on the molecular selection of DNA-linked small molecule libraries generated by DNA-programmed chemistry (DPC). Josh received his B.S. in Chemistry from MIT and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University. His doctoral work was done under the direction of Professor David Liu as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow and focused on the directed molecular evolution of proteins and nucleic acids.

Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder & Director Labcyte Sunnyvale, CA (USA)

Mr. Ellson is a founder of Labcyte where he serves as chief technical officer and works on acoustic liquid handling and automation technologies. As an SLAS member, he has gained broad and long-term perspective through many roles with the organization and its journals. He also brings years of experience as a board member for both profit and non-profit organizations. Mr. Ellson holds a B.S. in Fluid and Thermal Science and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. Through the Kodak Doctoral Awards Program, he took a two-year paid leave to study mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Professor

School of Dentistry

University of California

Los Angeles, CA (USA)

Dr. Dean Ho is currently a Professor in the Division of Oral Biology and Medicine, the Division of Advanced Prosthodontics, Biomaterials, and Hospital Dentistry, and Co-Director of the Weintraub Center for Reconstructive Biotechnology at the UCLA School of Dentistry. Dr. Ho joined the school as a faculty member in July 2012. He is also a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the California NanoSystems Institute. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Ho was an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University. Dr. Ho leads an internationally-recognized team focused on the development of nanodiamond platforms for drug delivery and imaging. His research group has developed multiple approaches towards improved therapeutic efficiency and safety using the nanodiamond vehicle and applications have included gene delivery, therapeutic protein release for potential wound healing use, and most notably, cancer therapy. Dr. Ho also serves SLAS as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Laboratory Automation and recently was honored with an SLAS Endowed Fellowship for his work at UCLA.

SLAS practices an open leadership model that invites participation by all members and ensures a healthy, ongoing rotation of leadership talent. The SLAS Board of Directors comprises nine individuals who are elected by the members-at-large to three-year terms of service. The SLAS Nominations Committee plays a key role in guiding the election process by seeking, qualifying and nominating a final list of at least two candidates for each open position whose backgrounds and experience reflect the goals of the SLAS Strategic Plan.

The three newly elected representatives will join existing SLAS Board of Directors members David Dorsett, M.B.A., of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ (USA); Frank Fan, Ph.D., of Promega, Verona, WI (USA); Jeff Paslay, Ph.D., of Paslay Consulting Group, Kirkland, WA (USA); Robyn Rourick, M.S., of Genentech, South San Francisco, CA (USA); Daniel Sipes, M.S., of Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, San Diego, CA (USA); and Mary Jo Wildey, Ph.D., of Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ (USA).

Retiring from the SLAS Board of Directors on December 31, 2012, are Jason Abbas, M.S., of Syngenta Seeds, Slater, IA (USA); Erik Rubin, Ph.D., of Bristol-Myers Squibb, New Brunswick, NJ (USA); Andy Zaayenga, B.S., of SmarterLab, Martinsville, NJ (USA).