Gregory Engel, M.D., M.S.
Dr. Engel is a member of the Scientific Board of Advisors of the Company and is a practicing physician with CMCA (Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiac Arrhythmias) in Palo Alto and Redwood City, California. He is Board Certified in Cardiac Electrophysiology, Cardiovascular Medicine, Nuclear Cardiology and Internal Medicine.
Dr. Engel has authored numerous peer reviewed papers in the medical literature and several book chapters in major cardiovascular reference textbooks. He has given research presentations at many national medical and scientific meetings. He has a Masters in Epidemiology from Stanford University and his research and thesis was focused on “Multiple Biomarkers Analysis for Cardiovascular Risk Prediction.”
Dr. Engel received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and then attended Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine as well as his fellowship in Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Stanford University. Dr. Engel served as Medicine Chief Resident and Chief Cardiology Fellow at Stanford. Among his awards, he received the Timothy F. Beckett, Jr. award for excellence in clinical teaching from the Department of Medicine and the Edwin Alderman excellence award for clinical research from the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. Dr. Engel is also on the Board of Directors for the California Chapter of the American College of Physicians (ACP). He is also a member of the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society.
Valerie Watiker, M.D., M.S.
Dr. Watiker is a member of the Scientific Board of Advisors of the Company and is a practicing clinical geneticist with a private pediatric practice, located in Beverly Hills, California, where she specializes in caring for children with genetic disorders. She is Board Certified in Clinical Genetics.
Dr. Watiker began her career as a board certified Prenatal and Pediatric Genetic Counselor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She has held numerous other positions in genetic counseling, including as Research Coordinator at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Prior to her current position, Dr. Watiker held a position in Medical Genetics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. She is a frequent lecturer on a wide variety of topics in clinical genetics
Dr. Watiker received her undergraduate degree from Albion College and her M.S. in human genetics from Sarah Lawrence College. She attended Medical School at the University of California, Irvine and completed her residency in Pediatrics and Medical Genetics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Watiker is an active member of the American Society of Human Genetics and the American College of Medical Genetics.
Michael G. Hill, PhD.
Dr. Hill is a member of the Scientific Board of Advisors of the Company and is currently a Professor of Chemistry at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. In 2001, he co-founded GeneOhm Sciences, where he served as its interim Vice President for Research. GeneOhm specializes in rapid nucleic-acid-based diagnostics and was acquired in 2006 for approximately $250 million by Becton, Dickinson and Company.
Dr. Hill has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed papers in the scientific literature, holds both US and international patents for DNA-based diagnostics, and has been Principle or Co-Principle Investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health totaling more than $4 million. He has also carried out research at the California Institute of Technology, where he continues to serve as a Visiting Associate, and was a visiting scholar at UCLA where he investigated proteins implicated in the familial form of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). In 1999 he led one of eight academic teams in the nation to be funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research for his work on the early evolution of RNA sequences in the pre-biotic world.
Dr. Hill received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and he is a member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, and the Society for Biological Inorganic Chemistry. Among his teaching and research awards, Dr Hill was named a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher/Scholar in 2000.
Aram Nersissian, PhD.
Dr. Nersissian is a member of the Scientific Board of Advisors of the Company and is currently an Assistant Professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, where he teaches general chemistry, biochemistry, and bioinformatics. Dr. Nersissian is a physical chemist with an extended background in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and has worked for 20 years on protein redesign aimed to gain insight into the factors determining the structure, physical properties, and reactivity of the metal-binding sites in metalloproteins. He has cloned several cDNAs encoding novel blue copper proteins and is author of twelve original contributions to the GenBank sequence database.
In 1994, Dr. Nersissian joined the research team of Professor Joan Valentine in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was an Associate Research Fellow. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Nersissian was a postdoctoral scholar at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He was also a visiting scholar at the Magnetic Resonance Center of the University of Florence, Italy. Dr. Nersissian has published more than 30 original research articles, reviews, and book chapters addressing a wide range of topics at the interface of bioinorganic chemistry, medicine and biology and routinely participates in conferences and does speaking engagement in both Europe and the United States, including participating in the Oxford Round table discussion on Religion and Science.
Dr. Nersissian received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Moscow State Lomonosov University, in Moscow, Russia, and received his PhD. from the Institute of Biochemistry in Yerevan, Armenia. In addition, he was awarded a postdoctoral grant from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and from the Alexander von Humbold foundation.
Pekka Kostamaa
Mr. Kostamaa is a technical advisor to the Company and is currently the Director of Advanced Development at Teradata Corporation, the world’s largest company solely focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing and enterprise analytics. In his role, Mr. Kostamaa is focused on the addition of new features over the next 3 to 5 years and on developing Intellectual Property for the company, in the form of patents. Previously, Mr. Kostamaa has had several roles of increasing responsibility at Teradata, including as a performance analyst, a development manager, and a development architect, eventually moving to several management roles. These include management of base development groups, as well as the Teradata Architecture group, which is responsible for the technical architecture of the product. Mr. Kostamaa currently has 5 issued patents, and 19 pending patent applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Prior to Teradata, Mr. Kostamaa has been involved with several startups as a major technical contributor. He has also been an independent consultant for several Los Angeles area defense contractor companies and is a member of the Advisory Board for the UCLA Computer Science Department, his alma mater. Mr. Kostamaa has published papers in the VLDB (Very Large Database) Conference, the ACM SigMod Conference, and the Parle Conference.
Grant Wedner, MBA, MPH
Mr. Wedner is a strategic advisor to the company and an eHealth veteran with a history of building early-stage health companies. Most recently, he was VP, Corporate Development and Partnerships at DailyStrength.org, the popular health-focused social network. In this role, Mr. Wedner was responsible for securing financing, overseeing all distribution and sales partnerships, and leading all corporate development activities.
In prior roles, Mr. Wedner oversaw business development for Kosmix, a highly regarded search technology company with a leading health destination site. He also served in numerous roles at Healtheon and WebMD, including Chief of Staff and Director of New Services Development. In this latter role, Mr. Wedner oversaw WebMD’s expansion into consumer directed business lines and the distribution expansion of the WebMD Health Network. Mr. Wedner has also worked for Ernst & Young and Kaiser Permanente.
Mr. Wedner has a BA in History from the University of California, San Diego, an MPH from Columbia University, and an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
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