Meet the team behind the research.

Kim Branson, Ph.D.

Senior VP and Global Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, GSK

Dr. Kim Branson joined GSK April 2019 as Senior VP and Global Head of AI/ML. Kim Branson has been involved in large scale machine learning and medical informatics initiatives for over 15 years, over a range of ventures from computational drug design to disease risk prediction. Prior to joining GSK, Kim was Head of Artificial Intelligence for the Informatics department of Early Clinical Development at Genentech. He also served as Founding Chief Data Scientist at Lumiata, a predictive health analytics company. Kim received degrees from the University of Adelaide, and a PhD from the University of Melbourne. He was a Peter Doherty fellow and received postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He held leadership and consulting roles in the pharmaceutical and medical informatics industry, notably at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Following this, Kim worked extensively in online search as a founding member of Discovery Engine (acquired by Twitter in 2009) and in Health Informatics as the Founding Chief Scientist of Gliimpse (acquired by Apple in 2017)

Brian Dillard

Chief Innovation Officer, City of San Antonio

Brian Dillard is a third-generation Eastside San Antonio native. Born and raised in the former Wheatley Courts area, Brian attended Wheatley Middle School and graduated from Sam Houston High School in 2001. Mr. Dillard holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force where he served ten years Active Duty. Brian currently works in the City of San Antonio Office of Innovation as the Chief Innovation Officer.

Brian is the former President of the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association and has served as a Board Member for VIA, the Ella Austin Community Center, and the San Antonio Centro Partnership. Brian is an alumnus of Leadership San Antonio (LSA43), Leadership SAISD, and San Antonio New Leaders Council.

Hava Siegelmann, Ph.D.

Professor, University of Massachusetts; Program Manager, DARPA

Dr. Siegelmann, a recognized expert in Complex Systems and Neural Networks, focuses on theoretical computational neuroscience, computation in and modeling of natural systems and their application to intelligent systems. Of particular research interest are intelligence vis-a-vis adaptive memory, advanced models of cognition, and evolving, intelligent interfaces for robotics and other intelligent systems. Her studies often involve multi-scale modeling and system level analysis of major disorders such as cancer. The creator of a new field of computer science, Super-Turing computation, Dr. Siegelmann is applying the theory to biological systems and exploring them in connection with a new generation of analog computer.

Matthew Mattina

VP of Machine Learning, Tenstorrent

Matthew Mattina is the Distinguished Engineer and Senior Director of Machine Learning Research at Arm, where he leads a global team of machine learning researchers developing advanced hardware, software, and algorithms. Prior to joining Arm in 2015, Matt was Chief Technology Officer at Tilera, where he was responsible for overall company technology, processor architecture, and strategy. Prior to Tilera, Matt was a CPU architect at Intel and invented and designed the Intel Ring Uncore Architecture. Matt has been granted over 30 patents relating to CPU design, multicore processors, on-chip interconnects, and cache coherence protocols. Matt holds a BS in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

Michael Snyder, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine; Professor at Stanford

Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. Dr. Snyder received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and has developed many technologies in genomics and proteomics. These including the development of proteome chips, high-resolution tiling arrays for the entire human genome, methods for global mapping of transcription factor binding sites (ChIP-chip now replaced by ChIP-seq), paired end sequencing for mapping of structural variation in eukaryotes, de novo genome sequencing of genomes using high throughput technologies and RNA-Seq. These technologies have been used for characterizing genomes, proteomes and regulatory networks.

Seminal findings from the Snyder laboratory include the discovery that much more of the human genome is transcribed and contains regulatory information than was previously appreciated, and a high diversity of transcription factor binding occurs both between and within species. He has also combined different state–of–the–art “omics” technologies to perform the first longitudinal detailed integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) of person and used this to assess disease risk and monitor disease states for personalized medicine. He is a co-founder of several biotechnology companies, including Protometrix (now part of Life Technologies), Affomix (now part of Illumina), Excelix, and Personalis, and he presently serves on the board of a number of companies.

Gustavo Stolovitzky, Ph.D.

IBM Fellow; Program Director, Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology at IBM Research

Gustavo Stolovitzky is Program Director of the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology Program at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, an Adjunct Professor of Genetics and Genomics Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.  His research focuses on the analysis of high-throughput biological data, the mathematical modeling of biological processes, and the use of nanotechnology for biomedical applications in diagnostics.

Dr. Stolovitzky co-founded and leads the Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods (DREAM). Started in 2006 with Andrea Califano and supported through a partnership with Sage Bionetworks, DREAM is an international, collaborative effort that organizes challenges to identify the most effective methods in systems biology and leverage the expertise of the scientific community to address key problems in translational medicine.