Bioscience Symposium Speaker Information for 2010 Fink Symposium

George W. Carmany III '62

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George Carmany was born in New York in 1940. He is a graduate of Amherst College, from which he holds its Distinguished Service Award, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. Carmany began his business career with Bankers Trust Company in its International Banking Department, working in New York and for four years in Sydney, Australia, as an executive director of its merchant banking subsidiary.

In 1975, Carmany joined the American Express company, where he held senior positions at the corporate level and in its international banking division, including senior vice president, corporate strategic planning, and senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer of American Express Bank. In 1990, Carmany joined American Express’ investment management and private banking subsidiary, The Boston Company, as senior executive vice president, treasurer and director, a position he held until the sale of the company to Mellon Financial Corporation in 1993. Carmany subsequently served as chairman of the Olympia & York Bondholders' Steering Committee and formed GW Carmany and Company, Inc., an advisory business in financial services and life sciences.

Carmany is a director of Sun Life Financial in Toronto and Macquarie Infrastructure Company in New York; vice chairman of Computerized Medical Systems, Inc., in St. Louis, Mo., a manufacturer of software used in the delivery of radiation therapy; and senior advisor to EnGeneIC Pty. Ltd., a biotechnology company in Sydney, Australia. He is also a senior advisor to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. and The Asia Link Group of Beijing. He served until 2005 as chairman of Helicon Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company founded by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Roche Pharmaceuticals and OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Carmany is the past chairman of The New England Medical Center (now called Tufts Medical Center), a member of the President’s Circle of the National Academies, a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Bentley University, a member of the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council of Amherst College and past chairman of the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.  He is married to the former Judith Jermain Lawrence, and they are the parents of two grown children, Bill, 36, of  Los Angeles, and Elizabeth, 33, of New York.

John Deutch '60

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John Deutch is an institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1970 and has served as chairman of the Department of Chemistry, dean of science and provost. He has published more than 140 technical publications in physical chemistry, as well as numerous publications on technology, energy, international security and public policy issues.

Deutch has served in significant government and academic posts throughout his career. In May 1995, he was sworn in as Director of Central Intelligence following a unanimous vote in the Senate and served as DCI until December 1996. In this position, he was head of the intelligence community (all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States) and directed the Central Intelligence Agency. From March 1994 to May 1995, he served as the deputy secretary of defense. From March 1993 to March 1994, he served as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions and Technology.

From 1977 to 1980, Deutch served in a number of positions for the U.S. Department of Energy: as Director of Energy Research, acting assistant secretary for Energy Technology and undersecretary of the department.

In addition, Deutch has served on many commissions during several presidential administrations. He has served on the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee (1980-81), the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces (1983), the White House Science Council (1985-89), the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1997-2001), the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (1990-93), the President’s Commission on Aviation Safety and Security (1996) and the Commission on Reducing and Protecting Government Secrecy (1996) and as chairman of the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (1998-99).

Deutch has received fellowships and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Research Fellow 1967-69) and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (Memorial Fellow 1974-1975). Public Service Medals have been awarded him from the Department of Energy (1980), the Department of State (1980), the Department of Defense (1994 and 1995), the Department of the Army (1995), the Department of the Navy (1995), the Department of the Air Force (1995) and the Coast Guard (1995). He earned the Central Intelligence Distinguished Intelligence Medal (1996) and the Intelligence Community Distinguished Intelligence Medal (1996). He received the Greater Boston Federal Executive Board’s Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Award for exemplary public service in 2002 and the Aspen Strategy Group Leadership Award in 2004, and he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007. He is a member of the National Petroleum Council (2008) and the Defense Science Board (2010).

Deutch earned a B.A. in history and economics from Amherst College and both a B.S. in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from MIT. He holds honorary degrees from Amherst College, the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Northeastern University. He serves as director for the publicly held companies Citigroup, Raytheon and Cheniere Energy. He is a trustee of the Center for American Progress, Resources for the Future, the Urban Institute (life trustee) and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Julia F. Feldman '84

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Julia Feldman is currently on sabbatical to work on a special project relating to state health care payment reform, as a consultant to the Center for Health Law and Economics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

At Krokidas & Bluestein, Feldman concentrates her law practice in the areas of health care, nonprofit, administrative, managed care and corporate law. In more than two decades of experience, Feldman has represented hospitals, managed care providers, governmental entities, universities, nursing homes, community health centers, behavioral health providers, hospice providers, assisted living residences, nursing associations, community-based human service organizations, private special education schools, physicians and allied health professionals in matters involving transactions, litigation, corporate governance, contracts, legislation, regulation, reimbursement and tax-exempt financing.

Before joining Krokidas & Bluestein, Feldman was legal counsel to the Massachusetts Division of Medical Assistance and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services for over a decade. Prior to her government service, she worked in the private sector, including law firms in New York and Boston. She has broad expertise in the areas of Medicaid law, state and federal regulation, reimbursement arrangements and dispute resolution strategies. She regularly advises on managed care business relationships and transactions, managed behavioral organization contracts, pharmacy benefit management agreements and specialty pharmacy contracts. Through her experience working for and with several government agencies, she is especially well positioned to negotiate successful resolutions to conflicts between regulators and private entities.

Feldman has lectured in several graduate-level programs, including programs at Boston University School of Law and the Heller Graduate School of Brandeis University, on legal issues in managed care contracting and governmental health policy. She has published in several legal publications and has served on the health law committee of the Boston Bar Association. Serving her community, Feldman is a member of the Health and Human Services Advisory Council to the Newton Public Health Commission. She is also involved in several arts and education organizations in her community in Newton, Mass.

Feldman graduated from Amherst College in 1984, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and was awarded the John Woodruff Simpson Fellowship in law. She graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1987, where she was an editor of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems. She was a co-recipient of the Governor’s Award for Legal Excellence in 2004.

Feldman is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York and the District of Columbia. She is married and has three children.

Gerald R. Fink '62

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Gerald R. Fink is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and the American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at MIT. He was director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001. He received his B.A from Amherst College in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1965. In addition, he has received honorary doctorates from Amherst College and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. His research focuses on the molecular biology of yeast and fungal infectious disease. 

He is past president of the Genetics Society of America. Among his many awards are the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Medal of the Genetics Society of America, Emil Christian Hansen Award (Denmark), the Yale Science and Engineering Award, the Yale Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal and the 2001 George Beadle Award.

Fink has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society. He serves on many boards, including the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; the Weizmann Institute of Science; and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Fink has been the founder of two biotechnology companies, including Myco Pharmaceuticals and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals.

Edward F. X. Hughes '62

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Edward F.X. Hughes, M.D., M.P.H., is professor of health industry management and management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. He first came to Northwestern in 1977 as the founding director of the university's Center for Health Services and Policy Research (now the Institute for Health Services Research and Policy Studies) and served as its director for 18 years. A native of Boston, Hughes is a graduate of the Boston Latin School, Amherst College, Harvard Medical School and Columbia University School of Public Health. He trained originally in general surgery at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Prior to coming to Northwestern, Hughes was, for seven and a half years, associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Under Hughes' leadership, the Center for Health Services and Policy Research, a university-wide entity with five programs of active interdisciplinary research, grew from its founding in 1977 to be one of the most highly regarded university-based health services research centers in the United States. Its five programs included Health Care Policy and Financing, Long-Term Care, Organization Behavior in Health, the Multipurpose Arthritis Center and the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Field Station, in collaboration with the Edward A. Hines, Jr. VA Hospital.

Hughes is particularly interested in the elaboration of national health policy, in the efficient utilization of resources in the delivery of health care and in the future directions of our health system. Within the center, he was co-director of the Program in Health Care Policy and Financing and was, for five and a half years, principal investigator of the HCFA "Policy Center" at Northwestern. He was also special advisor to the V.A. Field Station and for many years served as the director of the Non-Biomedical Component of the Multipurpose Arthritis Center. While he was center director, Hughes served for three years as the director of the program in Health Services Management in the Kellogg School. The program was recently chosen by U.S. News & World Report as one of the two highest-ranking health management program in the United States. Hughes is also the originator of Northwestern's Joint M.D./M.B.A. Program, one of the first programs of its kind in the United States. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, Hughes is the first physician to be a tenured professor in a school of management in the United States. 

Hughes is one of the five co-founders of the Association for Health Services Research and a charter member of its Board of Directors, and he served as its first vice president. He has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine. He was the founding editor of HMO/PPO Trends and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Medical Interface, Health Business Digest and Group Health News. He is the editor of the book Perspectives on Quality in American Health Care, published by McGraw-Hill. He was chosen by Faulkner and Gray's Health Information Center as a charter member of "The Health Care 500" (now "The Health Care 1500"), a directory of the most influential Americans in the field of health policy. Hughes was also chosen as a charter member of "The Managed Care 1500." In October 1999, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association awarded Hughes the Clifton J. Latiolais Honor Medal, the highest honor in managed health care. He possesses a distinguished record of publications and is a consultant to numerous health care organizations.

Julia A. Segre '87

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Julia A. Segre is senior investigator and head of the Epithelial Biology Section of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. Her past research has focused on how the epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, acts as a barrier between the body and the environment. Her current research program explores the millions of microbes that live on the skin and how these microbes affect human health. She is actively involved in the Human Microbiome Project, an effort launched as part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research to comprehensively characterize all the species of microorganisms that live in and on the human body.

After graduating summa cum laude with a degree in mathematics from Amherst in 1987, Segre did a yearlong Watson Fellowship and then went on to earn a Ph.D. in biology and genetics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. For the next four years, she did postdoctoral research in cell biology at the University of Chicago. She joined the NHGRI in 2000 and was given tenure and appointed Senior Investigator in 2007.

Segre is lead author or co-author of more that 30 peer-reviewed articles. Her many awards and honors include Amherst's Brown Prize and Breusch Prize for best senior honors thesis in mathematics; Phi Beta Kappa membership; the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund Postdoctoral Award; a Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award; and Outstanding Postbaccalaureate-IRTA Mentor recognition and a Director’s Challenge Award from the NIH.

Kipp A. Weiskopf '07

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Kipp Weiskopf is an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, in the Medical Scientist Training Program. While at Amherst, he majored in biology, served as co-chairman of the Charles Drew Health Professions Society and played on the football team. He wrote his senior thesis in the lab of Professor David Ratner on developmental mutants of Dictyostelium discoideum. Weiskopf spent his summers away from the college, doing research at a variety of institutions, including Hydra Biosciences, the Whitehead Institute and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. At Amherst, Weiskopf was awarded the James R. Elster award in biology, the Frank Fowler Dow Prize for undergraduate work indicating a career of distinction in medicine and the Oscar E. Schotte Award for his senior thesis in biology and was selected to receive the Kauffman Fellowship.

After graduating summa cum laude in 2007, Weiskopf was awarded a Churchill Scholarship to pursue an M.Phil. degree at the University of Cambridge under the guidance of Professor David Glover. There, he studied molecules important for proper cell cycle progression, a process that has implications for diseases such as cancer. He also played on the Cambridge Varsity Lacrosse team. At Stanford, he has worked in the laboratories of Irv Weissman and Ron Levy on immunologic-based treatments for cancer. Weiskopf will earn his Ph.D. in cancer biology and plans to pursue a career in biomedical research.

Weiskopf is a Massachusetts native, having grown up in the town of Sudbury.