Bioscience Symposium Speaker Information

George W. Carmany III ’62

George Carmany is a graduate of Amherst College, a director of the Macquarie Infrastructure Company, New York, NY; and is a senior advisor to Brown Brothers Harriman and Company; Essex Woodlands Health Ventures; EnGeneIC Ltd., a biotechnology company in Sydney, Australia; and The Asia Link Group of Beijing, PRC. He retired as a director of Sun Life Financial, Toronto, Canada in 2010, and served until 2005 as chairman and CEO of Helicon Therapeutics, a biotechnology company founded by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Roche Pharmaceuticals and OSI Pharmaceuticals.

Carmany is the past chairman of the New England Medical Center; a member of the President’s Circle of the National Academies; a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Bentley University; past vice president 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 children, Bill, of Los Angeles, Calif., and Elizabeth of N.Y.

Carmany, together with Gerald R. Fink ’62, are the founders and organizers of the annual Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium.

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Gerald R. Fink ’62

Gerald R. Fink ’62 is the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and the American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute. He was director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001. His research focuses on the molecular biology of yeast and fungal infectious disease. Fink was the first to describe transformation in fungi—the stable uptake of DNA into the genome of yeast cells. 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, the 2001 George Beadle Award and the 2010 Gruber Award in Genetics. 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. Fink has also founded two biotechnology companies, Myco Pharmaceuticals and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals.

Fink, together with George Carmany ’62, are the founders and organizers of the Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium.

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Barry Bloom ’58

Dr. Bloom is Harvard University's Distinguished Service Professor of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He received a bachelor’s degree and an honorary Sc.D. from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University. He is widely recognized for his work in the area of cell-mediated immunity, infectious diseases, and global health. The discovery of cytokines, the development of genetic systems in mycobacteria, and understanding molecular mechanisms of resistance to intracellular infections of are among his scientific contributions. He served as a consultant to the White House on international health policy, was elected president of the American Association of Immunologists, and served as president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Dr. Bloom has been extensively involved with the World Health Organization (WHO) for more than 40 years. He was a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research (ACHR) and chaired the WHO Committees on Immunology of Leprosy (IMMLEP), Immunology of Tuberculosis (IMMTUB) and chaired the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (STAC) and chaired the Global Malaria Programme. He has served on the National Advisory Councils of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Health, and the Center for Infectious Diseases within the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He currently serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, K-RITH, and Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa).

He has received numerous awards for his scientific work including the first Bristol-Myers Award in Infectious Diseases, the Robert Koch Gold Medal for lifetime achievement in research, and shared the Novartis Award in Immunology. He was elected to membership of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.  

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Isaiah L. Holloway Jr. ’17

Isaiah Holloway '17 spent last summer as an intern at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in Cold Spring, New York. CSHL was established in 1890 and is a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, bioinformatics and genomics, and quantitative biology.

A senior at Amherst College, Holloway is majoring in psychology and is pre-med. He is also a member of the football team, has been on the wrestling team, a member of the production "Probably" and served as treasurer for the Amherst College Branch of KDSAP (Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program.) Holloway came to Amherst from Montville High School in Montville, Conn.

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David M. Lawrence ’62

Dr. Lawrence served as CEO and chairman of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals until his retirement in 2002. He was appointed CEO in 1991 and chairman the next year. He currently pursues interests in new business development, teaching, public policy, and writing. He is a member of the boards of McKesson Corporation, Proteus Digital Health, Aditazz and CellWorks. He is a member of the Health Advisory Boards of the RAND Corporation; an advisor to SomaLogic, Inc., MedExpert, Inc. and TangramCare; associated with Artiman Ventures and teaches with the Estes Park Institute. He consults with selected health care systems that pursue advanced integration strategies.

Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente in 1981, Dr. Lawrence worked in Public Health and Human Services in Multnomah County, OR; on the faculty of the University of Washington, School of Public Health and Community Medicine and the School of Medicine; as an advisor to the Ministry of Health of Chile; and as a Peace Corps physician. Dr. Lawrence is a founding board member of the Lucian Leape Institute of the National Patient Safety Foundation and a Distinguished Advisor to the NPSF. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the AOA physician honor society. He is the author of From Chaos to Care: The Promise of Team-Based Medicine (Perseus, 2002) and Best Care. Best Future: A Guide for Healthcare Leaders (Second River Publishing, 2014).

Dr. Lawrence received his Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College (1962), his MD from the University of Kentucky (1966), and his Masters of Public Health from the University of Washington (1973). He completed his residency in general preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington, and is board certified in general preventive medicine (1974). He has received honorary degrees from Amherst College, University of Kentucky, and Cornell University and is a member of the University of Kentucky Alumni Hall of Fame and the University of Kentucky College of Public Health Hall of Fame.

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Doug Lowy ’64

Dr. Douglas Lowy is best known for developing the technology that underlies the three FDA-approved Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines. He conducted this research as part of his long-standing, ongoing collaboration with his NCI colleague John Schiller. Doug and John have received many awards for their joint research. These include Federal Employee of the year from the Partnership for Public Service (2007), the Gold Medal from the Sabin Vaccine Institute (2011) and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama (2014). Doug has also received an honorary degree from Amherst (1992), and the Medal of Honor for Basic Science from the American Cancer Society (2007). He is a member of the National Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS; 2003) and the NAS (2009). 

Doug majored in art history at Amherst, and spent his Junior year in Paris through the Sweet Briar College Junior Year in France program. His daughter Stephanie is an Amherst alum. Doug received his MD from NYU School of Medicine, and trained in internal medicine at Stanford and Dermatology at Yale. He began his research training as a medical student at NYU and continued it as a post-doctoral fellow in the National Institute of Health (NIH) intramural research program, in the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He has had his own laboratory in the NIH intramural research program since 1975, has been a laboratory chief since 1983, and was deputy director of the NCI intramural Center for Cancer Research from 1995-2010. Doug was NCI deputy director from 2010-2015, when Harold Varmus, Amherst ’61, was the NCI director. He has been the acting NCI director since 2015.

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Marc Pohl ’62

Dr. Marc A. Pohl is the former head of the Section of Clinical Nephrology and Hypertension at the Cleveland Clinic, and holds the Ray W. Gifford, M.D. Endowed Chair in Hypertension.

After graduating from Amherst College, Pohl received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and then interned and did medical residency training at University Hospitals of Cleveland, followed by senior residency in medicine and nephrology fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University Medical Center and Boston City Hospital. He also served as head of the Dialysis and Transplantation Section of the Kidney Disease Control Program, of the Regional Medical Programs of the United States Public Health Service from 1968-1970. Pohl has been associated with the Cleveland Clinic since 1973.

Pohl has been a co-investigator in a number of major clinical trials, including the U.S. Collaborative Study of Adult Nephrotic Syndrome Study, and the Lupus Nephritis Collaborative Study Group, and the North American Nephrotic Syndrome Study. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and numerous abstracts and book chapters. Pohl actively participates a s a faculty member of many national and international symposia and postgraduate courses in nephrology and hypertension, and is widely recognized for his excellence in teaching and commitment to graduate and post graduate medical education.

Pohl belongs to the American Society of Nephrology, the International Society of Nephrology, the American Heart Association and its council for High Blood Pressure Research, the American Society of Hypertension and the National Kidney Foundation. He is a past chairman of the Post Graduate Education Committee of the American Society of Nephrology and recently served as co-director of the American Society of Nephrology Board Review Course and Update from 2009-2011. He has been listed in Best Doctors in America since 1992, and America’s Top Doctors since 2000.

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Kipp Weiskopf ’07

Upon graduation from Amherst College, Kipp Weiskopf ’07 was awarded a Winston Churchill Foundation Scholarship to study the genetics of cancer with Dr. David Glover at Churchill College, Cambridge University, England. Weiskopf received his MD and PhD from Stanford University School of Medicine before beginning work as a resident physician in the field of internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, where he works currently.