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.

---

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.

---

Shirley Tilghman

Shirley M. Tilghman is a member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College, and received an honorary degree from Amherst in 2008. She is currently a professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University, where she served as President from 2001-2013.  

During her tenure, the university expanded its undergraduate and graduate student bodies, and instituted a four-year college system. She oversaw the creation of major new academic programs, including the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Lewis Center for the Arts. Her field of research is mammalian developmental genetics, with a focus on the evolution and molecular mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of genomic imprinting. She is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Developmental Biology, the Genetics Society of America Medal, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.  She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, The National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the Royal Society of London and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.  In addition to her service at Amherst College, she is a trustee of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Simons Foundation, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and is a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation.   

 

---

Richard Aronson '69

Ever since my time here at Amherst as a student, I have had a passion to explore and act upon the meaning of health and the nature of healing. What does it mean to be a healthy person, a healthy family, a healthy community, a healthy society? What does it mean to be open to healing? For those who ponder pursuing a health profession of any kind, and for those who have already made that decision, what pathways are available to fit and feed your skills, curiosity, ideals, and dreams? What practical steps does one take to make these aspirations come alive? I am here to stimulate such conversation and help our students along in their journey.

My own journey has been rich with challenge, learning, and a myriad of opportunities to promote the health of people and communities, starting with my own health (I'm still working on that!). At Amherst, I majored in Religion, helped organize the Amherst Amigos (a group of us who lived in rural Mexican villages in the summers), and had the good fortune to be involved in the founding of the Amherst ABC Program.  Medical school (University of Rochester) and public health school (University of North Carolina) launched me on a career that has included clinical pediatric practice, public service, leadership as a public health physician (in Vermont, Wisconsin, and Maine), and teacher (most recently, at Hampshire College and UMass Amherst School of Public Health). I helped Amherst students start the Public Health Collaborative in 2009. I am now at a time of excitement and commitment to inspire a new generation of health professionals.  I can't think of a better place to do that than right here at Amherst.

I continue to be moved and inspired by the curiosity, passion, critical thinking, and thirst for light and justice that thrive at Amherst College.  Embracing the opportunity to be fully present here again, I turn to my favorite Amherst song:  "In the love of Amherst hearts, abides her greatest glory. As the future still imparts, the old unchanging story. Youth and beauty, learning, faith. Bound by friendship's charter. To the College we have made. With eye and mind and heart."

---

Jack Angiolillo ’08

Jack Angiolillo ’08 is a National Library of Medicine Fellow at Columbia University in biomedical informatics, and practices as an internal medicine physician. His research is in deep learning for artificial intelligence. At Amherst, he majored in chemistry and studied studio arts. For his college summers, he studied Arabic, participated in the Hughes Research Fellowship, and interned at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). As a freshman in 2004, he became a “Big Brother” to a boy who is now a senior at Princeton University. Immediately after college, Jack did structural biology research in Germany through a CSHL connection, then worked as a classroom assistant in East Harlem while applying to med school. He completed his MD/MBA at Columbia University and his residency at Vanderbilt University. He thinks of Amherst daily and values humanism.

---

Andrew Balder ’75

Andy Balder works as medical director for the Baystate Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center, where he has practiced and taught Medicine-Pediatrics resident physicians for 29 years, and as chief medical officer for the City of Springfield’s Health Services for the Homeless FQHC.  Service in the Mason Square community of Springfield has resulted in opportunities for engagement in community health, both hyper-local on the Mason Square Health Task Force and municipally as chair of Project Baby Springfield, focusing on reducing inequities in birth outcomes and infant mortality. He has been cited for his work by the Martin Luther King Junior Social Services agency, the city of Springfield and the Massachusetts Public Health association.

He served for 10 years on the Drug Utilization Review Board of the Massachusetts Medicaid (MassHealth) program and was a medical director for 11 years for Boston Medical Center HealthNet Plan, a Medicaid managed care plan operating state-wide.

Dr. Balder has had the opportunity to teach multiple resident physicians and medical students on both inpatient and outpatient Medicine and Pediatric services at Baystate Health. Proximity to Amherst has enabled him to host a number of student interns doing community and public health project work. He also serves on the Boards of Directors of Holyoke-Chicopee-Springfield Head Start and Home City Housing, a non-profit low income housing development and management corporation.

---

Elena Boley ’92

Dr. Boley is a medical officer in the Division of Bone, Reproductive and Urologic Products (DBRUP) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where she serves as a medical expert on a multidisciplinary team in the review and evaluation of scientific data. In her position as a medical officer, she reviews and evaluates clinical data related to marketing applications for new drugs and biologics in the urologic area. In addition, she evaluates proposed drug labels to ensure they have truthful claims and adequate directions for use.  

As an instructor and associate clinical professor at The George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, she teaches a course entitled Professional Development that promotes self-awareness and problem solving by thoughtful and effective communication with patients and encouragement of regular student self-reflection. 

Dr. Boley received her BA in Neuroscience from Amherst College and her MD from Duke University School of Medicine.  She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.  Soon thereafter, she earned her MBA from The Carey School of Business at The Johns Hopkins University. She was briefly in private practice before joining the Medical Faculty Associates at GW where she treated patients for 15 years and precepted medical students. During that time, she was a physician leader for health quality initiatives and a senior policy advisor in GW’s Center for Healthcare Quality. Subsequently, she served as director of executive health services. She is board certified in Internal Medicine. 

Dr. Boley lives with her husband (David Leviss ’92) and their two teenagers in Bethesda, MD.

 

---

Natalie Braun ’19

Natalie Braun is a current Amherst College student and co-president of the Association for Women in Science at Amherst. She has also served as a research intern at Erie Family Health Centers, ChicagoCHEC, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

---

Mary Gehring

Mary Gehring is a member of The Whitehead Institute and an associate professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on understanding epigenetic fidelity and epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation using plant model systems, with a particular focus on DNA methylation and small RNAs. 

Gehring began research as an undergraduate at Williams College. After a brief stint outside of academia, she pursued a PhD in plant biology at the University of California, Berkeley. For her postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, she focused on applying genomic approaches to interesting questions in plant epigenetics. She started her lab in 2010. Among other honors, in 2011 Gehring was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and in 2013 she received the Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award.

---

Laboni Hoque ’19

Laboni Hoque is a current Amherst College student studying Anthropology and Chemistry.

 

 

---

Thierry Pauyo ’05

Dr. Thierry Pauyo obtained his medical degree from Harvard Medical School before joining the Orthopedic Residency Program at McGill University. He played a very important role as Chief Resident during the Royal College accreditation process. Dr. Pauyo is also very involved in research and has won multiple awards for his great work during residency. He also is involved in International Aid in Orthopedics in Haiti and other underserved areas.

He will be pursuing a Fellowship in Sports Medicine at Pittsburg University and a second Fellowship at Harvard’s University in Pediatrics.

Apart from being an excellent physician and leader, Dr. Pauyo is also a talented hockey player playing for Harvard NCAA Varsity Team. He has been one of the key players in the Brown Cup at McGill for the past 4 years. He is also a father to his baby boy named Noah.

---

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.

---

James Stoller ’75

Dr. Stoller is Chairman of the Education Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He holds the Jean Wall Bennett Professorship of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and the Samson Global Leadership Academy Endowed Chair. He is a pulmonary/critical care physician in the Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute.

Throughout his career at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Stoller has served in various leadership roles, including the Head of the Section of Respiratory Therapy, Vice Chairman of the Division of Medicine, Associate Chief of Staff, and the Executive Director of Leadership Development. He also currently serves on the Cleveland Clinic’s Medical Executive Committee (Board of Governors).

In 2001, Dr. Stoller earned a Masters of Science in Organizational Development and Analysis from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). His organizational development activities have included launching and co-directing the “Leading in Healthcare” course for Cleveland Clinic faculty, forming and directing the Cleveland Clinic’s Samson Global Leadership Academy, leading the American Thoracic Society’s “Emerging Leaders Program,” and teaching in leadership development curricula offered by various healthcare organizations (e.g., Hartford Healthcare, McLeod Healthcare, American Association for Physician Leadership, Cass School of Business, UK’s National Health Service). His organizational development scholarship focuses on the impact and outcomes of leadership development training in healthcare and he has recently co-authored the book “Exception to the Rule: The Surprising Science of Character-Based Culture, Engagement, and Performance” (McGraw-Hill, 2018).

He currently also serves as a Professor of Organizational Behavior at CWRU’s Weatherhead School of Management and as an Honorary Visiting Professor, Cass School of Business, City, University of London (UK). Community and organizational service include membership on the Board of Directors of the Alpha-1 Foundation and of the American Respiratory Care Foundation.

Dr. Stoller is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society Fellow, and the American Association for Respiratory Care.