JAMES F. CHILDRESS (Board Chair) is the John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia, where he teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and directs the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life. He served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, 1972-1975 and 1986-1994, as Principal of UVA's Monroe Hill College from 1988 to 1991, and as co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center 1991-1999. In 1990 he was named Professor of the Year in the state of Virginia by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and in 2002 he received the University of Virginia's highest honor--the Thomas Jefferson Award. In 2004, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities bestowed on him its Life-time Achievement Award. Dr. Childress was vice chair of the national Task Force on Organ Transplantation, and he has also served on the Board of Directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the UNOS Ethics Committee, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee, the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee, and several Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for NIH clinical trials. He was a member of the presidentially-appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission 1996-2001. Childress is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of the Hastings Center. He received his B.A. from Guilford College, his B.D. from Yale Divinity School, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. Dr. Childress is currently the chair of the Committee on Increasing Rates of Organ Donation. He has co-chaired the NRC Subcommittee on Use of Third Party Toxicity Research with Human Test Subjects and has served as a member of the IOM Committee on Establishing a National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Program and the Committee on Assessing Genetic Risks: Issues and Implications for Health.

DONALD BURKE is director of the Center for Vaccine Research (CVR). In addition to serving as director of the CVR, Dr. Burke is the dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health and serves in the newly established position of associate vice chancellor for global health, health sciences. Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh faculty, Dr. Burke was professor of international health and epidemiology and the director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previously, he served 23 years at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, including six years at the Armed Foreces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Burke is one of the world’s foremost experts in prevention, diagnosis, and control of infectious diseases of global concern, including HIV/AIDS, avian influenza, and emerging infectious diseases. His research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of human epidemic virus diseases including HIV/AIDs, dengue, flavivirus encephalitis, and hepatitis. He is past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine. He has served on the NRC Rountable for the Development of Drugs and Vaccines against AIDs, the NRC Committee on Climate, Ecology, Infectious Diseases, and Human Health (as Chair), the IOM Committee to Review the Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System.

C. THOMAS CASKEY is Director-Elect and Chief Executive Officer-Elect and Chief Operating Officer of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM), at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Caskey was founding director of Houston-based Cogene Biotech Ventures and Cogene Ventures, venture capital funds supporting early-stage biotechnology and life sciences companies. He has received numerous academic and industry-related honors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He has served as president of American Society of Human Genetics, the Human Genome Organization and The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST). Dr. Caskey previously served as Senior Vice President for Human Genetics and Vaccines Discovery at Merck Research Laboratories from 1994 to 2000 and as president of the Merck Genome Research Institute from 1998 to 2000. His genetic research documented the universality of the genetic code, discovered the mechanism of peptide chain termination, identified the genetic basis of 10 major heritable diseases, opened the understanding of triplet repeat diseases (Fragile X, myotonic dystrophy and others), developed the STR method of DNA-based personal identification (now used worldwide) for forensic studies, and developed a viral vector vaccine for HIV. He received the Distinguished Texas Geneticist Award from the Texas Genetics Society in 1998 and serves on Texas Governor Rick Perry's Council on Science and Biotechnology, which makes funding recommendations for the $200 million Texas Emerging Technology Fund. Dr. Caskey earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine and his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina. He is Board certified in Internal Medicine, Clinical Genetics, Metabolic Diseases and Molecular Diagnostics.

DENNIS CHOI is Executive Director of Emory¹s strategic neurosciences initiative and Director of the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center in the Woodruff Health Sciences Center at Emory University. He graduated from Harvard College in 1974, and received the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in 1978 (the latter in Pharmacology) from Harvard University and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Prior to joining the faculty of Emory University, he was Executive Vice-President for Neuroscience at Merck Research Labs. Dr. Choi is a fellow of AAAS, and a member of the IOM, the Executive Committee of the Dana Alliance for Brain Research, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He has served as President of the Society for Neuroscience, Vice-President of the American Neurological Association, and chairman of the U.S./Canada Regional Committee of the International Brain Research Organization. He has also served on the NAS Board on Life Sciences, and Councils for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Society for Neuroscience, the Winter Conference for Brain Research, the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, and the Neurotrauma Society. He has been a member of advisory boards for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, the Grass Foundation, the Hereditary Disease Foundation, the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation, the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, the Queen's Neuroscience Institute in Honolulu, the Max-Planck Institute in Heidelberg, the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) in Seoul, and the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as for several university-based research consortia, biotechnology companies, and pharmaceutical companies.

KATHLEEN A. DRACUP is Dean and Endowed Professor of Nursing Education at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her professional career includes 35 years of experience in cardiovascular nursing and university professorships. She is recognized nationally and internationally for her investigation in the care of patients with heart disease and the effects of this disease on spouses and other family members. Her initial research focused on the needs of spouses of terminally ill cardiac patients in the intensive care unit. In her subsequent interdisciplinary program of research, she has tested a variety of interventions designed to reduce the emotional distress experienced by cardiac patients and their family members and to reduce morbidity and mortality from sudden cardiac death. She consistently has been awarded extramural funding for her research from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute for Nursing Research, the American Heart Association, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. Dr. Dracup has published her research in more than 300 articles and chapters, and has recently published the textbook, Intensive Coronary Care. She served as the editor of Heart & Lung for over a decade and currently is the co-editor of the American Journal of Critical Care. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association Council of Cardiovascular Nursing. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Australia and is a member of the Institute of Medicine. She received the outstanding teaching award at UCLA School of Nursing on four different occasions and was awarded the American Heart Association's Eugene Braunwald Award for Academic Mentorship in 2003.

FRED H. GAGE is the Vi and John Adler Professor of the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego. Dr. Gage’s research focuses on the structural plasticity that persists in the adult nervous system. In addition to studying the mechanism and function of adult neurogenesis his research efforts also focus on genetic engineering and cell transplantation strategies to reverse or restore function lost as a result of neurodegeneration or neurotrauma. In 1998 he led the team that discovered neural stem cells in the human brain. In addition to stem cells, he is studying substances that act to promote growth in injured nerve projections. His professional activities have included service on the NIH Advisory Council on Aging, the NIH Working Group on Guidelines for the Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, the Research Consortium of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, and the Advisory Board of the American Society of Gene Therapy. He has also served on the editorial board of over two dozen scientific journals and as President of the Society for Neuroscience; and he has received numerous awards and honors including the NIH Merit Award, Decade of the Brain Medal. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2001 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. He served on an IOM committee that studied the biological impact of exposure to electromagnetic fields (1996).LINDA C. GIUDICE is Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco where she holds the Robert B. Jaffe, MD Endowed Chair in the Reproductive Sciences. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MD from Stanford University, after postdoctoral training at Rockefeller and the NIH. Dr. Giudice completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis and was a fellow in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Stanford. In 1987, she joined the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine and in 2005 was named the Stanley McCormick Memorial Professor Emerita. While at Stanford, Dr. Giudice served as Founding Director for the Center for Research on Reproduction, Women’s Health and Genomic Medicine and was the Director of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Division from 1994–2005. Dr. Giudice was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2002 and has been affiliated with the Institute for Stem Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California at San Francisco since 2005, where she serves on the Gamete, Embryo, and Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee, the Stem Cell Research Coordinating Committee and the Stem Cell Research Program Committee. She has a major interest in human embryonic stem cells and somatic cell nuclear transfer from the perspective of policy and human subject protection.

LAWRENCE O. GOSTIN is an internationally recognized scholar in law and public health. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies and an elected fellow of the Hastings Center. At the NAS, he currently is a member of the Committee Science, Technology, and Law. Professor Gostin is the Health Law and Ethics Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and serves on the editorial boards of many other scholarly journals. His recent books have included: The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice, and Unfulfilled Expectations (2004), The Human Rights of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities: Different But Equal (2003, with SS Herr, HH Koh, eds.), Public Health law and Ethics: A Reader (2002), and Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (2000). He currently works as a Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and as Professor of Law and Director of the Center on Law and the Public's Health at the Georgetown University Law Center.

PAUL JARRIS is executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. He served as medical director of Vermont’s largest nonprofit HMO, Community Health Plan from 1992–1996. He was president and CEO of Vermont Permanente Medical Group from 1998–2000, as well as CEO of Primary Care Health Partners, Vermont’s largest statewide primary care medical group from 1999–2000. From 2000-2003, he served as president of Jarris and Associates, an independent consulting firm providing services to major regional health plans and provider groups. He was appointed commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health by Governor Jim Douglas in March 2003. Throughout his career, Dr. Jarris has maintained an active clinical family practice, including work in federally qualified health centers, and served as physician to an inner city school and a shelter for homeless adolescent youth. He graduated from the University of Vermont and received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He interned at Duke-Watts Family Medicine Residency Program in Durham, North Carolina, and completed his residency at the Swedish Family Practice Residency Program in Seattle, Washington. He received an M.B.A. degree from and completed a faculty development fellowship at the University of Washington. Dr. Jarris is board certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and the American Board of Medical Management.

DAVID KORN is Senior Vice President for Biomedical and Health Sciences Research at the Association of American Medical Colleges. He is also vice president, dean of medicine, and professor of pathology, emeritus, Stanford University. Dr. Korn received his undergraduate degree and MD from Harvard University. He was a founder of the California Organ Transplant Donor Network, one of the nation's largest Organ Procurement Organizations, and was appointed as chairman of the National Cancer Advisory Board in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, a position he held until 1991. Dr. Korn is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Pathology, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Human Pathology. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

RICHARD LARSON is MIT Mitsui Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the Engineering Systems Division. He is founding director of the Center for Engineering System Fundamentals. He has focused on operations research as applied to services industries. He has actively conducted research on planning for and responding to disasters, including pandemic influenza. He is Past-President of INFORMS, INstitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an INFORMS Founding Fellow, and a recipient of the INFORMS President's Award, Lanchester Prize and Kimball Medal.

ALAN LESHNER is Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Executive Publisher of Science magazine. From 1994-2001, he was Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at NIH, and from 1988-1994 he was Deputy Director and Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Prior to that, he spent nine years at the National Science Foundation, where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, and on science education. He began his career at Bucknell University, where he was Professor of Psychology. His research has focused on the biological bases of behavior, particularly the role of hormones in the control of behavior. Dr. Leshner is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of AAAS and many other professional societies. He has received numerous awards form both professional and lay groups for his national leadership in science, mental illness and mental health, and substance abuse and addiction.

LINDA MILLER is President of the Volunteer Trustees Foundation in Washington, D.C., a consortium of not-for-profit hospital governing boards. She has extensive experience with advocacy and the legal, ethical, and policy issues facing voluntary health care institutions, and has worked closely with the states’ attorneys general in developing models for oversight and practice guidelines. Ms. Miller has been a frequent speaker on health care issues and written extensively on the subject in both the medical and popular press, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, USA Today, the Washington Post, and New York Times, among others. She served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (now HHS) and on numerous health-related policy councils and advisory committees, including the NIH Consensus Panel on Liver Transplantation, the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Spinal Cord Injury and the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. She has been a member of several academic and health care institution Boards of Governors, including Blythedale Children’s Hospital, Cornell University’s Alumni Council, and Capital Hospice, among others. She was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine in 1997.

STEVEN MARC PAUL is Executive Vice President of Science and Technology and President of the Lilly Research Laboratories (LRL) of Eli Lilly and Company. Dr. Paul joined Lilly in April of 1993, initially as a Vice President of the Lilly Research Laboratories responsible for Central Nervous System (CNS) Discovery and Decision Phase Medical Research. In 2005, Dr. Paul was named Chief Scientific Officer of the Year as one of the Annual Pharmaceutical Achievement Awards. Prior to assuming his position at Lilly, Dr. Paul served as Scientific Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH/NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Paul received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Magna Cum Laude with honors in Biology and Psychology from Tulane University, in 1972. He received his Master of Science degree in Anatomy (Neuroanatomy) and his Doctor of Medicine degree, both in 1975, from the Tulane University School of Medicine. Following an internship in Neurology at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, he served as a resident in Psychiatry and an Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. In 1976, he was awarded a research fellowship in the Pharmacology Research Associate Training Program of the National Institute of General Medical Science (NIGMS), to work with Nobel Laureate Dr. Julius Axelrod in the Laboratory of Clinical Science, IRP, of the NIMH. In June 1978, he became a Clinical Associate in the Clinical Psychobiology Branch of NIMH, and served in that position for two years. In 1982, Dr. Paul was appointed Chief of the Clinical Neuroscience Branch as well as Chief of the Section on Preclinical Studies, IRP, NIMH. Dr. Paul also served as Medical Director in the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service, and maintained a private practice in Psychiatry and Psychopharmacology. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and has been elected a Fellow in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), served on the ACNP Council and was elected President of the ACNP (1999). Dr. Paul is currently licensed to practice medicine in the State of Maryland. He also serves on the executive board of PhRMA’s Science and Regulatory Committee and is incoming chairperson. Dr. Paul served as a member of the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council, NIH (1996-1999), and was appointed by the Secretary of HHS to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH (2001-2006).

LINDA ROSENSTOCK is currently Dean of the UCLA School of Public Health. Prior to this position, she served as Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) where she was instrumental in creating a framework for guiding occupational safety and health research. This agenda was developed in collaboration with 500 external partners. Dr. Rosenstock has been active internationally in teaching and research in occupational and environmental health and has served as an advisor to the World Health Organization. She has expertise in occupational and environmental medicine health care delivery as well as in the role of federal government in health sciences research and policy. She received her M.D. and M.P.H. from The Johns Hopkins University. She is a recipient of the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award and was elected to the IOM in 1995.

RAJEEV VENKAYYA directs the Global Health Delivery team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He oversees late-stage development of health technologies and interventions as well as efforts to expand access to health solutions in the developing world. Previously, Dr. Venkayya served as special assistant to the U.S. president and senior director for biodefense at the White House. One of his key responsibilities was development and implementation of the U.S. strategy for pandemic influenza. He served as an advisor to the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was one of 13 non-partisan White House Fellows appointed by President Bush in 2002. Dr. Venkayya is a pulmonary and critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Previously, he directed the high-risk asthma clinic and co-directed the Medical Intensive Care Unit at San Francisco General Hospital. He holds a medical degree from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

KEITH WAILOO is a Professor at Rutgers University, jointly appointed in History and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research. He is an historian of medicine and the biomedical sciences, and author of Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (UNC Press, 2001), Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in 20th Century America (Johns Hopkins, 1997), a forthcoming book on race and cancer in America, and numerous other works exploring the intersections of medicine and science with society, politics, and culture in America. Previously, he served for nine years on the faculty in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. In 1999, he received the James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship in the History of Science.

CLYDE W. YANCY is a cardiologist and heart failure/heart transplant specialist at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas (Baylor Dallas), where he is the medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute, and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. Previously, Dr. Yancy was a professor of internal medicine and cardiology and holder of the Carl Westcott Chair in Medical Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where he served as director of its heart transplant program. He also is credited with establishing the medical center’s heart failure program and cardiovascular institute. He holds fellowships in the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the American College of Physicians. He is an active member of the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the American Society of Hypertension. Presently, he serves on the executive committee of the Heart Failure Society of America. He also sits on the editorial board of a number of professional journals. In 2003, he was recognized as physician of the year by the American Heart Association for leadership in programs related to their mission. He currently serves on the Cardiovascular Device Panel for the FDA and is a consultant to the NIH/NHLBI. His research interests include the broad areas of heart transplantation, heart failure and heart disease in special populations. Dr. Yancy received his medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine and completed post- graduate training at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.