Adam Kuspa, PhD, SVP & Dean of Research, is responsible for the development and execution of BCM’s strategic vision for research and commercialization. He oversees and allocates institutional resources to support all research centers, departments, and institutes, faculty recruitment, and commercial endeavors. He is responsible for maintaining Baylor’s extensive research support infrastructure including pre-award and compliance functions, a vast animal program, Advanced Technology Cores, Research IT, the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) and laboratory safety. He partners with BCM affiliates toward the advancement of a collaborative research vision. His major focus is to integrate clinical and translational research across BCM, as well as to promote the commercial development of the discoveries that result. Dr. Kuspa’s own federally funded laboratory currently investigates the multifaceted way that eukaryotic cells kill bacteria.
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Mr. Matthias Hofer is a Partner at Stonehaven Consulting AG. He has over 13 years of experience in Animal Health. He served on the executive committees of two major Animal Health companies for a total of 7 years. Between 2009 and 2013 he led the global Aqua Health business at Novartis Animal Health (NAH). Later, he was Global Leader Emerging Business at Elanco and a member of Elanco’s global executive committee. During 2014 and with Elanco’s intention to buy NAH, Matthias served as overall pre-merger integration leader on the Novartis side. In that role, Matthias led a large team and efforts to prepare integration pre-closing overall including carve-out preparations of operations linked to Novartis. Matthias is a business leader with broad international experience and strength in sales, strategy, and execution.
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Caroline Popper MD MPH is the CEO of Diversigen and the President of BCM Technologies, the company creation enterprise of Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Popper has more than 25 years of hands-on life science operating experience. Originally an internist and pathologist, she combines her medical and scientific perspective with knowledge gained from managing a wide spectrum of life sciences businesses in both Fortune 500 and start-up settings in the US and globally. She maintains a large venture and private equity network, sits on several company boards, and speaks internationally on healthcare innovation and value analysis. Dr. Popper received her medical degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore). She completed her residencies in internal medicine and in pathology at Johns Hopkins.
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Dr. Rossi has a driving passion for finding innovative solutions to therapeutic challenges and has been actively involved in veterinary research. He has a particular interest and expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of skin, coat and nail diseases in animals.
Dr. Rossi obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Southeastern Louisiana University before completing a master’s degree and becoming a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at Louisiana State University. After several veterinary research projects and internships, he developed his skills in dermatology during a two-year residency with North Carolina State University and while working with the Veterinary Referral Center of Colorado. During this time, he taught veterinary students about clinical and scientific aspects of dermatology.
Dr. Rossi is board certified by the American College of Veterinary Dermatology (ACVD) and currently works for a veterinary specialty clinic based in Houston. As well as small animals, Dr. Rossi enjoys working with horses and zoo animals.
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Dr. Petrosino has been actively driving a better understanding of human and animal microbiomes since the introduction of Next Generation Sequencing technologies for the purpose of microbiome studies. He has been involved in key research projects and made a number of ground-breaking advances in our understanding of microbiomes.
Dr. Petrosino was awarded a degree in microbiology and immunology with a distinction in research from the University of Rochester, before completing a PhD in the same subjects at Baylor College of Medicine. He continued at Baylor where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics, and then worked as a research associate in the Human Genome Sequencing Centre.
As a principal investigator for the Human Microbiome Project, he helped develop standardised clinical sample preparation protocols for sequencing and analysis. This allowed microbial communities from diverse body sites to be compared with minimal technical bias and has led to study design standards that are being implemented internationally.
Dr. Petrosino is currently Professor and interim Chairman of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine and Director of the Alkek Centre for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research. The Centre is involved in more than 400 metagenomics projects in humans which aim to improve human health through a better understanding of microbiomes and the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics. Dr. Petrosino is a popular speaker at national and international meetings and was named Distinguished Lecturer for 2012-2014 by the American Society for Microbiology.
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