A Principal Scientist at digital pathology and image analysis, Pfizer drug safety research and development. Responsible for microscope imaging analysis workflows and support project pathologists for drug safety and efficacy evaluation in preclinical and clinical studies, developing quantitative image analysis algorithms using image analysis platforms and AI. Interdisciplinary scientist with 15+ years of experience in digital image analysis, microscopy and neuroscience.
After having been a management team and C suite member responsible for contribution to the overall business strategy and building up Pharma Services Esther started her own global advisory company SolarisRTC based in Boston in 2023. Esther drives efforts for reimbursement in Digital Pathology and collaborations with different Pathology Associations. In 2022 she was the president for the Digital Pathology Association (DPA) and she has chaired the DPA Regulatory and Standards Taskforce and facilitates FDA collaborations to drive regulatory and standard clarifications for interoperability and computational pathology in the field of digital pathology. She is also a co-founder of the Alliance for Digital Pathology / Pathology Innovation Collaborative Community.
I am a 31-year veteran of the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with expertise in pharmacology, drug delivery, assay development, digital pathology, spatial biology and image analysis I have mostly worked in research of support of immunologically based targets and diseases as well as metabolic disease and sustained delivery technologies. Over the last ten years or so I have focused on supporting our research with imaging and image analysis techniques, including deep learning and machine learning approaches. Recent collaborations have also led me into working with teams and bioinformatics to process and understand spatial biology using platforms such as 10x Genomics, Codex, Nanostring, as well as high plex immunofluorescent kits for protein and in situ methodologies. I enjoy the challenge of implementing and integrating new technologies into our workflows.
Ylaine Gerardin, PhD, Principal Biomedical Data Scientist at PathAI, leads efforts to apply and interpret AI histopathology models across a range of indications including oncology and chronic liver disease. She has worked as a computational biologist in drug discovery and translation for the last seven years. At PathAI, her focus has included defining novel model evaluation strategies and leveraging human-interpretable features as biomarkers in clinical research. Ylaine received her PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard in 2016 and dual BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Biology from MIT
Dr. Hongbo Yu received her M.D. from Beijing Medical University and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. She completed AP/CP residency at Georgetown University Hospital and Hematopathology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She served as Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School. She was appointed to Chief, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Service and Director, Boston Area Consolidated Laboratories, VA Boston Healthcare System in July 2017. She has provided expert clinical services to clinicians and Pathology colleagues. She also has been actively involved in translational research projects with a major focus of evaluation of diagnostic and prognostic markers for hematopoietic malignancies.
Zhenzi Yu holds a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and an MS in Computational Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. He starts his role as Data Scientist at Takeda since 2023, where he spearheads next-generation medical device projects and fosters cross-functional digitalization collaborations. His core interests span artificial intelligence, medical devices, and drug development, enabling data-driven decisions and innovative healthcare solutions at the intersection of technology and healthcare.
Dr. Matthew O. Leavitt first envisioned digital pathology's immense potential in the early 2000’s, while Department Chair in a large Utah-based medical center. In 2014, he stepped away to establish Lumea Inc., a digital pathology platform focussed on creating practical improvements to lab workflow to drive standardization. In 2020 he launched PathNet, novel hub-and-spoke virtual pathology practice model, which now provides digital pathology diagnostic services to under-served patient populations across 35 states. Committed to harnessing the potential of patient health data, he now focusses on improving cross-sector data-exchange between technology, life-science and healthcare organizations, in the DDx Foundation. He and his wife Louise live with their 3 teenage daughters in Michigan
Dr. Qing Li is a physician scientist with over 20 years of clinical, academic, and industrial experiences in diagnostic, translational and clinical research with primary focus in oncology. During her time at Harvard Medical School, she made impactful contribution in the field of anti-angiogenesis, vascular anomaly and vascular development. She received her MD from the school of Medicine, Shandong University where she completed her residency and was a surgical pathologist before she earned PhD in molecular biology Japan. Qing has a special interest in integrated approach for CDx development in clinical trials centered around digital pathology with AI/ML application. Qing is a co-inventor of the first IF based Multi-Omics technology platform, involved in digital and computational pathology since its inception. Qing is a forward-thinking, strategic leader in precision medicine. She led multiple clinical studies integrated novel technology in clinical trials that has made significant impact.
Mark Gustavson is in Clinical Biomarker Development at AstraZeneca where he is Head of Computational Pathology Translational Science. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, he was with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where he served as both scientific reviewer for IVDs and member of the Personalized Medicine Group. Prior to the FDA, he was developing cutting edge quantitative pathology-based diagnostics with companies including MetaStat, Genoptix, and HistoRx. Mark received his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Vanderbilt University and did his post-doctoral fellowship under Dr. David Rimm at Yale University.
Alina Ainbinder holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Rochester, NY, and a Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology Engineering from Ort Braude College, Israel. In her current capacity as a Principal Research Scientist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals since 2022, she leads projects focused on phenotypic and spatial image analysis, providing critical support to oncology programs and driving the development of cloud-based image analysis infrastructure. In her prior role as a Senior Scientist in Product Development at Ultivue INC. from 2021 to 2022, she made significant contributions to biomarker discovery, the development of multiplex immunofluorescence assays, and image analysis projects. Her key areas of expertise include the development of image analysis infrastructure, standardizing image analysis processes, and integrating innovative technologies.
Hossain Md Shakhawat is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the Independent University Bangladesh (IUB). He is also working as the Head of the Medical Imaging and AI research wing at the RIoT Research Center of IUB. His research focuses on using machine learning and whole slide images to gain insight into the treatment of cancer patients. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. His doctoral research was a collaborative work with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he worked for 3 years in three different roles. After graduation, he worked as a Research Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA. He received his Master's degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology for which he collaborated with Harvard Medical School, Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He also received an offer to join the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford University, UK as a Senior Researcher of Machine Learning in Medical Imaging. His recent research is focused on unraveling the role of the HER2 gene in the progression of different cancers such as breast, colon and gastric. He is a member of IEEE.
Lewis Hassell is Professor of Pathology at the University of Oklahoma, and former director of Anatomic Pathology. He received his medical degree from the University of Utah and completed training in pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a past board member of American Pathology Foundation, College of American Pathologists and Digital Pathology Association, and past president of the CAP Foundation. Before re-entering academia he practiced for 17 years with Dahl Chase Pathology in Maine and for four years in Northern California.
Dr. Hassell is keenly interested in developing pathology capacity and diagnostic quality in low-resource settings.
James Thackeray is a distinguished professional in the field of cancer diagnostics and digital pathology, with a passion for advancing healthcare through cutting-edge technology and innovation. With over twenty years of experience, he has been helping drive the fight against cancer by leveraging his expertise in commercial strategy and operations.
James journey began with a strong education graduating with honors with an MBA from the David Eccles School of Business. He has had the great opportunity to work for cutting edge organizations like Johnson & Johnson, Genzyme Corporation, and Clarient Diagnostics where he has played key roles in those organizations’ commercial strategy and growth. Most recently, he has spent the last 7 years building the commercial strategy and team at Lumea, spearheading state of the art digital pathology solutions. Lumea is in a strong market leading position in the digital pathology revolution.
As CEO of mTuitive, Colin is focused on revolutionizing reporting, data, and analytical software for digital pathology and surgical oncology. For the last 17 years, he’s led the development and deployment of the company’s synoptic reporting solutions to hundreds of hospitals worldwide in partnership with CAP and other industry authorities. Colin, a product person at heart, is at the forefront of finding ways to utilize the data captured through the synoptic reporting process to make better decisions and provide the best possible outcomes for patients. When he isn’t working, some of his favorite activities with his family and kids are coaching, boating, and cooking.
Dr. Yagi’s Pathology Digital Imaging laboratory at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center provides an incubator to explore and evaluate new technology to advance digital pathology in a clinical setting and actively engage vendors to help improve the technology and develop clinical applicability. Collaborations with clinical departments (e.g., Surgery), Radiology, Medical Physics, and Informatics groups will enhance the assessment and create opportunities for multidisciplinary applications.
Dr. Yagi’s work further enriches our knowledge of disease by integrating computational pathology data with other specimen-related data (genomics, proteomics, radiographic imaging, etc.). This brings an unprecedented breadth and depth of information to each individual case and yields a comprehensive, multidimensional analysis that would otherwise be impossible.
Sunil Singhal has managed the successful implementation of the Digital Pathology programs at multiple US healthcare organizations. He is experienced in formulating and implementing Digital Pathology strategy to support clinical, research and education missions. He is interested in digital pathology workflow, image analysis, data analytics and computational pathology.
Sunil managed the program for the first hospital in the US to use primary digital diagnosis at scale and has applied these learnings to similar organization's digital adoptions.
An engineer by training, Sunil is a broad thinker who excels at finding elegant collaborative solutions to problems that enhance the human experience. He has over 30 years of c-suite management consulting experience covering multiple industries. Sunil currently serves as the Chief of Digital Pathology Transformation at Baylor College of Medicine, and Principal Consultant at Synergess.
Sunil has bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India (class topper), and a master’s degree in Electronics Engineering from Philips International Institute, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Shoh Asano is a Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer, where he is predominantly responsible for preclinical microscopy imaging and analysis workflows across multiple disease indications. Having contributed in over 50 different projects across different tissues and disease indications, Shoh was responsible for multiple transitions supporting mechanistic or confidence in rational studies. As a curious technologist, he is also driving data infrastructure and analytics strategies for complex imaging projects. Shoh holds an MBA from UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management, a postdoc at MIT, and a PhD in Biophysics at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry.
Dr. Aneesh Acharya, Vice President of Commercial, Molecular Instruments, Inc
With extensive experience as a commercial leader in the health technology industry and as a management consultant in the life sciences sector, Aneesh brings a unique blend of business acumen and technical expertise to his work. Aneesh's technical proficiency is highlighted by his notable contributions in developing cutting-edge technologies, such as HCR™ RNA-FISH for liquid biopsy samples, as well as for microRNA and other challenging targets.
Continuously driven by his passion for progress coupled with his remarkable combination of industry and technical expertise, Aneesh remains at the forefront of driving advancements in health technology, always embracing innovation and pushing the boundaries of the status quo.
Aneesh received a BS in Biomedical Engineering summa cum laude from Boston University and a PhD in Bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology.
