Leading a new department focused on directing and accelerating biomedical research to improve the lives of people with kidney diseases. More to come as we build off three exciting programs: the KidneyX Innovation Accelerator (https://www.kidneyx.org/), the consortium-based Kidney Health Initiative (https://khi.asn-online.org/), and the grants and fellowships focused KidneyCure (https://www.kidneycure.org/).

As a voting member of the Scientific Advisory Board, my roles are to support a multi-pharmaceutical/government consortium’s mission to advance collaborations developing drug discovery platforms. This includes providing advice to scientific strategy, reviewing letters of intent and peer-scored proposals, and evaluating scientific progress of funded projects. I've also spoken at two of their public partnering forums on issues related to biospecimen quality and U.S. funding opportunities for biomedical research.In addition to serving on the Scientific Advisory Board, I am also a member of a Research Oversight Committee on projects focused on expanded clinical trials.

Served an unpaid advisory capacity to WHO Digital Health strategy as part of their Roster of Experts

I had two different, but related, responsibilities as a member of ASM's Senior Leadership Team. My primary responsibility was to lead and manage a team of 20 program managers/specialists, coordinators, and budget specialists who designed and managed laboratory-strengthening programs in countries that need improved clinical, public health, and veterinary services. This included expanding the technical strategy through programs that apply the microbiology expertise and tools of the ASM community in advancing One Health approaches for zoonoses and clean water. I was also responsible for initiating and serving as a partnership steward with complementary organizations such as Africa-CDC, Institut de Recherche en Santé, de Surveillance Epidémiologique et de Formation, African Society for Laboratory Medicine, Fleming Fund, and WHO/PAHO. In addition to the Global Public Health Programs, I was also responsible for society-related partnerships that leverage all of ASM's resources for the global community. This included advancing partnerships with the private sector - based on my experience in diagnostics product development and as an active member of the scientific advisory board of a multi-pharmaceutical consortium (CQDM) - and other synergistic organizations that advance the microbial sciences profession.

The California Health Nail Salon Collaborative is focused on the health, safety and rights of nail salon and cosmetology workers, owners, and students. As a member of the Research Advisory Committee, I contribute my subject matter expertise in chemistry to help the Collaborative understand and communicate the issues that are associated with chemistry and chemical formulations, including ad hoc guidance and consultations.

I served two different roles at the Bill and Melinda Gates FoundationProgram Officer, Diagnostics, Global Health ProgramAs a member of the diagnostics cross-functional team, I led the diagnostics strategy for Neglected Tropical Diseases in collaboration with the disease team. I created a "use-case scenario"​ survey for staff and stakeholder community to detail/forecast the impact of a new diagnostic on the control, elimination, or eradication strategies of a specific neglected tropical disease. Through a series of multi-stakeholder workshops that I led and moderated, we created a series of consensus documents to frame the impact, timelines and resources development and delivery of a new diagnostic - complementary information that aims to assist in the prioritization of new diagnostic investments. This resulted in several partnerships with multinational diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies. Details, including associated target product profiles, were published in PLOS NTDs.I also helped assess current strategies for cervical cancer screening and pre-cancer treatment, an effort that spans divisions within the Global Development and Global Health programs. Working with colleagues at Integrated Delivery (within Global Development), my work applied principles of human-centered design to define the algorithms, scenarios, and settings for screen-and-treat programs in targeted countries. The goal was to propose tools that could be developed to advance and scale these public health programs.Gates Fellow, Office of the President, Global Health ProgramMy role was to work with the Director of the office to perform due diligence assessments of potentially cross-foundation technologies. For instance, I applied past work at DARPA on dried blood spots to identify past/current/future use-cases, forecast the impact of this 50+ year technology on foundation strategy, and identify opportunities for technology improvement.

Developed and executed a program focused on understanding the framework, impact, and challenges for biomedical research collaborations. This included research consortia, which temporarily convene multiple - oftentimes competing - organizations to strategically share resources and effort in the creation of a broadly-usable solution. The deliverables of this program included a report on the framework of research consortia, a landscape analysis of 371 research consortia to understand their contributions to the research ecosystem, and a collaboration to develop metrics that can be used in the assessment of impact. I also assessed various partnership models and monitored trends and policies affecting innovation in biomedical research, primarily to provide counsel to the research programs of several patient philanthropies.

Served a supporting role as chief of technical staff to DARPA/Defense Sciences Office Program Manager, Col Daniel J. Wattendorf USAF MC on a program that had the goal of building new biomedical capabilities in diagnostics, vaccines and passive immunity. My day-to-day roles included ensuring that the program manager was updated on the technical progress of his various efforts, ensuring that the technical SETA staff provided materials needed to support the management of the various efforts and serving as a point-of-contact to the DARPA and external (DoD, interagency, non-profit foundation, IOM, NAS/NRC and researcher) communities. To explore scientific white-space opportunities that were aligned with DARPA's mission, I organized and chaired three scientific workshops to better assess the state-of-the-science in implanted/in-vivo diagnostics (in collaboration with the FDA), storage of self-collected biospecimens and the use of "big-data" approaches to advance our understanding of health, as well as organized a summit of non-profit biomedical foundations that fund diagnostics research and development projects. I also created and organized a "speed-dating" event to introduce DARPA's diagnostics interests to the biomedical research community. I was an active participant in several interagency diagnostics working groups, contributing subject matter expertise and programmatic guidance to DoD, government and civilian audiences.

As the deputy and acting program director, my day-to-day roles included coordinating and communicating with the program staff that represented the four divisions of the NCI on the strategic planning and execution of the IMAT program. This extramural program funds approximately $10M/yr in new grants to researchers who typically represented "non-traditional" cancer researchers, such as the engineering and physics communities. I served as the point-of-contact for the NCI leadership and support staff (grants, review, etc) to ensure the day-to-day functionality of the program. I was also the point-of-contact for the extramural community where I worked to solicit ideas, communicate the mission of the program, and helped ensure that concepts were reviewed with appropriate feedback. I organized several outreach events that included two symposia at Pittcon and several invited talks at international conferences, university seminars and incubator events. I also published two papers, including a feature article in the January 2010 edition of Analytical Chemistry. My other responsibilities included drafting three request-for-proposals, re-established a relationship between the IMAT program and the NCI SBIR office (which resulted in another new solicitation to the small business communities), and ensured adherence of our funding activities to budget requirements.

I served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the NCI Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research, an office led by Carolyn Compton MD PhD to address the scientific, regulatory, ethical and policy issues related to the quality of biospecimens collected, stored and used for cancer research. My technical subject-matter-expertise was used to communicate with "non-traditional" cancer researchers, such as the engineering, chemical and analytical communities on the pre-analytical considerations needed when working with biospecimens. In addition to education events, I also reached out to the technical communities to solicit new ideas that would advance sample preparation and handling. This resulted in several speaking events at international conferences, NCI conferences and university communities. I was also involved in a project aimed to understand the economic justification of proper biospecimen management and co-authored a publication at the J. NCI.

As an independently-funded postdoctoral fellow (F32 NRSA in Cancer Nanotechnology), I worked in the laboratory of Charles Craik (UCSF Pharmaceutical Chemistry) to develop chemical tools that could identify and isolate protease biomarkers that were associated with breast cancer. This included the design and chemical synthesis of several classes of peptidic affinity probes that irreversibly bound to specific serine proteases. This evolved into a collaboration with Arun Majumdar (UC Berkeley Engineering) to develop cantilever and nano-fluidic devices, the results of which were reported in NanoLetters. I also published a review in Bioorganic Medicinal Chemistry and filed an invention disclosure with UCSF's Office of Technology Management.

Supervised peptide synthesis division of the Core Facility. Duties included direct supervision of an employee, use and maintenance of three peptide synthesizer platforms, an amino acid analyzer, and two HPLC's. Conducted wet-lab solution phase peptide synthesis and peptide modifications, and worked directly with TSRI PI's on the design of peptides. Participated in an ABRF core facility study.

Research that attempted to develop a copper(II) sensor for detection in marine environments.