Talk About Pharmaceutical Partnerships to Advocate for Basic Research

Anirvan Ghosh serves as the senior vice president of research and early development at Biogen. Prior to joining Biogen, Ghosh served as the founding chief scientific officer at E-Scape Bio, a biotech company developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders, and as VP/global head of neuroscience discovery and biomarkers at Roche, where he also headed the biomarkers and clinical imaging group. Ghosh received his PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University and did his postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School. He has held academic appointments at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of California, San Diego, where his research focuses on understanding how connections in the brain are established during development and how they may be affected in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Timothy Denison holds a joint appointment in engineering science and clinical neurosciences at Oxford University, where he explores the fundamentals of physiologic closed-loop systems. Prior to that, Denison was a technical fellow at Medtronic PLC and the vice president of research and core technology for the Restorative Therapies Group, where he helped oversee the design of next generation neural interface and algorithm technologies for the treatment of chronic neurological disease. He received a PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rita Balice-Gordon, PhD, is the head of neuroscience research at Sanofi Genzyme. She leads teams of scientists prosecuting targets relevant to neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation, and central nervous system rare disease. Balice-Gordon is on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Board of Scientific Councilors and SfN’s Government and Public Affairs Committee, and she was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2015. She earned her BA in biological sciences from Northwestern University and PhD in neurobiology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Moses V. Chao is professor of cell biology, physiology, and neuroscience and psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. Chao received his BA from Pomona College and PhD from UCLA in biochemistry. His laboratory defined the genes encoding the NGF receptor and his research interests are in defining mechanisms used by trophic factors to change synaptic plasticity. Trophic factors are responsible for neuronal survival, learning and memory, pain, obesity, anxiety and counteracting neurodegeneration. He served as Senior Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience for eleven years and is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards for the Simons Foundation, Target ALS, and the Pershing Square Foundation. He also served on the Scientific Boards of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation; the Glaucoma Research Foundation; St. Jude’s Cancer Center; the Crick Institute, the Max Planck Institute, the Vollum Institute and the New York Stem Cell Foundation. Chao was the President of the Society for Neuroscience for 2012.