a2 National Symposium

Daniel Belsky, PhD, is an associate professor of epidemiology in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

In his research, Dr. Belsky aims to reduce social inequalities in aging outcomes in the United States and elsewhere. His research sits at the intersection of public health, population and behavioral science, and genomics. His studies seek to understand how genes and environments combine to shape health across the life course. Using tools from genome science and longitudinal data from population-based cohort studies and randomized trials, he aims to identify targets for policy and clinical interventions to promote positive development and extend healthspan. Dr. Belsky received his PhD in health policy and management from the Gillings School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his postdoctoral training at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University Medical Center.

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Tony Chan, JD, is global co-leader of Orrick’s Life Sciences & HealthTech Sector. His practice focuses on representing private equity and strategic clients in the life sciences, healthcare, investment management and tech sectors on complex domestic and cross-border corporate transactions. Chan regularly advises on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity, growth equity, and venture capital transactions, as well as on corporate governance, joint ventures, and corporate finance matters. He has been recognized for his life sciences and M&A work by a number of notable publications, including The Legal 500 US, Law360, IFLR1000, and Legal Media Group. In particular, Law360 highlighted his work in navigating the complex life sciences industry and key partnership negotiations between biotechnology and drug companies.

In addition, Chan sustains an active pro bono practice, serving as counsel to nonprofit organizations such as Aequitas, APAI Vote, Chefs Stopping Asian American Hate, Rebuilding Together Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Film Society, and the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance. Chan also serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School where he has taught Takeovers, Mergers, and Acquisitions since 2015.

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Luigi Ferrucci, MD, PhD, is a geriatrician and epidemiologist whose work centers on uncovering the biological mechanisms that drive physical and cognitive decline in older adults. As scientific director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) since 2011, he has advanced interdisciplinary research that integrates neuroimaging, physiology, genomics, and emerging AI-enabled methods to better understand the aging process.

Dr. Ferrucci’s career spans decades of pioneering research, including leadership of the Longitudinal Studies Section at NIA and the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, as well as major contributions in the design of many epidemiological studies conducted in the United States and Europe.

Vadim Gladyshev, PhD, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Redox Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Gladyshev’s lab focuses on studying aging, rejuvenation, and lifespan control using a combination of experimental and computational approaches. He has published more than 400 articles. Dr. Gladyshev is the recipient of NIH Pioneer, Transformative, and Eureka awards and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Todd Haim, PhD, serves as senior advisor on biomedical innovation at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and directs the NIA Office of Strategic Extramural Programs. He oversees approximately $150 million in annual seed funding that supports startups advancing cutting-edge technologies in aging, including AI-driven tools, digital health solutions, and next-generation biomedical innovations. Dr. Haim leads a team dedicated to strengthening NIA’s training, career development, and small business programs, expanding resources that help innovators translate scientific discoveries into real-world impact.

Before joining NIA, Dr. Haim served as program director at the National Cancer Institute’s SBIR Development Center and held roles at the National Academy of Sciences and Pfizer. He earned his PhD in biomedical research from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a technology commercialization certificate from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Dr. Haim’s work has been recognized nationally through multiple awards, including the 2024 Champion of Small Business Commercialization Award and several NIH Director’s Awards.

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Albert Higgins-Chen, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University where he is a principal investigator. During his MD/PhD training at the University of Michigan, Dr. Higgins-Chen worked with C. elegans, identifying genes regulating aging and longevity. He is a clinically trained psychiatrist and has applied aging biomarkers to investigate how mental health and treatment affect aging. He now develops new methods for measuring the biological aging process and the effects of aging interventions.

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Anand Iyer, PhD, MBA, is the chief AI officer at Welldoc, a global leader in digital health innovation. A pioneer in the integration of AI, digital therapeutics, and mobile health, he played a central role in developing BlueStar®, the first FDA-cleared digital therapeutic for adults with type 2 diabetes. Since joining Welldoc in 2008, he has served in multiple leadership roles, including president, COO, and chief strategy officer, and has previously been recognized as Maryland Healthcare Innovator of the Year and as a global thought leader on Constellation Research’s AI 150 list.

With a career spanning technology, strategy, and regulatory policy, Dr. Iyer previously directed PRTM’s wireless consulting practice, helping global firms harness disruptive technologies and new business models. He co-founded the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, founded the In-Building Wireless Alliance, and teaches advanced wireless technologies to senior officers in the U.S. Department of Defense at the Institute for Defense and Business. He holds a PhD and MS in electrical and computer engineering and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jason Karlawish, MD, is a professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy, and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as co-director of the Penn Memory Center and co-principal investigator and Clinical Translation and Validation Core co-lead for PennAITech. Dr. Karlawish is a physician and writer who researches and writes about issues at the intersections of bioethics, aging, and the neurosciences. He is the author of The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It and the novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont. His essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The Hill, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, STAT, and The Washington Post. He is the producer of The Age of Aging, a podcast that examines how to live well with an aging brain.

Dr. Karlawish serves on the Pennsylvania Advisory Council on Elder Justice in the Courts; AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health; the Board of Directors for The Greenwall Foundation, a grant making foundation dedicated to expanding bioethics knowledge to improve clinical, biomedical, and public health decision-making, policy, and practice; and for Play On! Philly, a nonprofit providing orchestral music education for underserved children throughout Philadelphia.

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Rose Maria Li, PhD, MBA, is the president and CEO of Rose Li and Associates, Inc. and co-principal investigator of the a2 Collective Coordinating Center. The U.S. Small Business Administration named Dr. Li the 2024 Small Business Person of the Year for Maryland. She was also honored in 2024 to receive small business leadership awards from the International Leadership Foundation and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. Since 2016, she has served by appointment of the governor as chairperson of the Maryland Commission on Aging. By appointment of the governor, she also served on the Maryland State Board of Education (2016–2021).

Prior to founding RLA, Dr. Li served the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in leadership roles, including as senior policy advisor to the NIH Office of Extramural Research, special assistant for policy development with the NIH Office of Communication and Public Liaison, chief of the Population and Social Processes Branch within the National Institute on Aging Division of Behavioral and Social Research, and health scientist administrator with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She earned her BA in economics and MBA in finance and international business, both from the University of Chicago, and her PhD from Princeton University in public and international affairs, with a concentration in population policy. She completed postdoctoral research in demography, epidemiology, and economics of aging in Asia at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Kunal Parikh, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine in the divisions of glaucoma and nanomedicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute and at the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design within the JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Parikh leads a translational, R01-funded, interdisciplinary lab of engineers, scientists, and clinicians working together to create and translate novel biomedical solutions to alleviate human suffering at scale. His research program utilizes biodesign and insight-informed innovation methodologies to develop digital health technologies, surgical instruments, medical devices, multi-functional biomaterials, and therapeutics that can be readily scaled and adopted into clinical practice to enable access to care, improve treatment outcomes, and prevent post-operative complications. Several of his laboratory’s inventions have been licensed to industry or formed the basis for startup companies (Eyedea Medical, Cove Therapeutics, Samata Therapeutics, Visilant), including multiple commercial products.

Previously, Dr. Parikh built and served as the executive director of the Social Innovation Lab at JHU, where he advised and funded mission-driven entrepreneurs. Prior to arriving in Baltimore, he was the founding CEO of Core Quantum Technologies, a venture-backed biotechnology company developing superior imaging and detection reagents. Dr. Parikh earned his PhD in biomedical engineering at JHU where he was a Roche/ARCS Scholar and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Nick Patel has helped build an organization prepared to bring cutting-edge technology solutions to the senior living industry and beyond. With more than 20 years of experience with Fortune 500 companies across multiple business sectors, Patel has a deep understanding of strategic planning, finance, operations, and sales management in domestic and international markets.

Phillip Phan, PhD, is the Alonzo and Virginia Decker Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, a professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and a core faculty member at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. At JH AITC, Dr. Phan serves as co-principal investigator and Networking and Mentoring Core director. An author of more than 300 peer-reviewed research articles and author/editor of 13 scholarly books, Dr. Phan’s academic and professional work focuses on the commercialization of biomedical technology and health services research, technological innovations that emphasize patient safety, quality, and biomedicine, as well as AI applications for patient care.

Rick Robinson has led teams building products and boosting startups at AARP’s Innovation Labs and the AgeTech Collaborative for 6 years. Prior to that he cofounded venture-backed and public companies, with two exits, and led product and content functions at AOL, Sprint, Politico and NatGeo.

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Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, is the founder, CEO,and CBO of Insilico Medicine, a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation generative AI and robotics platforms for drug discovery. Since 2014, he has invented critical technologies in the field of generative AI and reinforcement learning for the generation of novel molecular structures with the desired properties and the generation of synthetic biological and patient data. Under his leadership, Insilico raised over $530 million in multiple rounds from expert biotechnology, healthcare, and financial investors, opened R&D centers in 8 countries and regions, and partnered with multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic institutions. Since 2021, the company nominated more than 22 preclinical candidates, 10 of which reached clinical stage, and one program with a novel target and novel molecule completed Phase IIa in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with favorable safety, tolerability, and encouraging dose-dependent efficacy.

Since 2012, Dr. Zhavoronkov has published over 310 peer-reviewed research papers, with over 30 papers in the field of generative adversarial networks, generative reinforcement learning, and multi-modal transformers, and three books. He serves on the advisory or editorial boards of Trends in Molecular Medicine, Aging Research Reviews, Aging, and Frontiers in Genetics, and founded and co-chairs the annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery Meeting. Dr. Zhavoronkov is the adjunct professor of AI at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

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