Balaji Hariharan
Rajesh Krishnaswamy
Vishal Dogra
Mallory Embree
Mallory’s entire career has focused on researching and developing new methodologies to study both natural and synthetic microbial communities. Her area of expertise centers around the integration of bioinformatics with multiple omics datasets, physiological measurements, and metabolic modeling to examine microbial communities from a species-centric perspective. She has studied microbial communities from a diverse range of environments beyond livestock, including liver-disease mouse models, human skin microbiomes, brewery wastewater digesters, slow-growing methanogenic alkane-degrading enrichments, and low-biomass deep subsurface sediments from the ocean gyres.
Together with her co-founder, Mike Seely, Mallory founded Ascus Biosciences in 2015 to discover, develop, and commercialize first-in-class endomicrobial products for the animal health & nutrition industries. Outside of her passion for microbial communities and microbial product development, Mallory spends a lot of her free time working on airplanes, hot-air balloons and doing yoga. Mallory received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego.
About Ascus
Ascus Biosciences, based in San Diego, CA, is focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing first-in-class endomicrobial products for the animal health and nutrition industries. Founded in 2015, Ascus is pioneering the emerging science of endomicrobial ecology to illuminate microbial communities within animals, and the role they play in overall health and performance. Ascus has a broad pipeline of all-natural, endomicrobial products in development across livestock and companion animals. Galaxis is their lead product and could launch as early as 2018 in the dairy market.
Dr Thomas Kuri
Heather Wasserman
Ailis Tweed-Kent
Dr. Ailis Tweed-Kent is an up-and-coming entrepreneur and leader in the development of innovative medical technologies. With her education in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Ailis has first-hand knowledge of the burden of disease. In 2013, Ailis was inspired by her patients to found Cocoon to develop innovative silk therapeutics for osteoarthritis. Prior to Cocoon, she worked on the design, development, and delivery of diagnostic technologies for global health collaborating with organizations such as PEPFAR/Office of U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the Global Health Delivery Project. She brings a multidisciplinary approach with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Dorothy Brown
Dottie is the lead executional scientist for TCMR at Eli Lilly/Elanco. TCMR facilitates companion animal studies designed to de-risk assets in the Lilly pipeline, as well as assets of potential Lilly partners. At the University of Pennsylvania, Dottie led a sponsored translational research program focusing on the development of outcome assessment instruments for chronic pain in companion animals and applying those instruments to translational studies evaluating the efficacy of novel interventions, such as targeted neurotoxins, in dogs with naturally occurring bone cancer or osteoarthritis. At Eli Lilly/Elanco, she now directs companion animal studies across institutions in order to leverage high quality, systematic translational data with the goal of improving both human and animal health.
