Support for the Initiative for Open Innovation
Funding and partnerships
The IOI is initially funded through grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Lemelson Foundation. The IOI builds on Cambia’s Patent Lens, and is currently hosted at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.
Endorsed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)
The IOI and Cambia’s Patent Lens have been endorsed by Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Read the letter of endorsement here:
Endorsement from Francis Gurry (WIPO)
The International Advisory Council
The International Advisory Council (IAC) comprises prominent professionals whose leadership, expertise and responsibilities will help inform and advise on the scope, mechanisms, partnering, strategies, funding, and governance of the IOI. In this way, a consortium of public and private agencies, individuals and governments are working together to ensure an effective global facility evolves rapidly and efficiently.
IAC members as of December 2009
Dr. Jorge Ávila is a national of Brazil, and is currently President of the Brazilian National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). Jorge graduated in 1984 from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with a degree in Civil Engineering. In 1994, he obtained his Masters Degree in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COOPEAD/UFRJ). He obtained a PhD in 2003 on the subject of Public Health, from the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Jorge joined the Brazilian Oil Company PETROBRAS in 1987 as a Systems Analyst. From 1995 to 1999, he worked as Studies and Business Development Director at the Industrial Development Company of the State of Rio de Janeiro. In 1999, he joined the Brazilian Innovation Finance Agency (FINEP) as Executive Director, a post he held until March 2003. In April 2003, Jorge returned to PETROBRAS as a Business Consultant for institutional strategies and partnerships, where he stayed until September 2004, when he was designated the Vice-President of INPI.
As the leader of the Mozilla Project, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products. Baker was born and raised in Berkeley, California, receiving her BA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law. Her law career included working for Sun Microsystems and Netscape. She has also sat on the board of the Open Source Applications Foundation. Baker has been the general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999, helping shape the license under which Netscape’s source code was released. In 2003, she became president and founder of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. In 2005, Baker led the creation of Mozilla Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Baker served as CEO of the corporation until January 2008, when Mozilla’s rapid growth encouraged her to shift her focus back to the scope and mission of the project. As Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents. TIME Magazine profiled Baker under “Scientists and Thinkers” in its 2005 TIME 100. She has also appeared on The Charlie Rose Show and CNN Global Office to discuss open source software and the Firefox phenomenon. For the last three years, she has participated in the World Economic forum as a Technology Pioneer.
Seth Berkley is the president, CEO and founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a not-for-profit organization working in 24 countries to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. He is also a medical doctor specializing in infectious disease epidemiology and international health. Prior to founding IAVI in 1996, he was an officer of the Health Sciences Division at The Rockefeller Foundation. He has worked for the Center for Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and for the Carter Center, where he was assigned as an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Uganda. Seth played a key role in Uganda’s national HIV sero-survey and helped develop its National AIDS Control programs.
He is currently an adjunct Professor of Medicine at Brown University and an adjunct Professor of Public Health at Columbia University. He also sits on a number of international steering committees and corporate and not-for-profit boards, including those of Gilead Sciences, VaxInnate, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and the Acumen Fund, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Seth has been featured on the cover of Newsweek, recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and by Wired Magazine as among “The Wired 25″—a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders. The author of over 85 publications, Seth has written extensively on infectious disease and frequently serves as a media commentator on health technology development, AIDS and global health issues.
Dr. Shakeel Bhatti is the First Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Before joining FAO, Shakeel was at the United Nations in Geneva where he headed the Genetic Resources, Biotechnology and Associated Traditional Knowledge Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization. He was responsible for the work of the Organization on Intellectual Property law in relation to genetic resources, biodiversity, traditional knowledge and biotechnology. He was instrumental in the creation of the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, and served in the Secretariat of the Committee. Shakeel represented the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in the negotiations for the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), in the WTO, and in the genetic resource negotiations at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which led to the CBD Bonn Guidelines on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing. He has taught international patent law and genetic resource policy at several universities in India, Japan and Sweden, including the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, Center for Intellectual Property Rights Studies of Cochin University, Swedish Agricultural University and at other institutions.
Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari earned his PhD in 1978 from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. After a brief Postdoctoral stint in Paris, he returned to Molecular Biophysics Unit, IISc as Research Associate in 1979. He served as Faculty Member at IISc from 1981 until his retirement as Professor at IISc in 2002. He was Director, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (formerly Centre for Biochemical Technology), CSIR, from 1997-2007. At present he is Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and Secretary to Government of India, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Prof. Brahmachari pioneered the functional genomics initiative in India and led the Indian Genome Variation Consortium project. Currently he is leading the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) project and the Pharmacogenomics for affordable health programme in India, with global participation. He is a member of the HUGO Council and the Advisory Board of the X Prize in Genomics. As a member of the Expert Group on Human Rights and Biotechnology Commission of the United Nations, he has addressed issues of unethical exploitation of genetic resources of the Third World and has championed the rights of patients in benefit sharing in the development of genomic medicine. He is the elected Fellow of all three National Academies of Sciences in India, and the recipient of a large number of national and international awards.
Dr. Philip Campbell earned a Bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, a Master’s in astrophysics, and a PhD in upper atmospheric physics. Among the career options afforded him by 10 years of advanced training in the physical sciences, he made an unusual choice: he became an assistant editor at a multidisciplinary science journal. He spent 11 years at Nature — he served as Physical Sciences Editor for nine — before leaving in 1988 to launchPhysics World, an international magazine of the Institute of Physics widely regarded for its authority and accessibility. Philip returned to take the helm of Nature in 1995. During his tenure as Editor-in-Chief, circulation has increased nearly 20 percent; the journal remains the highest cited multidisciplinary journal; and the Nature Publishing Group, of which he is a board director, has created several Nature research journals in fields including neuroscience, cell biology, immunology, materials science, methods and chemical biology, as well as review journals in many areas and innovative online publications. He regularly writes articles for Nature and other publications on subjects spanning biology, physics, chemistry, national and international science policy, science and the public, bioterrorism and research ethics.
Janice Culpepper, PhD is a Senior Program Officer, Infectious Diseases, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is primarily focused on the development of vaccines for malaria; in her portfolio are grants to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium, as well as a number of grants to academic and research institutes. Prior to joining the foundation in 2007, she was an independent consultant in the areas of scientific operations and program management. Among her clients were Genome Canada and the Institute for OneWorld Health, where she was the Interim Project Leader for the biosynthetic artemisinin project 2005-2006. Janice held positions of increasing responsibility at Structural GenomiX, Inc. from 2000 to 2004; her last position was Sr. Vice President, Alliance Management, overseeing external collaborations in protein crystallography and technology transfer. From 1995 to 2000, she worked at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where she was responsible for a number of platform technologies used in gene discovery and validation. She has more than 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry. Janice completed post-doctoral fellowships at UCSF and at the DNAX Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA. She received her PhD in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University and her AB in Biology from Clark University.
A 19-year veteran of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Claire Driscoll has served as the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)’s Technology Transfer Office since 2002. At the NIH, NHGRI is the focal point for research into the genetics of human disease. In 2008, NHGRI’s intramural research program received approximately $US100 million dollars in research funding. Claire is responsible for the overall oversight of the Institute’s intramural patent and licensing portfolio, and she advises staff on technology transfer policy and related matters. Claire has given presentations, primarily on biomedical technology transfer and related Intellectual Property and licensing topics, at many conferences including Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), and Licensing Executives Society (LES)-sponsored events. Currently, Claire serves on the advisory boards of PXE International, a lay patient research advocacy organization, and the Genetic Alliance Biobank, a centralized blood and tissue repository, as well as the AUTM annual meeting program committee. Claire has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology from the University of Notre Dame, and a M.S. degree in Biotechnology Studies from the University of Maryland University College.
Dr. Chris Elias is President and Chief Executive Officer, leading PATH’s work in more than 70 countries in the areas of health technologies, maternal and child health, reproductive health, vaccines and immunization, and emerging and epidemic diseases. Chris represents PATH at domestic and international forums, both as a spokesperson for PATH and as an advocate for innovative responses to global health challenges. He serves on the boards of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Medicines for Malaria Venture, and the Washington Biomedical and Biotechnology Association, among others. Chris was honored as the Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year for the United States in 2006, and named Global Health Research Ambassador by the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research in 2007. Before joining PATH, Chris was a senior associate in the International Programs Division of the Population Council, where he served as the country representative in Thailand, managing reproductive health programs throughout Southeast Asia. His early career included two years in Thailand working with refugee assistance programs, first as a physician supervising a large pediatric ward in a refugee encampment, and then as a medical coordinator for the American Refugee Committee at the Thailand–Cambodia border. Chris received his MD from Creighton University and his MPH from the University of Washington.
John Gage joined KPCB in 2008, with a primary focus on Greentech. Prior to joining KPCB, he was a Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, an international information technology company based in California. He was one of the founders of Sun which was created in 1982, when a group of students and professors from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, joined to create open systems in hardware and software. He has served on the Boards of Trustees of the United States National Library of Medicine, FermiLabs, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute NetDay, Schools OnLine, United States National Research Council, the Internet Society (ISOC) and other scientific and educational groups. He serves on the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security, the Board of Advisors of the United States Institute of Peace, the National Academy of Sciences, and the International Advisory Board of the Malaysian Multimedia Corridor.
He attended the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Reinaldo Guimarães is chairman of the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Strategic Inputs of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Reinaldo holds a medical degree from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and a Masters in Social Medicine from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. He is Vice-President of Research and Development (Technology) at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (FIOCRUZ). Reinaldo has held several university posts and editorial positions, and has published widely in epidemiology and public health. He regularly comments on the status of scientific research in Brazil, advocating that Brazil’s National Policy in Science, Technology, and Innovation in Health should be based on the quest for equity in health and ethical research standards and practice, underpinned by a collaborative approach between health researchers and managers.
Dr. Francis Gurry was appointed Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Secretary-General of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) on October 1, 2008. Francis began his WIPO career in 1985, initially in the Development Cooperation and External Relations Bureau for Asia and the Pacific. He was instrumental in establishing the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in 1994, and subsequently in developing the highly successful Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. He served on the WIPO top management team from 1997, initially as Assistant Director General, then from 2003 as Deputy Director General with responsibility for patents and the PCT system, the Arbitration and Mediation Center, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and genetic resources. Before joining WIPO, Francis practiced as an attorney in Australia, and taught law at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He holds law degrees from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of numerous publications and articles on Intellectual Property issues in international journals.
An Australian national, Francis speaks fluent English, French, and some Spanish.
Dr. Pamela Hartigan is Executive Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School at the University of Oxford. She is also founding partner of Volans Ventures, an organization launched in 2008 and focused on building innovative scalable solutions to challenges affecting our future. Prior to starting Volans, Pamela spent eight years as the first Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum where she was also on the Forum Managing Board. The Schwab Foundation is focused on advancing the practice of social entrepreneurship globally, building and supporting its community of practitioners whose efforts have achieved transformational social change. Throughout her career, she has held varied leadership positions in multilateral health organizations and educational institutions as well as in entrepreneurial non-profits. She has been responsible for conceptualizing and creating new organizations, departments and programs across a variety institutional arrangements and multi-stakeholder platforms. She is currently a Trustee for the following social enterprises: Cambia (Australia), Endeavor (USA), INDEX (Denmark), GEXSI (Germany), Mobile Metrix (Brazil), and The Story Museum (UK). A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., she also holds Masters degrees in Economics and Public Health and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology.
As Corporate Vice President of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research, Dr. Tony Hey oversees the worldwide external research and technical computing strategy of Microsoft Corporation. He leads the company’s efforts to build long-term public-private partnerships with global scientific and engineering communities. These span broad-reach and in-depth engagements with academic and research institutions, related government agencies, and industry partners. In this role, Tony also oversees Microsoft Research’s efforts to enhance the quality of higher education globally. Before joining Microsoft, Tony served as director of the UK’s e-Science Initiative, managing the UK Government’s endeavors to provide scientists and researchers with access to key computing technologies. His own research has focused on parallel programming, and he is notably a co-author of the first draft specification for the message-passing standard MPI. Tony is a fellow of the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering. He has also served on several national committees in the UK, including committees of the UK Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Science and Technology. Tony is a graduate of Oxford University, with both an undergraduate degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical physics. He is author of books on quantum mechanics and relativity.
Joichi ‘Joi’ Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons, and founder and CEO of Neoteny, a venture capital firm focused on personal communications and enabling technologies. A well-known entrepreneur, angel investor, and activist, Joi is founder of PSINet Japan, Digital Garage, and Infoseek Japan. He sits on the boards of Machinima.com, EPIC, Technorati, WITNESS, and Global Voices Online. Joi’s contribution to Internet culture and entrepreneurialism has been recognized in his naming by BusinessWeek as ‘one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web’ in 2008. In 2001, Joi was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the ‘Global Leaders of Tomorrow.’ His editorials have appeared in The New York Times and Asian Wall Street Journal, and his photographs have featured in BusinessWeek, American Heritage, Wired News, and BBC News. He is the author of a number of books including Dialog – Ryu Murakami X Joichi Ito and Freesouls, a photographic celebration of activists, creators, inventors, hackers and entrepreneurs, whose images are licensed freely under Creative Commons Attribution. Joi is a passionate advocate of emergent democracy and the sharing economy. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Business Administration at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University.
Li Jiayang, a plant molecular geneticist and CAS member, was born in Feixi County, Anhui Province. In 1982, he graduated from Anhui Agricultural College (now Anhui Agricultural University). In 1991, he obtained his PhD from Brandeis University at Waltham, Massachusetts. From 1991 to 1994, he carried out Postdoctoral research at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University. After returning to China, he served as assistant director and director of the CAS Institute of Genetics and Biological Development (IGBD). In January 2004, he was appointed as vice president of CAS. The main interest of Prof. Li’s scientific research is focused on the regulatory mechanisms of plant growth and development by making use of model plants such as Arabidopsis and crop rice. His recent research work includes the following: isolation and characterization of MONOCULM 1 (MOC1), a gene that is important in the control of rice tillering; characterization of the classic rice mutant brittle culm1 (bc1) and cloning of the BC1 gene, thus elucidating the molecular mechanism that controls the mechanical strength of rice; revealing the relation between biosynthesis of choline and temperature-sensitive male sterility through identification of an Arabidopsis mutant defective in the choline biosynthesis; identification of genes responsive to brassinosteroid and finding that the brassinosteroid can promote cell division; and, development of a plant expression system to generate transgenic Arabidopsis mutants.
Olav Kjorven joined UNDP in March 2005 from the Government of Norway, where he has held the position of State Secretary for International Development since 2001. Together with Hilde Johnson – the Minister of International Development – Olav has been responsible for policy making and the overall management of Norwegian international development efforts, including a major reorganization of aid administration. Olav also held the post of Political Adviser to the Minister on International Development and Human Rights from 1997 to 2000. Prior to working for the Norwegian Government, Olav was Director of International Development at the Centre for Economic Analysis, in 2000-2001. Much of his work in this consulting firm was related to energy and environment issues. Olav also held the position of Environmental Specialist at the World Bank from 1992 to 1997; in particular he was involved in the development of and support to the World Bank’s environmental and social quality assurance system for lending operations, including developing policies, procedures, and knowledge management tools and resources. Olav holds a Master of Arts in International Affairs from George Washington University.
Professor Kiyoshi Kurokawa received his MD degree from the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine in 1962. After completion of clinical training in medicine and its subspecialty of nephrology, Prof. Kurokawa moved in 1969 to University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as a fellow in Biochemistry. Prof. Kurokawa then moved to UCLA, USC, and returned to UCLA School of Medicine where he was appointed as Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Nephrology, at West LA VA Medical Center. Following his academic career in the USA, which spanned over 14 years, he returned to the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine in 1984, and assumed the position of Professor and Chair of Department of Medicine in 1990. He became Dean of Tokai University School of Medicine in 1997. Prof. Kurokawa is board certified in internal medicine and its subspecialty of nephrology by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is a member of prestigious professional societies in both USA and Japan, including ASCI, AAP, IOM, and Master of American College of Physicians in US, and Science Council of Japan. He is a board member of the Japanese Societies of Medicine, of Nephrology, and is currently President of the International Society of Nephrology. He has served as Science Advisor to the Ministry of Education and Culture of Japan, and serves on many advisory and academic committees of the Ministries of Health and Welfare, the Science and Technology Agency, the National Space and Development Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Prof. Kurokawa has published over 300 papers in prestigious journals and given many invited lectures and seminars in national and international conferences, congresses, and grand rounds/seminars in many medical schools in US and Japan.
Dr. David Lipman is currently the Director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which is a division of the National Library of Medicine within the National Institutes of Health. NCBI was created by Congress in 1988 to do basic research in computational biology, and to develop computational tools, databases and information systems for molecular biology. After medical training, David joined the Mathematical Research Branch of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) as a Research Fellow. In his research on computational tools, he developed the most widely used methods for searching biological sequence databases. There are thousands of citations to Dr. Lipman’s methods in papers which have used them to discover biological functions for unknown sequences and which have thereby advanced the understanding of the molecular basis of human disease. Since 1989, David has been the Director of the NCBI, a leading research center in computational biology and the creators of PubMed, one of the most heavily used sites in the world for the search and retrieval of biomedical information.
Malebona Precious Matsoso is a Director in Public Health Innovation and Intellectual Property (PHI) in the office of the Director General, serving as WHO Secretariat on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. Precious has been the Director of the Department of Technical Cooperation for Essential Drugs and Traditional Medicines. Prior to this, she was the Registrar of Medicines of the National Drug Regulatory Authority in South Africa, the Medicines Control Council. She has been a senior official in the South African Government for nine and a half years and also served as Secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) harmonization initiative and has coordinated related activities for the region for effective regulation of medicines in the region. She has served in various bodies including the Medicines Control Council, which she headed for 7 years, responsible for overseeing 10 technical committees. She has been a member of the National Research Ethics Council in South Africa and has produced over 40 technical guidelines for the medicines regulatory authority in South Africa. She directed the development of the National Drug Policy and the Essential Drugs Programme for South Africa. She has been a member of various advisory panels locally and internationally, mainly tasked with improving access to medicines.
Mr. Sisule F. Musungu, a Kenyan national, is the President of IQsensato, a Geneva-based research organization that serves as a platform for promoting the research and thinking of developing country’s experts in international policy discussions on a range of development-related issues. He also consults for, and acts as an advisor to many international, regional and national organizations including a number of United Nations agencies, in addition to board memberships in a number of organizations in Africa, Europe and the United States. Previously, Sisule worked as an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School; the Coordinator of the Innovation and Access to Knowledge Programme at the South Centre; and as an Associate at the law firm Hamilton, Harrison and Mathews in Kenya. His research specialization and expertise are in Intellectual Property law and policy, particularly the relationship between various categories of IP and development; knowledge governance and access to knowledge; innovation for development; and international Human Rights law. He also has an interest and has participated in a number of scenario building processes. Sisule is widely published in his areas of specialization and expertise.
Julia Novy-Hildesley is Executive Director of The Lemelson Foundation. Along with a team of advisors and staff, Julia develops and implements the Foundation’s programs and oversees operations. The unifying theme across Julia’s past and current work is forging multi-stakeholder partnerships to unleash innovation and develop strategies for economic growth that sustain natural resources. She has worked extensively toward these goals with government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private sector partners in the U.S., Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Indonesia, India, French Polynesia, and other countries. Julia earned a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in International Development from the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University in the United Kingdom, funded by a Marshall Scholarship. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology with a Minor in African Studies and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University. A Fellow of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program, Julia was recognized as one of Portland Business Journal’s 2008 “Forty leading business people under the age of 40,” and featured in Oregon Business Magazine’s 2005 “50 Great Leaders for Oregon.” She speaks French, Spanish, and Kiswahili.
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O’Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, and the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar, “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is an activist for open source and open standards, and an opponent of software patents and other incursions of new Intellectual Property laws into the public domain. Tim’s long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
Michael S. Rabson, PhD has served as Cytokinetics Inc. Senior Vice President, Business Development & Legal Affairs and General Counsel, since March 2008. From September 1999 to March 2008, he served as General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Maxygen, Inc., a biotechnology company. From 1996 to 1999, Mike was a member of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. From 1985 to 1986, he was a patent examiner focused on biotechnology and genetic engineering at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. From 1983 to 1985, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. Mike received a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University, a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Dr. Steve Reed is the founder and Head of Research and Development of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI). He also co-founded Corixa Corporation in 1994, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer until 2004. His academic appointments include Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York, and Research Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Washington. He serves on several editorial review committees, has served as a member of the Tropical Medicine Review Board of the National Institutes of Health, and is a member of the Vaccine Development Steering Committee of the World Health Organization. Steve was born in rural eastern Washington, graduated from Whitman College in 1973, and received a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Montana in 1979. That year he was appointed as Scientist of the National Institute of Amazon Research in Manaus, Brazil, where he directed research on tropical diseases. Steve joined Cornell University Medical College in 1980 as Assistant Professor of Medicine, continuing to work in Brazil as manager of the Cornell-Bahia program in International Medicine. He joined the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in 1984, where he worked until founding IDRI in 1993. Steve’s research interests have focused on the immunology of intracellular infections, and on the development of vaccines and diagnostics for both cancer and infectious diseases. He has more than 210 original articles, several book chapters, and holds 100 issued patents for diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics of infectious diseases and cancer.
Maximiliano Santa Cruz is Counselor at the Mission of Chile to the World Trade Organization and has been recently named director of the Chilean National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI), the Chilean IP Office. He obtained his law degree from the Universidad de Chile, and a LL.M. from the University of San Francisco, California, U.S., in International Transactions and Comparative Law with a concentration on Intellectual Property and Information Technologies. Since January 2005, he has worked in the Permanent Mission of Chile to the WTO, in charge of Intellectual Property issues and trade facilitation. During his employment in Geneva, he has acted as Second Vice-Chair of the WIPO Coordination Committee; First Vice-Chair of the WIPO Coordination Committee; Vice-Chair of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications (SCT); and Chair of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents. From 1999 to 2004, he worked at the Economic Directorate (Direcon) of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was in charge of Intellectual Property issues in Direcon, first working in the Trade Policy/WTO Department, and then as the Head of the intellectual Property Unit. He was head negotiator in Intellectual Property in the free trade agreements between Chile and the European Union, the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), Korea and the agreement between Chile, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore (known as P4). He was also negotiator in the agreement with the United States and in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Dr. Sibusiso Sibisi took office as President of the CSIR South Africa on 1 January 2002. He previously held the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Born in Mariannhill, KwaZulu-Natal, Sibusiso completed a BSc (Hons) in physics in London and obtained a PhD from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Cambridge University, in 1983. Sibusiso joined the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand in 1984, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in 1988. He returned to Cambridge in 1989 to assume a research position at DAMTP, and in 1991, co-founded a research-based small enterprise at Cambridge. On his return to South Africa in 1997, Sibusiso joined Plessey as Executive Director before joining UCT. He is well known in science circles for the role he played as chairperson of the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI). He is the chairperson of the Denel Board and a board member of Liberty Life. Sibusiso was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe: Silver by President Thabo Mbeki in September 2007. National Orders are bestowed on South Africans who contribute to the betterment of the country in their respective fields and represent the highest award that the country, through its President, bestows on its citizens. The Order of Mapungubwe represents ingenuity and excellence, and is awarded for exceptional achievement.
Tony Taubman is currently Director, Intellectual Property Division, World Trade Organization, with responsibility for Intellectual Property, competition and government procurement. From 2002 to 2009, he was Director, Global Intellectual Property Issues Division, including the Traditional Knowledge Division and Life Sciences Program of WIPO, which covers a wide range of programs on Intellectual Property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, the life sciences, and related global issues including the environment, climate change, human rights, food security, bioethics and indigenous issues. After a diplomatic career, Tony left the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2001 to join the newly-formed Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, at the Australian National University, teaching and researching on international IP law. From 1998 to 2001, he was Director of the International Intellectual Property Section of DFAT, and in that capacity was engaged in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on Intellectual Property issues, domestic policy development, regional cooperation, and TRIPS dispute settlement. In 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a Bellagio residential fellowship for his work on TRIPS and public policy issues. He joined DFAT in 1988 as a career diplomat, and his service included disarmament policy and participation in the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention, a posting in the Australian Embassy in Tehran as Deputy Head of Mission, and a posting to the Hague as Alternate Representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Chair of the Expert Group on Confidentiality.
Tan Tieniu is Professor and Director of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR). He also serves as Deputy Secretary-General (for cyber-infrastructure and international affairs) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Head of the Department of Automation, The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Prof. Tan received his B.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, in 1984, and his M.Sc. and PhD degrees in electronic engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, U.K. In 1998, he returned to China to join the NLPR Institute of Automation of CAS, and was the Director General of the CAS Institute of Automation from 2000-2007. Prof. Tan is a Fellow of the IEEE and the International Association of Pattern Recognition. He has served as chair or program committee member for many major national and international conferences. He has served on the editorial boards of international journals including numerous ITEE Transactions. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Automation and Computing, and Acta Automatica Sinica. He is the Founding Chair of the IAPR Technical Committee on Biometrics, founding chair of the IAPR/IEEE International Conference on Biometrics and the IEEE International Workshop on Visual Surveillance. Prof. Tan has published more than 300 research papers, authored or edited nine books, and holds more than 20 patents. He has given invited talks and keynotes at many universities and international conferences, and has received numerous national and international awards and recognitions.
Hans Wigzell, a Professor of Immunology at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), also serves as a Chief Scientific Advisor to the Swedish Government and is on the scientific advisory boards of several biotechnology companies. Professor Wigzell previously served as President of the Karolinska Institutet (1995–2003), Chairman of the Nobel Committee (1990-1992), and a Chairman of the Nobel Assembly (2000). His previous affiliations have also included positions as Chairman of the WHO-UNAIDS Vaccine Advisory Committee, Secretary-General of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, and Director General of the National Bacteriological Laboratory in Stockholm. Professor Wigzell, who holds both M.D. and D.Sc. degrees, is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, EMBO, and Academia Europea. In addition, Professor Wigzell is an honorary member of the American Society for Immunology, has received numerous awards, published over 600 articles and is a member of the editorial boards of several international journals. His main fields of research are medicine, pathology, and immunology, with emphasis on topics such as the regulation of antibody synthesis and of transplantation immunity, describing and analyzing components of the immune system, immunity in the maternal-foetal context, immunity in relation to HIV and other infections, DNA as a tool in diagnosis and gene analysis.
Cambia IP and informatics specialists
Cambia has been working on the Patent Lens to create transparency in the patent system, and to serve the public worldwide as a platform resource to explore, understand and improve its impact on society. The IOI is supported by Cambia’s informatics team as well as its Executive, Administrative and Intellectual Property teams.