Fighting AMR in Benin with Dr. Victorien Dougnon

Dr. Bruce D. Walker is a physician-scientist and T cell immunologist, the founding Director of the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT and Harvard, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of the Practice of Medicine at MIT.  

Dr. Walker received a BS in chemistry in 1980 from the University of Colorado, Boulder, also attending the Swiss Federal Technical Institute (ETH), and his MD from Case Western Reserve University. He performed his internship and residency training in internal medicine at MGH and Harvard Medical School, where he also completed an internship in pathology and specialty training in infectious disease. He is a native of Boulder, Colorado, and is board-certified in both internal medicine and infectious disease.  Together with Arlene Sharpe, he is also the co-director of the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR), a collaboration among more than 800 local scientists focused on pandemic preparedness from Harvard, MIT, BU, Tufts, UMass, the academic teaching hospitals, and the Department of Health in Massachusetts. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Walker’s laboratory studies T cell responses to chronic viral infections, using HIV as a model system.  His lab focuses on learning from patients to determine how the body fights back against viral infections using HIV as a highly relevant example, trying to uncover mechanisms by which it succeeds and, importantly, why it usually fails.  They study blood samples from persons with chronic HIV infection as well as from elite controllers, persons who are able to control HIV infection to undetectable levels without the need for antiretroviral therapy (ART).  His work extends to international collaborations, particularly with investigators at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, where Dr. Walker helped catalyze the creation of two research institutes.  

Jonathan M. Spector MD MPH has practiced pediatrics and public health for 20+ years. His clinical activities span fieldwork with Médecins Sans Frontières in remote Africa to intensive newborn care at Massachusetts General Hospital. His interest in health systems fueled a portfolio of research at Harvard School of Public Health to support maternal and newborn health in low resource settings. As part of that work, he led the design and early testing of the World Health Organization’s Safe Childbirth Checklist. Jonathan later directed the opening of Lao Friends Hospital for Children, the first comprehensive pediatric medical center in northern Lao PDR. Now at Novartis, he leads portfolio strategy, partnering, and access-to-medicine solutions for the Novartis Global Health research unit—helping to bring novel therapies “bench-to-bedside” to address major unsolved health challenges.

Aravinda Souza is a communications and content marketing leader for high-growth, agile technology companies who value customer experience as paramount. She thrives on being a player-coach in high-performing, nurturing teams and prioritizing both speed and quality simultaneously. As a writer, speaker, researcher, and storyteller, and Vinda is passionate about communicating across all platforms.

Al Ozonoff, PhD, CPPS is Senior Advisor to Dr. Pardis Sabeti and Chief of Staff of the Sabeti Lab. In these roles, he provides administrative leadership and senior scientific expertise across the full range of lab activities and research. He provides further programmatic support as the U.S. Director for the Sentinel Program. Al is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a faculty scientist within the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Al applies his training in mathematics, statistics, epidemiology, and data science in pursuit of population-based improvement in the health of children and adults. His research focuses on the development and application of methods for surveillance of health and disease. As a surveillance methodologist, he is most engaged in areas of public health surveillance, infectious disease surveillance, and hospital-based surveillance with an emphasis on patient safety and healthcare quality.

Al’s graduate and post-doctoral training was in mathematics (University of California, Santa Barbara, under D. Darren Long) and biostatistics (Harvard School of Public Health, under Marcello Pagano). He has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications throughout more than 20 years of research experience. He was Principal Investigator of two R01 grant awards: a 3-year project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BioSense Program, “Improving syndromic surveillance by data integration” (R01 PH000021-02), and a 5-year project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), “Patient safety surveillance using machine learning and free text clinical” (R01 HS026246-01A1).

As a leading expert during the early phases of the pandemic, Al led the Clinical and Data Coordinating Center for IMPACC, a national immunophenotyping study of COVID-19 funded by the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIH/NIAID). In 2016-17, he was one of 12 Harvard Medical School Fellows in Bioethics.

Outside of work, Al enjoys spending time with his family and learning from teachers in contemplative traditions. He has played semi-professional football for over 25 years, most recently with the Randolph Oilers of the East Coast Football League.

Michelle Niescierenko, MD, MPH is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician, director of the Global Health Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Health Specialist with Avenir Analytics. The Boston Children’s Global Health Program works to improve child health globally through partnerships for clinical quality improvement, education, research and advocacy in over 30 countries around the world. ??Avenir Analytics health focus on high quality humanitarian health systems interventions.

She has experience in pediatric care and program development in China, Bolivia, Lesotho, Guatemala, Liberia, Indonesia, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria. In Liberia she provided pediatric humanitarian aid in the immediate post-conflict setting partnering local remaining infrastructure to US academic institutions for the last 10 years. Through these partnerships, sustainable programs for health system rebuilding including physician education and care for vulnerable children were developed in Liberia. During the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak she lead the Liberian hospital public health response utilizing a rapid deployment of training done by local healthcare workers. This work continued into Liberia’s recovery phase with implementation of a national program for hospital quality improvement and emergency care training. Her particular areas of interest are in the provision of healthcare in humanitarian settings through system development, the development of emergency care systems for children as well as the role of children in humanitarian crises.

Harvey Lodish has been a leader in molecular cell biology as well as a biotechnology entrepreneur for over five decades. Much of his early research focused on the regulation of messenger RNA translation and the biogenesis of plasma membrane glycoproteins. Beginning in the 1980s, his research focused on cloning and characterizing many proteins, microRNAs, and long noncoding RNAs important for red cell development and function. His laboratory was the first to clone and sequence mRNAs encoding many hormone receptors, mammalian glucose transport proteins, and proteins important for adipose cell formation and function. He went on to identify and characterize several genes and proteins involved in insulin resistance and stress responses in adipose cells. Over the years, he has mentored hundreds of undergraduates, PhD and MD/PhD students, and postdoctoral fellows, and continues to teach award-winning undergraduate and graduate classes on biotechnology. 

Chad Jackson, PhD is a translational science executive focused on developing breakthrough therapies for inherited retinal diseases (IRDs), dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and other vision disorders. With a background in visual neuroscience (Ph.D., Emory) and over a decade of experience spanning the nonprofit, federal, and academic sectors, he specializes in advancing complex therapeutics—like gene therapies and regenerative approaches—from lab to clinic.

At the Foundation Fighting Blindness, Dr. Jackson leads a $50M+ portfolio of preclinical and early clinical-stage programs, including a first-in-kind $46M whole eye transplant effort funded by ARPA-H. His role blends scientific strategy, regulatory readiness, funding acquisition, and multi-site team leadership. He has conducted scientific due diligence for promising biotech startups, advised C-suite leadership on go/no-go decisions, and forged partnerships across academic labs, CROs, and government agencies.

Previously, he supported national R&D priorities through roles at DARPA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the U.S. State Department. These experiences sharpened his ability to navigate federal innovation ecosystems and scale novel technologies for societal impact.

Ina Jamuna Breuer is Executive Director of NEID Global, which is a national peer-to-peer learning community of global donors, social investors, and family foundations. NEID Global’s mission is to convene and empower donors to help address the world’s big problems and does so through 50 events per year, two Giving Circles focused on core issues of international development, and a bi-annual Symposium.

NEID offers its members a journey that helps them learn, connect, inspire, and act. This journey entails providing members access to experts, to other global philanthropists and to safe spaces to learn from each other.

Previously Ina was the Executive Director of Beyond Conflict, where she worked for 17 years to help leaders in the Middle East, Central America, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and South Asia address difficult challenges relating to reconciliation and change. At Beyond Conflict Ina launched the Neuroscience and Social Conflict Initiative in 2008, which now forms the core of Beyond Conflict’s work and has led to a new area of inquiry at the intersection of brain science and conflict resolution. Prior to BC, Ina was the Assistant Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. In the early 1990s TCDS was a hub for dissidents from Eastern Europe and was focused on helping rebuild civil society and the political culture needed for democracies to flourish in the former communist region. Ina began her career at the Foundation for Civil Society, where she was involved in educational and environmental programming in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She completed her studies at Northwestern University, the Free University of Berlin and the New School for Social Research.  Ina is a German citizen that was born and raised in India and South Korea. She recently also became a US national. 

Paul is responsible for individual outreach to increase philanthropic support for Seeding Labs. He is an experienced fundraising professional with broad knowledge and understanding of resource development and advancement in major research universities and public trusts. 

In previous roles at The University of Massachusetts, MIT, Harvard University, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, Paul cultivated relationships within the philanthropic community, garnering support for programs and priorities spanning nuclear engineering, global health, climate science/energy, and demographic and survey research.

Paul’s educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is active in his alma mater, serving on the Department of Political Science Advisory Board, and was a former board member of the UMass Alumni Association. 

Additionally, he has completed professional certificate programs at the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health and MIT, enhancing his expertise in policy, politics, and innovation.

Jennifer builds and stewards Seeding Labs’ partnerships with corporations and other life science institutions. Our partners’ financial and lab equipment contributions help support universities and research institutions in under-resourced settings.

When these talented scientists, researchers, and educators have the resources they need to create and maintain strong scientific institutions, new solutions are created for both local development needs and global challenges.

Before joining Seeding Labs, Jennifer raised funds and engaged constituents for

the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Brandeis University. She graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in French studies.