Dr. Merzenich is the brain behind BrainHQ and the author of Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life. For nearly five decades, he has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. As co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Posit Science, Michael Merzenich heads the company’s science team.

Dr. Merzenich has published more than 150 articles in leading peer-reviewed journals (such as Science and Nature), and received numerous awards and prizes (including the Russ Prize, Ipsen Prize, Zülch Prize, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and Purkinje Medal). He has been granted nearly 100 patents, and he and his work have been highlighted in hundreds of books about the brain, learning, rehabilitation, and plasticity. In 2016, Dr. Merzenich was awarded one of the world’s top neuroscience prizes, the Kavli Prize, for his achievements in the field of brain plasticity.

Dr. Merzenich’s work is also often covered in the popular press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Wired, Forbes, Discover, and Newsweek. He has appeared extensively on television. He is the scientific consultant and provided the brain assessments and brain training exercises for the Discovery Channel show “Hack My Brain” (which aired in Australia as “Redesign My Brain.”) His work has also been featured on four PBS specials: “The Brain Fitness Program,” “Brain Fitness 2: Sight and Sound,” “The New Science of Learning,” and “Brain Fitness Frontiers.”

Dr. Merzenich earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Portland and his PhD at Johns Hopkins. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison before becoming a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2007, he retired from his long career at UCSF as Francis A. Sooy Professor and Co-Director of the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999 and the Institute of Medicine in 2008.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invented the cochlear implant, now distributed by market leader Advanced Bionics. In 1996, Dr. Merzenich was the founding CEO of Scientific Learning Corporation (Nasdaq: SCIL), which markets and distributes software that applies principles of brain plasticity to assist children with language learning and reading.

 

Dr. Bercik graduated as MD from Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia. He obtained a fellowship from the Swiss National Foundation to work with Professors Pavel Kucera and Andre Blum at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied myogenic and neural control of gastrointestinal motility as a theme of his doctoral thesis. After clinical residency training in Charles University and the Central Military hospital in Prague, he worked as postdoctoral research and clinical fellow at McMaster University with Professor Stephen Collins focusing on animal models of functional gastrointestinal diseases and the role of low grade inflammation on gut function. Currently, he is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, and director of Clinical Motility Laboratory and Celiac Clinic at McMaster University. His basic and clinical research, funded by CIHR and NIH, investigates the role of intestinal bacteria in gut-brain axis signaling, and its pathogenic importance in functional gastrointestinal diseases and gluten-related disorders. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers, with current h-index of 39.

Russ Jaffe is Founder and Chairman of PERQUE Integrative Health, LLC (PIH, www.PERQUE.com) a company that offers the world scientifically proven, integrative health solutions to speed the transition from sick care to healthful caring.

Dr. Jaffe has more than 40 years of experience contributing to molecular biology and clinical diagnostics. His focus is on functional, predictive tests and procedures designed to improve the precision of both diagnosis and of treatment outcomes and he has authored nearly 100 articles on the subject. He received his B.S., MD and Ph.D. from the Boston University School of Medicine, completed residency training in clinical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health and remained on the permanent senior staff before pursuing other interests, including starting the Health Studies Collegium think tank.

Dr. Jaffe is board certified in Clinical Pathology and in Chemical Pathology. He is the recipient of the Merck, Sharp & Dohm Excellence in Research Award, the J.D. Lane Award, and the U.S.P.H.S. Meritorious Service Award. Dr Jaffe was honored as an International Scientist of 2003 by the IBC, Oxford, England, UK for his lifetime contributions to clinical medicine, biochemistry, immunology, methodology, and integrative health policy. He is widely published and sought to explain complex subjects to any audience.  Dr. Jaffe is also founder and chairman of ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies, and MAGique BioTherapeutics.

Dr. Haas founded Orion Bionetworks in July 2012 and serves as its CEO and President. Orion Bionetworks was transformed to Cohen Veterans Bioscience in 2015 to specifically dedicate research to improving the detection and treatment of post-traumatic stress (PTS) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and related co-morbidities so that the burden of these conditions may be lessened on service members, veterans, and their families.

Magali has over 15 years of pharmaceutical executive and clinical research experience, predominantly at Johnson & Johnson, where she assumed broad end-to-end development leadership roles in medical marketing, full clinical development, early development, and translational and biomarker sciences in psychiatry and neurology. She successfully filed NDAs in the US and Europe for risperidone indications in Autism, Adolescent Schizophrenia, Juvenile Bipolar Disorder and Conduct Disorders. She also led Development Teams evaluating compounds for Depression, Neuropathic Pain, Epilepsy, and Migraine Disorder.

She served 3 years as Chief Science and Technology Officer for One Mind for Research, a nonprofit organization launched in May 2012 by Patrick J Kennedy. She orchestrated the launch of One Mind’s seminal programs, Apollo, an informatics research portal and, Gemini, an international TBI/PTSD research program.

As an “intrapreneur” at J&J she established the first Neuroscience Translational Medicine & Integrative Solutions department, and co-founded the first Companion Diagnostics Center of Excellence as well as J&J’s Healthcare Innovation team. She serves on several advisory boards including Brain Canada, Prophase, Pear Therapeutics, PAASP and IMEC for nanoelectronics.

Magali earned her BS in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and her MD PhD with distinction in neuroscience from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.

Dr. Will Cole, leading functional medicine practitioner, specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors and customizing health programs for chronic conditions such as thyroid issues, autoimmune, hormonal dysfunctions, and more. He consults locally in the Pittsburgh area as well as webcam and phone consultations for people across the country and around the world. Dr. Cole is a health writer for international publications such as MindBodyGreen and lectures nationally.