Events | GWG 2021 Conference
Rosalind Franklin Award 2021 Finalists
Janice Chen, Co-founder & CTO at Mammoth Biosciences, San Francisco, California.
Natalia Gomez-Ospina, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics; Genetics and Stem Cell Transplantation, Medical Genetics at Stanford Bio-X.
Jennifer Hamilton, Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow, Doudna Laboratory, UC Berkeley.
Pratiksha Thakore, Senior Scientist, Department of Cellular and Tissue Genomics at Genentech.
Janice Chen, PhD
Co-founder & CTO at Mammoth Biosciences, San Francisco, CaliforniaJanice Chen is the co-founder and CTO of Mammoth Biosciences, a biotechnology company based in the San Francisco Bay Area harnessing a revolutionary gene-editing tool called CRISPR to deliver on the promise of precision medicine across diagnostics and therapeutics. Janice received her PhD from the lab of Nobel Laureate Professor Jennifer Doudna at University of California, Berkeley. She investigated mechanisms of CRISPR proteins and developed technologies leading to multiple papers and patents, and co-invented the programmable CRISPR-based detection technology called DETECTR.
Janice was selected as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare, Business Insider's 30 Under 40 in Healthcare, Endpoints Top 20 Women in Biopharma, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 and delivered a TEDx talk on the potential for CRISPR to democratize diagnostics.
Natalia Gomez-Ospina, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics; Genetics and Stem Cell Transplantation, Medical Genetics at Stanford Bio-XBorn and raised to a single mother in Medellin, Colombia, Dr. Gomez- Ospina arrived in the USA at nineteen. She is now a physician-scientist dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases. Her clinical interest focuses on patients with lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs), the most common genetic cause of childhood neurodegeneration. She directs the enzyme replacement service for LDS at Lucile Packard Children’s hospital and the Program for Inherited Metabolic Disorders, which aims to promote gene and cell-based therapies for LSDs. Dr. Gomez-Ospina has championed the idea of commandeering the hematopoietic system to express proteins needed in other organs, including the brain.
She established an adaptable platform for the treatment of lysosomal enzyme deficiencies and performed a first-of-its-kind preclinical study to support the clinical development of autologous transplantation of genome-edited cells to treat patients with Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (Hurler syndrome). Beyond delivering lysosomal enzymes, this platform has potential implications for delivering many kinds of therapeutic proteins to the brain. Her lab combines basic and translational science needed to develop therapies for LSDs primarily combining stem cells and genome editing.
In addition to therapy development, Dr. Gomez-Ospina led the discovery and characterization of several genetic diseases including an infantile cholestasis syndrome caused by mutations in the bile acid receptor. Also, as part of large multi-institutional collaborations, participated in the discovery of multiple intellectual disability syndromes. She has been the lead author in research studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, Nature Communications, and the American Journal of Medical Genetics.
Jennifer Hamilton, PhD,
Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow, Doudna Laboratory, UC BerkeleyJennifer Hamilton is a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Jennifer Doudna to advance CRISPR-based gene editing therapeutics for use in humans. Dr. Hamilton did her PhD training in virology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Advised by Dr. Peter Palese, she studied host responses to influenza virus infection and the engineering of RNA viruses for novel uses, such as killing cancerous cells.
She is now leveraging her background in virology to co-opt viral infection strategies to more effectively deliver CRISPR-Cas9 tools to disease-relevant cells. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Hamilton has also co-lead the technical development of the Innovative Genomics Institute’s SARS-CoV-2 testing lab, which provides free clinical testing for first responders and underserved populations in the Bay Area, as well as asymptomatic screening for the UC Berkeley campus.
Pratiksha Thakore
Senior Scientist, Department of Cellular and Tissue Genomics at GenentechPratiksha Thakore first became interested in genome engineering as a graduate student in Charlie Gersbach’s group, where she used CRISPR/Cas9 for epigenome editing and probing enhancer function. As a postdoc with Aviv Regev, she combined this passion for perturbing genome function with high-content single-cell profiling to understand autoimmunity and cancer. Recently, Pratiksha started a lab at Genentech, where she will deploy technologies for high-information content screens to design therapies for regenerative medicine, gene and cell therapy, and immunology.
Rosalind Franklin Award Information
The 2021 Rosalind Franklin Medal is awarded during the lunch session on Thursday, July 29.
Dr. Shondra Pruett-Miller, Director, Center for Advanced Genome Engineering, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Erin Nolan, GWG Secretary, will announce this year’s recipient of the Rosalind Franklin Society Award.
In the video below, Shondra discusses the award and gives context for this unique opportunity.
Honoring women in science
“Wow. I can’t really convey how honored I am to receive this award. Rosalind Franklin has been a role model and source of inspiration for me since
beginning my graduate studies in the field of nucleic acid chemistry.”
Subsequent to being awarded the Rosalind Franklin Medal in 2020 by GWG, Komor was named as a Fortune ‘40 Under 40 in Healthcare’ and as an RCSA Cottrell Scholar - Congratulations Dr. Komor!
We honor women in science.
The Genome Writers Guild (GWG) and Rosalind Franklin Society have joined forces again to recognize amazing scientists with the Rosalind Franklin Medal.
We invited the nominations of women working in the fields of genome engineering and synthetic biology; researchers in the early stage of their career, including graduate students, post-docs and assistant professors.
Nominees from all walks of genomics and nucleic acid research, including academia, industry, and government were considered.
About the medal.
The Rosalind Franklin Medal recognizes the outstanding body of research of a woman in the field of genome engineering and nucleic acids research.
The medal offers a platform to share their work with members and colleagues worldwide of both organizations.
This award unites GWG’s core objectives of facilitating genome writing conversation, collaboration, and exposure with the Rosalind Franklin Society’s goals of enabling more women to achieve higher recognition, visibility, appointments and success in industry, academia, or government.