Appendix C

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Planning Committee Members

WORKSHOP SPEAKERS

Joan Bathon, M.D., is a rheumatologist, a professor of medicine, the chief of the Division of Rheumatology, and an advisory dean for clinician scientist faculty at the Columbia University Medical Center. Prior to that, she was the deputy director of rheumatology and the director of the Arthritis Center at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Her career has focused on understanding the pathogenesis and functional consequences of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Her group is particularly interested in understanding the effects of chronic rheumatoid inflammation on the extra-articular phenotype of RA, as manifested by accelerated atherosclerosis, myocardial dysfunction, and adverse body composition. Her work has consistently been funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and other sources. Dr. Bathon has also been the principal investigator or co-investigator on many RA and osteoarthritis clinical trials, both industry and NIH sponsored. She has authored more than 200 scientific publications and book chapters. Dr. Bathon is currently a member of the NIAMS Advisory Council. She previously served as a standing member of both the NIH Arthritis, Connective Tissue, and Skin and the NIH-NIAMS Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Clinical Trials study sections. She is the past editor-in-chief of Arthritis & Rheumatology, a past member of the Food and Drug Administration Arthritis Advisory Com-

mittee, and a past member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Rheumatology. Her dedication to advancing the careers of women faculty and trainees is reflected by her past roles while at Johns Hopkins as the director of the dean’s Office of Women in Science and Medicine, the co-chair of the Women’s Leadership Council, and the chair of the Department of Medicine’s Task Force on Academic Careers of Women in Medicine.

Jerome Bickenbach, Ph.D., LL.B., is a permanent visiting professor in the Department of Health Sciences and Medicine at the University of Lucerne and a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Faculties of Law and Medicine at Queen’s University. He is the author of Physical Disability and Social Policy (1993) and the co-editor of Introduction to Disability (1998), Disability and Culture: Universalism and Diversity (2000), A Seat at the Table: Persons with Disabilities and Policy Making (2001), Quality of Life and Human Difference (2003), and numerous articles and chapters in disability studies, focusing on the nature of disability and disability law and policy. He is a content editor of Sage Publications’ proposed 5-volume Encyclopaedia of Disability. Since 1995, he has been a consultant with the World Health Organization (WHO) working on the revision of the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps to the final draft leading to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Professor Bickenbach has participated in nearly all revision activities, and continues to consult with WHO on ICF dissemination and international disability social policy. His research is in disability studies, using qualitative and quantitative research techniques within the paradigm of participatory action research. Most recently, his research includes disability quality of life and the disability critique, disability epidemiology, universal design and inclusion, modeling disability statistics for population health surveys, the relationship between disability and health, and the ethics and the application of ICF to monitoring the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As a lawyer, Professor Bickenbach was a human rights litigator, specializing in antidiscrimination for persons with intellectual impairments and mental illness.

Daniel J. Clauw, M.D., is a professor of anesthesiology, medicine (rheumatology), and psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He attended undergraduate and medical school at the University of Michigan, and then did his internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowships at Georgetown University, where he eventually held roles including the chief of rheumatology and the vice chair of medicine. While at Georgetown University he assembled an interdisciplinary team that began to

study the central nervous system contributions to a number of chronic pain disorders, including fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, low back pain, and Gulf War illnesses. This group of investigators, the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center, moved to the University of Michigan in 2002. In addition to bringing this group to the University of Michigan, Dr. Clauw was also asked to lead the clinical research infrastructure serving the University of Michigan at that time. With strong support from University of Michigan leadership he helped expand clinical and translational research infrastructure dramatically, becoming the first assistant and then associate dean for clinical research (through 2009). He was also the first principal investigator (PI) of the University of Michigan Clinical and Translational Sciences Award and the founding director of the unit at Michigan that supports translational research—the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research. He currently is co-PI of three National Institutes of Health center grants studying the mechanisms underlying chronic pain in urological and musculoskeletal disorders and is an active mentor of clinical and pain researchers.

Judith A. Cook, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized authority on mental health services research, specifically the study of clinical and rehabilitation outcomes of children and adults receiving community-based care. She directs a federally funded research center along with numerous grants focused on intervention science and psychiatric epidemiology. She designs and implements innovative programs to enhance mental health and behavioral health of vulnerable populations. She works with federal, state, and local authorities on behavioral health service system redesign and alternative financing strategies. Her recent work focuses on randomized controlled trials of evidence-based practice treatments for serious mental illness and outcomes of individuals with co-occurring mental illness and chronic medical conditions. She consults with federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor, the Government Accountability Office, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. She is currently the principal investigator for the first national study of the prevalence of psychiatric and substance use disorders among women living with HIV/AIDS. She was a member of the National Institute of Mental Health Study Section on Mental Health Services in Specialty Settings from 2006 to 2009.

Amit Etkin, M.D., Ph.D., is the founder, the chief executive officer, and the chairman of Alto Neuroscience, as well as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and a member of the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University.

He has received multiple awards, most notably the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award in 2017, for groundbreaking work in clinical psychiatry and neuroscience. Dr. Etkin is trained as both as a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, with scientific experience ranging from molecular biology through machine learning and human clinical trials. The overarching aim of Dr. Etkin’s work has been understanding the neural basis of emotional disorders and their treatment, and leveraging this knowledge to better understand how the brain works and to develop novel treatment interventions. Alto Neuroscience builds on this work in order to advance precision psychiatry with respect to actionable, real-world, clinical, and commercial outcomes.

Philip D. Harvey, Ph.D., is the Leonard M. Miller Professor of Psychiatry and a Veterans Affairs (VA) senior health scientist. He is the author of more than 1,000 scientific papers and abstracts and he has written more than 60 book chapters. He has been designated annually by Thompson-Reuters since 2010 as being in the top 1 percent of all mental health researchers in citations. He has received a number of awards, including the first systemic inflammatory response syndrome Clinical Scientist Distinguished Contributions award in 2012, the 2014 Alexander Gralnick Schizophrenia Research award from the American Psychiatric Foundation, the 2014 VA John Blair Barnwell award, and he will receive the Stanley Dean Award from the American College of Psychiatrists in 2021. He has received continuous federal funding since 1985. His research has focused on cognition and everyday functioning across neuropsychiatric conditions, with a special focus on severe mental illness. His research has also recently focused on technology in mental health and aging, including novel assessment strategies using ecological momentary assessment and various passive measurement strategies and technology-based interventions.

Kristi L. Kirschner, M.D., is a clinical professor in the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) Department of Medical Education, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation. She is currently the subtheme leader for health humanities for the UICOM curriculum taskforce and overseeing the development and enhancement of the health humanities programs within the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Dr. Kirschner’s academic interests include medical humanities and bioethics with a particular focus on disability issues and marginalized populations; the training of health care professionals about health humanities, bioethics, and disability; and health care access for people with disabilities, including reproductive health services. She also is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Disabilities and Human Development at UIC where she worked with Carol Gill,

Ph.D., and Teresa Savage Ph.D., RN, to create the Certificate in Disability Ethics in 2003. As background, she is a physician specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation with particular interest in the needs of patients with complex neurological disabilities, including adults with spina bifida, neuromuscular diseases, and cerebral palsy.

Virginia Byers Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of medicine, pathology, and orthopedic surgery, and a faculty member of the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute in the Duke University School of Medicine. She is a practicing rheumatologist with 20 years of experience in osteoarthritis (OA) research. Dr. Kraus is the past president of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI)—the premier organization focused on the prevention and treatment of OA through the promotion and presentation of research, education, and the worldwide dissemination of new knowledge. In 2019, she was elected to the Association of American Physicians and awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from OARSI. She is the co-principal investigator of the OARSI/Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Osteoarthritis Biomarkers Consortium Project, which advances the validation and qualification of biomarkers for OA diagnosis, prognosis, and clinical trials. She also directs the Duke Biomarkers Shared Resource under the management of Janet Huebner. This facility assists investigators with the design and implementation of molecular and protein assays to evaluate biochemical and inflammatory markers. Dr. Kraus is also the director of the molecular measures core in the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. This has led to a long-time collaboration of the Kraus lab with the Stedman Nutrition Center that has culminated in the housing of these labs under the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute.

Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., is the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; the director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute; and the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Columbia University Medical Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The Columbia University Department of Psychiatry is among the top ranked in the nation in psychiatric research funding from the National Institutes of Health and for psychiatry in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital rankings. Dr. Lieberman’s work at Columbia University has advanced the understanding of the neurobiology and the treatment of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders and led to the transformative mental health care strategy for the early detection and prevention of schizophrenia. He has authored or co-authored more than 600 articles published in scientific literature and wrote or edited 11 books on mental illness,

psychopharmacology, and psychiatry. In recognition of this work, he has received many national and international honors and awards, and in 2000 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and in 2013 as the president of the American Psychiatric Association. More recently, Dr. Lieberman’s work has extended into public policy and advocacy for enhancing awareness of mental illness and improving mental health care, as well as reducing the stigma associated with mental illness. In this context, Dr. Lieberman has actively contributed to government policy and federal legislation, including the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, and he is a visible spokesperson to the media on mental illness and psychiatry. This motivated him to write the critically acclaimed book Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry and deliver a TED talk on stigma and mental illness.

Joseph P. Menetski, Ph.D., is the associate vice president of research partnerships and the director of the Biomarkers Consortium at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Menetski received his Ph.D. from the Northwestern University Medical School with Dr. Stephen Kowalczykowski and completed his postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases with Dr. Martin Gellert. He then started his career in industry in 1993 in the Immunopathology Department at Parke-Davis (later Pfizer), where he established a discovery research program in cellular inflammation that eventually transitioned to the molecular study of osteoarthritis (OA). Dr. Menetski moved to Merck in 2004. His first position was in the Department of Immunology where he was involved in the OA new targets and biomarker program. While at Merck he was a member of the Molecular Profiling group, the Knowledge Discovery and Knowledge Management group, and finally a director in Global Competitive Intelligence. Over the years, he has been a key contributor to many basic research and clinical programs in the areas of arthritis, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and asthma. He has served as a core research team member on several external basic research projects for the identification of new targets and molecular biomarkers. His industry research and development experiences include target identification, compound selection, translational biomarker identification, clinical study design and analysis, and external scientific collaborations. In the commercial space, he has been intimately involved in opportunity and asset identification and qualification, and in assessing the competitive landscape of disease areas that he is supporting. During this time, he has been recognized by multiple research and development awards for his contributions.

Andrew Peterson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University, an affiliate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Memory Center, a guest researcher at the National Institutes of Health’s Department of Bioethics, and a Greenwall Faculty Scholar. Previously, he was a Crest Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar (CGS) in the Rotman Institute of Philosophy and the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Dr. Peterson’s research centers on bioethics and the philosophy of neuroscience, with specialization in ethical and epistemological issues related to the scientific study of consciousness. This work has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the Vanier CGS program, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and The Greenwall Foundation.

Gwendolyn Sowa, M.D., Ph.D., is the Endowed Professor and the chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Dr. Sowa also serves as the co-director of the Ferguson Laboratory for Orthopaedic and Spine Research and the medical director of UPMC Total Care-Musculoskeletal Health. She holds joint appointments in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering. Dr. Sowa completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry and M.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her physical medicine and rehabilitation residency at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago at Northwestern University. She has served as a clinician scientist in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for more than 15 years, where she has been active in developing new models of care for patients with low back pain. As the co-director of the Ferguson Laboratory, which has a rich history in musculoskeletal research, she leads a diverse group of scientists, including engineers, physiatrists, molecular biologists, orthopedic surgeons, and neurosurgeons working together to develop innovative and individualized treatments for spine conditions and low back pain. The ultimate goal of her research program is to apply the growing knowledge of the biology and mechanobiology of the spine to the development of biomarkers to facilitate precision medicine approaches for low back pain treatment.

Madhukar H. Trivedi, M.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center. He serves as the chief of the Division of Mood Disorders and the founding director of the Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care, where he holds the Betty Jo Hay Distinguished Chair in Mental Health and the Julie K. Hersh Chair for Depression Research and Clinical Care. He specializes in treating depression. Dr. Trivedi is an internationally rec-

ognized translational researcher focusing on developing and validating biosignatures of depression. He also conducts research on pharmacological, psychosocial, and nonpharmacological treatments for depression. Dr. Trivedi has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed research publications and he is currently the president of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Dr. Trivedi earned his medical degree at Baroda Medical College in India, where he also completed a residency in psychiatry. He performed a second residency in psychiatry at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and received advanced training in functional brain imaging and psychopharmacology through a research fellowship at UT Southwestern.

Amy K. Wagner, M.D., is a tenured professor, the vice-chair of faculty development, and the Endowed Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience and the Clinical Science and Research Institute. She is also the associate director for rehabilitation research at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research and directs UPMC’s Clinical Brain Injury Medicine Fellowship. Dr. Wagner’s research program uses biomarkers as tools for developing and optimizing personalized treatments and outcomes for individuals with disability, particularly with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and with cardiac arrest. Dr. Wagner’s research focus includes the TBI Rehabilomics Research Model, identifying biomarkers relevant for assessing pathology and prognosis as well as for assessing clinical risk and use in clinical decision making. Her experimental research also focuses on how agents commonly used during rehabilitation impact recovery. Her experimental research also focuses on the neurobiology of neuroplasticity and recovery after TBI, immunotherapies after neurological injury, and how commonly used therapeutic agents impact neurobiological and neurobehavioral processes associated with neuroplasticity and recovery. She is especially focused on dopaminergic systems and brain injury recovery, and her experimental TBI work also includes the study of rehabilitation relevant cognitive training paradigms to better understand the substrates and mechanisms of learning and memory recovery. She also conducts large database work identifying risk factors for complications after brain injury such as epilepsy and mental health disorders and development risk/prognostic models for these complications after TBI.

Mark Warshawsky, Ph.D., is the deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy at the Social Security Administration. He is in charge of a policy, research, and administration component (about 520 employees);

identifying issues; assuring quality; responsiveness of policy development; analysis and data for agency leadership; and the administration. In particular, he is leading efforts to modernize the disability programs and to improve the vehicles that educate the public on program features. His interests include social security, employer-sponsored pension and retirement programs, financial planning, health and long-term care financing, public finance, and macroeconomics. He has testified before Congress and administrative agencies many times, and was recently a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, as well as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Golub Center for Finance and Policy. Dr. Warshawsky is the author of more than 150 published articles and 4 books. From 2006 to 2013, he was the director of retirement research at Towers Watson, a global human capital consulting firm. Dr. Warshawsky was a member of the Social Security Advisory Board from 2006 through 2012 and was the vice chairman of the Federal Commission on Long-Term Care in 2013. From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Warshawsky served as the assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of the Treasury, playing a key role in the development of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. He is the inventor of the life care annuity, a product integrating the immediate life annuity and long-term care insurance benefits, and a developer of planning software. Dr. Warshawsky has held senior-level positions at the Federal Reserve Board, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. with the highest distinction from Northwestern University.

PLANNING COMMITTEE

Sara Rosenbaum, J.D. (Chair), is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy and the founding chair of the Department of Health Policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. She also holds professorships in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration and the Schools of Law and Medicine and Health Sciences. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Boston University Law School, Professor Rosenbaum has devoted her career to issues of health justice for populations who are medically underserved as a result of race, poverty, disability, or cultural exclusion. An honored teacher and scholar, a highly popular speaker, and a widely read writer on many aspects of health law and policy, Professor Rosenbaum has emphasized public engagement as a core element of her professional life, providing public service to six presidential administrations and 19 Congresses. She is best known for her work on national health

reform, Medicaid and private insurance, Medicaid managed care, health care access for medically underserved communities and populations, and civil rights and health care.

Linda S. Brady, Ph.D., serves as the director of the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Science at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In this role, she provides scientific, programmatic, and administrative leadership for an extramural research program portfolio in basic neuroscience to support NIMH’s mission of transforming the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses. Dr. Brady has directed programs in neuropharmacology, drug discovery, and clinical therapeutics and organized consortia focused on ways to accelerate the development and clinical application of radiotracers in clinical research. She has provided leadership for many programs, including Development and Application of Positron Emission Tomography and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography Imaging Ligands as Biomarkers for Drug Discovery and for Pathophysiological Studies of Central Nervous System Disorders, the National Cooperative Drug/Device Discovery/Development Groups for the Treatment of Mental Disorders, and First in Human and Early Stage Clinical Trials of Novel Investigational Drugs or Devices for Psychiatric Disorders. Dr. Brady serves as the co-chair of the Neuroscience Steering Committee for the Biomarkers Consortium, a public–private research partnership of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health that focuses on discovery, development, and qualification of biological markers to support drug development, preventive medicine, and medical diagnostics. From 2004 to 2013, she was the co-leader of the Molecular Libraries and Imaging Program, a trans-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund initiative to provide biomedical researchers access to small organic molecules that can be used as chemical probes to study the functions of genes, cells, and biochemical pathways in health and disease. Dr. Brady was trained in pharmacology and neuroscience. She completed her Ph.D. at the Emory University School of Medicine, followed by postdoctoral work and research positions at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the NIMH Intramural Research Program. She is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and a Fellow in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Brady has received NIH Director awards and NIH Merit awards in recognition of her activities in biomarker development and drug development for mental disorders.

Betty Diamond, M.D., graduated with a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She performed a residency

in internal medicine at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and received postdoctoral training in immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Diamond has headed the rheumatology divisions at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and the Columbia University Medical Center. She also directed the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine for many years. She is currently the head of the Center for Autoimmune, Musculoskeletal and Hematopoietic Diseases at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the director of the Ph.D. and M.D./Ph.D. programs of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. A former president of the American Association of Immunology, Dr. Diamond has also served on the Board of Directors of the American College of Rheumatology and the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Dr. Diamond is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Sarah E. Morris, Ph.D., is the chief of the Adult Psychopathology and Psychosocial Interventions Research Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Division of Translational Research and associate head of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) Unit. Dr. Morris earned her B.A. in psychology from Scripps College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied the processing of emotional and auditory stimuli and error detection in schizophrenia using psychophysiological methods. She completed a clinical internship at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the Baltimore VA Medical Center. Following her fellowship, Dr. Morris joined the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and continued as an investigator at the MIRECC. She also served as the director of the VA Maryland Health Care System/University of Maryland Baltimore Psychology Internship Consortium. Her research has focused on learning, reward processing, and self-monitoring in schizophrenia using event-related brain potentials and on remediation of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. She joined NIMH in 2010 as a program officer for the schizophrenia-spectrum disorders program and now leads a branch that manages inquiries, grant applications, and funded grants focused on translational research in adult psychopathology and co-leads the RDoC effort to explore novel methods to classify mental disorders.

Ralph Nitkin, Ph.D., is the deputy director for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s (NICHD’s) National Center

for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR). For the past 30 years, he has worked as a science administrator at NICHD, first in intellectual and developmental disabilities and, for the past 20 years, in medical rehabilitation. Within NCMRR, Dr. Nitkin is particularly involved with research on the fundamental mechanisms and substrate of rehabilitation, including neuroplasticity, physiology, exercise, and other adaptive changes. He also leads efforts on NCMRR rehabilitation research infrastructure networks (now the Medical Rehabilitation Research Resource Network), the annual Training in Grantsmanship for Rehabilitation Research grant-writing workshop, and special career development networks for clinical neurorehabilitation, for physical/occupational therapists, and, more recently, for rehabilitation engineers. In addition to his NCMRR work, Dr. Nitkin has helped promote National Institutes of Health research initiatives in diverse areas such as genomic factors that affect rehabilitation outcomes, promotion of exercise and diet in children with disabilities, clinical trial design in rehabilitation, technologies for healthy independent living, and research workforce diversity. Dr. Nitkin received his undergraduate and master’s degrees in biological sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in cellular neurobiology from the University of California, San Diego. His postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and later work as an assistant professor at Rutgers University focused on the cellular and molecular basis of nerve—muscle synapse formation.

Patricia M. Owens has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1993. She currently serves on the Board of Directors and recently accepted the position of chair to the Development Committee. Ms. Owens consults internationally on disability policy in both public and private sectors. Previously, she was the senior disability advisor and the vice president at UNUM Life Insurance Company. Before that, she was the vice president of group and individual underwriting at the Paul Revere Insurance Group. From 1982 to 1986, Ms. Owens served as the associate U.S. commissioner for disability at the Social Security Administration (SSA). While at SSA, she received the Health and Human Services Distinguished Leadership Award and a Social Security Commissioner’s Public Service Citation. She was a Switzer Fellow and author of the National Rehabilitation Association and was a member of the Notch Commission. She served on the National Academy of Social Insurance Disability Policy Panel. Ms. Owens has written a number of reports and monographs on disability-related issues and legislation.

Sarah Ruiz, Ph.D., is an associate director of the Office of Research Sciences at the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Her current research focuses on evidence-based

programs and practices for individuals aging with long-term disability. She has more than 15 years of experience designing and analyzing research studies on health outcomes for older adults and people with disabilities, with extensive experience working on projects at the federal, state, and local level. In her past role at NORC at the University of Chicago, she led large-scale program evaluation efforts to understand health care innovation for older adults and people with disabilities under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Dr. Ruiz has also held leadership positions in the nonprofit and private sectors. She served as the research director for the National Self-Management Alliance, a public–private partnership to scale chronic disease self-management interventions at the National Council on Aging that arose from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic Framework on Multiple Chronic Conditions. Dr. Ruiz was previously a research associate at the RAND Corporation and IMPAQ International, where she managed and oversaw projects on health policy, long-term care, and evidence-based programs and services for older adults. She holds a Ph.D. in gerontology from the University of Southern California.

Ira Shoulson, M.D., is a professor of neurology, pharmacology, and human science and the director of the Program for Regulatory Science and Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. From 1990 until 2011, Dr. Shoulson was the Louis C. Lasagna Professor of Experimental Therapeutics and a professor of neurology, pharmacology, and medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York, where he currently holds adjunct appointments as a professor of neurology, pharmacology, and physiology. Dr. Shoulson founded the Parkinson Study Group in 1985 and the Huntington Study Group in 1994—international academic consortia devoted to research and development of treatments for Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and related neurodegenerative and neurogenetic disorders. He was a key investigator in the United States–Venezuela Collaborative Huntington’s Disease Project, which identified the gene responsible for this fatal hereditary disorder. Dr. Shoulson has served as the principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health–sponsored trials “Deprenyl and Tocopherol Antioxidative Therapy of Parkinsonism,” the “Prospective Huntington at Risk Observational Study,” and in the leadership of more than 35 other multi-center clinical research studies. He played an instrumental role in the development of 10 new drugs for neurological disorders, including seven for Parkinson’s disease (selegiline, lazabemide, pramipexole, entacapone, clozapine, rasagiline, rotigitine), two for Huntington’s disease (tetrabenazine, dutetetrabenazine), and one for attention deficit disorder (Concerta). He was formerly a health policy fellow in the U.S. Senate, a

member of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council, and the president of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics. He is currently a principal investigator of the Food and Drug Administration-Georgetown University Collaborating Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI–FD004319), the associate editor of JAMA Neurology, and an active elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has authored more than 310 scientific reports.

Robert B. Wallace, M.D., M.Sc., is interested in the occurrence and prevention of chronic illnesses and disabilities in older persons. He has worked in the areas of prevention of coronary artery disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, dementia, osteoporotic fractures, and various common cancers. In addition to the Health and Retirement Study, he has participated in trials of the prevention of disease, disability and falls, and in the common chronic conditions of postmenopausal women. He has been an investigator or consultant for other cohort studies of older persons, including the National Health and Aging Trends Study; the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing; the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project; the Mexican Health and Aging Study; and the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly.