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Keynote Address Listen now (streaming audio) Download mp3 (9 MB file)

J. Michael Bowman

From 1990 to 1996 Bowman was vice president and general manager for DuPont Advanced Materials and Systems, a $1 billion global business unit with 2,500 employees. Over a 30-year career at DuPont he served professional and managerial roles in research, marketing, and manufacturing. Currently Bowman serves on the boards of five technology-based companies as well as First State Innovation, Delaware Science and Technology Council, and the UD Technology Corporation. He is also a member of the Council on Competitiveness. Bowman holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Cincinnati and has attended graduate business and financial programs at Columbia University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Elizabeth Browning

LLuminari, Inc. is a prestigious network of health experts cofounded by Browning with Nancy Snyderman, M.D. and Susan Love, M.D. which includes Miriam Nelson, Ph.D., Mehmet Oz, M.D., Alice Domar, Ph.D., Janet Taylor, M.D., and 25 other well-regarded health experts. This innovative health media company is launching BeWell.com, the first social networking site devoted to health that connects members to evidence-based content and dialogue between leading experts. BeWell.com is focused on elevating the quality of online health discussions and ensuring that the public has clear and up-to-date information that will help them make healthful decisions.

Elizabeth Browning, Cofounder and CEO, LLuminari, Inc.
Browning is cofounder and CEO of LLuminari, Inc.  Prior to founding LLuminari, she was president of DuPont Consumer Health, a division of DuPont’s Nutrition and Health strategic business unit. During her 20-year career with DuPont, she held a variety of leadership positions and led the globalization of the LYCRA® brand and the company’s entry into e-business. Browning frequently lectures on global marketing and branding. She has worked with the Stanford Executive Education Program, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Delaware MBA Program.

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Steve Prior

Quantum Leap Technologies is developing and deploying software products focused on the transformation of data into information and information into knowledge. Typical problems that the software addresses are characterized as being complex and adaptive. The work is based on distributed computing, intelligent agents, and automated knowledge discovery technologies. Since 1999 the company has been working in both the public and private sector and has had continuous contracts with the Department of Defense (DOD) for over seven years. In addition to the DOD, the company is working with the Department of Homeland Security and with agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community. Work in the private sector includes partnerships and work for Fortune 500 companies

Steve Prior, President, Quantum Leap Technologies
Prior is the president of Quantum Leap Technologies and the executive director of the National Center for Critical Incident Analysis. He is also an adjunct distinguished research fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, where his research interests include the impact of life sciences on military operations and national security and innovative technologies for military use.

Prior has worked with several U.S. government agencies and was the principal investigator for the Department of Defense’s Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. In the past eight years, after founding the National Security Health Policy Center and subsequently joining Quantum Leap, his work has included development of innovative approaches to modeling biological systems and the analysis of complex adaptive systems based on biological principles. Prior holds a B.S. in microbiology from the University of Kent and a Ph.D. in microbial physiology from the University of Warwick, both in the United Kingdom.

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Barry Marrs

Athena Biotechnologies, Inc., uses unique and patented technologies to break the code that prevents over 98% of the world of bacteria from being cultured, studied, and developed for the myriad of commercial uses that may lead to breakthrough solutions in the agricultural, bio-fuel and medical fields. Current work includes projects with the Department of Energy, the Florida Citrus Production Research Advisory Council, and Drexel University. Specifically in the bio-fuel field, Athena has made significant progress toward their target of combining bacteria that produces ethanol when grown at 80° C with bacteria that uses cellulose in a continuous process of manufacturing ethanol with as much as 40% savings from current technology. Once these benefits are combined into one bacterium, Quorum Sensing Silencing technology will be employed to allow this bacterium to grow to commercial densities and revolutionize the production of bio-fuels.

Barry Marrs, Founder and Chairman, Athena Biotechnologies, Inc.
Marrs earned a B.A. in biology from Williams College in 1963 and a Ph.D. in biology from Case Western Reserve University in 1968. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana and at Stanford University. Marrs was a professor of biochemistry and program director of the Cell and Molecular Biology Training Program at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He headed the Molecular Genetics Group for Exxon Research and Engineering Company for two years before joining DuPont Central Research and Development in 1985, where he was director of life sciences. In 1994 he left DuPont to become the founding CEO of Recombinant BioCatalysis, Inc. Marrs became president and founding CEO of Photosynthetic Harvest, Inc. in 1996; director of corporate research for Hercules, Inc., from 1998 to 2001; and executive director of the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology from 2001 until 2005, at which time he founded Athena Biotechnologies, Inc., where he also serves as chairman.

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Vidadi Yusibov

The Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology (FhCMB) is a not-for-profit, contract research organization that develops and applies plant science and other core platform technologies for the production of valuable proteins. FhCMB has particular expertise in a platform technology known as transient gene expression, which provides excellent protein yields in a short time. FhCMB seeks to provide research and development capabilities to business, government, and other organizations, with specialization in plant protein expression systems, functional genomics, and directed evolution.

Vidadi Yusibov, Executive Director, Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology
As executive director of the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology (FhCMB), located in Newark, Delaware, Yusibov is responsible for the overall management and operation of the plant-based vaccine and therapeutics development programs. For more than 23 years, Yusibov has been involved in a variety of aspects of plant molecular biology, with a major focus on using plants as a means for biomanufacturing. He is recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in plant-based vaccine development. Prior to joining FhCMB, he was an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University, where he developed a plant virus-based experimental vaccine against rabies virus, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for human trials. Yusibov has also held research positions at Purdue University. His research is focused on the development of plant virus-based expression systems, including a launch vector system as a new technology platform for production and delivery of target proteins.

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Catherine T. "Katie" Hunt

"As Earth becomes more crowded and developed, challenges that once seemed far-off are rapidly approaching and causing significant debate around the world. Debate on global climate change has shifted from arguments over whether the phenomenon is even real to 'what can or should we be doing now?'"

from Chemical & Engineering News,
May 7, 2007, Vol. 85, No. 19, p. 73

Catherine T. "Katie" Hunt, Corporate Sustainability Director and Leader, Technology Partnerships, Rohm and Haas
Dr. Hunt began her career as a senior scientist in analytical research at Rohm and Haas after completing an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University.  For nearly 25 years Katie has held positions of increasing responsibility, from research scientist to process chemist to plant laboratory manager to Director of Rohm and Haas’s Worldwide Analytical and Computational Competency Network (ACNET) paired with Technology Development.

As 2007 President of the American Chemical Society, Katie championed education, collaboration and innovation, especially related to the Sustainability of Energy, Food and Water.  Back ‘home’ in Philadelphia, she now represents Raj Gupta and Rohm and Haas, as a member of the Mayor’s newly-formed Sustainability Advisory Board, now chaired by Mark Alan Hughes.