Shoukat Dedhar, Ph.D.

Shoukat Dedhar, Ph.D. has been a senior scientist at the British Columbia Cancer Agency and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) since 1997.

Dr. Dedhar received his B.Sc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University in Aberdeen, Scotland and his Ph.D. from UBC in 1984.

He worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at UBC and as a scientist at the BC Cancer Agency. He then joined the Cancer Biology group at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. In 1995, Dr. Dedhar became a professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto.

Dr. Dedhar is a Distinguished Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the recipient of the Terry Fox Cancer Research Scientist award.

Dr. Dedhar served on the review panel of the National Cancer Institute of Canada from 1991 to 1997, the latter three years as chair. He currently sits on the Ontario Cancer Research Network and the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation review panels; and he is a member of the College of Reviewers of the Canada Research Chairs Program.

Dr Dedhar is a member of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, UBC. Furthermore, Dr. Dedhar sits on the Working Group on BC Cancer Agency Research Operations and on the organization’s Structural Organization Task Force.

Dr. Dedhar has served as a consultant and scientific advisor for several international pharmaceutical companies, and is currently a consultant for QLT Inc. and a scientific advisor for Upstate & Chemicon.

Dr. Dedhar is also an author of over 120 peer-reviewed papers, review articles and book chapters.

Roderick Jensen, Ph.D.

Roderick Jensen, Ph.D. is the Alton Brann Distinguished Professor of Physics, Biology and Mathematics and the Director of the Center for Environmental Health, Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). He received both his A.B. in Physics and Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University and has previously served on the faculties of Physics and Applied Physics at Yale University, Physics and Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, and Physics, Neuroscience and Molecular Biology at Wesleyan University.

Prior to moving to UMB in the fall of 2004, he was a visiting professor in the department of Neurology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School where he was director of the Biotechnology Center and Laboratory for Functional Genomics.

Dr. Jensen's research interests over the past 25 years have focused on interdisciplinary problems in nonlinear dynamics, complex systems and chaos theory. He is the author of more than 120 publications on applications of these fields to classical and quantum physics, computational neuroscience, functional genomics, systems biology and economics. This work has been recognized by an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Julia Levy, Ph.D

Julia Levy, Ph.D has served in several key senior posts at QLT Inc. including Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President as well as President and Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2002. Under her leadership, QLT recorded the strongest period of growth in company history and earned a reputation for achieving milestones, including FDA approval for Visudyne® therapy to treat age-related blindness in April 2000.

Following her doctorate degree in immunology from the University of London, Dr. Levy was awarded an Industrial Professorship in the Department of Microbiology from the University of British Columbia and is the recipient of several honorary degrees. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and former president of the Canadian Federation of Biological Sciences, Dr. Levy has earned numerous awards and honours including an appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001, the Female Entrepreneur of the Year for International Business in 1998, Pacific Canada Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000 and the Future of Vision Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness in 2001.

In 2002 Dr. Levy received, along with Dr. David Dolphin, the Friesen-Rygiel prize for medical research and the Prix Galien Canada research award. Along with Dr. Gustav Huber of Novartis, she was presented with the 2003 Helen Keller Prize for Innovation in Eye Care.

In her honour, the Julia G. Levy Professorship in Ophthalmology Chair was created at Johns Hopkins Hospital Wilmer Eye Institute in 2004, the same year she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Columbia Biotechnology Association.

Dr. Levy currently serves as a director on a number of early-stage biotechnology company boards and on the board of the Working Opportunity Fund, a British Columbia, Canada-based venture capital firm.

Thillainathan Yoganathan, Ph.D.

Thillainathan Yoganathan, Ph.D. is MBI's founder and an expert in gene expression technology and signalling pathways.

Dr. Yoganathan has over 18 years of experience in scientific research, with 15 years spent in biotechnology.  Dr. Yoganathan is the author of numerous peer­-reviewed scientific papers and is the co-inventor of one patent and seven pending patent applications, one of which relates to MBI's Hematalogical Cancer Profiling System. He is elected as a member of the American Association For Cancer Research and is also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Canadian Academy for the Advancement of Science.  Dr. Yoganathan is also a mentor for the student biotechnology network (SBN) of British Columbia.  Dr. Yoganathan holds a B.Sc. (Honours) from the University of North London, an M.Sc. from the University of Sussex and a Ph.D. from the University of Oslo.