John Ryals, Ph.D., President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Metabolon, Inc.

Dr. John Ryals co-founded Metabolon, Inc. in 2002 and serves as president, CEO and chairman. Metabolon is a pioneer and leader in the field of metabolomics and its use in personalized medicine and human health. Prior to Metabolon, he was a co-founder, CEO and president of Paradigm Genetics, Inc., which he led to a successful IPO in 2002. Paradigm Genetics eventually sold to Monsanto and is now the Monsanto research site in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Prior to Paradigm Genetics, Dr. Ryals joined the Ciba-Geigy Agricultural Biotechnology Unit in 1985, now Syngenta. He worked at various research and management positions at Ciba and later Novartis, leading the agricultural biotechnology efforts of the company from 1993 to 1997 when he departed to form Paradigm Genetics. Dr. Ryals was on the board of Athenix Corp., which was acquired by Bayer Crop Sciences, and is a co-founder and board member of AgBiome, which is located in Research Triangle Park.

Charles Cantor, Ph.D., Founder, and retired Chief Scientific Officer, SEQUENOM, Inc.

Dr. Charles Cantor is a founder, and retired Chief Scientific Officer at SEQUENOM, Inc., which is a genetics discovery company with tools, information and strategies for determining the medical impact of genes and genetic variations. Dr. Cantor consults for a number of biotech companies including SEQUENOM, Agena and Retrotope.

He is also the founder of SelectX Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company, Retrotope, an anti-aging company, and DiThera, a biotherapeutic company. Dr. Cantor is professor emeritus of Biomedical Engineering and of Pharmacology and was the director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He is currently adjunct professor of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, adjunct professor of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Institute for Research, and distinguished adjunct professor of Physiology and Biophysics at UC Irvine. Prior to this, Dr. Cantor held positions in Chemistry and then in Genetics and Development at Columbia University and in Molecular Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Cantor was educated in chemistry at Columbia College (AB) and at the University of California Berkeley (PhD).

Dr. Cantor has been granted more than 60 US patents and, with Paul Schimmel, wrote a three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry. He also co-authored the first textbook on Genomics titled 'The Science and Technology of the Human Genome Project'. In addition, he sits on the advisory boards of numerous national and international biotechnology firms, has published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Ralph Snyderman, M.D., Chancellor Emeritus, Duke University

Ralph Snyderman, MD is Chancellor Emeritus, Duke University and James B. Duke Professor of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine. He served as Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine at Duke University from 1989 to July 2004 and led the transition of this excellent medical center into an internationally recognized leader of academic medicine. He oversaw the development of the Duke University Health System, one of the most successful integrated academic health systems in the country, and served as its first President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Snyderman has played a leading role in the conception and development of Personalized Health Care, an evolving model of national health care delivery. He was amongst the first to envision and articulate the need to move the current focus of health care from the treatment of disease-events to personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory care that is focused on the patient. Dr. Snyderman is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his contributions to research and to developing more rationale models of health care. In 2012, he received the David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges who referred to Snyderman as “the father of personalized medicine.”