Marie A. Bernard, M.D., is the National Institutes of Health (NIH)* Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity (COSWD). As the COSWD, she leads NIH thought regarding the science of scientific workforce diversity, assuring that the full range of talent is accessed to promote scientific creativity and innovation. Dr. Bernard co-led the development and is co-leading the implementation of the Fiscal Years 2023 – 2027 NIH-wide Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA). She also cochairs the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity, the NIH Steering Committee Working Group on DEIA, and the NIH UNITE initiative to identify and address any structural racism that may exist within NIH and throughout the biomedical and behavioral workforce. Prior to being selected as the COSWD, Dr. Bernard served as the Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA), following a productive research and leadership career as an academic geriatrician.
*Disclaimer: No endorsement of ASPET, their programs or services, by NIH is intended.
Dr. Shehnaaz Suliman is CEO of ReCode Therapeutics – a leading genetic medicines company focused on powering the next wave of genetic medicines through tissue-specific lipid nanoparticle delivery. Dr. Suliman is a physician, drug-developer, company builder and has played a leading role over 25 years in transforming high growth companies through advancing clinical pipelines and executing partnerships and acquisitions at Alector, Theravance, Genentech, Roche and Gilead. Dr. Suliman has been honored by Forbes, Fierce Biotech, Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times as a nationally acclaimed leader female business leader and advocate for healthcare equity and access. She received her M.D. at the University of Cape Town Medical School, South Africa, and holds an MBA, with distinction, and M.Phil. degrees from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Dr. Suliman serves on the Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical and 10x Genomic Boards. Dr. Suliman is forging paths for underrepresented individuals with the Board Room Ready program and is a mentor to dozens of rising stars.
Dr. Brian Shoichet is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Recently, docking libraries have expanded from three million “in-stock” to billions of make-on-demand (“tangible”) molecules. Docking these new libraries has revealed novel scaffolds with nM and sub-nM potencies directly from the docking.
Dr. Shoichet will discuss recent applications to several targets where in vivo active leads have been developed for analgesia and for metabolic control. In the Shoichert Lab, scientists are developing new computational methods for ligand discovery and applying these to G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCR).
His lab develops new molecular docking and chemoinformatics methods that are tested in experimental model systems, and applied to targets of active biological interest, often GPCRs.
Featuring leaders from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), this panel will discuss the critical work occurring in various parts of the federal government focused on the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Moderated by Julie Lade, PhD, Scientific Associate Director with Amgen, panelists will share how their agency has contributed to the fight against cancer, what their future initiatives in this area will focus on to drive progress across the cancer journey and how their work will impact the field of pharmacology.
Dr. Lade's work focuses on driving preclinical and clinical development of small molecules and RNA therapeutics across several therapeutic areas. She has been an active member of ASPET since 2014 and is currently on the executive committee for the Division of Drug Metabolism & Disposition as acting secretary/treasurer.
May
16-19
ASPET Annual Meeting in Arlington, VA
19-20
ADDC/ASPET Colloquium
April
3-6
ASPET 2025 Annual Meeting Portland, OR
17-20
ASPET 2026 Annual Meeting Minneapolis, MN