Meet our Advisors
Scientific Advisory Board
Larry Gold
Larry Gold, Ph.D. is the Founder and Chairman of the Board, and former CEO of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, he also founded and was the Chairman of NeXagen, Inc., which later became NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 1999, NeXstar merged with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to form a global organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel products that treat infectious diseases.
During his nearly 10 years at NeXstar, Dr. Gold held numerous executive positions including Chairman of the Board, Executive Vice President of R&D, and Chief Science Officer. Before forming NeXagen, he also co-founded and served as Co-Director of Research at Synergen, Inc., a biotechnology company later acquired by Amgen, Inc. Dr. Gold recently became the CEO of Lab79, a new biotech company in Boulder, Colorado.
Since 1970, Dr. Gold has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While at the University, he served as the Chairman of the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department from 1988 to 1992. Between 1995 and 2013, Dr. Gold received the CU Distinguished Lectureship Award, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Career Development Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Colorado Biosciences Association, and the Chiron Prize for Biotechnology. Dr. Gold was also awarded the 8th International Steven Hoogendijk Prize by the Dutch Batavian Society of Experimental Philosophy in 2018.
In addition, Dr. Gold has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1993 and the National Academy of Sciences since 1995. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Gold also serves on the Board of Directors for CompleGen, Plato BioPharma, Lab79, Keck Graduate Institute, and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study.
Dr. Gold established the Gold Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1971. Starting with basic research on bacteria and bacteriophage, the lab shifted its focus to human disease following the invention of the SELEX process in 1989. The Gold Lab today focuses on the utilization of biological and information technology to improve healthcare. Dr. Gold also began holding the GoldLab Symposia in 2010, an annual event that tackles big questions in healthcare (www.goldlabfoundation.org). He is determined to change healthcare for the better through teaching, research, and debate among scientists and citizens throughout the world.
John Swindle
John Swindle, Ph.D. is the President, CEO, and Co-founder of CompleGen, Inc. Dr. Swindle was Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Tennessee, from 1986 to 1996. In 1996 he became a member of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Washington. In 1999, Dr. Swindle became a member of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (Seattle, WA). Dr. Swindle is trained in and has taught both classical and human genetics. At CompleGen he co-developed and patented the genetic based XenoGene small molecule discovery platform currently used and guided early stage drug candidates through preclinical development. Dr. Swindle also serves as a senior consultant to SomaLogic, Inc. a proteomics company based in Boulder, CO, where his duties include the integration of proteomic data and cell biology. His interests are Classical and Human genetics, Cell biology and Proteomics.
Nina Ma
Nina Ma, M.D., is the Ed and Jeannette Kerr Family Endowed Chair in Endocrinology at Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado. She is the Director of the Bone and Mineral Metabolism Program. Dr. Ma supports research and clinical care for better treatments and cures for endocrine bone diseases. She most recently hails from Boston Children’s Hospital where she was the Director of the Bone Health Program in the Division of (pediatric) Endocrinology.
Nancy Miller
Nancy Miller, M.D., specializes in Orthopaedic Surgery at Children's Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado. Dr. Millers interests includes the care, treatment and research of pediatric patients with skeletal deformities and bone disorders.
Matthew Sampson
Matthew Sampson, M.D., M.S. is a Pediatric Nephrologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Matt knew that he wanted to be a pediatrician since high school, but never imagined that once he became one, he'd be spending the majority of his time as a researcher, deeply engaged in improving the health of children with kidney disease through genomic discovery. He received his BS in Cell & Molecular Biology at Duke University and his MD at the University of Virginia. He spent the next six years at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his residency in Pediatrics, fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology, and a Master's Degree in Epidemiology-Human Genetics. After 8 years on Faculty at the University of Michigan, where he established his "kidneyomics" lab, he moved to Boston Children's Hospital in 2019 where he holds the Warren E. Grupe Chair in Pediatric Nephrology. He is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, where he is a member of the Kidney Disease Initiative. He is the co-chairman of the Genetics and Genomics Working Group of the Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE) and the Kidney Disease Working Group of the ClinGen Consortium. More information about Dr. Sampson's research can be found at http://sampsonlab.org and on his Twitter feed @kidneyomicsamps.
Tanya Warnecke
Tanya Warnecke is the Founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at Artisan bio, a Colorado-based start-up that applies precision engineering to immune-cell applications in pursuit of developing next-generation cell therapies. Tanya is a seasoned executive-level professional with a unique combination of experiences including technical, operational, and business leadership throughout her industrial career. Her ventures include cell engineering startups with a variety of applications (cell therapies, biofuels, and biochemicals) and life sciences tools including instrumentation, reagent development, and software engineering. Prior to Artisan, Tanya was the Founder, CTO, and VP of Applications at INSCRIPTA and Director of Technology at OPXbio. She currently serves as an advisor with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustain in Copenhagen, Denmark and Co-PI of the Cell Architecture Lab, which focuses on technology development for advanced genome engineering. Tanya is the inventor on 20+ patent filings across a range of applications including metabolic and genome engineering of complex phenotypes and engineering novel endonucleases for CRISPR-based editing.
Craig Forester
Craig Forester, M.D.,Ph.D., is a Pediatric Hematologist at Children’s Hospital of Colorado and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado. Prior to arriving in Colorado, he completed a residency in Pediatrics at the Boston Combined Residency Program (BCRP) prior to fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/BMT at the University of California-San Francisco. His research focuses on developing tools to study how nascent gene expression directs crucial early steps in hematopoiesis and how these are impaired in rare pediatric diseases such as pediatric bone marrow failure and other hematologic diseases.
Michael Levine
Michael Levine, M.D. is Chief Emeritus of Endocrinology and Diabetes and Director of the Center for Bone Health at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Levine holds the Lester Baker Endowed Chair and is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Levine received his M.D. from Drexel University College of Medicine, and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a Clinical Associate and Fellow in Endocrinology and Genetics at the National Institutes of Health from 1979 to 1982.
His research interests focus on the genetic basis of endocrine signaling defects. His primary clinical interests are endocrine diseases that affect bone and mineral metabolism, particularly osteoporosis, primary hyperparathyroidism, and hypoparathyroidism. Dr. Levine has an active laboratory research program that complements and extends his clinical studies. He has identified and characterized the molecular basis of various inherited disorders of mineral metabolism, including familial hypoparathyroidism, pseudohypoparathyroidism, the McCune Albright syndrome, and novel forms of vitamin D dependent rickets.
Dr. Levine is a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the American Pediatric Society, and has received awards that include the Distinguished Endocrinology Award from the American College of Endocrinology; the Frederic C. Bartter Award from the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research; the International Award from the European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology; and the inaugural Senior Investigator Award from the Pediatric Endocrine Society.
Tony Marion
Tony Marion, PhD is a native of Piedmont North Carolina with a B.S. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University at Raleigh; a M.S. in Microbiology from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University; and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. His training in Immunology continued as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Yoshihiro Hamashima, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan and Dr. Charles A. Janeway, Jr., Section on Immunobiology, Yale University Medical School. Dr. Marion joined the faculty of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis as an Assistant Professor in 1987 and is now a Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biochemistry at UTHSC. He is founder and scientific director of the UTHSC Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting shared resource laboratory. Dr. Marion is also Adjunct Professor, Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Sichuan University Medical School and West China Hospital, Chengdu, China. Dr. Marion’s research has been focused on the structure, origin, and pathogenetic function of autoimmune anti-DNA antibodies in mouse models for systemic lupus erythematosus. Most recently he has collaborated on successful research to evaluate CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) as a successful experimental cure for lupus.
Board of Directors
Michael Weinstein
Michael Weinstein is Senior Vice President, Strategy and a member of the Executive Committee at Medtronic PLC, the world’s leading medical technology company. He joined Medtronic in May 2018 following 25 years at J.P. Morgan & Co., where he served as Managing Director led the firm’s #1 ranked Healthcare team in Equity Research. Mr. Weinstein joined J.P. Morgan in 1992 and was the firm’s senior medical technology analyst from 1995 to 2018. Mr. Weinstein is a 14-time #1 ranked analyst in the annual surveys of both Institutional Investor and Greenwich Associates, and in 2013 he was named to the Institutional Investor Hall of Fame.
Blake Sedberry
Blake Sedberry is a seasoned business development and marketing executive with over 20 years of experience. He is the VP of Business Development for Daily Burn, a membership-based fitness collective. Formerly, Blake spearheaded Business Development and Marketing for Know Me, a video production company specializing in on-the-go editing, where he built multi-channel strategies and worked closely with key partners and influencers. Blake has also served as the Business Development and Partnerships Director at Time, Inc, increasing magazine subscription and user engagement across multiple brands, including People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle. Blake is a long time friend of Sophie’s family and Sophie’s honorary uncle. His dedication to the organization has been unwavering since the day the organization was founded. As the Director of Development he has been instrumental in fundraising efforts by applying for grants and leading private sector funding efforts.
Hosea Rosenberg
Hosea Rosenberg is Sophie’s dad, and co-founder of Sophie’s Neighborhood. When he isn’t playing hide and seek with Sophie, tickling her to the point of hiccups or baking bread and cookies with her, he is a celebrated chef and restauranteur in Boulder, Colorado; the owner and executive chef of Blackbelly and Santo restaurants. Chef Hosea’s culinary career began while in college at the University of Colorado while earning a degree in Physics and Engineering. While his science background helps him in the kitchen on a daily basis, he is now applying some of that knowledge more than he ever expected, in order to help steer Sophie’s Neighborhood towards its ultimate goal of treatment discovery. Hosea has earned numerous accolades in his career including being the winner of Bravo TV Top Chef Season 5 and he was recognized by the US Small Business Administration as a “business owner inspiring the entrepreneurial spirit of the nation.”
Lauren Rosenberg
Lauren Rosenberg is Sophie’s mom, and co-founder of Sophie’s Neighborhood. When she isn’t coordinating all of Sophie’s daily healthcare needs, and having tea parties with her little love, she is the Director of Communications and co-owner of Blackbelly and Santo restaurants in Boulder, CO. Lauren’s professional experience starts with 14 years working in advertising and media in New York City. Lauren spent the first couple of years working for major ad agencies, McCann Erickson and MediaEdge, planning media strategy for companies such as Microsoft (Xbox), Campbells Soup Company, and Ferrero Rocher. Lauren then shifted to media sales as an Ad and Marketing Executive at Time Incorporated working at Ski Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Cooking Light, People Magazine, as well as USA Today. During this time, while she honed her creative marketing skills - delivering results driven ad programs to marketers, her interest in the restaurant industry developed in parallel. She spent many hours hosting business meetings within the walls of the best restaurants in New York, and discovered she was more intrigued by the restaurants, than the media sales work with which she had been entrenched. In 2011, Lauren departed from media to attend a full-time program at the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC, where she studied restaurant management, with electives in culinary arts. From here she worked with bar industry friends to invest in- and co-open, SoHo restaurant/bar, Mother’s Ruin; a staple in Manhattan to this day. Following this experience, Lauren decided to drastically improve her quality of life by moving out of NYC to Colorado, where she could finally transfer her well-seasoned marketing experience to restaurants, and, as a life-long skier, live her dream of being among the Rocky Mountains. Prior to joining her husband, Hosea Rosenberg, at Blackbelly in 2016, and helping the team open Santo in 2017, she was the PR Director for ChoLon and Gather (Galvanize) in Denver. While Lauren has only high school level science education under her belt, she has been an extremely motivated and eager student under the tutelage of the incredibly qualified Scientific Board of this foundation.
Volunteer
Katie Etter
Katie Etter graduated from the University of Colorado in May of 2022 with a degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. She quickly decided that she wanted to remain a part of the Boulder community and secured a laboratory associate position at SomaLogic. Within her first few months at the company she became aware of one of Larry Gold’s “passion projects”, which involved utilizing the SomaScan® Assay to gain insight into Sophie’s rare disease. After seeing marketing campaigns for Sophie’s Neighborhood on several occasions within the community, Katie decided she wanted to express her passion for science outside of the lab. Shortly after connecting with Lauren, she began and has continued to volunteer her time sharing Sophie’s story and helping to facilitate fundraising events throughout the year.