2013 Bioscience Speaker Information
George W. Carmany III ’62
 George W. Carmany III |
George Carmany is a graduate of Amherst College, from which he holds its Distinguished Service Award, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. Carmany began his business career with Bankers Trust Company in its International Banking Department, working in New York, and for four years in Sydney, Australia as an executive director of its merchant banking subsidiary. In 1975, he joined American Express Company, where he held senior positions at the corporate level and in its international banking division, including senior vice president, Corporate Strategic Planning, and senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer of American Express Bank. In 1990 Carmany joined American Express’ investment management and private banking subsidiary, The Boston Company, as senior executive vice president, treasurer and director, a position he held until the sale of the company to Mellon Financial Corporation in 1993. Carmany subsequently served as chairman of the Olympia and York Bondholders' Steering Committee, and formed G.W. Carmany and Company, an advisory business in financial services and life sciences.
George Carmany is a director of the Macquarie Infrastructure Company, New York, NY; and is a senior advisor to Brown Brothers Harriman and Company; Essex Woodlands Health Ventures; EnGeneIC Ltd.; a biotechnology company in Sydney, Australia; and The Asia Link Group of Beijing, PRC. He retired as a director of Sun Life Financial, Toronto, Canada, in 2010, and served until 2005 as chairman and CEO of Helicon Therapeutics, a biotechnology company founded by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Roche Pharmaceuticals and OSI Pharmaceuticals.
Carmany is the past chairman of The New England Medical Center; a member of The President’s Circle of the National Academies; a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Bentley University; vice president of the Alumni Council of Amherst College; and past chairman of the Board of Associates of The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is married to the former Judith Jermain Lawrence, and they are the parents of two children, Bill, 37, of Los Angeles, CA, and Elizabeth, 35, of New York.
Carmany, together with Gerald R. Fink '62, are the founders and organizers of the Gerald R. Fink '62 Bioscience Symposium.
Gerald R. Fink ’62
 Gerald R. Fink |
Gerald R. Fink '62 is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and the American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at MIT. He was director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001. His research focuses on the molecular biology of yeast and fungal infectious disease. He was the first to describe transformation in fungi—the stable uptake of DNA into the genome of yeast cells. He is past president of the Genetics Society of America. Among his many awards are the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Medal of the Genetics Society of America, Emil Christian Hansen Award (Denmark), the Yale Science and Engineering Award, the Yale Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the 2001 George Beadle Award, and the 2010 Gruber Award in Genetics. Fink has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society. Fink has been the founder of two biotechnology companies, Myco Pharmaceuticals and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals.
Fink, together with George Carmany ’62, are the founders and organizers of the Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium.
 George Q. Daley, M.D., Ph.D. Children's Hospital Boston Karp Family Research Labs george.daley@childrens.harvard.edu |
George Q. Daley
George Q. Daley, M.D., Ph.D. is the Samuel E. Lux IV Professor of Hematology/Oncology and Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. He is also professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, medicine, and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Daley received his bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Harvard University (1982), a Ph.D. in biology from MIT (1989), and the M.D. from Harvard Medical School summa cum laude (1991). His honors include membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the Judson Daland Prize, the E. Mead Johnson Award, and the E. Donnall Thomas Prize.
Rajiv D. Desai ’84
I graduated from Amherst in 1984 and entered Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. I recieved my MD in 1989, having spent time in Elvin Kabat's lab cloning genes involved in autoimmunity. I stayed on at Columbia for my Neurosurgery training which I completed in 1995 under Dr Bennett Stein (see the movie Buckaroo Banzai's opening 10 minutes...). I then served in the Air Force at Lackland AFB in San Antonio where I was Director of Neurotrauma and PI for a study of a neuron-specific calcium channel antogonist for brain injury (did not work). On completion of my active duty time, I went into practice in Portland, Maine. I eventually became the managing partner and CEO of our practice which gave me the stimulating opportunity of growing a small business taking revenues from $8M to $16M per year and ultimately completing sale of the business and ancillaries to our local teaching hospital. I then became Medical Director of the Neurosciences Program at Maine Medical Center in 2006. We currently service the tertiary and quaternary needs of patients with neurologic disorders throughout the state and parts of New Hampshire, with close to 50,000 patient visits and 4000 surgical cases per year. My areas of focus are spinal surgery and brain tumor surgery. I am PI on a multicenter trial of tumor treating fields (Novocure) for brain cancer, and am in the process of setting up a collaboration with our research facility and the Jackson Lab investigating a relatively novel treatment concept manipulating cell invasion into the ECM for treatment of glioblastoma. I have wonderful partners and patients, many kids, a dog, a horse. Life in Maine is good!
 Paula K. Rauch, M.D. ’77 |
Paula Rauch ’77
Paula K. Rauch, M.D. is the founding director of the Marjorie E. Korff Parenting At a Challenging Time (PACT) Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. This program provides expert parent guidance to support the emotional health and well-being of children when a parent is seriously ill. She is program director of the Family Support component of the Home Base Program (a partnership between the Red Sox Foundation and the Massachusetts General Hospital) which addresses challenges faced by military connected families, and supervises on the Consultation Service to Pediatrics. She is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rauch has been honored with numerous clinical and teaching awards including the Kenneth B. Schwartz Compassionate Caregiver of the Year Award. She co-authored the book “Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child When a Parent is Sick” along with many chapters and journal articles on this topic.
 Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge ’87 |
Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge ’87
For the past 12 years Dr. Wyche-Etheridge has lead Nashville/Davidson County’s Maternal Child Health initiatives. A public health pediatrician, Dr. Wyche-Etheridge marries her clinical training with public health practice to serve the community. She has a strong interest in prenatal and perinatal health outcomes/disparities and health equity, especially as they relate to infant mortality. With a staff of 80, she oversees 15 programs, ranging from home visiting programs to adolescent /youth development initiatives. She has introduced programs for at-risk pregnant teens and to promote community health screenings, as well as educational and maternal health programming through area faith-based institutions. She initiated a program for high school students to learn the basics of public health, and established Lentz University, an internal employee public health 101 program to guide the health department towards accreditation. She served as interim chief medical officer for the department, as well as co-director from Sept 06-July 07. In 2003, she founded the Nashville chapter of the Birthing Project, and now serves as the medical director for Birthing Project USA, with chapters in 80 cities and five countries. In addition Dr. Wyche Etheridge serves as the current chair of the board of directors for CityMatCH, the only national urban maternal child health organization, and she also serves on the board of directors for the National Healthy Start Association, along with multiple advisory boards and commissions on the local and national level. In order to further the mission of the FYI bureau, Dr. Wyche Etheridge has successfully spearheaded the application and receipt of over $7,000,000 in grants for program expansion.
She is committed to improving the quality, access, and acceptability of care for underprivileged, underserved children, teens and families, and to changing the systems that perpetuate the inequities. She participates actively in community advocacy and outreach initiatives, and uses the media to spread health messages throughout the community. She has worked to change clinical practice by teaching medical students and master’s students to practice culturally and economically-competent primary care and public health. In addition she has stressed the importance of recognizing the effect of race and racism on birth outcomes. Dr. Wyche-Etheridge sees the transition of health policy into practice at the level of the community as the key to improving health and wellness. She has received numerous local and national awards, including being named outstanding clinician of the year, and one of the top 40 under 40 by the Tennessean newspaper. In addition to the numerous mentorship awards; she received the prestigious Albert Schweitzer award from Harvard University, and was named as one of Nashville’s 20 Freedom’s Sister in 2010. She is recognized and sought after for her lectures both locally and nationally, and has had multiple abstracts, posters, and presentations accepted at national public health meetings across the country.
Dr. Wyche-Etheridge received her medical degree from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA in 1993, and completed her pediatric internship and residency at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. in 1996. She received her Masters of Public Health in 2000 from the Harvard School of Public Health while completing a Commonwealth Fund Harvard University Fellowship in minority health policy.