DXS Track Two Keynote Speakers

Jean-Luc Butel
Global Healthcare Advisor, President, K8 Global & Senior Advisor , McKinsey&Company

Jean-Luc Butel has had a long and illustrious international career in the health care industry. Before returning to Singapore in early 2015, Butel was Corporate Vice-President and President International for Baxter, responsible for all countries outside the US. Prior to Baxter he was Executive Vice-President and Group President International at Medtronic, also responsible for all countries outside of the US. Having spent 25 years working in several Asian countries, Butel also worked for Johnson & Johnson and Becton-Dickinson both in Asia and the US. While in Japan, Butel was the Chairman of the US-Japan Business Council for three years until 2011. In 2014 he was awarded the Public Service Medal (Friends of Singapore) by the President of Singapore. He is now a Global Healthcare Advisor and has been serving on the board of EDB since 2012 where he also serves on the finance committee. In 2015 Butel was appointed to the board of ETPL at A*STAR. Since June 2016 he is an independent director on the board of Takeda Pharmaceutical where he also serves as a member of the Audit and Supervisory Committee. Butel is a member of the Novo A/S Advisory Group. He is on the board of several medical technology start-ups in Asia and Europe. He is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey’s health care practice.

Mahesh Choolani
Research Director , National University Health System (NUHS)

A/Prof Mahesh Choolani, Senior Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the National University Hospital and A/Prof at the National University of Singapore. He completed his PhD doctoral thesis at Imperial College, London, UK on Fetal Medicine. Professional experience includes appointments as Postgraduate Education in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, NUH; Chair of the National Healthcare Group Annual Scientific Congress; Deputy Chair of the National Healthcare Group Domain Specific Review Board; Chairman NLAM Clinician Scientist Unit; Co-chairman of the NUS Leadership in Academic Medicine Programme; and Chairperson of Teaching Faculty NHG-NUS Clinician Leadership in Research Programme.

Principal areas of research interest are: non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, early detection of epithelial ovarian cancer, and fetal mesenchymal stem cells for intrauterine fetal therapy. His research papers are published in leading UK and USA peer-reviewed journals.

Roger Foo
Group Leader, GIS

Fred Kramer
Professor, New Jersey Medical School Rutgers University

Fred Russell Kramer is Professor of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Rutgers University, and has been a Principal Investigator at the Public Health Research Institute for the past 30 years. He also serves as PHRI's Associate Director for Business Development. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1964 and received his doctorate from the Rockefeller University in 1969. He was on the faculty of the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for 17 years, and was a Research Professor in the Department of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine for 27 years.

John CW Lim
Executive Director, Centre of Regulatory Excellence, Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore, Deputy Director of Medical Services (Industry & Research Matters) , Ministry of Health

John Lim is a medical graduate of the National University of Singapore, and holds Masters degrees in Public Health from NUS and Health Policy and Management from Harvard University. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. Dr Lim has held senior positions in the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education. After the Health Sciences Authority was established in 2001, he became Director of its Centre for Drug Administration. He was appointed HSA’s Chief Executive Officer in 2006 and led the organisation for eight years during a period of major development and growth. Since July 2014, Dr Lim has served concurrently as Deputy Director of Medical Services (Industry & Research Matters) in MOH and Executive Director of the Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE) at Duke-NUS. The MOH role is that of a deputy chief medical officer coordinating research initiatives, policies and industry engagement. In CoRE, Dr Lim draws on his international experience and networks in health products regulation to enhance regulatory capacity and scientific excellence in the Asia-Pacific. He was appointed Chairman of the Singapore Clinical Research Institute in May 2015.

Chwee Teck Lim
NUS Society Chair Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore

Professor Chwee Teck LIM is the NUS Society Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology at the National University of Singapore. His research interest is in the development of microfluidic technologies for applications in disease diagnosis and health monitoring. He has co-authored over 470 journal publications and is also a serial entrepreneur having started six companies. Prof Lim is an Elected Fellow of seven academies including the US National Academy of Inventors, IUPESM, AIMBE, IAMBE, AAET, among others. He and his team have garnered numerous research awards and honours including Asia’s Most Influential Scientist, Highly Cited Researcher, Asian Scientists 100, Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold) and the President's Technology Award among others.

Steven Myint
Senior fellow, Consultant, Adjunct Professor, Chairman, ETPL, Duke-NUS, Inex Private Ltd

Prof. Steven Myint (MD PhD) is a physician with global experience in health and biomedical management. He is currently a Senior fellow to A*STAR, and consultant to its commercialization arm, ETPL. He is also Adjunct Professor at Duke-NUS in the Center for Technology, Enterprise and Development. In these capacities he is involved in the commercialization of biomedical and bio-engineering research.

He is also Chairman of Inex Private Ltd. In Finland he is chairman of Plexpress Oy and Inc, a diagnostic technology company with a US subsidiary and non-executive director of Aplagon Oy and Primex Oy, both biotech companies. He was also founding partner of a Finnish Vigo accelerator, Ukko Partners. In addition he is a partner in the Palo Alto based venture fund, Pharma Capital and a non-executive director of Lipid Genomics, a diagnostic company spun out of Johns Hopkins, now based in Boston. Until recently he was also executive chairman of Green Signal Bio, which he developed into one of India’s largest vaccine manufacturers.

He has held non-executive directorships with several organisations in the public and private sectors. He is a former Professor and Dean of Medicine & Health at the University of Surrey and Professor/Chairman of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Leicester in the UK. He has been a biopharmaceutical senior and Board executive as global Medical Director at GlaxoSmithKline and Senior Vice-President for R&D/Chief Medical Officer at BTG International. He has been instrumental in over 50 successful IND and 12 NDA submissions. He was an NHS consultant in UK for over 20 years and is also a former Senior Independent Director, then chairman, of a hospital in the NHS and Board Member of Care International.

He also has experience in the IT sector as executive chairman of Onmedica Group Ltd and Onmedica India Private Ltd (a health/IT and marketing organization). He has also been Chief Executive of the European Federation of Neurological Associations, consultant to several organisations in the medical and financial worlds and member of several national and international advisory boards. He has authored over 120 peer reviewed publications and 6 books. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Infection for 5 years. He is a Fellow or Member of several societies, including the Institute of Knowledge Transfer, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine. After his own first university spinout in 2005, he has been involved in the development of over 30 SME’s in life sciences and created over $1billion value for shareholders.

Rudi Pauwels
Founder Director/Chief Executive Officer, Biocartis

Rudi Pauwels, PhD (M) , is the Chief Executive Officer of Biocartis and founded the company in 2007.

As a pharmaceutical scientist (1960, Belgium) , he belonged to the first group of HIV/AIDS researchers who, shortly after the discovery of HIV in 1983-1984, started the efforts to find new treatments for HIV (AIDS).
For nearly 3 decades he mainly focused on the search and development of anti-HIV drugs, a number of which have been approved and introduced in the clinic while generating several billion USD revenue and the development of diagnostic technologies and products that address the needs in this new era of high precision, more personalised medicine.

His research as well as his entrepreneurial career is driven by medical needs and the passion to advance medicine while holding a strong belief in the value of a multidisciplinary scientific, technological and clinical approach to solve the key pharmaceutical and diagnostic challenges. In 2004 he expanded his areas of interest into micro- and nanotechnology and went on a 3-year sabbatical at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), one of the leading research centers in this emerging field.
Mr Pauwels is (co)-author of more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the recipient of several awards for his scientific and entrepreneurial accomplishments.

In 2012, he and Biocartis received the Global Technology Pioneer Award from the World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland). He received an honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Ghent in 2013.
Mr. Pauwels holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Patrick Tan
Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School and Deputy Executive Director, Biomedical Research Council, A*STAR

Dr. Patrick Tan holds a joint appointment as Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School and Deputy Executive Director of the Biomedical Research Council (Agency for Science, Technology, and Research). He directs PRISM, the SingHealth/DukeNUS Precision Medicine Institute. He received his B.A. (summa cum laude) from Harvard University and MD PhD degree from Stanford University, where he received the Charles Yanofsky prize for Most Outstanding Graduate Thesis in Physics, Biology or Chemistry. Other honours include the President’s Scholarship, Loke Cheng Kim foundation scholarship, Young Scientist Award (A-STAR), Singapore Youth Award (twice), Singhealth Investigator Excellence Award, Han-Mo Koo Memorial Lectureship (Van Andel Research Institute, USA), Swee Liew Wadsworth Lectureship (NUS), and the Chen New Investigator Award from the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). In 2015, Dr Tan received the President’s Science Award, the highest national accolade for scientific achievement. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and a member of the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC), a national body that provides advice to the Singapore government on ethical issues related to biomedical research. He co-leads the biliary tract cancer project of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC)

David Wong
Felix and Mildred Yip Endowed Chair in Dentistry; Director for UCLA Center for Oral/Head & Neck Oncology Research, University of California-Los Angeles

David T.W. Wong DMD, DMSc is Felix & Mildred Yip Endowed Professor, Associate Dean of Research and Director of the Oral/Head and Neck Oncology Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Wong is an active scientist in oral cancer and saliva diagnostics research. He has authored over 280 peer reviewed scientific publications. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), past member of the ADA Council of Scientific Affairs and the past president of American Association of Dental Research (AADR).