Center for Human Healthspan

• 
  Lee Hood, MD, PhD  Co-Director, Center for Human Healthspan
  Chief Innovation Officer and Distinguished Professor, Buck Institute
  Founder and CEO, Phenome Health

  A world-renowned scientist and recipient of the National Medal of Science in 2011, Dr. Leroy Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in 2000 and served as its first President from 2000-2017. In 2016, ISB affiliated with Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) and Dr. Hood became PSJH’s Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer. He is also Chief Strategy Officer and Professor at ISB.

  Dr. Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Of the more than 6,000 scientists worldwide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only 20 people elected to all three.

  He received his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his PhD in biochemistry from Caltech. Dr. Hood was a faculty member at Caltech from 1967-1992, serving for 10 years as the Chair of Biology. During this period, he and his colleagues developed four sequencer and synthesizer instruments that paved the way for the Human Genome Project’s successful mapping and understanding of the human genome. He and his students also deciphered many of the complex mechanisms of antibody diversification. In 1992, Dr. Hood founded and chaired the Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington, the first academic department devoted to cross-disciplinary biology.

  Dr. Hood has co-founded 17 biotech companies including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Rosetta and Arivale. His many national and international awards include the Lasker Prize, the Kyoto Prize, and the National Medal of Science. Currently, he is the Founder and CEO of Phenome Health and Chief Innovation Officer and Distinguished Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He is also the Co-Founder and Professor at the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle.

• 
  Eric Verdin, MD  Co-Director, Center for Human Healthspan
  President and Chief Executive Officer, Buck Institute

  Dr. Eric Verdin is the president and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute. A native of Belgium, Dr. Verdin received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University  of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, the Picower Institute for Medical Research, and the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Verdin is also currently a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

  In 2016, Dr. Verdin established his lab at the Buck to study the relationship between aging and the immune system. He is an elected member of several scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has published more than 270 scientific papers and holds 18 patents.

• 
  Nathan Price, PhD  Co-Director, Center for Human Healthspan
  Professor, Buck Institute

  Dr. Nathan Price is Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and also Chief Scientific Officer of Thorne, a science-driven wellness company that serves 5 million+ customers and 47,000 health-care practitioners. Previously he was CEO of Onegevity, an AI health intelligence company that merged with Thorne in 2021, and Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle for a decade. He is co-author with biotechnology pioneer Lee Hood of a 2023 bestselling book, The Age of Scientific Wellness, published by Harvard University Press. In 2019, he was named one of the 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He was the chair of the NIH Study Section on Modeling and Analysis of Biological Systems (MABS) from 2018-2020. He is also a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and was the 2023 recipient of the Alexander & Mildred Seelig Award for science from the American Nutrition Association. 

• 
  Jeffrey Boore, PhD  Chief Technology Officer, Phenome Health

  For the last five years, Dr. Boore has been the Director of Translational Medicine for Providence St. Joseph Health and a visiting scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology, in each case working directly for Leroy Hood, MD, PhD, the primary architect of this vision for transforming healthcare. Prior to this, he was a professor at the University of California Berkeley for 17 years, a scientist at Berkeley National Laboratory, the Head of Comparative Genomics at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), one of the world’s largest genome sequencing centers, and the founder and CEO of Genome Project Solutions, Inc., a corporation devoted to genomics and bioinformatics. Through these experiences, he has authored 125 scientific manuscripts that have been collectively cited in the scientific literature more than 32,000 times, served on review and advisory panels to NIH, NSF, and USDA, led 23 grant-funded projects, trained scores of postdocs, graduate students, and visiting researchers, and served on the six-member Senior Management Committee of the JGI to manage an annual budget of over $65 million. He created the DOE “Community Sequencing Program,” a $20 million per year project, effectively converting JGI into the world’s premier center for comparative genomics. Prior to all of this, and overlapping somewhat with years as a graduate student, postdoc, and junior faculty, he spent 20 years as an officer in the Air Force and (part-time) Air National Guard, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was educated at the Pennsylvania State University (B.S.) and the University of Michigan (M.S. and Ph.D.), all in biology with an emphasis on genomics, bioinformatics, and molecular biology.

• 
  John Earls, PhD  Senior AI Scientist

  Dr. John Earls is a Senior AI Scientist at the Buck Institute for Aging, working in the Price lab. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Earls specializes in leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze multi-omic, longitudinal human health data with the goal of optimizing wellness and preventing disease. Dr. Earls is dedicated to translating research into practical applications that enhance people’s lives. He co-founded Aevum Aging, which was later acquired by Thorne Healthtech, and was an early team member at Arivale, the pioneering company in multi-omic scientific wellness. Outside of his research, Dr. Earls is passionate about weightlifting and enjoys quality time with his family.

• 
  Simon Evans, MBA, PhD  Chief Operating Officer, Phenome Health

  After receiving his B.S. from Western Washington University, Dr. Evans spent five years in the Seattle Biotech industry before returning to graduate school for a doctorate at Oregon State University, with formal training in molecular and cellular biology applied to neurochemistry. His postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan focused on the neurochemistry of stress disorders and yielded a series of publications, including the first implication of the central fibroblast growth factor system in major depressive disorder. Dr. Evans stayed on as faculty at Michigan for another 15 years and during this tenure, retrained in Public Health, Nutrition Science and Human Clinical Research through an NIH Career Development Award. This precipitated a transition to direct a research program focused on understanding the role of dietary patterns in the burden of disease of psychiatric disorders, leveraging multiomics approaches and another series of publications that included the first analysis of the gut microbiome in Bipolar Disorder. After leaving Michigan, Dr. Evans joined Drs. Lee Hood and Nathan Price at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle with another shift into research administration. More recently, he received his MBA from the University of Illinois and joined Phenome Health as the Chief Operating Officer. Here, Dr. Evans is integrating business frameworks with his research experience to help drive the implementation of the Human Phenome Initiative.

• 
  Lee Hood, MD, PhD  Chief Executive Officer, Phenome Health

  A world-renowned scientist and recipient of the National Medal of Science in 2011, Dr. Leroy Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in 2000 and served as its first President from 2000-2017. In 2016, ISB affiliated with Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) and Dr. Hood became PSJH’s Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer. He is also Chief Strategy Officer and Professor at ISB.

  Dr. Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Of the more than 6,000 scientists worldwide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only 20 people elected to all three.

  He received his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his PhD in biochemistry from Caltech. Dr. Hood was a faculty member at Caltech from 1967-1992, serving for 10 years as the Chair of Biology. During this period, he and his colleagues developed four sequencer and synthesizer instruments that paved the way for the Human Genome Project’s successful mapping and understanding of the human genome. He and his students also deciphered many of the complex mechanisms of antibody diversification. In 1992, Dr. Hood founded and chaired the Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington, the first academic department devoted to cross-disciplinary biology.

  Dr. Hood has co-founded 17 biotech companies including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Rosetta and Arivale. His many national and international awards include the Lasker Prize, the Kyoto Prize, and the National Medal of Science. Currently, he is the Founder and CEO of Phenome Health and Chief Innovation Officer and Distinguished Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He is also the Co-Founder and Professor at the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle.

• 
  Jennifer Lovejoy, PhD  Translational and Behavioral Scientist Consultant, Phenome Health

  Dr. Lovejoy is a translational and behavioral scientist with deep experience in personalized medicine and behavior change.  She holds a B.S. degree from Duke University in Zoology, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Emory University in Physiological Psychology, and she completed postdoctoral training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Emory University School of Medicine. During her academic career, Dr. Lovejoy held the Manship Endowed Professorship in Diabetes at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University. She is a Past-President of the Obesity Society and has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers on her research. She currently holds affiliate faculty appointments at the Institute for Systems Biology and Washington State University’s Elson S Floyd College of Medicine. 

  More recently, Dr. Lovejoy has held senior executive roles in several health and wellness companies. She was Chief Translational Science Officer at Arivale, the scientific wellness startup uniting systems biology and behavioral science to help consumers optimize wellness, where she developed the behavioral coaching program, oversaw selection of genomic and other biomarkers returned to consumers, and helped guide the focus of the multi-omic research program. She was also Head of Science at Seven, a digital health startup developing a unique behavioral AI platform to improve lifespan and healthspan, as well as the VP of Innovation and Program Strategy at the Lifestyle Medicine Institute.  Currently, she provides consulting services via her company, integralscience.net. 

• 
  John Newman, MD, PhD  Director, Clinical Research Core
  Assistant Professor, Buck Institute

  John Newman, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and an Associate Professor in the Division of Geriatrics at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). His career goal is to translate our expanding understanding of aging biology to improve the care and help maintain the independence of older adults. His research at the Buck Institute studies the molecular details of how diet and fasting regulate the genes and pathways that in turn control aging, focusing on the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate and how its molecular signaling activities involving epigenetics and inflammation regulate aging and memory in mice. 

  Dr. Newman is also a geriatrician who cares for hospitalized older adults at UCSF and the San Francisco VA Medical Center, focusing on preserving mobility and preventing delirium.

• 
  Bartek Nogal, PhD  Senior Data Scientist

  Bartek is a Senior Data Scientist at the Buck Institute, bringing diverse experience from engineering and device development to animal science and biophysics. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biological Engineering from Cornell University, followed by work at NASA Ames on nanopore technology for DNA damage detection. Transitioning to biotech, he led clinical oncology projects at Genentech, Gilead, and Novartis. Bartek completed his PhD at Scripps Research, where his work on HIV vaccine immunogens was featured in Cell Reports. He later joined a precision health company, leading the development of an integrated DTC genomics product. Committed to improving the resolution of current definitions of health and disease, Bartek now focuses on AI and bioinformatics to advance precision health in the Price Lab. Outside the lab, he enjoys reading, staying physically active, and outdoor adventures with his three kids and two German Shepherds.

• 
  Nathan Price, PhD  Co-Director, Center for Human Healthspan
  Professor, Buck Institute

  Dr. Nathan Price is Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and also Chief Scientific Officer of Thorne, a science-driven wellness company that serves 5 million+ customers and 47,000 health-care practitioners. Previously he was CEO of Onegevity, an AI health intelligence company that merged with Thorne in 2021, and Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle for a decade. He is co-author with biotechnology pioneer Lee Hood of a 2023 bestselling book, The Age of Scientific Wellness, published by Harvard University Press. In 2019, he was named one of the 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He was the chair of the NIH Study Section on Modeling and Analysis of Biological Systems (MABS) from 2018-2020. He is also a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and was the 2023 recipient of the Alexander & Mildred Seelig Award for science from the American Nutrition Association. 

• 
  Noa Rappaport, PhD  Research Associate Professor

  Noa Rappaport, PhD is a Research Associate Professor at the Price Lab, the Chief Data Officer at Phenome Health, and Principal Scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology. She leads integrated research programs in computational biology and multi-omic analysis, applying advanced machine learning techniques to understand complex biological systems. After earning her Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, she spearheaded the development of biological databases including MalaCards and GeneCards, which are widely used in the scientific community. Her current research focuses on uncovering novel insights in aging biology, Alzheimer’s disease, and metabolic health through the integration of multiple data types. She served as the PI of the Systems Biology core for the NIA-funded Longevity Consortium, where she currently co-leads 3 out of its 5 projects, and has published numerous high-impact papers on metabolic health, microbiome-metabolome interactions, biological aging markers, and disease prediction.

  nrappaport@buckinstitute.org

• 
  Eric Verdin, MD  President and Chief Executive Officer, Buck Institute

  Dr. Eric Verdin is the president and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute. A native of Belgium, Dr. Verdin received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University  of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, the Picower Institute for Medical Research, and the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Verdin is also currently a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

  In 2016, Dr. Verdin established his lab at the Buck to study the relationship between aging and the immune system. He is an elected member of several scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has published more than 270 scientific papers and holds 18 patents.

• 
  James T Yurkovich, PhD  Research Assistant Professor
  Chief Innovation Officer, Phenome Health

  James holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from the University of California San Diego. From there, he completed a Faculty Fellowship at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. He then transitioned into the biotech industry by joining the pharmaceutical company Biosplice Therapeutics (formerly Samumed) to build and lead a systems biology division focused on understanding the healthy functioning and aging of the human musculoskeletal system. At Phenome Health, James spearheads new opportunities—technologies, computational methods, and collaborations—that bridge the gap between the scientific and technological efforts. He helps lead the architecture and implementation of the Phenome Core cloud infrastructure and technology platform that supports the scientific discovery and return of results. He also leads efforts in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), bridging the gap between computer science and biology. His interdisciplinary background spans mechanistic modeling, machine learning, network analysis, and dynamical systems theory. James is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he also serves on the Industrial Advisory Committee. 

Scientific American: The New Science of Wellness

Science is poised to shift the focus of healthcare from a disease focus to a wellness focus-the prediction and prevention of disease. Making the ‘Science of Wellness’ a reality will require a radical change in how we think about healthcare. In this Scientific American special issue, join Phenome Health founder Lee Hood and others to learn about the new era of biomedicine, from the tools like genome sequencing to new computational technologies, and a future of health where health is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory.

Measuring the Impact of Phenomics: A White Paper on the Economics and Benefits of Precision Population Health Initiatives

As we reach the quarter point of the 21st Century, breakthroughs in science and technology are enabling the diagnosis of thousands of diseases from vials of blood However, our healthcare systems are slow to integrate these advancements that have the potential to revolutionize the way medicine is practiced. Here, we explore the potential economic impact and clinical benefits of integrating new genomic and phenomic technologies into standard clinical practice