Qing Nie, PhD
is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Developmental & Cell Biology at UC Irvine, where he also serves as the UC Presidential Chair. As Director of the NSF-Simons Center for Multiscale Cell Fate Research, he is a leading authority in systems biology, computational modeling, and single-cell analysis. Dr. Nie brings deep expertise in quantitative modeling and data-driven discovery to his role on the Scientific Advisory Board.
John Quackenbush, PhD
is Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a Professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After earning a PhD in theoretical physics, John transitioned to genomics through a fellowship on the Human Genome Project, holding research appointments at the Salk Institute, Stanford University, and The Institute for Genomic Research before joining Harvard in 2005.
John explores how genes interact to drive complex phenotypes and how variables such as sex and gender shape gene regulatory networks. With over 100,000 citations, he has been widely recognized for his contributions to systems biology, including being named a White House Open Science Champion of Change in 2013. He founded Genospace, a precision medicine software company acquired by Hospital Corporation of America in 2017, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.
James Trager, PhD
is a biotechnology leader with over 25 years of experience in developing novel therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, with deep expertise in cellular therapies. As former Chief Scientific Officer at Nkarta Therapeutics, he led two clinical candidates from concept through early clinical development and built a CAR NK pipeline, overseeing a team of 100+ scientists and engineers. Previously, at Dendreon Pharmaceuticals, he served as VP of Research and Product Development, supporting sipuleucel-T through approval and commercialization. Dr. Trager also held research roles at Geron and has advised the Shoreline Immunotherapy Biohub and Stanford SPARK. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and a BA from St. John’s College.
Changhan He, PhD
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of South Carolina. His research lies at the interface of multiscale mathematical modeling and single-cell omics-driven inference, with a particular focus on cell–cell communication dynamics and mechanisms of cell fate transitions. Dr. He integrates theoretical modeling with quantitative data analysis and machine learning methods to advance understanding of complex developmental and cellular processes.
Yasin Şenbabaoğlu, PhD
is the Computational Biology Platform Leader at Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco, where he directs the development of machine learning models to decipher and predict cellular behavior in health and disease.
Previously, he was at Genentech, where he discovered novel immunotherapy targets for immune-desert and stroma-rich tumors and developed multimodal AI tools to identify spatial biomarkers of response to cancer immunotherapy. Earlier in his career, Dr. Şenbabaoğlu trained as a postdoctoral researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, contributing to cancer systems biology and immunogenomics within NCI’s TCGA consortium.
He holds graduate degrees in Statistics and Bioinformatics from UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan, where he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumni in 2024. His research has advanced precision oncology, immuno-oncology biomarker discovery, and multi-omics target identification, and his publications have been cited over 40,000 times. Beyond oncology, he has served as a machine learning consultant to NIH/NIDDK on clinical phenotyping.
Dr. Şenbabaoğlu brings to Cellazon deep expertise in computational biology, a passion for systems-level discovery, and a proven record of turning data into therapeutic opportunity.