The tranSMART Foundation Elects New Board of Directors

WAKEFIELD, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 2, 2014) - The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization providing a global, open-source knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, announces its new board of directors comprised of industry leaders from the top life science companies and educational institutes.

"With the scientific, technical and business expertise of the individuals on our board of directors and the support of their organizations, the Foundation is well-positioned to make a major impact on the development of new therapies and diagnostic tools," said tranSMART Foundation CEO Keith Elliston. "This is a well-rounded group of prestigious industry and academic experts that will serve as a valuable resource for our leadership team providing us with guidance and support on our strategic initiatives, helping the Foundation continue to grow and to gain momentum."

The Foundation's board of directors consists of 13 directors; 10 directors from its membership organizations and three at-large directors nominated by the management team and elected by the board. Gold-level members of the Foundation elected six representatives from the Gold membership to serve on the board; Silver-level members elected two representatives from the Silver membership, and Bronze-level members elected two representatives from the Bronze membership to serve on the board of directors. The members of the board of directors serve a one-year term and meet quarterly.

The new board of directors includes:

Gold:

• Jamie Dananberg, M.D., Executive VP, Therapeutic Areas, Takeda Pharmaceuticals
• Brett Davis, General Manager, ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte and Principal, Deloitte Consulting
• Matteo di Tomasso, VP Research Business Technology, Pfizer
• Olivier Gien, Ph.D., Global Head, R&D Health Information Technologies, Sanofi
• Juergen Hammer, Ph.D., MDA, Global Head Data Science; Center Head Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development Informatics, Roche TCRC
• Jonathan Sheldon, Global VP, Health Sciences, Oracle

Silver:

• Gilbert Omenn, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (CCMB) and Professor, University of Michigan
• Kenneth Pienta, M.D., The Donald S. Coffey Professor of Urology at the Brady Urological Institute of The John Hopkins Hospital

Bronze:

• James Burns, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Drexel University College of Medicine
• Lee Hood, M.D., Ph.D., President, Institute for Systems Biology

At Large:

• Hiroaki Kitano, Ph.D., President, The Systems Biology Institute
• Gerrit Meijer, Chair, Department of Pathology, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, PI of CTMM TraIT
• John Wilbanks, Chief Commons Officer, Sage Bionetworks

About The tranSMART Foundation
The tranSMART Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides an open-source, cloud-based, data-sharing and analysis platform that enables scientists at universities, disease foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies around the world to share pre-competitive data in a way that saves money and time in translating research findings into new therapies and diagnostic tools. Founded to steward the tranSMART platform, the Foundation is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts with Centers of Excellence in Ann Arbor, Mich.; London, England; Boston, Mass.; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The tranSMART Foundation can also be found on the web at www.tranSMARTFoundation.org.