DoHyun Cho, PhD

CEO and President, W Medical Strategy Group | Chairman, New York Health Forum

DoHyun Cho is the founder, president, and CEO of a U.S. consulting company W Medical Strategy Group. W Medical Strategy Group has subsidiaries including World Asian Medical Journal, New York Health Forum, W MediTech, and Green Alley. He also serves as the Board of Member for Enzychem Lifesciences, a publicly traded biopharma company. Prior to his current position, he served as the Head of Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) USA in New York for six years, a specialized agency of the Ministry of Health of South Korea. He also served as a Board of Director for Korean American Chamber of Commerce and serving as the Advisory Member for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Harmonization Center, Korean government delegate for APEC Life Science Working Group, Healthcare division representative for Korea-U.S. Business Council, etc. 

Moderator: Surani Fernando

Lead Reporter, Reorg

Surani Fernando leads pre-deal coverage across the healthcare sector and other regulated industries for Reorg M&A. Prior to joining Reorg, she was at BioPharm Insight (owned by The MergerMarket Group, later by GlobalData) for nine years. Initially starting as a reporter covering drug development for financial and corporate audiences, she later became a regional managing editor in both EMEA and North America regions. Prior to her career in journalism, she worked in clinical operations at CRO PAREXEL. She has a Bachelor of Medical Science and Master of Health Communication, both from Sydney University. 

Sundeep Lal, PhD, MBA

CEO, BioConnexUS

Sundeep Lal is the CEO and Founder of BioConnexUS, LLC. As an innovative global leader with tenures at Medtronic and Merck, he brings over twenty years of healthcare leadership experience in medtech and pharma in the U.S. and emerging market. His expertise includes strategy, BD, hospital solutions sales, business model innovation, and new products for biotech and medtech companies. At Medtronic, he was based out of Singapore for six years covering Asia-Pacific. At Merck & Co, he was in global roles based in corporate HQ in NJ, USA.

Ji Sun Park, PhD

Senior Scientist, Enzychem Lifesciences

Ji Sun Park is a project manager and scientist at Enzychem Lifesciences, a publicly owned biopharmaceutical company from South Korea. She works for both clinical and non-clinical sectors to assist the Phase II clinical studies and to apply for the U.S. government agency-sponsored grants and contracts, respectively. Before joining Enzychem, she had an academic career as a biomedical engineer with a background in cancer therapeutics, biomaterials, and regenerative medicine. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, an M.S. from Duke University, and a B.S. from the University of Washington in Seattle. 

Jo-Wen Lin

Portfolio Manager, Hudson Bay Capital

Jo-Wen Lin is a Portfolio Manager responsible for Asia Healthcare fund at Hudson Bay Capital. The fund holds investments in biotech, medical devices, healthcare services and pharmaceuticals pan Asia including Japan, China, India, Australia, and SE Asia. Prior to joining Hudson Bay Capital, she has managed a global healthcare equities portfolio within a few multi-billion funds. She has extensive experience in leading investment idea generation, portfolio construction, and equity analysis, with expertise in Asia Healthcare. She began her career as a Lead Product Development Engineer at a company acquired by Medtronic for six years. She received her MBA in Finance and Accounting from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Johns Hopkins University.

William Ho, MBA

President and CEO, incysus Therapeutics

William Ho has over 18 years of experience in the biotechnology and healthcare industries. He founded lncysus Therapeutics from AlephPoint Capital, a private healthcare focused investment manager which he launched in 2014. Prior to AlephPoint, he launched the public investments and cross-over portfolio at New Leaf Venture Partners, a leading healthcare venture capital firm. He was a Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America and an Analyst at Piper Jaffray & Company covering the biotechnology and life-science tools sectors. Will holds an MBA from the University of Notre Dame and a B.S. in Biochemistry, from McMaster University in Canada. He is a current member of the inaugural Scientific Advisory Board for the Faculty of Science at McMaster University. 

Moderator: Alaric DeArment

Senior Reporter, MedCity News

Alaric DeArment is the senior reporter at MedCity News, covering biopharma. He has covered the latest developments in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and healthcare for 11 years, previously working for BioPharm Insight and Drug Store News. A native of Seattle, he has lived in New York since 2008, having graduated from the journalism program at Ball State University in Indiana, where he studied after living in mainland China from 2001-2004. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Health Care Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. 

Jahan Ali, PhD

Director, BioVenture eLab at Weill Cornell Medical Center

Jahan Ali is a multifaceted business executive who has experience in biotech investing, commercialization and licensing. Her accomplishments include leading catalytic entrepreneurial programs, including BioAccelerate NYC, New York Digital Health Accelerator, and BioVenture elab. She has forged numerous partnerships and collaborations among companies, investors, and academia. She is adept in building relationships with multiple stakeholders to develop programs and initiatives. Jahan has previously served on the boards of MITEnterprise Forum NYC chapter, and ELabNYC. She currently serves on advisory boards of AmplifyHer Ventures and Springboard's healthcare council. 

Vahan Simonyan, PhD

Chief Scientist, Embleema

Vahan Simonyan is the Chief Scientist of Embleema. As the former Senior Director of Bioinformatics at CRISPR Therapeutics, he has expertise in biotechnology and biomedical informatics, previously serving at the U.S. FDA as a Lead Scientist of HIVE, R&D Director of Bioinformatics. He is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University. His accomplishments in academic and R&D technology carriers have been complemented with the success of technology leadership roles at NCBI and FDA where he established large-scale and complex, science-heavy R&D infrastructures capable of serving worldwide communities for research and regulatory purposes. He donated High-performance Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE) codebase to the U.S. government and led a research collaboration between FDA and IBM on testing feasibility of blockchain for healthcare data. 

Ariel Katz

Co-Founder and Partner, H1

Ariel Katz is the Co-Founder and Partner at H1, the first company to arm healthcare and life science companies with on-demand, live insights from across the data universe to accelerate the discovery and development of therapies to fight diseases. He has previously worked at Greensightdata.com and was the co-founder of Labspot.io, a curriculum management system for medical school student research, as well as the CEO and co-founder of ResearchConnection. At H1 , he currently works to provide insights into thought leaders, scholarly content, academics and healthcare professionals to some of the largest and most influential global life science organizations. 

Les Funtleyder, MPH

Healthcare Portfolio Manager, E Squared Partners

Les Funtleyder is a Healthcare Portfolio Manager at E Squared Capital Management where he is responsible for conducting fundamental and valuation analysis of public and private companies within the healthcare industry. He is also a consulting partner to Bluecloud Health, a Sub-Saharan healthcare private equity fund, and is on the board of several healthcare companies and foundations. He is also currently an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Columbia. Prior to E Squared, he was the Director of Strategic Investments for Opko Health, Phil Frost's holding company. He also wrote Healthcare Investing : Profiting from the New World of Pharma, Biotech, and Health Care Services (McGraw Hill). 

William C. Hicks

Co-chair, Mintz Securities & Capital Markets Practice

William (Bill) C. Hicks is the Co-chair of Mintz Securities & Capital Markets Practice Group. He has extensive experience representing issuers, investors, and investment banks in structuring and executing IPOs, cross-over investments, alternative public offerings, including reverse mergers and form 10 transactions. He represents hedge funds, venture capital firms, and private equity firms in customized investments in public companies. He also represents public companies in public and private financings, SEC compliance, corporate governance, and general counseling.

Jon Civitarese

Managing Partner, SVB Leerink

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Jon Civitarese is a Managing Director in Investment Banking at SVB Leerink. He was one of the firm's earliest employees when he joined SVB Leerink in 1995, providing advisory services to high-net-worth individuals in the Private Client Group prior to moving to Investment Banking. Since 1999, his activities have included advising public and private life science companies on strategic initiatives and equity capital financings as part of SVB Leerink's investment banking team. In addition to his primary banking responsibilities, he has also served as a senior member of the equity capital markets and syndicate team since 2001. He began his career by serving in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier, and graduated from the University of Maine. 

Marc Estigarribia, MBA

Managing Director, MSQ Ventures

Marc Estigarribia is the Managing Director at MSQ Ventures, an NYC-based cross-border advisory firm that bridges the healthcare and emerging technology industries globally by offering our deep knowledge and local insight of China market. MSQ Ventures manages clients' cross-border transaction processes including licensing, M&A, fundraising, joint ventures, and other strategic partnerships from its offices in the U.S. and China. At MSQ, he is responsible for sell-side M&A deal origination, business development, building MSQ's client pipeline for consulting mandates and engagements. He started his career on the buy-side, post-NYU Stern Business MBA. Then, he moved to sell-side as a publishing equity research analyst at Citigroup for 10 years covering TMT in emerging markets. After 14 years at Citi, prior to MSQ, he worked at Chardan Capital Markets, an Investment Bank boutique in downtown NYC. 

John R. Lieberman, CPA

Managing Director, Perelson Weiner LLP

John R. Lieberman is the Managing Director at Perelson Weiner LLP, where he works with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to implement financial controls, in addition to evaluating and working on private placements of publicly-traded securities or prior to an IPO. He has dedicated his practice of over 25 years to assist the owners of closely-held companies with business tax planning and risk management and high net worth individuals with their wealth management needs. He has extensive experience in a broad range of industries from the sports and entertainment industry to media, real estate, and healthcare companies both private and public. He is frequently solicited by the media to speak on tax issues.