The Sage Commons is a novel information platform being built by an international partnership of researchers and stakeholders to define the molecular basis of disease and guide the development of effective human therapeutics and diagnostics.
The Sage Commons will be used to integrate diverse molecular mega-data sets, to build predictive bionetworks and to offer advanced tools proven to provide unique new insights into human disease biology. Users will also be contributors that advance the knowledge base and tools through their cumulative participation.
The public access mission of the Sage Commons requires the development of a new strategic and legal framework to protect the rights of contributors while providing widespread access to integrative genomics resources.
Bio
Andrew Kasarskis
Andrew Kasarskis is the Head of Strategic Initiatives at Sage Bionetworks, located in the greater Seattle area. Sage Bionetworks is a new, not-for-profit medical research organization, established in 2009 to revolutionize how researchers approach the complexity of human biological information and the treatment of disease. Sage's objectives are to build and support an open access platform and databases for building innovative new dynamic disease models and to interconnect scientists as contributors to evolving, integrated networks of biological data.
Andrew Kasarskis' role at Sage Bionetworks involves developing a scalable network of contributor scientists that will make systems biology an impactful, precompetitive area for drug development and biological research. His specialities include building applied science teams, research portfolio management, genetics, informatics, genomics, systems biology, project management, software development, high performance computing, animal models, sleep research, cardiovascular disease genetics, developmental biology, business planning, and web 2.0 community development. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Kentucky.
Ilya Kupershmidt
Ilya Kupershmidt is VP of product management at NextBio.
Mr. Kupershmidt has had extensive experience in the design, implementation, and integration of bioinformatics solutions for organizations involved in basic research, clinical and drug discovery efforts. An especially relevant area of Mr. Kupershmidt's expertise derives from his years at Silicon Genetics. There he helped develop and market software widely used for data mining and management of information from high-throughput genomic and proteomic platforms. Mr. Kupershmidt joined Silicon Genetics at the company's inception, and has since worked with hundreds of academic institutions and commercial enterprises on the design, customization, and deployment of systems for global analysis and management of high-throughput biological information. In his role as Director of Professional Services, he worked closely with such institutions as Novartis, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Merck, Bayer, Stanford, Harvard, MIT and others, on implementing effective bioinformatics solutions.
Previously, Mr. Kupershmidt carried out research at Geof Rosenfeld's lab at UCSD Howard Hughes Medical Institute. There he studied transcriptional mechanisms of gene expression regulation during pituitary development. Mr. Kupershmidt is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Royal Institute of Stockholm (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.
The use of biology to solve problems and make useful products. The growth of the field is linked to the development in the 1970s of genetic engineering. Biotechnology merges biological information with computer technology to advance research in other areas, including nanotechnology and regenerative medicine. Today there are numerous commercial biotechnology firms that manufacture genetically engineered substances for a variety of mostly medical, agricultural, and ecological uses.
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