Advisory Panel

The advisory panel for the International Stem Cell Policy Program includes:

Neal Lane, Ph.D. (Co-Chair) – Senior Fellow in Science and Technology Policy, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy; Malcolm Gillis University Professor and Professor of Physics, Rice University, U.S.A.

Abdelali Haoudi, Ph.D. (Co-Chair) – Vice President for Research, Qatar Foundation

Ibrahim Ahmad Al-Hijji, M.D. – Consultant for Hematology and SCT, Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar

Baruch Brody, Ph.D. – Leon Jaworski Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine; Andrew Mellow Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy, Rice University, U.S.A.

Kirstin Matthews, Ph.D. – Fellow in Science and Technology Policy, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, U.S.A.

Stephen Minger, Ph.D. – Director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer at the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases, King’s College London, U.K.

Abdelhafez Helmy Mohammad, Ph.D. – Professor Emeritus, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Paul Simmons, Ph.D. – Professor of Molecular Medicine, C. Harold and Lorine G. Wallace Distinguished Chair and Director of the Center for Stem Cell Research at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, U.S.A.

Momtaz Wassef, Ph.D. – Director, Department of Biomedical Research, Ministry of Public Health, Qatar

 

Biographies

Neal F. Lane, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow in Science and Technology Policy, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and Malcolm Gillis University Professor and Professor of Physics, Rice University, U.S.A.

Neal F. Lane, Ph.D., is the senior fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. He is also the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Previously, Lane served in the federal government as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from August 1998 to January 2001, and he served as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and member (ex officio) of the National Science Board from October 1993 to August 1998. Before his post with NSF, Lane was provost and professor of physics at Rice, a position he had held since 1986. He first came to the university in 1966, when he joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. In 1972, he became professor of physics and space physics and astronomy. He left Rice from mid-1984 to 1986 to serve as chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Lane received his Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. in physics from the University of Oklahoma.

 

Abdelali Haoudi, Ph.D.

Abdelali Haoudi, Ph.D., vice president for research at Qatar Foundation, holds a doctorate degree in cellular and molecular genetics and a master’s degree in human, quantitative and population genetics from Pierre and Marie Curie University and Orsay University (Paris, France).

Prior to joining Qatar Foundation, Haoudi was a professor of cancer biology and virology at Eastern Virginia Medical School and at the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia (U.S.A.). He also served as a visiting professor or visiting fellow at leading biomedical research institutes, including the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Institute of Proteomics, Cambridge (U.S.A.), the National Institutes of Health (U.S.A.) and the Pasteur Institute (France). He was also an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

Haoudi is the founder and president of the International Council of Biomedicine and Biotechnology. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology and a fellow of the National Royal Academy of Sciences and Technology. He has been actively involved in various science advisory activities for various international organizations, including the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the U.S. Department of Defense Medical Branch and other private research foundations.

 

Ibrahim Ahmad Al-hiiji, M.D.

Dr. Ibrahim Alhiiji was qualified as a Medical Doctor in 1994 from Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He did his training in General Medicine and all aspects of Hematology in the United Kingdom from 1996 till 2004. He then joined Al Amal Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, as a Consultant Clinical Hematologist and Stem Cell Transplant Physician. He has published many articles and case reports e.g. Mini-review in Stem Cell Transplantation, Qatar Medical Journal.

Dr. Alhiiji supervises two postgraduate students doing research in Gleevic Resistant CML Patients in Qatar, and Impact of Molecular Findings in Hematological Malignancies. He is a member of many European and Regional Societies. His interest is in Cell Therapy and Hemato-immunology.

 

Baruch Brody, Ph.D.

Baruch Brody is the Leon Jaworski Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). He is also the Andrew Mellow Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Rice University. Brody studied at Oxford University as a Fulbright Fellow from 1965 to 1966. He taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1967 to 1975, and has been at Rice since 1975, and at Baylor since 1982.

Brody has served on the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), on the Protocol Review Committee for the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network, on the Bioethics Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and on the NASA Bioethics Advisory Board. He was the principal investigator for the “Ethical Issues in Emergency Research” study (funded by the NIH) and headed the coordinating committee for the “Altering Nature” study (funded by the Ford Foundation). He has helped 11 healthcare institutions organize their ethics committees, and served for more than 15 years as the head of the ethics program at the Methodist Hospital. Brody has served on the national board of the American Philosophical Association and was formerly the president of the Society for Health and Human Values. He also is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and was elected in 2001 to the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies.

Dr. Brody received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1962, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1967.

Kirstin Matthews, Ph.D.

Kirstin R. W. Matthews is a fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. She is responsible for managing the activities of the Science and Technology Policy Program, which includes planning and organizing conferences, as well as researching and writing Baker Institute policy reports and research papers, among other science and technology policy briefs. Matthews’ research focuses on the intersection between traditional biomedical research and public policy. Her current projects include the Baker Institute International Stem Cell Policy Program, the Civic Scientist Lecture Series and Outreach Program, and policy studies in research and development funding, global health and climate change.

Matthews came to Rice University as a postdoctoral research associate in the department of physics and astronomy and a research assistant at the Baker Institute in 2003. In 2004 she became the program manager for the Science and Technology Policy Program and in 2008 she was promoted to fellow in science and technology policy. From 2004 to 2006, Matthews was also the project director for the task force, Access to Health Care in Texas: Challenges of the Uninsured and Underinsured. The task force released the report, “Code Red: The Health of Texas,” in April 2006, followed by an update, “Code Red 2008,” in March 2008.

Matthews has a B.A. in biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Stephen Minger, Ph.D.

Director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer at the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases, King’s College London, U.K.

Stephen Minger, Ph.D., is the director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer at the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases at King’s College London. Minger received his Ph.D. in pathology (neurosciences) in 1992 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. From 1992 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego, where he first began to pursue research in neural stem cell biology. In 1995, Minger was appointed assistant professor in neurology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. He moved his stem cell research program to Guy’s Hospital, London, in 1996 and was appointed a lecturer in biomolecular sciences at King’s College London in 1998. Over the past 16 years, his research group has worked with a wide range of tissue-derived stem cell populations, as well as mouse and human embryonic stem (ES) cells. In 2002, together with Susan Pickering and Peter Braude, Minger was awarded one of the first two licenses granted by the U.K. Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for the derivation of human ES cells. His group subsequently generated the first human ES cell line in the United Kingdom and was one of the first groups to deposit this into the U.K. Stem Cell Bank. They have gone on to generate a number of new human ES cell lines, including one that encodes the most common genetic mutation resulting in cystic fibrosis and another one that contains the Huntington’s disease mutation.

Minger, together with Chris Mason of University College London (UCL), is also one of the co-organizers of the London Regenerative Medicine Network, a grassroots, research-led organization designed to stimulate clinical translation of cell- and gene-based therapies within London. He is also the stem cell expert and member of the U.K. Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) at the Department of Health and is a member of the advisory panel of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

 

Abdelhafez Helmy Mohammad, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abdulhafez Helmy Mohammad, Ph.D., has been professor emeritus at Ain Shams University since 1988. Prior to this, he was professor of protozoology, vice dean and dean of the faculty of science at Ain Shams. He was also professor of general zoology at Kuwait University.

Mohammad is also the president of the National Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science, the Zoological Society of Egypt, and the Egyptian Society for the Arabization of the Language of Science. He is the vice president of the IRCICA (Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture) Governing Board. Additionally, he is a member of the executive boards of the International Union of the History of Science and Technology; the Society of Protozoology, New York; and the British Society for the History of Science, London. Mohammad is a member of the Egyptian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of the Arabic Language.

Mohammad was granted the Ain Shams Prize of Merit in Basic Science in 1997 and the State Prize of Merit in Basic Science in 2001. Mohammad received his B.Sc. from Cairo University and his Ph.D. from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London.

Paul Simmons, Ph.D.

Professor of Molecular Medicine, C. Harold and Lorine G. Wallace Distinguished Chair, and Professor and Director of the Center for Stem Cell Research at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, U.S.A.

Paul Simmons, Ph.D., serves as professor and director of the Center for Stem Cell Research at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) for the Prevention of Human Diseases. He was president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) from 2006 to 2007.

Simmons graduated from Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, U.K., and received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, where his research focused on long-term bone marrow cultures. Postdoctoral research was initially conducted at the Terry Fox Laboratory, B.C. Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, and subsequently (1986-1990) in the Department of Transplantation Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. In 1990, Simmons was appointed the inaugural R.L. Clifford Fellow in Experimental Haematology and a member (professorial equivalent) of the Hanson Centre for Cancer Research in Adelaide, Australia. In 1999, Simmons was recruited to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne as program head in Stem Cell Biology, and from 2003 also held the position of director of the Adult Stem Cell Platform of the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC).

Simmons is or has served as associate editor on multiple journals in the field of stem cell biology, including Experimental Hematology, Cytotherapy and Stem Cell Research, and he is on the editorial boards of the journals Cell, Stem Cell, Blood and Stem Cells. Simmons serves regularly as a reviewer for Nature, Science, PNAS and the Journal of Clinical Investigation, among others.

 

Momtaz Wassef, Ph.D.

Director, Department of Biomedical Research, Ministry of Public Health, Qatar

Momtaz K. Wassef, Ph.D., graduated with a B.Sc. (with honors) and an M. Sc. in biochemistry from Ain Shams University in Egypt, and a doctorate degree from the University of Ottawa in Canada. Before joining the National Health Authority in 2008 as director of the Department of Biomedical Research, he was the leader (chief) of the Atherosclerosis Research Group at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Wassef came to the NIH from academia.  He was a postdoctoral fellow and held various positions, including adjunct professor, at New York Medical College, the University of Kentucky, Duke University, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Washington University in St. Louis.

Wassef’s areas of research interest are in chemistry and metabolism of lipids, with particular expertise in inflammation, atherosclerosis and vessel wall biology, diabetes, and angiogenesis. He has authored or co-authored 65 research papers that have appeared in peer reviewed journals, and also has authored or co-authored five books and review articles. During his 27 years tenure at the NIH, Wassef initiated, implemented and directed numerous large NIH landmark research programs, including the Specialized Centers of Research in Molecular Medicine and Atherosclerosis, the Pathobiological Determinants of Atherosclerosis in Youth, Characteristics of the Vulnerable Plaque, Pathogenesis of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm and the Cardiovascular Complications of Diabetes.

Wassef belongs to many scientific societies, including the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and he is also member of the executive committee of the American Heart Association Council on Atherosclerosis. He received numerous achievement and merit awards from the NIH and from the American Heart Association. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and reviewer for the journals Circulation, Circulation Research and Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.