Education Sessions
Keynote Session
Monday, 27 October 08.30 – 12.00
Keynote Speakers:
Hans Rosling is professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. When working as a doctor in Mozambique he discovered a formerly unrecognized paralytic disease that his research team named konzo. His research concerns links between economy and health in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has been adviser to WHO and UNICEF; co-founded Médecines sans Frontiers in Sweden; and started courses and published a textbook on Global Health.
With his son and daughter-in-law he founded the Gapminder Foundation to promote a fact-based world view by developing software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive, and enjoyable graphics (www.gapminder.org). In 2007, Google acquired the software Trendalyzer that he used in his lectures to show the trends of economic, social, and environmental change that take place in the world. The animations clearly display how countries improve or deteriorate health, environment, and economics.
The five main points in his lectures are:
- There are no longer two types of countries in the world, the old division in industrialized and developing countries has been replaced by a world with a continuum of socio-economic development
- Most Asian countries are modernizing twice as fast as Europe did
- A new dichotomy may form between the five billion people moving toward healthy lives with cell phones, washing machines, and human rights, and the more than one billion people stuck in a vicious circle of poverty and insecurity
- So far all progress toward health and wealth has been achieved at the price of CO2 emission and an eminent climate crisis
- There are reasons for optimism regarding the future of the world because we presently manage the world so poorly (i.e., there are enormous opportunities to improve the life of all humans and to create a secure a sustainable world)
Dr. Janet Woodcock is the Director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She previously held various positions within the Office of the Commissioner, FDA as Deputy Commissioner, and Chief Medical Officer. She shared responsibility and collaborated with the Commissioner in planning, organizing, directing, staffing, coordinating, controlling, and evaluating the agency’s scientific and medical regulatory activities in order to achieve the mission of the FDA.
She also served as the deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, FDA, where she was responsible for overseeing Agency operations and cross-cutting regulatory and scientific processes at the FDA.
Dr. Woodcock has close interactions with diverse constituencies, including the clinical and scientific communities, members of Congress and the Administration, national media, patient and consumer advocacy groups, the international drug regulatory community, the regulated industry, and representatives of the Federal and State agencies. She frequently appears in or is quoted by the national media and has testified repeatedly before Congress.
Dr. Woodcock has led many cross-Agency initiatives while at the FDA. She introduced the concept of pharmaceutical risk management in 2000 as a new approach to drug safety, and has led the “Pharmaceutical Quality for the 21st Century Initiative” since 2002. This effort, to modernize pharmaceutical manufacturing and its regulation through the application of modern science and quality management techniques, has been highly successful in meeting its objectives. She has spearheaded an initiative on pharmacogenomics that has led to unprecedented agency-industry interactions on pharmacogenomics use in drug development. Over the last two years, she has led the FDA’s “Critical Path” Initiative, which is designed to improve the scientific basis for medical product development.
Dr. Woodcock has earned numerous FDA awards including six Commissioner’s Special Citations. She also received a Presidential Rank Meritorious Executive Award, the Nathan Davis Award from the American Medical Association (1999), the Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership from The American University (2000), the Public Health Leadership Award (2004) from the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), the VIDA Award from The National Alliance for Hispanic Health (2005), The Leadership Award in Personalized Medicine from the Personalized Medicine Coalition, three HHS Secretary’s Distinguished Service Awards, and the HHS Asian-Pacific Network Achievement Award (2001).
Dr. Woodcock received her M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School in 1977. She received her undergraduate degree from Bucknell University. She has held teaching appointments at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California at San Francisco. She lives in Maryland with her husband and is the mother of two daughters.
Patrick Y. Yang is Executive Vice President, Product Operations for Genentech. In this role, he is responsible for Genentech's engineering, manufacturing, regulatory, quality and compliance, facilities, supply chain management, and manufacturing collaboration functions. Yang is a member of Genentech's executive committee.
Yang joined Genentech in 2003 as vice president, South San Francisco Manufacturing and Engineering and most recently served as senior vice president, Product Operations. Prior to joining Genentech, Yang spent 11 years at Merck & Company in various leadership positions. Most recently, he held the position of vice president, Supply Chain Management in Merck's Manufacturing Division. In this role, he led the worldwide materials management, planning, global procurement, distribution/logistics, management engineering, third party manufacturing, automation and manufacturing support functions for Merck's manufacturing plants around the globe. Previous to that position, he was Merck's vice president, Asia/Pacific Manufacturing Operations. Yang was promoted to senior vice president, Product Operations in December 2004. In January 2006, Yang was promoted to executive vice president.
Prior to joining Merck in 1992, Yang spent 12 years at General Electric, serving in several research, engineering, technology, and manufacturing leadership roles with an increasing scope of responsibilities. Before working for General Electric, Yang spent five years in aerospace control systems research and development with Life Systems, Inc.
Yang holds a Bachelor of Science from the National Chiaotung University in Taiwan, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from Ohio State University.