Dr. Randall Schatzman to Keynote Convocation
Dr. Randall C. Schatzman, a well-known innovator in the bioscience industry, will be the keynote speaker at KGI’s 2012–2013 Convocation ceremony on September 7. Dr. Schatzman has been the president and CEO of Alder Biopharmaceuticals since its founding in 2004. Previously, he was senior vice president of discovery research at Celltech R&D Inc., where he led a group of 95 scientists responsible for much of the therapeutic antibody pipeline for Celltech. He also served as the director of gene discovery at Mercator Genetics and helped to found the Cancer and Developmental Biology Institute at Syntex/Roche Bioscience. He received his PhD in molecular pharmacology from Emory University and completed an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of J. Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco.
“Dr. Schatzman’s career has been marked by innovation and entrepreneurship at the highest level. I can’t imagine a more appropriate speaker to help us celebrate Convocation — a time when members of the KGI community come together in a spirit of intellectual curiosity and optimism,” President Sheldon Schuster said.
The theme of this year’s Convocation will be Pichia pastoris in honor of KGI’'s first faculty emeritus, Dr. James “Jim” Cregg. An enormously dedicated faculty investigator, Cregg is known for research on the development and use of the yeast, P. pastoris, as a system for the production of recombinant proteins. In fact, his dedication to his science and his students has helped to set the tone for the Institute over the past decade.
In addition to the keynote address by Dr. Schatzman, the Convocation program will include a tour of Cregg’s lab and presentations by Cregg and Jim Sterling, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty. Special remarks will also be made by a panel of distinguished guests, including John Latham from Alder Biopharmaceuticals and Tom Chappell from Biogrammatics, Inc. A full program schedule will be provided next month.