Dr. Brenner is Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. In this role, he leads the School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy, and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California, San Diego, and UC San Diego Health. A distinguished physician-scientist and leader in the field of gastroenterological research, Dr. Brenner first joined UC San Diego Health System in 1985 as a gastroenterology fellow, later joining the School of Medicine faculty, and serving as a physician at Veterans Affairs (VA) San Diego Healthcare System. He also served as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Clinical Investigator in the VA system. In 1993, Dr. Brenner became Professor and Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued to earn accolades for his patient care and research. He was ultimately recruited to UC San Diego Health System from Columbia University Medical Center College of Physicians and Surgeons, where from 2003 to 2007 he was Samuel Bard Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a member of the Columbia University Institute of Nutrition, and physician-in-chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia. Dr. Brenner’s professional memberships include the American Society for Clinical Investigation; the Association of American Physicians, for which he is currently President-Elect; the American College of Physicians; the American Gastroenterological Association, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association. He is also on the Board of Directors of two philanthropic foundations, the AlphaOne Foundation and the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. Dr. Brenner has been published numerous times and serves on several editorial boards. Dr. Brenner earned his M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, he served as a research associate in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Buckner received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Carleton College, magna cum laude. She attended Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and after receiving her MD, she completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Buckner went on to complete a fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Washington. As a fellow she was honored with the American College of Rheumatology’s Senior Rheumatology Scholar Award. After completing her medical training, Dr. Buckner continued her research training as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Nepom. In 1999, she was the recipient of the ACR Arthritis Investigator Award. Since 1999, Dr. Buckner has been an investigator at the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). She became the Director of the Translational Research Program at BRI in 2005, was named Associate Director of BRI in January 2012 and was appointed President of BRI in January 2016. Dr. Buckner continues to care for rheumatology patients at the Virginia Mason Medical Center, and she is an affiliate professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Washington, an affiliate professor of immunology in the UW School of Medicine, an affiliate of the UW Diabetes Research Center, an active member of the Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet Biomarker and Mechanisms Panel, and a member of the Brehm Coalition.

Peter Palese is a Professor of Microbiology and the Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research is in the area of RNA-containing viruses with a special emphasis on influenza viruses and more recently SARS-CoV-2. He has been a pioneer in the field of reverse genetics for negative strand RNA viruses, which is crucial for the study of the structure/function relationships of viral genes, for investigation of viral pathogenicity and for development and manufacture of novel vaccines. An improvement of this technique has been effectively used by him and his colleagues to reconstruct and study the pathogenicity of the highly virulent, but extinct, 1918 pandemic influenza virus. In recent years most of the efforts by Palese and his Mount Sinai collaborators, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre and Florian Krammer, have been directed at developing a Universal Influenza Virus Vaccine and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for low and middle income countries. Peter Palese is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.