Julia Berzhanskaya, PhD, Program Director, REACH and Innovator Support Lead, I&C, NHLBI

Julia serves as a Program Director for REACH/NCAI and as the Lead Innovator Support for the Innovation & Commercialization Office. Prior to joining the Innovation Office, Julia served as a Program Official at the National Institute on Drug Abuse responsible for management of behavioral, device, big data, and digital health technology SBIR/STTR portfolios. At the Office of the NIH Director, she oversaw the biomedical facilities program, and prior to that had a range of SBIR/STTR and regulatory related responsibilities at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Julia also held the role of Scientific Review Officer at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has contributed to several trans-NIH initiatives including HEAL, BRAIN, SPARC, MMM and Entrepreneurial Workforce Diversity Group. Julia earned her M.S. in Neuroscience from University of Pittsburgh and Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University.

CDR Mike Banyas, USPHS, M.P.A., M.A., Health Specialist, Community Health and Population Science, NIMHD

Commander Michael Banyas is a Senior Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service and a Health Specialist in the National Institute of Minority Health Disparities (NIMHD). The mission of NIMHD is to lead the nation’s scientific research to improve minority health and reduce health disparities. In his role, he is the Program Director for NIMHD’s SBIR/STTR program and oversees an award budget of almost $17.5 million and over 100 awardees. CDR Banyas specializes in underserved health care and public health systems with a focus on implementation science. Previously, he served as Public Health Analyst in NIH’s All of Us Research Program, where he led the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Pilot Project and Co Led the Tribal Engagement Strategic, as well as operational process improvement.

Patti Weber, DrPH, Program Director, NCI SBIR Development Center

Dr. Weber completed her Masters and Doctorate in Public Health with an emphasis in Biomedical Sciences at the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley. She began work at the National Institutes of Health in the National Cancer Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center in Oct of 2008. The SBIR Development Center is a division at the NCI that manages more than $180 million in technology projects within the small business community to accelerate the progress of cancer research. Her area of emphasis is in cancer prevention, digital health, therapeutics, and biologics. Prior to joining the NCI, she worked in industry managing drug discovery and development efforts at small biotech companies in San Diego followed by western Montana.

Todd Haim, PhD, NIA Senior Advisor on Biomedical Innovation

Todd Haim, Ph.D., is the NIH National Institute on Aging (NIA) Senior Advisor on Biomedical Innovation and the Director of the NIA Office of Strategic Extramural Programs (OSEP). He leads a dynamic team focused on coordinating and continuing to enhance NIA’s training, career development, and small business seed funding (SBIR/STTR) programs. Under Todd’s leadership, NIA’s seed funding programs have grown significantly, incorporated more resources to enable awardee success, and have been demonstrated to support advancement towards commercialization for a diverse array of innovators. Todd’s previous position was Program Director at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) SBIR Development Center, where he evaluated and managed cancer-focused SBIR & STTR grants and contracts and played a leadership role in several center initiatives. Prior to NCI, he was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences. Todd graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in January 2007 with a Ph.D. in biomedical research and obtained a certificate in technology commercialization from John Hopkins’ Carey Business School in 2011. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Pfizer in which he actively led Pfizer’s research efforts in a collaboration with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He has received several prestigious awards and honors, including the 2014 NCI Leadership Development Award, several NIA, NCI, and NIH Director’s Awards, and the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Volunteerism in the Field of Health.

Renée JG Arnold, PharmD, RPh, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at NIH/NHLBI and BioHealth Innovation, Inc.

Renée JG Arnold is currently Entrepreneur-in-Residence with both BioHealth Innovation, Inc. and the NIH/NHLBI, with expertise in Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) and evidence development related to reimbursement. She is also President & CEO, Arnold Consultancy & Technology, LLC, where she oversees outcomes research and develops affiliated software for pharmaceutical and government programs. Her special interest in evidence-based health derives from her research that deals with use of technology to collect and/or model real-world data for use in rational decision-making by healthcare practitioners and policy makers. In addition, Dr. Arnold is Adjunct Professor, Master of Public Health program, Department of Environmental Medicine and Climate Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, where she has developed and teaches the pharmacoeconomics coursework.
Dr. Arnold completed her undergraduate training at the University of Maryland and received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She also completed a post-doctoral residency at University Hospital in San Diego/University of California at San Francisco School of Pharmacy. Dr. Arnold is a founding member of ISPOR, the 20,000-member leading professional society for HEOR globally, and is the Chair of multiple special interest groups (SIGS) there including, most recently, the Open Source Model SIG. Dr. Arnold is an author of numerous articles, book chapters and books in the areas of pharmacology, pharmacoeconomics and cost containment strategies and the 2 nd edition of her pharmacoeconomics textbook.