Rik R. Tykwinskiearned his PhD from the University of Utah with Peter Stang in 1994. He worked with Professor François Diederich as a PDF at ETH-Zürich and then joined the faculty at the University of Alberta in 1997. In 2009 he accepted a position as Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. In 2016 he became Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. His studies focus on structure-property relationships in conjugated molecules.

Carrie Wager is Vice President Strategic and Scientific Operations at Ascidian Therapeutics. She received her Bachelor’s in Chemistry in 1994 from Miami University, her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Utah in 2000 and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2017.  Carrie spent 17 years at Pfizer as Senior Principal Scientist, Director of Business Planning, Chief of Staff for Pfizer Medical, and Medical Strategy Lead in Oncology.  She then joined the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as Senior Advisor, before assuming her present position at Ascidian Therapeutics.

Raymond Pricereceived his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Utah, followed by an M.D. from Harvard. He has spent his career expanding the role of surgery in public health, and has participated in or led surgical expeditions to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He co-founded The Center for Global Surgery at the University of Utah. He also currently directs graduate surgical education at Intermountain Medical Center. He has served with the World Health Organization, and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles and books or chapters in books.