Leading organizer:

San Diego Chinese Association (SDCA)

Co-organizers:

SABPA, San Diego
The American Chemical Society, San Diego Section
UCSD Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Services

Organizing Committee:

Hui Cai, Ph.D., Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Suixiong Cai, Ph.D., Maxim Pharmaceuticals

Cathy Chang, Ph.D. Diversa Corporation

Chao Dou, Ph.D., General Atomics

Regina Guo, ProSci Inc.

Hua Jin, M.D., University of California, San Diego

Ping Ling, Ph.D., Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Ved Srivastava, Ph.D., Amylin Pharmaceuticals

Feng Tian, Ph.D. Metabasis Therapeutics

Xiaojun Wu, CPA, SAIC

Hui Cai, Senior Scientist, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, La Jolla.

Dr. Cai currently serves as a member of the City of San Diego Science & Technology Commission, President of San Diego Chinese Association, a board member and Vice President of Sino-American Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association, and a board member of the American Chemical Society, San Diego Section. Dr. Hui Cai received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from Peking University, People’s Republic of China. She moved to the United States and pursued her doctorate in the laboratories of Professor Dale Boger at The Scripps Research Institute. Upon attaining her Ph.D. in 1999, She began her career in the pharmaceutical industry at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in La Jolla, California, where she is a Senior Scientist working on small molecule drug discovery programs targeting diseases of the immune system. She is a co-author of more than 20 published research papers and is a co-inventor on 7 issued U.S. patents and patent applications.

Suixiong Cai, Senior Director of Chemistry, Maxim Pharmaceutical.

Sui Xiong Cai, Ph. D. is Senior Director of Chemistry of Maxim Pharmaceutical. Prior to the merger of Cytovia with Maxim, Dr. Cai was Director of Chemistry and then Senior Director of Chemistry of Cytovia. Prior to joining Cytovia, a company spun off from CoCensys, Dr. Cai was Associate Director of Chemistry at CoCensys. He was one of the early employees of Acea and moved to CoCensys after Acea was acquired. Dr. Cai has extensive experience in drug research and discovery, including inducers of apoptosis as anti-cancer agents; inhibitors of caspases for the treatment of CNS, MCI and other degenerative diseases; inhibitors of SARS coronavirus proteases for the treatment of SARS; antagonists and modulators of glutamate receptors, include Glycine/NMDA receptors, NMDA subtype receptors and AMPA receptors for the treatment of CNS diseases; voltage dependent Na channel blockers for the treatment of CNS diseases; novel fluorescent dyes and substrates for the development of HTS assays; as well as management of company patent portfolio and intellectual property. Dr. Cai is the co-inventor of 55 issued US patents. He has published 64 peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Cai earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Oregon and his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Cathy Chang, Director, Diversa Corporation.

Dr. Chang is currently the Associate Director of Molecular Diversity at Diversa Corporation. Her group is responsible for extracting nucleic acid, and constructing cDNA and genomic libraries, from Diversa’s extensive collection of environmental samples. Prior to joining Diversa, Dr. Chang was a Director at Digital Gene Technologies, where she was responsible for managing the laboratory and robotics for DGT’s proprietary gene expression assay. Her team at DGT also engaged in technology development to advance DGT’s RNA and gene expression methods. Dr. Chang also worked at Stratagene as a Staff Scientist, and she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in the Division of Oncovirology. She earned her graduate and undergraduate degrees at Arizona State University and the California Institute of Technology, respectively.

Chao Dou, Associate Director of Diazyme Laboratories, a Division of General Atomics

Dr. Chao Dou is currently the associate director of Diazyme Laboratories, a division of General Atomics. At General Atomics, his effort has been dedicated to the development of clinical chemistry reagents for enzymatic detection of cardiac markers, diabetes, electrolytes and others with automated biochemistry analyzers. Prior to that, he served as an R&D manager at Apogent Technologies and senior research scientist at Roche Diagnostics. During his tenure at both companies, he successfully developed a dozen of commercial immunoassays for drug testing. He has brought more than a dozen of FDA 510 approval products to the US market and CE Marking products to the European market. He has published more than 20 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific journals and 4 patent applications.

He obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from Nankai University in 1987 and 1990 respectively. After that he was admitted by Peking University as a Ph.D. candidate. In 1993, he came to the University of California at San Diego and obtained his Ph.D. of Biochemistry in1997.

Hua Jin, Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Jin graduated from Shanghai Medical University in 1983 and completed psychiatry residency training at Shanghai Mental Health Institute between 1983 and 1987. Collaborating with neurosciences department at UCSD, he was involved in the first Alzherimer’s dementia study in China that brought him to UCSD in 1987 and 1990. After passing the US medical license examinations, he had psychiatry residency training again in the department of psychiatry at UCSD from 1996 to 2000 and has joined the faculty as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the department since then. His main research interests include geriatric psychiatry, clinical trial, drug related metabolic side effects and HIV/AIDS. Currently, he is the PI for several clinical trials on antipsychotics and antidepressants in the US and China, as well as the co-PI in a large scale HIV/AIDS neuropsychiatry research collaborating between UCSD and China CDC. /p>

Ping Ling, Senior Scientist, Johnson & Johnson PRD, La Jolla.

Dr. Ping Ling is currently a senior research scientist in Johnson & Johnson PRD. Ping obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry from Peking Normal University in 1982 and her M.S in the same major from Tianjing Medical University in 1985. In 1986, she came to the United States to pursue her advanced education in US Academy Member Professor Roberts’s lab at University of Missouri. After acquiring a Ph.D. in 1992, She began her career in the pharmaceutical industry through three years Post-Doctoral training at Hoffman-La-Roche in NJ and then joined Johnson & Johnson PRD La Jolla in 1996. Ping developed extensive experience in drug discovery and involved in more than 10 projects targeting diseases in immune system. She is an author of over 20 publications and an inventor of 6 patents.

Ved Srivastava, Associate Director of Research, Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Ved Srivastava is the Associate Director of Research at Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., San Diego, CA. He received his Ph.D. from University of Lucknow, India, in organic chemistry and had subsequent postdoctoral appointments at the University of Georgia and the University of Colorado Medical School. Over the past 20 years, Ved has been working in the drug discovery area, inflammation and metabolic diseases, with major emphasis in medicinal chemistry and peptide chemistry. Dr. Srivastava is currently serving as Program Chair of 41st Western Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society to be held in San Diego in 2007. He is the Immediate Past-Chairman of the San Diego section of the ACS. Dr. Srivastava has chaired the program effort of BioEntrepreneur Symposium-2002 and was a member of the organizing committee for the 3rd Annual Symposium on Biopharmaceuticals-2004, both held in San Diego. In addition to ACS, he is a member of the American Peptide Society for the last ten years. Dr. Srivastava became an ACS Career Consultant with Department of Career Services in 2002. For the past three years, he is also a Consulting Chief Scientific Officer with AIMS Fine Chemicals Inc.

Feng Tian, Senior Research Scientist, Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc.

Dr. Feng Tian is a senior research scientist in Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc. where he focuses on the discovery of novel small molecule drugs targeting liver diseases and metabolic diseases such as hyperlipidemia, liver fibrosis, and diabetes.  He did his postdoctral research at the Scripps Research Institute after obtaining his Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University.  He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Peking University.

Xiaojun Wu, CPA, SAIC.

Xiaojun Wu is a licensed CPA and a member of American Institute of Certified Public Accountant. She is currently an Audit Project Lead in SAIC where she plans and conducts operational and financial audits, identifies internal control weaknesses and tests controls for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act. She received master degree of Professional Accountancy from Jackson State University. She is volunteering as Treasurer of the San Diego Chinese Association.