The SDCSB enjoys a very active External Advisory Board (EAB) drawn from systems biology experts outside of San Diego. The EAB meets at least annually to review and provide guidance on all center activities, typically in conjunction with the Systems-to-Synthesis Symposium in San Diego in the spring. Prior to the annual meeting, the EAB is provided with a detailed progress report from the SDCSB administration. The review also involves site visits to facilities and closed-door meetings with faculty, fellows and graduate students. At the completion of each annual review, the EAB issues a written annual assessment.

Brenda Andrews, University of Toronto
Brenda Andrews, Ph.D., FRSC, is the Charles H. Best Chair of Medical Research at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomedical Research at the University of Toronto. Her lab is interested in understanding cellular signalling processes in budding yeast using functional genomics tools such as synthetic genetic arrays and high content screening. Her lab is also interested in understanding cell cycle processes and molecular players that regulate endocytosis via directed mechanistic studies.

James Ferrell, Stanford University
James Ferrell, Ph.D., is a Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, Professor of Biochemistry, and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Systems Biology. His lab studies signal transduction and cell cycle regulation, mainly focusing the spatial and temporal regulation of mitotic entry and exit. To go beyond mere descriptions of the individual proteins that regulate these processes, his lab is trying to understand how these proteins work together in circuits, generating reliable systems-level behaviors.

Katherine Pollard, Gladstone Institutes, UCSF
Katherine Pollard, Ph.D., is a Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. Her lab is developing statistical and computational methods for the analysis of massive genomic datasets, with a particular focus on comparative and functional genomics. Current projects focus on three major areas: identifying the genetic basis for human-specific traits, such as our susceptibility to AIDS and atherosclerosis; pinpointing regulatory elements and 3D chromatin interactions, including how these are affected by mutations; and characterizing the human microbiome through metagenomic data.

James Collins, MIT, Wyss Institute, Broad Institute
James J. Collins, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. He is one of the founders of the emerging field of synthetic biology, and a pioneering researcher in systems biology, having made fundamental discoveries regarding the actions of antibiotics and the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Collins’ scientific accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2003,becoming the first bioengineer to receive this honor.

Timothy Elston, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Timothy Elston, Ph.D., is a Director of the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics Computational Biology and a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine. A main focus of his laboratory is to use computational and mathematical methods to discover and understand control mechanisms used to regulate signaling pathways.

Ravi (Srinivas) Iyengar, Mount Sinai, Systems Biology Center, NY
Ravi (Srinivas) Iyengar, Ph.D., is a systems biologist and Director of the Experimental Therapeutics Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, as well as the Dorothy H. and Lewis Rosenstiel Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics and Director and Principal Investigator of the NIGMS-funded Systems Biology Center New York at The Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Arthur Lander, UC Irvine, Center for Biological Complexity
Arthur D. Lander, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for Complex Biological Systems at the University of California, Irvine. Lander’s research is focused on the Systems Biology of Development, and deals with topics in Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Mathematical & Computational Biology, Glycobiology, Neurobiology, and Engineering. Dr. Lander serves on the editorial boards of PLOS Biology and the Journal of Biology, is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI).

Aviv Regev, MIT, Broad Institute
Dr. Aviv Regev joined the Broad Institute as a core member and MIT as a faculty member in 2006. Dr. Regev’s research centers focus on understanding how complex molecular networks function and evolve in the face of genetic and environmental changes, over time-scales ranging from minutes to millions of years. Dr. Regev was named an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2009 and was a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Sloan fellowship from the Sloan Foundation, and the Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology.

Peter Sorger, Harvard Medical School, Dept. of Systems Biology
Peter Sorger, Ph.D., is a Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Dept. of Biological Engineering and Center for Cancer Research. He received his A.B. from Harvard College, Ph.D. from Trinity College Cambridge, U.K. and trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Harold Varmus and Andrew Murray at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Sorger was co-founder of the MIT systems biology program CSBi, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and Glencoe Software and serves on the scientific advisory and corporate boards of several other technology companies. He is currently Chair of the CSF study section of the NIH and Director of the NIH-NIGMS CDP Center for Systems Biology.