Judges
Brian Bennett
Medical College of WisconsinPersonal Page
Dr. Bennett is originally from the North East of England and obtained his Honors and Masters degrees in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. His Doctorate was awarded in 1994 by the University of Sussex for biochemical and EPR studies on molybdenum-containing enzymes under the late Prof. Robert C. Bray. Two postdoctoral positions followed, one with Prof. Andrew J. Thomson, FRS, OBE at East Anglia, U.K., and one with Prof. Richard C. Holz at Utah State, involving MCD, NMR, XAS and EPR spectroscopies. Dr. Bennett returned to the U.K. to work on protein crystallography and XAS at the National Synchrotron Radiation Source, Daresbury, U.K., and then moved to Germany (Universität des Saarlandes, Homburg) to take up a European Commission research fellowship, using pulsed and double resonance EPR methods to study metalloproteins. He has been at the Medical College of Wisconsin since 2001 and is currently an Associate Professor of Biophysics and the Associate Director of the National Biomedical EPR Center. He is married to a long-standing Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer, follows the Brewers, and rides a Harley-Davidson.
Luke Fisher
Accelrys, Inc.Fisher graduated in 1995 with a BS in Chemistry from Indiana University Northwest where my main area of research was the study on the photodegration of azo dyes. He received his PhD in Computational Chemistry in 1999 from UWM, studying under the guidance of Prof Tom Holme. My main research effort was on understanding the physiological behavior of compounds containing a boron-nitrogen dative bond. After graduate school, he started his career at Multicase Inc., a software company focused on building models for computational toxicology. During his time there, he worked primarily on building a multi-phase model on mutagenicity across a series of Salmonella endpoints. He began his present position eith Accelrys Inc., in 2000 (at that time the company was named Molecular Simulations Inc (MSI)). During the last eight years, he has held several roles within the company, but his focus has always been consistent -- helping their primary customer base in life sciences, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, use their software tools to design small molecule inhibitors for their drug discovery efforts. His first role was as an application scientist where his main responsibility was to work with customers on-site to help them use their software effectively. Beginning in 2002, he began managing a team of application scientists in the US. In 2006, he moved to a new position in the customer support division - Lead Scientific Support Consultant - where his main responsibility became helping customers via phone and email support to solve their problems and design their computational research workflow to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. Earlier this year, he began managing the Modeling and Simulation Support division in the US focusing on both of Accelrys industry sectors -- life science and materials science (nanotechnology, fuel cells, petrochemicals, catalysis, diversified chemicals, etc). I have had the pleasure of being engaged in numerous research projects during this time including structure based pharmacophore design, sequential screening, diversity selection, gene-to-lead studies, scientific business intelligence, just to name a few. Also, beginning in 2007, Accelrys and Prof Holme began formal strategic collaboration agreement on driving new technologies in computational sciences. This has proven to be a key driver for new scientific enhancements to Accelrys' product offerings.
Cristian Soto
Whirlpool Corp.Soto Graduated from Professor Tysoe's group in 1994, with the thesis entitled "Metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) of thin films of aluminum oxide and aluminum nitride on an alumina substrate: studies of chemical mechanisms." From 1994-1996 he worked as a post-doc in the laboratory of Prof Nicholas Spencer at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich Switzerland. The work centered around tribochemistry and surface characterization of self-assembled monolayers. In 1996 he became an "Oberassitant" in Prof. Spencer's lab where most of his work was to build surface analysis and tribology investigations capabilities that allowed for collaborations in variety of different fields (dental implants, stick-slip phenomena, tribochemistry among others).In 1997 he relocated to the USA after taking a position with Nalco Chemical Company where he became Group Leader of The Finishing Technology Group. The work there centered around development of chemical products for the metalworking and finishing industries. In 2003, he began working for Whirlpool Corp where he is currently an Engineering Manager for the Materials Organization in the Corporate Technology Organization. The work centers around front-end material technology assessment and early product development for next generation consumer products.
