Otradi

Patricia Beckmann

Dr. Patricia Beckmann is the Executive Director of the Oregon Translational Research and Drug Development Institute. Previously, Dr. Beckmann was a Kauffman Fellow at Accelerator Corporation (a Seattle-based venture firm which invests in and manages emerging biotechnology companies) and Northwest Technology Ventures (a seed- and early-stage venture firm focusing on opportunities in Oregon).

Patricia was founding Chief Scientific Officer of Homestead Clinical (now Integrated Diagnostics Inc.), an Accelerator-backed start-up focusing on proteomics and biomarkers for cancer. Previously, she was an Investment Specialist at Vulcan Capital, the investment vehicle for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Patricia also participated in strategic decision-making for the endowed Allen Institute for Brain Sciences.

For the majority of her career, Patricia held various research and management positions at Immunex Corporation and later Amgen, including Scientific Liaison responsible for scientific diligence relating to intellectual property and technology assessment. As a research scientist at Immunex, her efforts resulted in the marketed product (Enbrel), and several products in clinical trials. She was awarded National Inventor of the Year in 2000 for Enbrel.

Patricia earned her BA in biology, chemistry and art from the Evergreen State College and her PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Arizona. She pursued postgraduate studies as a Fulbright Scholar in Sweden and as a Visiting Scientist at the National Cancer Institute. Patricia has over 50 scientific publications and 40 issued US patents.

Jennifer Fox

Dr. Fox's areas of expertise include cell signaling and disease, novel assay development and understanding and combating drug resistance. Dr. Fox is a molecular & cellular biologist with more than 15 years of laboratory research experience. Prior to her appointment at OTRADI, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oregon working on the problem of drug-resistance in breast cancer. For this research, she received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. In addition, Dr. Fox received a postdoctoral research fellowship at Northwestern University in the laboratory of Dr. V. Craig Jordan, the pioneer of one of the world's leading breast cancer drugs, Tamoxifen.

Dr. Fox earned her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Tulane University in the environmental endocrinology laboratory of Dr. John A. McLachlan, director of the Tulane-Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research. Dr. Fox's groundbreaking work, published in the journal Nature, exposed previously undiscovered aspects of bacterial signaling networks. Jennifer pursued her Master's research work in the laboratory of Dr. Oliver Smithies, a 2007 Nobel Laureate and creator of the technique of genetic targeting and knockout mice. Jennifer received her BS in Genetics from the University of Georgia, where her work on the genes underlying bacterial interactions was first published.

Dr. Fox has been awarded multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). Jennifer has written textbook chapters, review articles, invited commentaries and over 20 peer-reviewed articles. In addition, Dr. Fox has given numerous lectures at national and international scientific meetings on the topics of drug resistance and cellular signaling in both bacteria and human cells.

Yih-Tai Chen

Dr. Chen is a cell biologist with more than 20 years of experience in applying imaging, biochemical, and recombinant DNA technologies for research in several fields of cell biology, including cytoskeletal dynamics, protein trafficking, and cell signaling. Previously, Dr. Chen was at Molecular Probes (Eugene, OR), where he played leading roles in bringing new probes and new technologies to the applications of high throughput fluorescence microscopy. Prior to that time Dr. Chen was at Cellomics (Pittsburgh, PA), which helped shape the field of automated high-throughput fluorescence microscopy for drug discovery and drug profiling (also known as "high-content screening" or "high-content analysis"). His roles included leading the development of recombinant biosensors and new cell-based assays.

Beside his experience in several prominent areas of cell biology, Dr. Chen also brings to OTRADI expertise covering the many facets of high-content screening - from biology, automation, imaging hardware, software, to data analysis. Other than facilitating novel imaging assay development, his current research interests are in image-based automated cell biology, exploratory analysis of high dimensional data, and algorithms in computational applications in graphics art.

He received his B.Sc. degree in Zoology from National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan) and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley where he studied in vivo microtubule dynamics and small GTP binding proteins. He pursued postdoctoral research at Stanford University studying trafficking of the adhesion molecule E-cadherin in epithelial cells. He has authored fourteen research articles and holds two US patents on green fluorescent protein and recombinant protein interaction sensors.