Dr. Kwak is a committed physician, scientist, and mentor. He aspired from an early age to make the scientific discoveries in the laboratory and then also offer them to patients with cancer. He graduated from the highly selective 6-year combined B.S.-M.D. Honors Program from Northwestern University Medical School and concurrently earned his Ph.D. in tumor cell biology there. He then completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford University.

Few people have single-handedly taken original inventions from laboratory to clinic that have been fundamental for highly successful cancer treatments in man. Over 30 years, Dr. Kwak has serially generated disruptive technologies for novel immunotherapies and pioneered their first-in-human clinical testing. Overall, more than 500 cancer patients have been treated on clinical trials of four unique cancer treatments invented by Dr. Kwak.

In 2010 Dr. Kwak was named to the TIME100, one of the world’s 100 most influential people by TIME magazine, for his 20 year commitment to the science of cancer immunotherapy. In 2016 he was awarded the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (the highest honor awarded by South Korea) for his pioneering research in cancer immunotherapy.

He is scientific founder of Pepromene Bio, Inc., a biotech company currently developing a novel chimeric antigen receptor (“CAR”) T-cell therapy for leukemia.

Dr. Ravina Kullar is an Infectious Diseases global expert and epidemiologist, who has spent 15 years researching in the infectious diseases space, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers. She has been invited to provide 3 TED talks focused on the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), sharing her own personal patient stories and providing action items that everyone can implement to be a part of the solution of infectious diseases outbreaks.

Dr. Bryan Xie received his PhD in Immunology from Stanford Medicine where he worked on discovering novel biomarkers and developing cell therapies for improving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation outcomes, including reducing infection risk, as a treatment for hematologic malignancies. With a collective decade of experience in research spanning academia and industry and in consulting and working at biotech startups, he brings with him an insight into the challenges and processes it takes to translate impactful innovations into the clinic.