Dr. Poornima provides specialized care for individuals with cardiac symptoms. Her expertise includes echocardiography, cardiac PET, and nuclear cardiac imaging. She also focuses on women’s heart health, including pregnancy-related cardiovascular disease. She earned her degree at Stanley Medical College at University of Madras in Chennai, India, and completed her residency at Wayne State University Health Center in Detroit, Michigan. She pursued additional training with a cardiovascular medicine fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and nuclear cardiology training at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She is the Medical Director of Nuclear Cardiology and Director Preventive Cardiology and Women’s Heart Center at Allegheny Health Network.

Kirk L. Peterson, MD, FACP, FACC, is a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine where he held the Perlman Chair of Cardiology for more than 25 years. During his 50-year professional career at UCSD, he also served as a cardiology consultant to the Naval Regional Medical Center and the Veteran’s Hospital in San Diego. He served as the Director of the Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center, UC San Diego Health System, from its opening in 2011 until 2015. During his academic career he sat on the editorial board of the Journal American College of Cardiology and was also President of the Medical Education Research Foundation. Between 2005 and 2020, Professor Peterson served as the Director of the Seaweed Canyon Cardiovascular Physiology Laboratory, University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, the site where the murine investigations of Jaan Biotherapeutics drugs were conducted in double-blind studies. He has authored over 180 papers in cardiology, numerous book chapters, and served as the senior author of a textbook on Cardiac Catheterization and Angiography. Professor Peterson received his medical degree from the Cornell University Medical College in New York, New York, completed two years of post-graduate training in Internal Medicine at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and received fellowship training in Cardiovascular Medicine at The Baylor College of Medicine before coming to UC San Diego.

Dr. Brar founded Jaan Biotherapeutics in 2015, following 7 years at Zensun USA, where she held various positions including the Vice President of Clinical Research, managing a United States Phase 2 clinical trial for a first in class therapeutic for the treatment of heart failure. Dr. Brar completed her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Swansea University in Wales and a Ph.D. in Physiology/Endocrinology from the University of Reading U.K. Dr. Brar has served as a consultant for many years helping companies to develop therapeutics through to clinical testing before founding Jaan Biotherapeutics. Dr. Brar is an inventor/co-inventor of numerous patents and has been working in developing treatments for heart disease for 28 years.

Dr. Varella is a clinical expert in the care of patients with breast cancer. She was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil where she completed her training in Medical Oncology.  She moved to the United States for a research fellowship in cancer immunology at the Cleveland Clinic, followed by a clinical fellowship in Experimental Therapeutics.  Following her residency in Internal Medicine, she spent a year as a Chief Resident at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  She then completed a fellowship in Hematology & Oncology at the Cleveland Clinic. After her training, Dr. Varella joined the breast cancer group coming from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York where she was an Assistant Professor of Medicine specialized in the treatment of breast cancer. Dr. Varella has a special clinical and research focus on improving outcomes in young patients with breast cancer. Her recent research innovations include leading a project at DFCI in which she is investigating the factors associated with survival in young patients with metastatic breast cancer from the Young Women's Breast Cancer study (YWS) at DFCI.  She also supervises and teaches Internal Medicine residents and Medical Oncology fellows at DFCI.  

Dr. Catharine H. Marshall is an obstetrician-gynecologist in La Jolla, California and is affiliated with Scripps La Jolla Hospitals. She received her medical degree from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years.

Beth Hoffman, Ph.D. is Founder and CEO at Origami Therapeutics. She brings more than 25 years of CNS drug discovery and has developed over 30 assets that have advanced into the clinic in cystic fibrosis, metabolic diseases, neurology, pain and psychiatry. Prior to Origami, she was Vice President, Discovery Biology for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where she generated and launched clinical candidates for respiratory and neurological diseases, including first-in-class block buster drugs in cystic fibrosis (Kalydeco, Orkambi, Symdeko, Trikafta). She expanded the market for Orkambi and increased sales to over $1 Billion, and also generated a novel non-opioid pain therapeutic and other protein folding programs at Vertex. Dr. Hoffman received an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Johns Hopkins University. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Huntington’s Disease Society of America as well as a Scientific Advisor for the Tau Consortium focusing on alleviating diseases associated with tau pathology, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. She is also on the Board of Biofrontera Inc.

Andreas Bader experience lies in drug development from early-stage drug discovery into Phase I clinical trials, with a focus on oligonucleotide therapies and cellular therapies. During his 10-year academic career, he studied mechanisms of cancer, validating cancer drug targets in vitro and in vivo. At Asuragen, Inc., he led the miRNA Therapeutics program. As a scientific founding member, he directed research programs that focused on the development of microRNA-based therapies. Currently, he is advising/consulting for new and early-stage biotechnology ventures.