Moderator
Jennifer Chang, PhD
Science Manager | American Brain Tumor Foundation

Presenters
Bruce Weinberg, PhD
Eric Byron Fix-Monda Endowed Professor | The Ohio State University Department of Economics
Bruce A. Weinberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1996 before joining the faculty at the Ohio State University, where he is Eric Byron Fix-Monda Endowed Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and recipient of Distinguished Scholar, Joan Huber, and Postdoc Mentor of the Year Awards. His research, which has been published in journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, and Science, spans three areas: 1) The economics of creativity and innovation 2) The determinants of youth outcomes and behavior 3) Technological change, industrial shifts, and the wage structure. Much of his work across these areas focuses on underrepresentation in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, or socio-economic background and has studied networks.

Weinberg has held visiting positions at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and Princeton University. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor (IZA), Bonn and Research Associate at the NBER, Cambridge, MA. He is an associate editor of the Industrial and Labor Relations Review and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. His research has been supported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Kauffman, Sloan, and Templeton Foundations. I seek to use my expertise on science and innovation into practice, having advised the NIH Directorate on the biomedical research workforce and NextGen initiatives and by serving on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. I have tried to repay the excellent mentorship I received by mentoring a diverse corps of over 50 undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs.

His work has been featured publicly in/on the Economic Report of the President, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other leading outlets in the U.S. and internationally.

Lara Bethke, PhD
Chief Science Officer | Health Resources in Action
Lara Bethke is a senior scientific consultant and the chief scientific officer at Health Resources in Action. Drawing on over 25 years of experience in life science research, consulting, and philanthropic advising, she leads initiatives focused on maximizing the impact of investments in biomedical research, including landscape research and strategic planning, research funding program design and management, impact evaluation, and research capacity building. She is passionate about developing innovative investment strategies focused on strengthening the biomedical research ecosystem to maximize the results of research investments, to advance science, and to improve human health. Previously, she developed and oversaw life science funding initiatives as the Director of Medical and Scientific Research at the Klarman Family Foundation, and as a Science Portfolio Advisor at the Wellcome Trust in London, UK. Prior to her work in biomedical research funding, she was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, where she led the genetic epidemiology arm of an international consortium of brain cancer epidemiologists. She has worked in international development in Russia, Ukraine, and Ecuador. She received a BA from Duke University, and a PhD in Biological Sciences in Public Health from Harvard University, where she conducted genetic research in infectious diseases.