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Founders
Topol, Eric J., M.D.
Chief Academic Officer, Scripps Health
Vice Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer, West Wireless Health Institute
The Gary & Mary West Chair of Innovative Medicine
Professor of Translational Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute
Senior Consultant, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Scripps Clinic
Eric J. Topol, MD, is the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, a National Institutes of Health funded program of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Consortium focused on advancing individualized medicine. He is the chief academic officer of Scripps Health, a senior consultant cardiologist practitioner at Scripps Clinic, and professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute.
Dr. Topol received his Bachelor of Arts with highest distinction from the University of Virginia in 1975, his doctor of medicine with honor from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1979, and completed internal medicine residency at University of California, San Francisco, and cardiology fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. He then was on faculty at the University of Michigan from 1985-1991, and in 2011 the University of Michigan set up the Eric J. Topol Collegiate Professorship in Cardiovascular Medicine.
In Cleveland, he chaired the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic for 15 years and elevated its status to rank No. 1 by U.S. News and World Report for 11 consecutive years. Dr. Topol served on the faculty of Case Western as a professor in genetics, and was founder and provost of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. His work in the genomics of heart attack has led to discovery of key genes recognized by the American Heart Association twice as one of the top 10 research advances, and by TIME magazine as a “Top 10 Medical Breakthrough in 2010.”
As a leader in clinical trials of novel therapeutics, Dr. Topol administered recombinant t-PA to the first patient in 1984, pioneered the clinical development of clopidogrel (Plavix), bivalirudin (Angiomax), and abciximab (ReoPro). He was the first physician to publish safety concerns on the cardiovascular risk of Vioxx. He has more than 1,000 original peer reviewed publications and has edited more than 30 books, including the “Textbook of Interventional Cardiology” (6th ed), the “Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine” (3rd ed), and a new book for consumers entitled “The Creative Destruction of Medicine”.
He has been a medical innovator in wireless medicine, including wireless electrocardiogram (ECG) telemetry, vital signs, and as a founder and vice chairman of the West Wireless Health Institute. Dr. Topol has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association of Physicians selected as one of the founding “Rock Stars of Science” by the GEOFFREY BEENE Foundation, and recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) to be one of the top 10 cited biomedical researchers in medicine in the past decade. In addition, Dr. Topol was recently selected as one of Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.
Download a Bibliography (PDF) of Dr. Topol’s work
Levy, Samuel, Ph.D.
Scripps Translational Science Institute
and Scripps Genomic Medicine
Professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine
The Scripps Research Institute
Samuel Levy, Ph.D., Director of Genomic Sciences, has an ongoing interest in characterizing and refining the structure and function of the genome and epigenome in human populations. He also is Professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute.
During his tenure as Director and Professor in Human Genomics at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Dr. Levy was the leading scientist on the first published diploid genome sequence of a human, J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., and he led ongoing studies of functional characterization of DNA variants in protein coding and cis-regulatory regions prior to joining STSI in 2009. Dr. Levy also provided contract-based gene re-sequencing services for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and has worked with over 10 different research groups over the last three years providing high throughput discovery of DNA variants on clinical samples for disease association studies. Among his current STSI projects is the Human Tumor Sequencing study.
Prior to joining JCVI in 2002, Dr. Levy worked at Celera Genomics for a three-year period and was involved in developing computational tools for gene discovery and functional annotation in the Drosophila and human genome sequences. Prior to his work at Celera Genomics, from 1989-1999, Dr. Levy was a postdoctoral worker and then independent investigator in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At MCDB, he worked on a variety of projects ranging from extracellular Golgi-based trafficking in plants, plant cell wall development and structure-function relationship in complex carbohydrates using a range of approaches involving biochemistry, cell biology and computational chemistry.
In 1982, Dr. Levy received a B.Sc. in Molecular Biophysics at the University of Leeds, UK, and in 1986 was awarded the Ph.D., in cell and computational biology at the University of Bristol, UK. He was in receipt of a NATO/SERC postdoctoral fellowship for a two-year period studying structural and biochemical changes in plant cell walls at the École Normale Supérieure, France.
Sam Levy, Ph.D., Director of Genomic Sciences, talks about his work.
Schork, Nicholas J., Ph.D.
Scripps Translational Science Institute
Director of Research, Scripps Genomic Medicine
Professor
Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine
The Scripps Research Institute
Professor of Psychiatry and Biostatistics (adjunct)
UC San Diego
Nicholas J. Schork, Ph.D., is Director of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics at STSI; Director of Research, SGM; and Professor, Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at TSRI.
His interest and expertise are quantitative human genetics and genomics, especially the design and implementation of methodologies to dissect the genetic basis of complex traits and diseases. He has published over 250 scientific articles and book chapters on the analysis of complex, multi-factorial traits and diseases.
Prior to joining Scripps in 2007, he served for seven years as Professor of Biostatistics and Psychiatry, and Co-Director of the Center for Human Genetics and Genomics at the UC San Diego. From 1994 to 2000, he was an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University.
During 1999 and 2000, he took a leave of absence to conduct research as the Vice President of Statistical Genomics at the French biotechnology company, Genset, where he helped guide efforts to construct the first high-density map of the human genome.
A member of several scientific journal editorial boards, Nik is a frequent participant in U.S. National Institutes of Health-related steering committees and review boards, and has served on the advisory board of five companies.
In addition, he is currently Director of the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core of the National Institute of Aging- sponsored Longevity Consortium and a member of the Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN) data analysis committee of the National Human Genome Research Institute
Nik earned the B.A. in Philosophy, M.A. in Philosophy, M.A. in Statistics, and Ph.D., in Epidemiology, all at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
