helping to improve the lives of people with autism and those whose lives they touch
Scientific Advisory Board
Judy Van de Water, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Advisor and Chair of the SAB
Professor, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology
University of California at Davis
Dr. Van de Water is the lead researcher on the development of the Maternal Autoantibody test and is a co-inventor on the patent covering that technology licensed by Pediatric Bioscience. Dr. Van de Water joined the faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine at UC Davis in 1999 and the faculty of the M.I.N.D. Institute in 2000 when she began her research on the immunobiology of autism. Dr. Van de Water’s laboratory pursues research programs pertaining to autoimmune and clinical immune-based disorders including the biological aspects of autism spectrum disorders. The application of Dr. Van de Water’s immunopathology background has been instrumental in the dissection of the immune anomalies noted in some autism patients and the mothers of children with autism. Dr. Van de Water’s work is part of a comprehensive and multidiscipline analysis known as the Autism Phenome Project (APP). The goal of the APP is to bring together researchers from several disciplines providing the definitive environment in which to determine the biomedical characteristics of different types of autism. Dr. Van de Water received a Ph.D. in immunology from the UC Davis in 1988.
Dr. Van de Water has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Pediatric Bioscience since inception and has chaired the SAB since late 2008.
Fred Cohen, M.D., Ph.D.
Managing Director of Texas Pacific Group Ventures
Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, UCSF
Dr. Fred Cohen has been a Managing Director at Texas Pacific Group Ventures since 2001. Dr. Cohen is also a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at UC San Francisco and has played a role on the boards or scientific advisory boards of a variety of biotechnology companies. He currently serves on the boards of Anaborex, Calderome, Genomic Health, Kémia, FivePrime, Expression Diagnostics (XDx), CardioDx, Matrix Laboratories, Nodality, ProteoGenix, and Quintiles Transnational Corp. He received his M.D. from Stanford in 1984, his DPhil. from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1980 and his BS in 1978 from Yale University. Dr. Cohen was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academics in 2004 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.
Dr. Cohen has played significant roles with several journals as an editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology and Folding & Design and as an Editorial Board member for Protein Engineering, Perspectives in Drug Discovery and Design, Journal of Computational Biology, and Molecular Medicine. He has given several eponymous lectures including the Genetics Institute Lecture at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Ninth and Tenth Annual Roland D. Pinkham, M.D., Basic Science Lectures at the University of Washington, the Frederic M. Richards Lecture in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University and the J. Lawrence Oncley Lecture in Biophysics at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cohen has been elected as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and as a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Western Association of Physician and the Association of American Physicians.
Dr. Cohen’s accomplished academic career and familiarity with the venture capital community provides the Company with a disciplined approach to converting an academic discovery into a product that is of great value and benefit to the public.
Howard Schulman, Ph.D.
Vice President of Biomarker Discover Sciences,
Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc. (PPD)
Dr. Schulman has been at PPD since inception and has extensive experience developing drug screens for therapeutic programs. Prior to joining PPD, Dr. Schulman was as a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he served for seven years as director of the Neurosciences Ph.D. Program and helped to establish its position among the top five in the nation. He also served as chairman of the Neurobiology Department at Stanford for six years, as well as co-founder and co-director of the Stanford Brain Research Center. He has served on reviews of intramural programs at NINDS and NIMH and for multiple extramural program project grants and new Ph.D. program evaluation for the UCLA and UCSF.
Dr. Schulman received his B.S. in chemistry from UCLA in 1971, and his Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Harvard University in 1976, studying phospholipid metabolism with Eugene P. Kennedy. Subsequently, he undertook postdoctoral research in neuropharmacology in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard. In 1978, he joined the faculty at Stanford University as an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and subsequently in the Department of Neurobiology. He was most recently the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and co-founder and co-director of the Stanford Brain Research Center. He joined SurroMed in 2000 as Vice President, a company whose biomarker assets were acquired by PPD in 2005 and where he now heads the biomarker discovery unit. As a scientist, he has been a major contributor to progress in the field of molecular pharmacology research for more than 20 years with over 100 primary articles. Dr. Schulman discovered one of the key protein kinases responsible for transmitting information from calcium-linked hormones, neurotransmitters, and cytokines in heart, brain and endocrine systems. He initiated two programs in pharmaceutical companies that are developing CaM kinase-based therapeutics in CNS (Roche) and cardiovascular (Scios – J&J) arenas and has consulted for many pharma, biotechnology, and diagnostics companies. He was recently elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pat Levitt, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Southern California
Dr. Levitt received his Ph.D. in neuroscience at UC San Diego. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine. He served as Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. In July, 2009, he assumed the Directorship of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and Chairman of the Department of Cell and Neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. He also has been designated as a Provost Professor of Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Pharmacy at USC. Named a McKnight Foundation Scholar in 2002, Dr. Levitt also is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. He is a member of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, and the National Advisory Mental Health Council for the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Levitt’s research focuses on the development of brain architecture that controls learning, emotional and social behavior in children. His clinical genetics and basic research studies focus on understanding the basis of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, and how genes and the environment together influence typical and atypical development. He currently has research and training grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and has held numerous grants from NIH, National Science Foundation, National Association for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, Joseph and Esther Klingenstein Foundation, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, among others. Dr. Levitt has been senior editor for the Journal of Neuroscience and currently serves on the editorial boards of Autism Research, Disease Models and Mechanisms, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Biological Psychiatry, Cerebral Cortex, and Neuron. He is the author of over 200 scientific papers. Dr. Levitt has been a Grass Foundation Traveling Lecturer, and is a frequently-invited speaker at national and international seminars and conferences, as well as public education and policy forums that promote the health and education of children. In 2007, he presented at the Summit on America’s Children for Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and numerous state legislatures.