Speakers

Lance Becker, MD, joined Northwell Health in 2015 as chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center, professor and chair of emergency medicine at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and an investigator at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

A national and international leader in academic emergency medicine, critical care and resuscitation science, Dr. Becker has research interests that are translational and extend across the basic science laboratory into animal models of resuscitation and to human therapies. He has been a leader in the field of resuscitation for more than 25 years, pioneering advances in improving the quality of CPR, AED use, defining the “three-phase” model for cardiac arrest care and therapeutic hypothermia. He has worked closely with the American Heart Association in emphasizing the importance of a “systems of care” approach to improving survival within communities.

Dr. Becker’s cellular studies have helped define reperfusion injury mechanisms, mitochondrial oxidant generation, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species responses to ischemia, apoptotic activation following ischemia, signaling pathways, new cellular cytoprotective strategies and hypothermia protection. He has received numerous honors and awards from organizations such as the American Heart Association, the American College of Emergency Physicians and American Society of Critical Care.

A recipient of prestigious teaching awards, Dr. Becker has mentored many successful researchers. He is a renowned, well-funded researcher who holds many patents for his discoveries. His professional affiliations include membership in the American Heart Association, Society of Academic Emergency Medicine, the US Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Physiological Society. In addition, he holds many offices in professional and scientific societies, and has organized many national and international scientific meetings. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine.

Before joining Northwell, Dr. Becker was founder and director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and professor of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He was previously founder and director of the Emergency Resuscitation Center at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

Dr. Becker received his medical degree from the University of Illinois, College of Medicine.

Jonathan R. Brestoff, MD, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology at WashU Medicine and studies immunometabolism with a focus on understanding how mitochondrial metabolism and mitochondria transfer regulates the function of immune cells. He also serves as the Director of the Initiative for Immunometabolism and Medical Director of the Clinical Flow Cytometry Laboratory. 

Professor Guy has 40 years’ experience in medical research and global drug development. He founded the drug delivery company Ethical Holdings plc in 1985 and led the company to its NASDAQ listing in 1993; in 1989 he founded Phytopharm plc, of which he was Chairman until 1997; and in 1998 Professor Guy founded GW Pharmaceuticals plc, a world leader in cannabinoid therapeutics, and was Chairman until its sale in May 2021. Geoffrey has been the physician in charge of over 300 clinical studies, author on over 80 scientific publications and has written two books. He holds a BSc in pharmacology from the University of London, an MBBS at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, an MRCS Eng and LRCP London, an LMSSA and a Diploma of Pharmaceutical Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians. Geoffrey was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Buckingham in 2011 and at the University of Westminster in 2016. He was awarded an Honorary DSc from University of Reading in 2016 and from the University of Westminster in 2024. Geoffrey received the Deloitte Director of the Year Award in Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare in 2011 and several international awards for his contribution to cannabinoids science including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Cannabinoid Research Society in 2023. Geoffrey was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Weldmar Hospicecare Trust for 8 years. In 2018 Professor Guy and his wife Kate established The Guy Foundation Family Trust and in the same year they also formed The Chedington Court Estate Ltd, to run the family estate and invest in Dorset-based farms and businesses. 

Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, and Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE). He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research. His research is about how energy flow has shaped evolution from the origin of life to the emergence of complex traits such as sex, death and consciousness. He has published more than 130 papers in journals including Nature, Science, Cell and PNAS. He is best known for his five books on energy and evolution, including most recently Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, which Science described as “A thrilling tour… Masterful.” He has received several awards for his work, including the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, the 2015 Biochemical Society Award and the 2016 Royal Society Faraday Prize. Bill Gates calls him “One of my favourite science writers”. 

Mr. Mortenson is the co-inventor of the technology platform developed to produce Clene’s Clean-Surface Nanocrystal (CSN™) therapeutics, as well as the inventor/co-inventor for 30 other U.S. patents and hundreds of corresponding foreign patents. 

Prior to joining Clene, Mr. Mortenson served as former Chief Operating Officer of Research, Development and Manufacturing for an advanced materials-based company of more than 300 employees. In addition to his professional experience, he is a former chief patent counsel responsible for approximately 5,500 patents and patent applications in the U.S. and 44 foreign countries. Mr. Mortenson holds both a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Bachelor of Science in ceramic engineering from Alfred University, a Master of Science in material science from Pennsylvania State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University. 

Dr. Nirosha J. Murugan is Canada Research Chair in Tissue Biophysics and a Faculty of Science Distinguished Research Chair at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she leads a multidisciplinary research program investigating the physical basis of life. As an applied biophysicist, her work explores how structured physical signals – such as light, voltage, and magnetism – govern cellular plasticity, tissue regeneration, and the reversal of disease states. Her approach reframes biology not solely as a molecular system, but as a dynamic network governed by first principles in physics. 

Dr. Murugan earned her Ph.D. in Biomolecular Sciences at Laurentian University, where she pioneered quantum-sensor-based technologies for non-invasive cancer detection, now commercialized through HelioFlux Inc. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Michael Levin’s lab at Tufts University, she helped establish ion-channel bioelectricity as a mechanism of tissue patterning and co-developed, in collaboration with Dr. David Kaplan, a silk-hydrogel drug delivery system to induce limb regeneration in non-regenerative species. 

Her lab bridges quantum biology with biomedical engineering to decode how physical signals, acting as carriers of structured information, sculpt the body’s energetic architecture. By mapping how these signals define energy landscapes and reconfigure cellular signaling networks, her work reveals new ways to understand cell state transitions, disease emergence, and therapeutic responsiveness at both the individual and systems level. 

A passionate educator and former Harvard teaching fellow, Dr. Murugan is deeply committed to mentorship and to making biophysics accessible to the next generation of health innovators. Through technology development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and entrepreneurial translation, she aims to bring the biophysics of life into real-world innovations that reprogram diseased states and support a more precise, holistic, and energetically informed model of human health. 

Alistair is a PhD biochemist who began his post-doctoral scientific career studying how cells undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis) at Hammersmith Hospital, London. He continued his research in Edinburgh before moving into industry and worked in clinical safety and medical communications, whilst continuing his academic relationships. Alistair set up his own company in 2005, Broadmind Science, so he could act as an independent scientific advisor. Since that time Alistair has worked with both Geoffrey Guy and Jimmy Bell. From 2010-2015 he was supported by GW Pharmaceuticals in academic positions at Imperial College and the University of Reading. He is now largely a theoretician, specialising in mitochondrial function and the ageing process and what actually defines “health”: his approach is to study the origins of life and evolution, in particular, from the quantum and thermodynamic perspective. He is an author on more than 20 scientific papers and written chapters in two books. In 2019 he became a Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster, and now studies bioenergetics and quantum biology in association with the Research Centre for Optimal Health. 

Martin Picard, PhD, is a Professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and director of the Mitochondrial Psychobiology Group (www.picardlab.org). Pioneering Mitochondrial Psychobiology, Martin has bridged the science of energy and the human experience to advance Healing Science—a field dedicated to understanding the dynamic energetic processes that keep us healthy. As the Chair in Energy and Health at the Columbia Aging Center, he leads NIH-funded research on the mind-mitochondria connection. His group’s work has uncovered connections between subjective experiences and mitochondria in the brain and immune system, linked mental stress to energy metabolism and aging, discovered that hair greying is reversible, and mapped the diversity of mitochondria across the brain and body. Martin collaborates globally to drive scientific and cultural transformation around energy, health, and healing. He is the author of the upcoming book ENERGY. Martin finds inspiration in nature, exploring energy and consciousness with his family, friends, and colleagues.  

Martin received his PhD at McGill University in Canada in 2012, completed postdoctoral training with Doug Wallace at the University of Pennsylvania, and opened his laboratory at Columbia in 2015. 

Dr. Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer since its inception. Previously, she created the satellite radio company SiriusXM. She is an inventor or co-inventor on nine U.S. patents, with additional applications pending. Her pioneering book, Your Life or Mine: How Geoethics Can Resolve the Conflict Between Private and Public Interests in Xenotransplantation, anticipated the need both for global virus bio-surveillance and a greatly expanded supply of transplantable organs. 

Dr. Rothblatt has also analyzed the socio-ethical issues of human-like cyber competencies, as are emerging from large language models, in her 2014 book Virtually Human. 

More than 35 years ago, Dr. Wallace and his colleagues founded the field of human mitochondrial genetics. The mitochondria are the cellular power plants, organelles that generate most of the cell’s energy. The mitochondria also contain their own DNA, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which encodes the wiring diagram for the cell’s power plants. Dr. Wallace showed that the mtDNA is inherited exclusively from the mother and that genetic alterations in the mtDNA can result is a wide range of metabolic and degenerative diseases as well as being important in cancer and aging.

One of his seminal contributions has been to use mtDNA variation to reconstruct the origin and ancient migrations of women. These studies revealed that humans arose in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago, that women left Africa about 65,000 years ago to colonize Eurasia, and from Siberia, they crossed the Bering land bridge to populate the Americas. Studies on the paternally-inherited Y chromosome showed that men went along too.