Rare Science is a California nonprofit corporation

Facebook Twitter Linkedin
Donate
Our Team Members
Chris-Waters

Christina Waters, PHD, MBA CEO / Founder

Christina Water’s Bio
Our Board Members

David Parkinson
Chairman of the Board

David Parkinson’s Bio

Mark Benedyk
Board Membe

Mark Benedyk’s Bio
Scientific Advisory Board

Craig Martens
Scientific Advisory Board

Craig Martens Bio

Copyright 2014-2024 Rare Science |  All Rights Reserved
Rare Science is a California nonprofit corporation exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Terms and Conditions
Sitemap

Christina Waters, PhD, MBA

Dr. Christina Waters has been responsible for leading medical research in a broad range of organizations ranging from academia and disease – focused non-profits to biotech and large pharmaceutical companies.   Her broad range of experience in basic, translational and clinical research and business strategies converge to specialize in the development of new approaches to personalized medicine and health, creation of synergistic partnerships and implementation of new innovative research initiatives that can accelerate treatments to patients.

She is CEO and Founder of RARE Science, a non-profit research organization that enables the rare scientific research community to accelerate discovery of therapeutic solutions for patients with rare disease.  She serves as a Scientific Advisory board member, for Global Genes|Rare Project, which focuses on advocacy and education for the rare disease community, a Life Science strategic consultant and a Senior Advisor for Personalized Medicine and Health Informatics for Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ Personalized Medicine and Health Sciences Practices serving academic and research organizations across the healthcare continuum.

Dr. Waters received her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis as a NIH Biotechnology Fellow.  She was a Postdoctoral Scholar and Associate of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology.  Dr. Waters also completed an NIH Postdoctoral fellowship at University of California, Berkeley, and received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from San Diego State University. Dr. Waters received her MBA from University of California, Los Angeles.

David Parkinson Profile

David R. Parkinson is a Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). From 2007 until 2012, Dr. Parkinson previously served as President and CEO of Nodality, a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company focused on the biological characterization of signaling pathways in patients with malignancy to enable more effective therapeutics development and clinical decision-making. Until October 2007 Dr. Parkinson was Senior Vice President, Oncology Research and Development, at Biogen Idec. At Biogen Idec he oversaw all oncology discovery research efforts and the development of the oncology pipeline. Previously he had served as Vice President, Oncology Development, at Amgen and
Vice President, Global Clinical Oncology Development, at Novartis. During his tenures at Amgen and Novartis, Dr. Parkinson was responsible for clinical development activities leading to a series of successful global drug registrations for important cancer therapeutics, including Gleevec, Femara, Zometa, Kepivance, and Vectibix.

Prior to joining industry, Dr. Parkinson worked at the National Cancer Institute from 1990 to 1997, serving as Chief of the Investigational Drug Branch, then as Acting Associate Director of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program. Dr. Parkinson is a past Chairman of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Biologics Advisory Committee and is a recipient of the FDA’s Cody Medal. He has served on the National Cancer Policy Forum of the Institute of Medicine and is a past co-chair of the Cancer Steering Committee of the NIH Foundation Biomarkers Consortium. He has also served as a member of the FDA’s Science Board, as an elected Director on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Cancer Research, and as a Director on the Board of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He currently serves as a Board Director for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and as the Chairperson of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Finance and Audit Committee. Dr. Parkinson was formerly a Director of Facet Biotech, Inc., a public biopharma company which was acquired by Abbott Pharmaceuticals as well as a Board Director of Ambit Biosciences, a public biopharma company recently
acquired by Daiichi Sankyo. He currently serves as Director on the Boards of Threshold Pharmaceuticals and Cerulean Pharma Inc., public biopharma companies focused on the discovery and development of anti-cancer drugs.

Dr. Parkinson received his medical degree from the University of Toronto. He completed a Hematology Fellowship at Royal Victoria Hospital at McGill University in Montreal and was a Research Fellow at the New England Medical Center at Tufts University in Boston. He has held academic positions both at Tufts and at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Mark Benedyk Profile

Dr. Benedyk, is President & CEO of Telephus Medical LLC, a company dedicated to discovering and developing new medicines to treat antibiotic-resistant staph infections. He is also Managing Partner at Rila Partners LLC, a business and corporate development consultancy he founded early in his career. Dr. Benedyk is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board member at KemPharm (NASDAQ: KMPH) a neuropsychiatry specialty care company, and is a member of the Translational Medicine Advisory Board of the CNS Regenerative Medicine Foundation. He is also a Director at the Center for Drug Research and Development in Vancouver, Canada and Accel-Rx, Canada’s national health sciences accelerator.

Previously, he was Senior Director and head of The Pfizer Incubator LLC (TPI) where his duties included membership on the TPI Board of Directors and TPI portfolio company boards, overseeing the TPI operations team, and reviewing investment opportunities in therapeutic areas including neurology, oncology, pain management, gastroenterology, metabolic disease and many others.
Dr. Benedyk has held executive Business Development roles at Ascenta Therapeutics, Optimer Pharmaceuticals (now Merck NYSE: MRK), Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex
 
Pharmaceuticals NASDAQ: VRTX), and Elan Pharmaceuticals (now Perrigo NYSE: PRGO). He received his Ph.D. in Developmental Genetics from The Rockefeller University, where he was a Lucille P. Markey Fellow and his B.S. degree in Microbiology and Botany from the University of Michigan.

Craig Martens Profile

Dr. Craig Martens is the Chief of the Genomics Unit at Rocky Mountain Labs (RML) in Hamilton, Montana.  RML is part of the Division of Intramural Research within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The NIAID mission is to conduct and support basic, clinical and applied research to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.  NIAID also has a mandate to respond to emerging public health threats.  Dr. Martens has been a staff scientist within the RML Genomics Unit since 2008 where he specializes in the bioinformatic analysis of Next Generation Sequencing data.

Prior to joining NIAID, Dr. Martens was a bioinformatics scientist within the Oncology Genomics Group at The Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)/Chiron Corporation.  While at NIBR he led teams in the analysis of library screening and microarray data and in the development of databases used by NIBR scientists to track screening experiments.

Dr. Martens received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis.  He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Both his graduate and postdoctoral worked focused on the transcriptional regulations of genes in the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  Dr. Martens started his scientific career in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Oliver Smithies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he also received his Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology.