Geoffrey Cooper is a Professor of Biology at Boston University. Receiving a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Miami in 1973, he pursued postdoctoral work with Howard Temin at the University of Wisconsin, where he developed gene transfer assays to characterize the proviral DNAs of Rous sarcoma virus and related retroviruses. He then joined the faculty of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School in 1975, where he pioneered the discovery of oncogenes in human cancers. He moved to Boston University as Chair of Biology in 1998 and subsequently served as Associate Dean of the Faculty for Natural Sciences, as well as teaching undergraduate cell biology and continuing his research on the roles of oncogenes in the signaling pathways that regulate cell proliferation and programmed cell death. He has authored over 100 research papers, two textbooks on cancer, and an award-winning novel, The Prize, dealing with fraud in medical research.

Kenneth W. Adams is an Associate Professor of Biology at Bridgewater State University. He earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry from Boston University in 2006, where he investigated the role of Bcl-2family members in the regulation of apoptosis downstream of PI 3-kinase signaling in the lab of co-author Geoffrey M. Cooper. His subsequent postdoctoral research was con-ducted with Bradley T. Hyman at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he investigated the mechanisms through which apolipoprotein E and its receptors affect susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease. He then joined the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program at Boston University as a post- doctoral faculty fellow and lecturer, during which his re-search focused on the transcriptional network that drives neuronal differentiation using PC12 cells as a model. In 2013, he joined the faculty of Bridgewater State University, where he initially continued his focus on the molecular mechanisms that mediate neuronal differentiation but has more recently returned to the Alzheimer’s work he conduct-ed during his postdoctoral research. In 2016, Kenneth was awarded the Presidential Award for Distinguished Teaching at Bridgewater State University, where he also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Research.