Meet the Team Behind Google X’s Bet to Detect Cancer

[Buster's Uncle]

Meet the Team Behind Google X’s Bet to Detect Cancer
The Wall Street Journal
By Alistair Barr  3:36 pm ET Oct 28, 2014



Vik Bajaj, project manager of the Google project Baseline Study, enjoys flying airplanes. —Vik Bajaj



Google’s research lab, Google X, is making a big bet on something tiny: nanoparticles that it hopes will patrol the body for early signs of killers like cancer and heart disease.

The Internet giant has hired more than 100 experts for the project from disciplines including astrophysicists, immunology, biology, oncology, cardiology and chemistry. They are working away in a newly constructed building on Google’s Mountain View, Calif. campus.

Here are some members of Google X’s Life Sciences team who are working on the nanotechnology project:

Vikram (Vik) Bajaj is the scientific lead for Google X ‘s nanotechnology program and other projects such as its Baseline study. He’s an expert in areas like molecular imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for diagnostics, the structural biology of neurodegenerative disease, millimeter wave devices and clinical bioinformatics. Before coming to Google, he was a principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Vasiliki (Vicky) Demas is a manager of the Biomedical Systems Engineering group in Google’s nanotechnology program. Her research interests include diagnostics, point of care assays, nanotechnology, portable magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), physiological and physiometric sensors. Before Google, she was a staff engineer and team leader at T2 Biosystems TTOO +4.27%, a nanoparticle diagnostics company.

James Higbie is an astrophysicist. Nanoparticles twinkle in a similar way to stars, so Google has hired scientists like Dr. Higbie to develop ways to detect and measure this twinkling. He’s on Dr. Demas’s Biomedical Systems Engineering group. His research focuses on sensitive magnetic field measurements using optical atomic magnetometers, magnetic field detection and optical physics and sensing. Prior to joining Google, he was a professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University.

Sanjeev Mariathasan is the scientific lead for systems immunology on the nanotechnology project. His research interests include mechanisms of inflammation, malignant blood disorders and infectious disease. He was a scientist and group leader at biotech giant Genentech before coming to Google.

Mark Lee is a clinical science leader on the nanotechnology project who researches clinical and molecular oncology and clinical trials and diagnostics in oncology. Before Google, he was the chief medical officer at Boreal Genomics, which is developing a new way to monitor tumor DNA.

Mark Audeh manages the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Group, part of the nanotechnology program at Google. His research focuses on in vitro diagnostics, nanoparticle diagnostics and chemistry. He came to Google from T2 Biosystems.


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