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About The Synaptic Leap

Mon, 2006-01-30 02:04 — gtaylor

Mission Statement

To provide a network of online research communities that connect and enable open source biomedical research.

Why We’re Doing It

We believe that effective collaborative community tools that promote transparent research and connect resources will:

  1. generate ideas more quickly
  2. reduce redundant work

Thus, ultimately cures will be developed more quickly and more effectively.

Make a Donation

If you think this is a great cause and would like to help, put your green where your sentiments are. All donations are tax-deductible in the U.S.

Pay to the order of: The Synaptic Leap

Mail to:

The Synaptic Leap
1181 S. Chanterella Dr.
San Ramon, CA 94582

U.S. checks only at this point please. We'll add an online contribution process later.

Contact Us

Email Ginger if you questions or comments about The Synaptic Leap gtaylor@thesynapticleap.org

Status of Incorporation

We incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of North Carolina on November 17, 2005. The IRS has officially designated us as a non-profit organization, classified as a public charity and therefore all donations are tax deductable.

Who’s On Board and Agreed to Help

We’re all part-time volunteers at this point - donating our time and a little money to move this effort forward. The list will be organized by function and then listed in alphabetical order. The order is not intended to represent value or volume of contributions.

Founder and Executive Director

  • Ginger Taylor: Ginger was the internal entrepreneur and champion of the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal. She ran the project in bootstrap mode and launched it to the field. The developers, QA, product marketing and product management organizations reported to Ginger. Ginger leads with passion and persistence.

Developers

  • Randy Akl: Randy is a development lead for the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal. He has great user interface instincts as well as skills for clean design and code. Randy is also a talented musician and has a CD for sale on Amazon.
  • Doug Chasman: Doug is a principal member of R&D for Salesforce.com. I know him from my PeopleSoft days and he's a phenomenal hands-on technical architect. He's a collector of programming design patterns. I've never seen anybody spend more time reading and learning about ALL aspects of software programming than Doug. Salesforce.com has a great philanthropic policy whereby they will pay Doug for one day of charitable work a month. Doug's already put in much more personal time than that for us. We're very fortunate to have someone of Doug's caliber helping us out.
  • Chris Heller: Chris is a technology jack-of-all-trades. Due to his diverse skill set, he frequently was sent on sales and field engagements to answer the difficult questions. Chris kept his finger to the pulse on what was important to customers and was responsible for alerting management when PeopleSoft needed to react to a new trend or field issue.
  • Ken Pugsley: Ken is a development lead for the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal. He’s terrific at exploring the philosophical angles of a software problem to ensure that his solution has longevity. He also does a great job of balancing software elegance with practical solutions. Prior to working in software Ken worked in chemical engineering, research and education.

Biomedical Research Advisors

  • Dr. Thomas Kepler: Tom is Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and Chief of the Division of Computational Biology at Duke University Medical Center. His primary research interests are computational immunology and vaccine design. Tom is also a member of Tropical Disease Initiative and has graciously agreed to serve on the board of directors for The Synaptic Leap.
  • Dr. Marc A. Marti-Renom: Marc was recently appointed as head of the Structural Genomics Unit at the Prince Felipe Research Center in Valencia (Spain). His interests focus on comparative protein structure prediction. Marc has published more than 30 manuscripts in international scientific journals and was an assistant adjunct professor at UCSF and a member of the Andrej Sali Lab. Marc is also a founding member of the Tropical Disease Initiative.
  • Dr. Matthew Todd: Mat is a lecturer in organic chemistry at the University of Sydney. Besides working on the chemical biology of schisto, Mat is interested in asymmetric catalysis, biosensors and the interactions of small molecules with DNA.

Intellectual Property and Policy Advisors

  • Stephen Maurer: Steve is the director of Information Technology and Homeland Security and adjunct professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. Steve has a JD in law from Harvard and practiced high technology and intellectual property litigation at leading law firms in Arizona and California. Steve is a founding member of the Tropical Disease Initiative and co-authored the article Finding Cures for Tropical Diseases is Open Source the Answer.
  • Arti Rai: Arti is a professor of law at Duke University and is an expert in patent law, law and the biopharmaceutical industry, and health care regulation. She graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in biochemistry, attended one year of medical school at Harvard and then proceeded to get her law degree from Harvard. Arti is also a founding member of the Tropical Disease Initiative, advisor for Science Commons and authored Open and Collaborative Research: A New Model for Biomedicine. Arti has also graciously agreed to serve on the board of directors for The Synaptic Leap.

Technical Advisors

  • Rich Manalang: Rich was the project manager who implemented the internal portal at PeopleSoft. Subsequent to that he has been in charge of the portal sales demo environment. This position has allowed Rich to work with leading edge technologies to do quick and dirty demo integrations. He’s a bit of a McGuyver and has become legendary in several development communities. In fact, one of his personal open source projects landed him a presentation slot at the upcoming AJAX conference.

Business Advisors

  • Paul Pedrazzi: Paul is Sr. Director of Strategic Marketing within the application product management division at Oracle. Paul knows how to tighten up and deliver a strong message in a few words. Paul also has an entrepreneurial heart. I know one day he will be CEO of his own company. Paul has graciously agreed to serve on the board of directors for The Synaptic Leap.

Other Volunteers

The number of people helping in miscellaneous ways is too much for this page. I will do my best to recognize their contributions in my periodic status notes.