Insights into the Pathogenesis of COVID-19 as Revealed by Spatial Biology

Joe Beechem joined NanoString in 2012 as the Senior Vice President of Research and Development and is now also the company's Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Beechem leads a multidisciplinary team at NanoString based in Seattle, WA where he and his colleagues develop innovative technology platforms and assays based on the company's nucleic-acid based optical barcodes for multiplexed quantification of biomolecules. He has become a scientific powerhouse for the company, co-inventing 3D Biology - the simultaneous profiling of DNA, RNA, and Protein on the nCounter® system - as well as the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP), which affords highly-multiplexed and quantitative profiling of RNA and protein from tissue sections in user-defined geographic regions of interest. At NanoString, Dr. Beechem has played an integral role in bringing the Hyb and Seq™ chemistry to life, making NGS from FFPE sections without library prep a reality. Dr. Beechem is an author on over 150 peer-reviewed papers in diverse fields: biomathematics, physics, chemistry, physiology, spectroscopy, diagnostics, medicine and biology. He received a doctorate in Biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University and started his career as a tenure-track faculty member at Vanderbilt University. His varied skills were sought-after in industry; in 2004, he joined Invitrogen as their Chief Science/Technology Officer and quickly rose to become the Head of R&D, Advanced Sequencing Technologies.

Dr. Christopher Mason is an Associate Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, as well as an affiliate of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), Rockefeller University, Harvard Medical School, and Yale Law School. The Mason laboratory develops and deploys new biochemical and computational methods in functional genomics to elucidate the genetic basis of human disease and physiology. We create and deploy novel techniques in next-generation sequencing and algorithms for: tumor evolution, genome evolution, DNA and RNA modifications, and genome/epigenome engineering. We also work closely with NIST/FDA to build international standards for these methods (SEQC2, IMMSA, and Epigenomics QC groups), to ensure clinical-quality genome measurements and editing. We also work with NASA to build integrated molecular portraits of genomes, epigenomes, transcriptomes, and metagenomes for astronauts, which help establish the molecular foundations and genetic defenses for enabling long-term human spaceflight. He has won the NIH's Transformative R01 Award, the NASA Group Achievement Award, the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance Young Investigator award, the Hirschl-Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award, the Vallee Scholar Award, the CDC Honor Award for Standardization of Clinical Testing, and the WorldQuant Foundation Scholar Award. He was named as one of the "Brilliant Ten" Scientists by Popular Science, featured as a TEDMED speaker, and called "The Genius of Genetics" by 92Y. He has >200 peer-reviewed papers and scholarly works that have been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Microbiology, and Neuron, as well as legal briefs cited by the U.S. District Court and U.S. Supreme Court. Coverage of his work has also appeared on the covers of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, TIME, The LA Times, and across many media (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, PBS, NASA, NatGeo). He is an inventor on four patents, co-founded five biotechnology start-up companies, and serves as an advisor to many others. He lives with his daughter and wife in Brooklyn, NY.