Advisory Boards
At Verinata Health, we have built an outstanding team of advisors who, we are confident, will enable us to achieve our goal of delivering non-invasive prenatal diagnostics that address the current unmet needs of prenatal patients.
Dr. Abuhamad is the Mason C. Andrews Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and vice dean for clinical affairs at the Eastern Virginia Medical School. Dr. Abuhamad is known internationally for his expertise in maternal-fetal medicine and obstetrical ultrasound, and for his innovative clinical research particularly in the diagnosis of fetal cardiovascular problems in early pregnancy. He is a member of the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Foundation, is active on the editorial boards of several journals, and is the current president of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. Dr. Abuhamad completed a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Miami, School of Medicine, and a clinical fellowship in ultrasound and prenatal diagnosis at Yale University School of Medicine. He is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and holds his subspecialty certification from the American Board of Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Dr. Bianchi is the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and vice-chair for research and academic affairs, Department of Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine. She is also executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center. She is recognized internationally for her multidisciplinary research in prenatal diagnosis and particularly for her stewardship of the field of non-invasive, cell-based prenatal testing. She is past president of the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, past president of the Perinatal Research Society, and editor-in-chief of the international journal Prenatal Diagnosis. Dr. Bianchi has received numerous honors and awards for her innovative research and has authored more than 213 peer-reviewed publications. She is one of four co-authors of the award-winning textbook, Fetology: Diagnosis and Management of the Fetal Patient. Dr. Bianchi graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, received her M.D. from Stanford University, and fulfilled her residency training in pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital, Boston. She completed clinical fellowships in the Harvard training programs in medical genetics and newborn medicine and is board certified in all three specialties.
Dr. Platt is professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Center for Fetal Medicine and Women’s Ultrasound in Los Angeles. He is past president of the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG) and recipient of its highest honor, the Ian Donald Gold Medal Award. Dr. Platt has been elected to numerous professional organizations, including the Society for Gynecologic Investigation and the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society. He is past president of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine and the Los Angeles OB-GYN Society, treasurer of the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Foundation, and board member of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Dr. Platt has published extensively. He serves on the Board of Directors of InSightec and Diagnostic Technologies. Dr. Platt received his M.D. from Wayne State University and completed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine. He is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine.
Dr. Puritz is President and a Managing Partner of The Group for Women and serves as Medical Director of OB/GYN Services for Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. She was the first female physician to join The Group for Women, quickly rising through the ranks to become a Managing Partner and President of the practice today. She received her B.S. and M.D. from Tufts University and completed a special internship at the Medical College of Hampton Roads. Dr. Puritz served as Chief Resident during her residency at Eastern Virginia Medical School and is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology. She is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and was appointed to the Government Affairs Committee for the 2011-2012 period. Dr. Puritz is a member of the Commonwealth of Virginia Task Force for Infant Mortality, is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her superior clinical practice, and in June 2011, was appointed as Clinical Faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Diana W. Bianchi, M.D.
Dr. Bianchi is the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and vice-chair for research and academic affairs, Department of Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine. She is also executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center. She is recognized internationally for her multidisciplinary research in prenatal diagnosis and particularly for her stewardship of the field of non-invasive, cell-based prenatal testing. She is past president of the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, past president of the Perinatal Research Society, and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Prenatal Diagnosis. Dr. Bianchi has received numerous honors and awards for her innovative research and has authored more than 213 peer-reviewed publications. She is one of four co-authors of the award-winning textbook, Fetology: Diagnosis and Management of the Fetal Patient. Dr. Bianchi graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, received her M.D. from Stanford University, and fulfilled her residency training in pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital, Boston. She completed clinical fellowships in the Harvard training programs in medical genetics and newborn medicine and is board certified in all three specialties.
Ronald W. Davis, Ph.D.
Dr. Davis is a professor of genetics and biochemistry at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center. He is the recipient of many international and national awards for his contributions to genetics research and technology development related to genomics and proteomics. These include the United States Steel Award, Louis S. Rosentiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Biomedical Research, Genetics Society of America Award and the Chiron Biotechnology Research Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (genetics) in 1983. Dr. Davis is a leader in the development and application of many critical technologies utilized in genomics and proteomics research. He is also a world leader in the burgeoning field of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). He received a B.S. in chemistry from Eastern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology.
Susan J. Fisher, Ph.D.
Dr. Fisher is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. She is jointly appointed in the Department of Anatomy. Dr. Fisher is the director of the UCSF Human Embryonic Stem Cell Program and faculty director of the Sandler-Moore Mass Spectrometry Facility, a campus-wide technology core. She is a member of the Eli & Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF and the Center for Reproductive Sciences. Ongoing research projects in her lab include exploring the basic mechanisms involved in human placental development, devising new methods for propagating and deriving human embryonic stem cell lines and applying mass spectrometry-based approaches to compile protein catalogues with a particular focus on biomarker discovery. She has served on several NIH panels. Most recently, she chaired the Reproductive Biology Study Section and was the principal co-organizer of the first Keystone Conference on Reproduction. She has received numerous honors, including the Sadler Award (NIH), 2000; an NIH MERIT Award, 2000; the UCSF Graduate Association Outstanding Mentor Award, 2002; the Anita Payne Lectureship (University of Michigan), 2003; the UCSF School of Dentistry Faculty Research Award, 2004; and the Silbar Memorial Lectureship, 2007 (Northwestern University).
Stephen Quake, Ph.D.
Dr. Quake is co-chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University, which he helped launch in 2004. Previously, he was the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Quake’s interests lie at the nexus of physics, biology and biotechnology. Over the past five years, he has focused on understanding the basic physics and biological applications of microfluidic technology. His group pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for large-scale automation of biology at the nanoliter scale, and he and his students have been exploring applications of “lab on a chip” technology in functional genomics, genetic analysis and protein design. Throughout his career, Dr. Quake has been active in the field of single molecule biophysics. He has focused on precision measurements on single molecules and, in 2003, his group demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing experiments.
Dr. Quake received “Career” and “First” awards from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health in 1997, was named a Packard Fellow in 1999, was in the inaugural class of NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards in 2004, and in 2005 was selected as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His contributions to the development of new biotechnology at the interface between physics and biology have been recognized by awards from MIT’s Technology Review, Forbes and Popular Science.
Dr. Quake earned a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in mathematics from Stanford University and a doctorate in physics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He then spent two years as a post-doc in Nobel Laureate Steven Chu’s group at Stanford University developing techniques to manipulate single DNA molecules with optical tweezers.
Dr. Bianchi is the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and vice-chair for research and academic affairs, Department of Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine. She is also executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center. She is recognized internationally for her multidisciplinary research in prenatal diagnosis and particularly for her stewardship of the field of non-invasive, cell-based prenatal testing. She is past president of the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, past president of the Perinatal Research Society, and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Prenatal Diagnosis. Dr. Bianchi has received numerous honors and awards for her innovative research and has authored more than 213 peer-reviewed publications. She is one of four co-authors of the award-winning textbook, Fetology: Diagnosis and Management of the Fetal Patient. Dr. Bianchi graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, received her M.D. from Stanford University, and fulfilled her residency training in pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital, Boston. She completed clinical fellowships in the Harvard training programs in medical genetics and newborn medicine and is board certified in all three specialties.
Ronald W. Davis, Ph.D.
Dr. Davis is a professor of genetics and biochemistry at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center. He is the recipient of many international and national awards for his contributions to genetics research and technology development related to genomics and proteomics. These include the United States Steel Award, Louis S. Rosentiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Biomedical Research, Genetics Society of America Award and the Chiron Biotechnology Research Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (genetics) in 1983. Dr. Davis is a leader in the development and application of many critical technologies utilized in genomics and proteomics research. He is also a world leader in the burgeoning field of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). He received a B.S. in chemistry from Eastern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology.
Susan J. Fisher, Ph.D.
Dr. Fisher is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. She is jointly appointed in the Department of Anatomy. Dr. Fisher is the director of the UCSF Human Embryonic Stem Cell Program and faculty director of the Sandler-Moore Mass Spectrometry Facility, a campus-wide technology core. She is a member of the Eli & Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF and the Center for Reproductive Sciences. Ongoing research projects in her lab include exploring the basic mechanisms involved in human placental development, devising new methods for propagating and deriving human embryonic stem cell lines and applying mass spectrometry-based approaches to compile protein catalogues with a particular focus on biomarker discovery. She has served on several NIH panels. Most recently, she chaired the Reproductive Biology Study Section and was the principal co-organizer of the first Keystone Conference on Reproduction. She has received numerous honors, including the Sadler Award (NIH), 2000; an NIH MERIT Award, 2000; the UCSF Graduate Association Outstanding Mentor Award, 2002; the Anita Payne Lectureship (University of Michigan), 2003; the UCSF School of Dentistry Faculty Research Award, 2004; and the Silbar Memorial Lectureship, 2007 (Northwestern University).
Stephen Quake, Ph.D.
Dr. Quake is co-chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University, which he helped launch in 2004. Previously, he was the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Quake’s interests lie at the nexus of physics, biology and biotechnology. Over the past five years, he has focused on understanding the basic physics and biological applications of microfluidic technology. His group pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for large-scale automation of biology at the nanoliter scale, and he and his students have been exploring applications of “lab on a chip” technology in functional genomics, genetic analysis and protein design. Throughout his career, Dr. Quake has been active in the field of single molecule biophysics. He has focused on precision measurements on single molecules and, in 2003, his group demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing experiments.
Dr. Quake received “Career” and “First” awards from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health in 1997, was named a Packard Fellow in 1999, was in the inaugural class of NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards in 2004, and in 2005 was selected as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His contributions to the development of new biotechnology at the interface between physics and biology have been recognized by awards from MIT’s Technology Review, Forbes and Popular Science.
Dr. Quake earned a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in mathematics from Stanford University and a doctorate in physics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He then spent two years as a post-doc in Nobel Laureate Steven Chu’s group at Stanford University developing techniques to manipulate single DNA molecules with optical tweezers.
