The Board of Directors is comprised of select past International Leadership and is legally responsible for The Triple Helix, Inc.
Kevin Hwang
Kevin Hwang is currently the Chairman of the Board of The Triple Helix, Inc. He founded The Triple Helix in 2004 and has served as CEO (2004-2007) and Cornell Chapter President (2004-2005). As CEO, Kevin grew the organization into the world’s largest, completely student-run, non-profit corporation involving over 1,000 student staff and 28 chapter universities on 4 continents. For his accomplishments, he has been featured in 18 local and national media articles, including USA Today as one of the nation’s top 20 undergraduates in 2006. Kevin received his B.A. from Cornell University in Biological Sciences (Microbiology) and Economics, where he graduated as a Merrill Presidential Scholar (top 1% of graduating class) and was selected for 17 major academic and leadership awards. At Cornell, he conducted several years of independent lab research resulting in a College Scholar senior thesis and led several campus organizations. Upon graduation, Kevin worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company advising Fortune 500 healthcare and consumer goods companies. His work experience also includes time at Intel Corporation, the California State Assembly, and private equity firm BC Partners. He recently received his MBA from Harvard Business School and is working in private equity in Los Angeles, CA.
Erwin Wang
Erwin Wang served as Executive Production Editor of The Triple Helix from 2004-2007. A member of the founding board, Erwin led the production of over 35 different editions of the journal and subsequently co-managed over $100,000 in expenditures for the organization. Erwin graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Philosophy in 2007 and with a Masters in Health Administration in 2009. Erwin was then a Research Consultant at The Lewin Group and has advised several governmental agencies, pharmaceutical associations, and a major foundation. Findings from his consultations informed federal policy and organizational strategy. Erwin is now a second year medical student at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. In addition to several active research projects and participation in IHI process improvement projects at Georgetown University Hospital, Erwin is also a coordinator for a student-driven free clinic in an underserved area in Southeast Washington, DC. As the Development Coordinator for the HOYA Clinic, he manages the finances and external relations of the organization. The HOYA Clinic serves over 700 patients annually and involves hundreds of medical students. Erwin continues to serve The Triple Helix as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Kalil G. Abdullah
Kalil G. Abdullah is currently a medical student at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Molecular Biotechnology from Arizona State University, where he was the founder of the ASU-Triple Helix chapter. In 2009, Kalil became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar at the National Institutes of Health. He has been the recipient of a NASA Space Grant Award and an American Medical Association Foundation Seed Grant for biomedical research.
Melissa Matarese
Melissa began her involvement with The Triple Helix as the Executive Director of Marketing in 2006 and joined the Board of Directors in 2007 as Secretary. Melissa is currently pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School ’12, where she is a Robert S. Kaplan Life Science Scholar. She received a BA in Neuroscience with honors from Johns Hopkins University and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge as an Overseas Trust Scholar. Melissa is co-investor and co-founder of a company developing a drug delivery system. Melissa has worked at Bionest Partners, Stryker Orthopedics, and was an investment banking summer associate at JP Morgan in the healthcare group for the summer of 2011.
Joel Gabre
Joel Gabre graduated from Johns Hopkins University with degrees in Biophysics and Anthropology. There, he founded the Johns Hopkins edition of The Triple Helix. After founding the journal, Joel was appointed to several international-level positions at The Triple Helix including Chief Operating Officer, North America. At Hopkins, Joel worked in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Bloomberg School of Public Health in addition to being active in the community and as a member of the Foreign Affairs Symposium. He was selected as the sole member of his graduating class to serve on a Trustee search committee. Joel is currently studying medicine at The University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he is a student member of the governing council. He has interned at the International Center for Migration and Health (ICMH), a WHO-collaborating agency in Geneva, Switzerland, and at the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) Foundation on the Achieving Diversity in Dentistry in Medicine (ADDM) project. As a third year medical student, he actively conducts clinical research in the Department of Surgery. He continues to serve as one of the original members of the Board of Directors of The Triple Helix.
Manisha Bhattacharya
Manisha Bhattacharya graduated cum laude from Cornell University in 2009 with a double major in Biological Sciences (Molecular and Cell Biology) and Economics. She began her four-year career with the Triple Helix as a writer and Associate Editor at the Cornell chapter, and subsequently held positions on the International Editorial Board as a Senior Literary Editor and Executive Editor-in-Chief. After becoming Chief Executive Officer in August 2007, she facilitated the establishment of both the Science Policy Division and the annual Triple Helix Poster Session, now held each year at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is currently an MD/MBA candidate at Duke University, where she has completed her first two years at the School of Medicine and is joining the Fuqua School of Business Class of 2013. Manisha is clinically interested in oncology across both internal medicine and pediatrics. Throughout her training and beyond, she plans to pursue research interests in access-oriented pharmaceutical innovation strategy and global oncology care infrastructure.
James Shepherd
James Shepherd is currently reading for a PhD in quantum chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK and is a graduate student at Gonville and Caius College. As an undergraduate studying natural sciences in 2006 he founded the Cambridge branch of The Triple Helix and in 2008, this work was recognised by the award of the Sir Harold Gilles Bursary. In 2010 he wrote a book chapter on his experiences of undergraduates communicating science through The Triple Helix for the book Successful Science Communcation (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and in 2011 presented the story of the growth of The Triple Helix at Cambridge at the AAAS General Meeting 2011 as part of the European Union-US Symposium Series. James is always on the look-out for new projects for the future, always keen to chat about his experiences in science communication, and happy to receive correspondence to: js615@cam.ac.uk.
Julia Piper
Julia Piper is a past CEO of TTH (2009-2010), the founding Executive Director of Science Policy (2008-2009) and a contributor to 3 issues of the Science in Society Review. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology (Genetics and Genomics emphasis). During her undergraduate career she sat on 3 editorial boards, co-founded a social entrepreneurship non-profit for economic and healthcare development in rural India, co-developed an experimental ethics course, authored a neuroethics white paper, and conducted 4 years of independent research in Dr. Lu Chen’s lab at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, culminating in a senior honors thesis on the molecular mechanism of the Angelman Syndrome protein, Ube3A. She is currently in the Gage Laboratory of Genetics and Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical and Computational Biology at The Salk Institute, where she is developing a single cell analysis assay to establish the degree and form of genetic mosaicism, and its contribution to individuality.
