John Sninsky, PhD, Program Advisor
John Sninsky, PhD is a Program Advisor at the Forum and a Visiting Professor in the Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology at the Berkeley School of Public Health. John is also a Translational Science and Medicine consultant with a comprehensive and deep understanding of the development and application of pioneering molecular procedures to the translation of research-grade biomarker assays into clinical-grade clinically adopted diagnostic tests. Following a faculty appointment at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, John joined the team at Cetus that developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and applied the powerful technology to clinical virology diagnostics, notably HIV. He has held senior management positions at Roche, Celera, Quest Diagnostics and CareDx.
John is the author of more than 110 scientific papers including advanced methods in molecular biology, application of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to virology and cancer, and genome-wide genetic association studies for multiple common, complex diseases. John advises commercial translation efforts at Stanford University (SPARK) and University of California, San Francisco (CATALYST) and lectures in Diagnostic Regulatory Science at University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of Coronavirus Standards Working Group, an organization focused on developing molecular standards for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). John also serves as a technical advisor for Stop the Spread, with a focus on diagnostics.
John is the author of more than 110 scientific papers including advanced methods in molecular biology, application of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to virology and cancer, and genome-wide genetic association studies for multiple common, complex diseases. John advises commercial translation efforts at Stanford University (SPARK) and University of California, San Francisco (CATALYST) and lectures in Diagnostic Regulatory Science at University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of Coronavirus Standards Working Group, an organization focused on developing molecular standards for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). John also serves as a technical advisor for Stop the Spread, with a focus on diagnostics.
Dr. Michael N. Robertson, MD (BDI Consulting), Program Advisor
Michael Robertson received his medical degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, School of Medicine in 1983. He then completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. He did post-doctoral fellowships at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (part of the NIH) in Hamilton, Montana, then a second post-doctoral fellowship at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. He returned to Seattle to do a clinical infectious disease fellowship, then stayed on as a faculty member at the University of Washington. In 1998 he took a position in the clinical research department at Merck. He remained at Merck for 25 years, working on a number of infectious disease and vaccine projects. He retired from Merck in January 2024 and now works as an independent consultant.