Speakers

• Carrie Emke

  Carrie Emke is a research specialist in the Clinical Studies Core at North Carolina State University. Prior to joining the team at NC State, she was the study coordinator for five years at The Oncology Service in Leesburg, Virginia. In addition to her current work, she is a data monitoring consultant for Animal Clinical Investigations of Chevy Chase, MD. She has degrees from the State University of New York at Fredonia and Medaille College. She lives in Knightdale, North Carolina, with her husband, their dog, two cats and several fish.

• Mindy Quigley

  Mindy Quigley is the Clinical Trials Coordinator at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, where she helped establish the Veterinary Clinical Research Office and the Collaborative Research Network, which enables specialty practices to collaborate in the college’s cutting-edge research. In 2016, she received the Friend of the VVMA Award, honoring a non-veterinarian who provides outstanding contributions to the veterinary profession in Virginia. Before joining the college, Mindy worked for Sir Ian Wilmut, who cloned the sheep named Dolly, and as a project manager for the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, founded by the author J.K. Rowling.

• Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology)

  Dr. Bergman is the Director of Clinical Studies for VCA. He is the principal veterinary investigator for the fully licensed canine melanoma vaccine (Oncept). Dr. Bergman is an adjunct faculty member of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

  Prior to Dr. Bergman joining VCA, he served as the Chief Medical Officer for BrightHeart Veterinary Centers from July 2007 to August 2011; from 1999 to June 2007 he was the head of the Donaldson-Atwood Cancer Center at AMC. After finishing veterinary school from Colorado State in 1990, he was an intern at Kansas State (90-91) and returned to CSU for his medical oncology residency (91-94) and then completed a PhD Fellowship in human cancer biology from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (94-99). He was previously Chair of the ACVIM Board of Regents and President of the Veterinary Cancer Society.

  Dr. Bergman has been an veterinary oncologist at Katonah Bedford Veterinary Center since 2007.

• Kelley Gibson, Senior Director of Development, UGA College of Veterinary Medicine

• Elizabeth Mitchell, DVM, MA, Diplomate ABVP

  Liz started working at Merial (now Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health) in April, 2010. Her initial role was as a Senior Veterinary Scientist, where she performed and monitored clinical studies in support of pharmaceutical product registrations, such as NexGard, primarily for companion animals. She has extensive experience working with CROs, private practices, and universities on both non-pivotal and pivotal clinical efficacy and safety studies. In 2018 Liz became the Head of Athens Pharma Clinical R&D for BI Animal Health.

   

  Prior to working at Merial, Liz was employed as a veterinarian in private practice. She earned her DVM at the University of Georgia, followed by a small animal internship at the University of Tennessee and a residency in Companion Avian and Exotic Pet Medicine at the University of California, Davis. She became a board certified Diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners in Companion Avian Medicine in 2008 and was employed as an Exotic Animal Veterinarian and Head of the Avian and Exotic Medicine Service at a large specialty veterinary practice from 2008 to 2010.  Liz also holds a master’s degree in Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin.

• Melissa Iorio

• Kristen Khanna, PhD, MBA

  Kristen completed her PhD at the University of Minnesota and received post-doctoral training in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.  She completed an MBA at Johns Hopkins in 2005.

  Prior to joining ACI, Kristen worked with several biotech companies in the areas of external relations, business development and strategic planning. She has actively served as ACI’s President and CEO since 2009.  Kristen loves the blend of scientific advancement and business strategy that is ACI’s work and she is continuously inspired by the human-animal bond.  Kristen’s family includes her husband, ACI founder Dr. Chand Khanna, their two children and a Danish-Swedish farm dog, Odin. She loves all things related to food, books and tennis and particularly enjoys her involvement in data management for her kids’ sports teams.

• Carol Frederick, Clinical Trials Coordinator, Cornell

• Jenna Burton, DVM, MS, DACVIM (Oncology)

  Dr. Burton is the director of the Veterinary Center for Clinical Trials and a veterinary medical oncologist. She received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME and her DVM from The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 2006. Dr. Burton then moved to Fort Collins, Colorado to complete a one-year rotating small animal internship followed by a residency in medical oncology at Colorado State University. She is board certified in oncology by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Surgical and Radiological Sciences at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Her primary research focus is comparative and translational oncology with a specific interest in canine lymphoma.