2022 Canine Health Summit

Panel: The Science of Canine Wellness and Longevity Reimagined

Wed, April 27, 2022 | 4:30 PM ET

Ryan Boyko

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Embark Veterinary (moderator)

Christina Lopes

Founder & CEO, FidoCure

Benjamin Lewis

Co-founder, FidoCure

Celine Halioua

Founder & CEO, Loyal

Robin Smith

Senior Director, Embark Veterinary

Ryan Boyko founded Embark after a decade spent using novel analytical approaches to tackle tough questions in public health, ecology, and industry. From Ebola outbreaks to retailer analytics to social evolution and sports science, Boyko has worked and published across a number of fields. Throughout that time, Boyko traveled the world collecting dog samples and contributing to a number of scientific studies. Boyko founded Embark to bring the critical insights obtained from this research to dog owners and to unlock the potential for Big Data to improve the lives of dogs and humans the world over. He has a BA in Computer Science from Harvard and graduate degrees in public health and ecology from Yale and the University of California at Davis

Christina Lopes is CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, the leader in precision medicine for dogs with cancer. Christina has been recognized as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos for her pioneering efforts in both deal making and women’s health. Christina was managing director of Cerberus Capital, a $30 Billion-assets-under-management fund.

She was advisory board director for International Planned Parenthood (Western Hemisphere), which provides 30 million health services per year. Christina participated in The United Nations Commission for the Status of Women, and lectured at Columbia University. Christina was also honored with a Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum in 2014.

She holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, a Masters in International and Political Affairs from Columbia University, and Doctoral Coursework in Ethics at Princeton University. She loves dogs and brings access to cutting edge healthcare. Christina lives in Palo Alto with her husband Ben and their two daughters.

Benjamin Lewis, Co-Founded One Health with Christina and is an animal health visionary, proud pet parent, and former Olympic athlete. Ben is committed to advancing cancer cures for dogs. Formerly, Ben was the co-founder and CEO of 4Vets, the largest B2B distributor of animal health products in Brazil.

Ben also represented the United States in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, where he served as captain of the K4. Ben studied bioengineering at Dartmouth College where he was inducted in the Dartmouth Hall of Fame (Wearer of the Green). In addition, Ben studied veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, and has an MBA in Health Care Management at the Wharton School of Business.

Celine Halioua founded Loyal in 2019. Previously, she held various roles at The Longevity Fund, an early stage venture capital fund investing in companies developing therapeutics to treat aging. Celine was a D.Phil student at The University of Oxford studying the economics of gene therapeutics, and holds a B.Sc. of Neuroscience from The University of Texas at Austin.

Robin P. Smith, PhD, wears two hats on Embark’s Product Team: driving efforts to identity the genetic underpinnings of longevity, as well as leading the development of new products. Robin has a unique 20 year background as a scientist and product manager in the field of genomics. After completing a Bachelor’s in Engineering from the University of Toronto in Canada, he trained as a scientist, completing a PhD from the University of Miami and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California – San Francisco, focusing on why genes are turned on and off in different cell types. Robin then joined 23andMe’s Product Team, where he led pioneering efforts to productize polygenic risk scores for complex traits. He later led the ancestry product area at 23andMe, pushing the envelope on algorithms and data powering ethnicity breakdowns (going from 31 regions to over 1000), and developing the first “automatic” family tree feature. Most recently, Robin was Head of Product at Wisdom Panel, where he drove product efforts to launch the Essential, Premium, and Complete for Cats products.

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