September Speaker: Wes Radez

September Topic:  Environmental Journalism in a Changing World – How Bay Nature Magazine informs and inspires amidst climate change, artificial intelligence, and policy turmoil

 Wes Radez, as Executive Director / Publisher at Bay Nature, leads their efforts connecting Bay Area people to their natural world.   Wes is a community builder passionate about environmental stewardship. Before arriving at Bay Nature, Wes was the Director of Development and Marketing for the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation, managing and investing assets in partnership with community and civic groups. Wes has more than 15 years of management, business development and marketing experience, drawing on experiences as varied as growing a national wireless brand, leading a venture-backed startup and building an international ecommerce business. Wes has an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University.

When you read Bay Nature magazine, it’s clear that these are extraordinary times for conservation, biodiversity, and climate resiliency in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the voice of the regional environmental community, Bay Nature is meeting this moment by keeping readers informed and connecting them with others who are passionate about local nature.

September Speaker: Giselle Knudsen, Ph.D.

Seotember Topic:  Can We Find Better Clues to Cancer?  Using Enzyme Activity to Improve the Diagnosis of Pancreatic Cysts

Dr. Knudsen , VP, Business & Technologies at Alaunus Biosciences, Inc. in Novato, CA, is a founding scientist at Alaunus Biosciences, Inc., and an inventor of a disease-profiling technology with multiple partnered applications in cancer for diagnostics and therapeutics. 

She earned her Ph.D. at the University of California San Francisco in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and trained as an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellow in nanotechnology at Purdue University.  She returned to the UCSF Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2008, where she served as an adjunct faculty in the UCSF School of Pharmacy.  Specializing in proteomics / bioinformatics / data modeling for target discovery, assay development, and molecular design,

Dr. Knudsen moved to Alaunus to build and pursue a promising technology platform for enzyme activity profiling that will be the subject of her SIRS presentation.  Their first commercial application is a diagnostic assay designed to assist clinicians in the risk stratification of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cystic lesions (PCL), enabling the management of benign vs. pre-malignant pancreatic cysts and early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.