Piers David Nash (born 8 August 1969) is an entrepreneur, cancer biology

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

, data evangelist, writer and technology

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

. He is the son of academic Roger Nash.

Early life and education

Born in Exeter, England, and grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. In high school he competed in the Canada-Wide Science Fair in five successive years (1983–87), winning awards on each occasion and becoming one of the most highly awarded science fair participants in the history of the fair. In recognition of this he was selected to represent Canada as one of two youth delegates to the 1985 Nobel Prize lectures and ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden as part of the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar and was awarded the

International Youth Year The year 1985 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Youth Year (IYY). It was held to focus attention on issues of concern to and relating to youth. The proclamation was signed on January 1, 1985, by United Nations Secretary Gen ...

Ontario Gold Medal. He received a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

with honours in biochemistry from the

University of Guelph , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...

, and the

Chemical Institute of Canada A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wit ...

prize for the top of class and President's Scholarship. He received a PhD in 1999 from the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a Public university, public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexande ...

working in the laboratory of Dr. Grant McFadden investigating poxviral immunomodulatory proteins. His doctoral thesis focused on the enzymology and biological properties of the

Myxoma virus ''Myxoma virus'' is a poxvirus in the genus ''Leporipoxvirus''. The two broad geographic types of ''myxoma virus'' are Californian and South American. Californian ''myxoma virus'' is found on the West Coast of the United States, the Baja Penins ...

encoded serine proteinase inhibitor (

serpin Serpins are a superfamily of proteins with similar structures that were first identified for their protease inhibition activity and are found in all kingdoms of life. The acronym serpin was originally coined because the first serpins to be id ...

), SERP-1. He completed

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

with Anthony Pawson at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

from June 1999 to December 2003. In 2014, Nash received an MBA with a concentration in finance awarded with high honors from the

University of Chicago Booth School of Business The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth or Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 N ...

. From 2014 to 2017, Nash was Director in th
Center for Data-Intensive Science
that was building and managing th
National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons
with

Robert Lee Grossman Robert Lee Grossman is an American computer scientist and bioinformatician at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are data science and data-intensive computing. Research Grossman has worked in several fields. His early wo ...

Career

Nash is the founder and CEO of Sympatic Inc. Nash is Founder & General Manager of Nash Strategy & Innovation. He advises Fortune 500 technology companies and startups in the genomics, healthcare, data science and data storage fields. He serves on the Advisory Boards of technology and innovation companies. Nash was Managing Director at Health2047, the innovation enterprise of the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016. The AMA's sta ...

from 2017-2018. He was founding Strategy Manager, Director of business & research development for the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

's Center for Data Intensive Science which developed the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Genomic Data Commons. He was a professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and a Scientist of the

Comprehensive Cancer Center NCI-designated Cancer Centers are a group of 71 cancer research institutions in the United States supported by the National Cancer Institute. Program Three designations are recognized: Comprehensive Cancer Centers, Clinical Cancer Centers, and B ...

at the

from 2004–2012 and a fellow of the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology from 2006–2012. As a scientist, he investigates protein–protein interactions involved in signal transduction, and the molecular mechanisms by which cells respond to external cues. His work at the University of Chicago focused on understanding the

SH2 domain The SH2 (Src Homology 2) domain is a structurally conserved protein domain contained within the Src oncoprotein and in many other intracellular signal-transducing proteins. SH2 domains allow proteins containing those domains to dock to phosphor ...

at a systems level and investigating the role of

ubiquitination Ubiquitin is a small (8.6 kDa) regulatory protein found in most tissues of eukaryotic organisms, i.e., it is found ''ubiquitously''. It was discovered in 1975 by Gideon Goldstein and further characterized throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Fo ...

in controlling endocytosis and modulating signal transduction. Earlier work focused on the emergent properties of complex systems such as

ultrasensitivity In molecular biology, ultrasensitivity describes an output response that is more sensitive to stimulus change than the hyperbolic Michaelis-Menten response. Ultrasensitivity is one of the biochemical switches in the cell cycle and has been implic ...

(all-or-none switches) at critical junctures in the

cell cycle The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the series of events that take place in a cell that cause it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the duplication of its DNA (DNA replication) and some of its organelles, and sub ...

. ResearchGate reports 54 peer-reviewed published works in a wide range of fields, including signal transduction, cell biology, molecular evolution, cell cycle, cognition and memory, meteorology, and pedagogy.

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

notes an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 30 and 4488 citationsgoogle scholar profile Piers D Nash
/ref> of 51 publications tracked in that database since 1996.

Notes

External links

Could health data privacy kill you? Op-Ed in The Hill

A Hippocratic Oath for Big Data Op-Ed in The Hill

Nash Blog

SH2 domain website

The Ben May Institute for Cancer Research

Publications noted on PubMed
(NCBI)
Press Release Science Blog post about two papers

Profile on MS Academic Research beta
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nash, Piers 1969 births Living people British biochemists American biochemists Canadian biochemists University of Chicago faculty University of Guelph alumni University of Alberta alumni British expatriates in the United States Canadian expatriates in the United States People from Greater Sudbury Scientists from Exeter Scientists from Ontario