birth_place nationality field work_institutions known_for residence prizes article_title name
australia australian biotechnology nih , prima biomed , neuclone , garvan institute of medical , research maxygen , affymax , oakbio , circadian malaria research , biotechnology industry sydney , australia advance , 2013 global australian award , overall winner and biotechnology russell j. howard
 russell j. howard
russell j. howard

russell j. howard is an australian-born scientist , ceo and entrepreneur .
he was a pioneer in the fields of molecular parasitology , especially malaria , and in leading the commercialisation of one of the most important methods used widely today in molecular biology today called `` dna shuffling '' or `` molecular breeding '' , a form of `` directed evolution '' .
his contributions to malaria research over an 18-year period began in australia at the walter and eliza hall institute of medical research , then continued as a tenured principal investigator at the national institutes of health -lrb- nih -rrb- in bethesda , md , usa , and continued at the biotechnology companies dnax -lrb- now schering-plough biopharma -rrb- and affymax in california .
thirteen years of his group 's malaria research on antigenic variation in malaria culminated in the first molecular cloning of the malarial antigen pfemp1 , a parasite protein that this human malaria parasite expresses on the surface of malaria-infected red cells this antigen represents critical biological functions for the parasite including immune evasion and adherence to microvascular endothelial cells .
during this time howard served on the world health organization 's special program for research and training in tropical diseases and the usaid program for research and vaccine development in malaria .
while howard was president and scientific director at affymax research institute , willem ` pim ' stemmer conceived and developed dna shuffling technology .
this revolutionary technology for improving the expressed phenotype of genes , pathways , plasmids , viruses and genomes gave birth to the creation and spinout of maxygen inc. where howard was ceo for 12 years .
he took the company public and led its growth with 10s of corporate partnerships , technology application programs that led ultimately to the development and commercialisation worldwide of 10s of life science products in diverse fields .
maxygen exploited dna shuffling technology across the entire life sciences spectrum , creating new companies dedicated to agricultural products -lrb- verdia -rrb- and industrial chemical opportunities -lrb- codexis -rrb- as well as a protein pharmaceuticals business -lrb- perseid -rrb- .
in 2008 , howard left maxygen to found oakbio inc. .
he is currently a founder and the ceo of oakbio inc. in sunnyvale , california , usa , a company designing microbes for production of cost-competitive chemicals using industrial co2 emissions as carbon source -lsb- http://www.oakbio.com] .
additionally , he is currently commercial strategy advisor at the garvan institute of medical research 's kinghorn centre for clinical genomics .
howard has published over 140 scientific publications in refereed journals and is an inventor on five issued patents .
