KMT2C Foundation Board Members
Jordana Koch, Board President
Jordana Koch has over thirteen years of industry experience within FinTech and bio-pharma operations. Start-up involvement has been from seed stage to fully funded with pharmaceutical backing. Teams have included C-suite members and senior executives from North America, EMEA, LATAM, Switzerland, APAC, and India. Jordana is the founding member of the KMT2C Foundation. She is a long-standing Autism Spectrum Disorder and 2E (Twice Exceptional) advocate.
Dr. Matthias Koch, Chief Scientific Officer
Matthias Koch is an Assistant Professor for Biology at Texas A&M University, where his lab studies how the clinical important bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa interacts with the physical environment of the host to regulate its pathogenicity.
Matthias found his passion for diseases related research and medical care during a community service gap-year after high school at the University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany.
Matthias started his career by exploring the world of astro physics, particle physics, and computer science, which earned him a MSc in Physics. Intrigued by the world of microbes and the molecular processes in the cell, he went on to apply his knowledge about physics to biological systems, for which he received a PhD with summa cum laude in Biophysics at the Department of Microsystem Engineering at his home university. He finally fostered his love for biology and diseases related work during a Postdoc in the Department for Molecular Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, where he made the remarkable discovery that bacteria have a sense of touch similar to humans to regulate their virulence related genes to their mechanical environment in the host.
Matthias has received numerous conference awards, the Wolfgang Genter Early Career Award for his PhD thesis, a National Institute of Health (NIH) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), and published his work in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Photonics, Nature Microbiology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), and more.
Dr. Alisa Mo, MD, Board MD
Alisa Mo received her M.D., Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland and is currently a Child Neurology resident at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is interested in better understanding the genetic and epigenetic basis of neurodevelopmental diseases, with a particular focus on defects in chromatin-related genes.
Dr. Joshua Shaevitz, Board Director
Joshua Shaevitz is Professor of Physics and Biophysics in the Department of Physics and Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. He did undergraduate work at Columbia University in New York and received his Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University in 2004. Prior to his appointment at Princeton, he was a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Shaevitz's work focuses on precision measurements in a variety of biological systems, focusing on topics related to cell shape in bacteria, active matter and pattern formation in groups of moving cells, and the quantification of animal behavior. He is the recipient of several awards and honors, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an APS Fellowship, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), among others. He also serves as co-Director of the Center for the Physics of Biological Function and is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Program in Biophysics at Princeton University.
Dr. Julie Thompson, BCBA-D, Board Director
Julie L. Thompson, PhD, BCBA-D, is an Associate Professor of Special Education, Behavioral Learning INterventions in Children (BLINC) Lab Director; Core Faculty Member of the Texas A&M University Institute for Early Childhood Development and Education; and Affiliated Faculty Member of the Center on Disability and Development at Texas A&M University. Julie’s work as a classroom teacher for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gave her insight into the layered complexities of providing adequate education to individuals with ASD in public schools. Julie’s BLINC lab uses social-justice-driven mixed-methods research to specialize in two areas: academic instruction for students with profound autism and/or intellectual disabilities AND preventing and teaching replacement behaviors to students with interfering problem behaviors in the classroom, to support inclusion, communication, independence, and lifelong fulfillment. Julie has been PI on seven externally funded awards totaling $3,864,799 and Co-PI four externally funded awards totaling $30.14 million. Julie has 22 peer-reviewed publications, 58 peer-reviewed presentations, and has chaired or co-chaired 17 doctoral students.
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