Michelle Freund

Dr. Freund holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Hahnemann University.  Following post-doctoral training at Rutgers University and a brief time as an assistant editor at Nature Medicine, she went on to conduct independent research studying monoamine neurotransmitters in actions of antidepressants and their role in substance use disorders.  Dr. Freund’s career over the past 20 years has focused on the importance of open science and broad data sharing.

In her most recent position she served as Director, Strategic Data Initiatives, where she had oversight of multiple data and research cores of the Child Mind Institute, each focused on providing reproducible scientific results to transform the lives of children and their families. She concurrently held the position of the director of Innovations in Clinical Assessment and Interventions of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute. This initiative focused on building, testing and deploying digital technologies to expand access to mental health care and research in low- and middle-income countries.

From 2019 through 2023, Dr. Freund was the director of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study at NIH, the largest longitudinal study of early brain and child development in the United States. Her tenure at NIH included 11 years at NIMH, serving as the deputy director of the Office of Technology Development and Coordination, where she managed a research portfolio of grants focused on the development of novel tools and technologies important for the advancement of basic and translational neuroscience. There, she also served as the director for the NIH NeuroBioBank, a network of six brain and tissue repositories that provide post-mortem human brain samples for research. She was an active member of several trans-NIH interdisciplinary teams such as the NIH BRAIN Initiative and the Blueprint for Neuroscience. Each of these positions provided an opportunity to champion the importance of open sharing of valuable data and biospecimen resources.

Fraser Glen

Fraser Glen is CTO and co-founder of Lasso Informatics, where he leads the development of secure data and compute platforms for research and data-intensive applications. With over 25 years of experience in distributed systems and large-scale software architecture, his work focuses on enabling compliant data sharing, secure compute environments, and the integration of AI into sensitive research workflows.

Damien Fair

Damien Fair is a Cognitive Neuroscientist and Professor in the Institute of Child Development and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. He is also the Redleaf Endowed Director of the Masonic Institute of the Developing Brain.

Combining technical advances in functional MRI, advanced mathematics, and expertise in psychology and neuroscience, Fair has demonstrated several basic principles of brain development and its relationships to typical and atypical behaviors. As PI and co-leader of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study and the Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, two of the largest brain-development studies in history, he directs transformative national efforts that define typical and atypical neurodevelopmental from the prenatal period through young adulthood. He has advanced reproducibility, open science, education and health accessibility by leading major NIH, DoD, and SFN efforts around big data, telehealth, tele-education, military/rural mental health care, and science communication.

In 2012, he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Issued by President Barack Obama and the White House. In 2020 he was named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow. He recently served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and Council for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He also serves on the Scientific Research Council for the Child Mind Institute and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Fair is deeply committed to public service, community engagement, and STEM education. He founded and directed the Youth Engaged in Science (YES!) initiative and the OHSU Fellowship for Diversity and Inclusion. He’s also served on the Society for Neuroscience Program Committee, Chaired Public Education and Communication Committee, Press Committee, Workforce and Training Groups, and maintained a position on the BrainFacts.org editorial board. He is also a past President of the Flux Society. He has delivered briefings to the Congressional Neuroscience Caucus and the American Brain Coalition on the intersection of brain development and public policy. His work is driven by an integrative, equity-focused vision aimed at advancing the intersection of cognitive psychology and neuroscience while expanding access, opportunity, and impact across science and society.

Jen Zink

Jen Zink, PhD, is the Director of Partnerships and Grants at Lasso Informatics, where she supports multimodal data coordination efforts for large-scale research initiatives. Previously, Dr. Zink was at National Institutes of Health for over 4 years, first as a Cancer Prevention Fellow (NCI) and then as a Scientific Program Manager for the HBCD Study (NIDA).

Dr. Zink earned her PhD in Preventive Medicine from the University of Southern California. Her research has focused on the behavioral and physiological determinants of health in children and adolescents, with an emphasis on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and their relationships to mental health, metabolic outcomes, and brain development. Her work has explored how patterns of movement, screen time, and sleep relate to outcomes such as anxiety, depression, obesity risk, and insulin sensitivity, often leveraging intensive longitudinal data to better understand health in everyday contexts.

Leigh MacIntyre

Leigh MacIntyre is the CEO of Lasso Informatics, where she leads the design and delivery of a modern research data platform supporting large-scale, multi-modal studies. In this role, she oversees the development of systems that enable secure data management, sharing, and analysis across complex research environments, and works closely with partners to translate scientific and operational needs into scalable technical solutions.

With over 15 years of experience in neuroscience and program management, Leigh has spent more than a decade leading Data Coordination Centers (DCCs) and large-scale research sharing and open science initiatives. She has deep expertise in study operations, data sharing, and workflow design, with a focus on reducing the operational burden/friction of complex studies and enabling more efficient, robust and reproducible science.

At Lasso, she leads a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and data analysts, and works closely with world-leading experts across diverse fields. Her work is driven by a deep commitment to building infrastructure that supports researchers in working effectively with complex datasets and advancing meaningful scientific discovery.