NEWS RELEASE
January 22, 2007
Thomas Jefferson School of Law Presents Free Biotechnology Law Seminar Seminar On Legal Issues Of The Biotechnology Revolution For Non-Scientists
SAN DIEGO –A free public seminar on the cutting-edge issues rapidly emerging from the biotechnology revolution is being offered on Saturday, January 27, 2007 at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. The lecture “The Science of Biotechnology for Non-Scientists’’ will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 300 of the Thomas Jefferson Law Library Building at 2121 San Diego Avenue in Old Town.
The event is open to the community as part of TJSL's Intellectual Property & Technology Law program, and is part of a course in biotechnology law being taught by Thomas Jefferson professor Randy Berholtz. According to Professor Berholtz, professionals who have an interest in biotechnology in San Diego will benefit from the seminar. Among the issues that will be discussed include patenting, licensing, regulatory approvals, and tort liability.
Professor Berholtz has invited two speakers for Saturday’s seminar: Dr. Mel Green, Professor Emeritus at UCSD, and Essy Levy, M.S., Instructor for the UCSD Extension Program. The biotechnology course, according to Professor Berholtz, is designed “to teach law students about the various disciplines that surround biotechnology law-patent law, food and drug law, corporate law, licensing, health law, mergers and acquisitions and public and private financing in order to allow student's to develop their biotechnology lawyer's toolkit.”
Please RSVP for this seminar by Wednesday, January 24th to Jennifer Risser Suckow at risserjl@tjsl.edu or (717) 821-2501. # # #
Biographies of Professor Berholtz, Dr. Green and Mr. Levy:
Randy Berholtz, Esq.: Professor Berholtz is an Adjunct Professor at Thomas Jefferson Law School teaching Biotechnology Law, a course that he taught previously in 2004. He is currently the Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of ACON Laboratories, Inc., a Chinese diagnostic products company with offices in San Diego, Hong Kong and Hangzhou, China. Professor Berholtz has been practicing law for over 17 years with life science companies and in private law firms the last two being Heller Ehrman LLP and Cooley Godward, both in San Diego. He was previously acting General Counsel of Nanogen, Inc., a public genomics company in San Diego and has been affiliated with a number of life science venture capital funds in San Diego. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences at the Claremont Colleges, was a co-editor of one of the seminal treatises in the biotechnology field: Biotechnology Law by Michael Malinowski and was the national Co-Chairman of the Practicing Law Institute’s Biotechnology Law Seminar. He was a former clerk for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas. He received a BA (summa cum laude) from Cornell University in Political Economy, an M.Litt. from Pembroke College, Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar and a J.D. from the Yale Law School where he serves as a Senior Editor on The Yale Law Journal.
Dr. Melvin Green: After attaining his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1962, Melvin Green conducted post-doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Nobel laureate Renato Dulbecco. He then advanced through the professorial ranks at the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently Professor Emeritus. His research has been in the areas of Molecular and Cellular Biology with a focus on medical topics such as cancer, AIDS, and wound repair.
Essy Levy, M.S., has worked in various aspects of science education locally and worldwide. Essy has had previous academic and industrial experience in molecular and cell biology. Currently, she is a part of the Bioscience team at UCSD Extension.
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