Asem Bala, MSc has over 20 years of experience in Healthcare & Clinical Research Management, now working at Taylored Biotherapeutics to create partnerships and ensure regulatory approvals.

Dr. Valerie Taylor, MD, PhD, FRCP is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary. She completed a Bachelor of Medical Science and graduated from medical school at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She subsequently finished her residency training in Psychiatry and got her PhD in Neuroscience from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Prior to coming to Calgary, she was the chief of Psychiatry at the Women’s College Hospital and the chief of Adult Health Services at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Her academic focus has been on the area of medical psychiatry – specifically, for the last 5 years, on the gut brain axis and the the gut microbiome. She is the only funded researcher in North America examining the therapeutic effects of fecal transplant as a treatment for mental health and she currently has 4 novel clinical trials looking at modifying the gut microbiome to treat mood disorders as well as the largest biological neuroscience microbiome repository in North America. She has over 180 peer reviewed publications and funding from a variety of national and international funding agencies. In 2020 she started Taylored Biotherapeutics, a micro therapeutics drug company. Today her primary role is in leading product development, getting regulatory approval, and finding partnerships.