Piers David Nash is an entrepreneur, cancer biology

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

, data evangelist, writer and technology

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...

. He is a pioneer in the field of emergent properties of complex biological systems, particularly for his work on integrative all-or-none switches at a cellular level. He was the founder of Sympatic, and the son of academic

Roger Nash Roger Nash BA, MA, PhD (Exon) is a Canadian philosopher and poet. He was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England on 3 November 1942. He grew up in England, Egypt, Cyprus, Singapore and Hong Kong. He has a B.A. from the University of Wales (1965) ...

Early life and education

Born in

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

, England, and grew up in

Sudbury Sudbury may refer to: Places Australia * Sudbury Reef, Queensland Canada * Greater Sudbury, Ontario ** Sudbury (federal electoral district) ** Sudbury (provincial electoral district) ** Sudbury Airport ** Sudbury Basin, a meteorite impact cra ...

, Ontario, Canada. In high school he competed in the

Canada-Wide Science Fair Started in 1962, the Canadian-Wide Science Fair (abbreviated as CWSF) is an annual science fair in Canada coordinated by Youth Science Canada. Finalists qualify from approximately 25,000 competitors at over 100 Youth Science Canada-affiliated regi ...

in five successive years (1983–87), winning awards on each occasion and becoming one of the most highly awarded science fair participants in the history of the fair. In recognition of this he was selected to represent Canada as one of two youth delegates to the 1985 Nobel Prize lectures and ceremony in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

as part of the

Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar (SIYSS) is an annual weeklong event for young international scientists, arranged in connection with the Nobel festivities by the SIYSS Committee of the Swedish Federation of Young Scientists. The histor ...

and was awarded the

International Youth Year The year 1985 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Youth Year (IYY). It was held to focus attention on issues of concern to and relating to youth. The proclamation was signed on 1 January 1985, by United Nations Secretary Gen ...

Ontario Gold Medal. He received a BSc with honours in biochemistry from the

University of Guelph The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...

, and the

Chemical Institute of Canada The Chemical Institute of Canada is a Canadian professional umbrella organization for researchers and professionals in the field of chemistry. It was founded in 1921 as the Canadian Institute of Chemistry until it merged with other groups in 1945 ...

prize for the top of class and President's Scholarship. He received a PhD in 1999 from the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

working in the laboratory of Dr. Grant McFadden investigating poxviral immunomodulatory proteins. His doctoral thesis focused on the enzymology and biological properties of the

Myxoma virus Myxoma virus is a poxvirus in the genus '' Leporipoxvirus''. The two broad geographic types of Myxoma virus are Californian and South American. Californian myxoma virus is found on the West Coast of the United States, the Baja Peninsula of Mexi ...

encoded serine proteinase inhibitor (

serpin Serpins are a superfamily of proteins with similar structures that were first identified for their protease inhibition activity and are found in all kingdoms of life. The acronym serpin was originally coined because the first serpins to be ...

), SERP-1. He completed

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

with Anthony Pawson at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

from June 1999 to December 2003. In 2014, Nash received an MBA with a concentration in finance awarded with high honors from the

University of Chicago Booth School of Business The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (branded as Chicago Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest ...

Career

Nash is currently a leader of Advanced Analytics and AI at Horace Mann Companies. Nash was founder and CEO of Sympatic Inc from 2019 to 2023, developing Cloud SaaS to power ethical data sharing for applications such as Artificial Intelligence. Nash has authored three patents on advanced multi-party rule-based secure cloud run-time environments that allow rule-based multi-party access or code access to dat
(link to patents)
Sympatic holds trademarks fo
VirtualVault®
an
Ethical Data Sharing®
based on Nash's work. Nash is Founder & General Manager of Nash Strategy & Innovation. He advises Fortune 500 technology companies and startups in the genomics, healthcare, data science and data storage fields. He serves on the Advisory Boards of technology and innovation companies. Nash was Managing Director at Health2047, the innovation enterprise of the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. This medical association was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 ...

from 2017-2018. From 2014 to 2017, Nash was Director of the Center for Data-Intensive Science at the University of Chicago that was building and managing the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons with

Robert Lee Grossman Robert Lee Grossman is an American computer scientist and bioinformatician at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are data science and data-intensive computing. Research Grossman has worked in several fields. His early w ...

. He was founding strategy manager and Director of business and research development for the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

's Center for Data Intensive Science which developed the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Genomic Data Commons. He was a professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and a Scientist of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the

from 2004–2012 and a fellow of the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology from 2006–2012. As a scientist, he investigates protein–protein interactions involved in

signal transduction Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a biochemical cascade, series of molecular events. Proteins responsible for detecting stimuli are generally termed receptor (biology), rece ...

, and the molecular mechanisms by which cells respond to external cues. His work at the University of Chicago focused on understanding the

SH2 domain The SH2 (Src Homology 2) domain is a structurally conserved protein domain contained within the Src oncoprotein and in many other intracellular signal-transducing proteins. SH2 domains bind to phosphorylated tyrosine residues on other proteins, ...

at a systems level and investigating the role of

ubiquitination Ubiquitin is a small (8.6 kDa) regulatory protein found in most tissues of eukaryotic organisms, i.e., it is found ''ubiquitously''. It was discovered in 1975 by Gideon Goldstein and further characterized throughout the late 1970s and 19 ...

in controlling

endocytosis Endocytosis is a cellular process in which Chemical substance, substances are brought into the cell. The material to be internalized is surrounded by an area of cell membrane, which then buds off inside the cell to form a Vesicle (biology and chem ...

and modulating

. Nash was an early pioneer of the concept of

Emergence In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central rol ...

in complex biological systems. His description of how complex protein interplay creates a digital switch guiding initiation of DNA replication publishe
in

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

was a seminal advance covered as a breakthrough of the year by

Science Signaling ''Science Signaling'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is focused on mechanisms of cell communication. It is published online weekly by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The editor-in-chief is John F. Foley, ...

and remains extensively cited. This emergent properties of a complex system as the basis for

ultrasensitivity In molecular biology, ultrasensitivity describes an output response that is more sensitive to stimulus change than the hyperbolic Michaelis–Menten kinetics, Michaelis-Menten response. Ultrasensitivity is one of the biochemical switches in the cel ...

(all-or-none switches) at critical junctures in the

cell cycle The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the sequential series of events that take place in a cell (biology), cell that causes it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the growth of the cell, duplication of its DNA (DNA re ...

remains a key example in this field. ResearchGate reports 54 peer-reviewed published works in a wide range of fields, including signal transduction, cell biology, molecular evolution, cell cycle, cognition and memory, meteorology, and pedagogy.

Notes

External links

Google Scholar Link

Could health data privacy kill you? Op-Ed in The Hill

A Hippocratic Oath for Big Data Op-Ed in The Hill

Nash Blog

SH2 domain website

The Ben May Institute for Cancer Research

Publications noted on PubMed
(NCBI)
Press Release Science Blog post about two papers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nash, Piers 1969 births Living people British biochemists American biochemists Canadian biochemists University of Chicago faculty University of Guelph alumni University of Alberta alumni British expatriates in the United States Canadian expatriates in the United States Academics from Greater Sudbury Scientists from Exeter Scientists from Ontario