Punam Malik received her M.D. degree from Lady Hardinge Medical College, University of Delhi, India. She completed a pediatric residency at Kalawati Saran Children;s Hospital, Delhi and at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, and then then trained in hematology-oncology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where she served as fellow, Assistant Professor from 1999-2005 and a tenured Associate Professor in 2006 at CHLA, University of Southern California. She joined Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati in 2007 as the Program Director of the Gene and Cell Therapy Program and in 2008, she became the director of the Translational Core Laboratories at CCHMC. In 2010, she became a Professor of Pediatrics. In 2012, she became the director of the Cincinnati Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center, and in 2014 she became the Marjorie Johnson Endowed Professor of Gene and Cell Therapy. Her group focuses on the pathobiology of sickle cell disease and thalassemia, identifying mechanisms of organ pathologies in sickle cell disease, and developing curative strategies for hemoglobinopathies and other hematopoietic stem cell disorders through transplantation of genetically modified autologous bone marrow stem cells. John Tisdale received his M.D. degree from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He completed an internal medicine and chief residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and then trained in hematology in the Hematology Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), where he served as a postdoctoral fellow. He joined the Molecular and Clinical Hematology Branch of NHLBI in 1998 and is now the Chief of the Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics Section. His group focuses on developing curative strategies for sickle cell disease through transplantation of allogeneic or genetically modified autologous bone marrow stem cells.