Atlantic White Shark Conservancy Adds Prominent Executive-Scientist to Board of Directors
Chatham, MA (January 16, 2020) – The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC) is pleased to announce the addition of prominent technology executive and scientist Dr. Chris Bouton to its board of directors.
“Chris' deep background in technology and science, along with his long-time interest in sharks and shark conservation, makes him an incredible asset to our Board of Directors and to the organization as a whole, especially since much of what we do here involves science, technology and data analysis," said Atlantic White Shark Conservancy CEO Cynthia Wigren. “We are thrilled to have him on our team.”
Dr. Bouton is currently CEO of Vyasa Analytics (www.vyasa.com), a technology start-up company focused on the application of deep learning Artificial Intelligence to text and image analytics. Before that, Bouton served as CEO of Entagen, a software company founded in 2008 that developed Big Data analytics software including Extera and TripleMap.
Under his leadership, Entagen technologies won numerous awards including the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s 2012 "Innovative Technology of the Year Award for Big Data" and was recognized in 2013 as a Gartner "Cool Vendor" in the Life Sciences.
Prior to becoming the chief executive at Entagen, Dr. Bouton worked as a computational biologist at LION Bioscience Research Inc. and Aveo Pharmaceuticals, leading the microarray data analysis functions at both companies. In 2004 he went to work for Pfizer as the Head of Integrative Data Mining where he led a group of Ph.D. level scientists conducting research in computational biology, systems biology, knowledge engineering, software development, and machine learning. While at Pfizer, Dr. Bouton conceived of and implemented an organization-wide knowledge base called Pfizerpedia for which he won the 2007 William E. Upjohn Award in Innovation.
Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Amherst College with a degree in neuroscience, Dr. Bouton earned his doctorate in molecular neurobiology from John Hopkins University in 2001. Over the course of his career, he has authored over a dozen scientific papers and book chapters, and his work has been the subject of numerous industry news articles.
In addition to serving on the AWSC Board of Directors, Dr. Bouton, who lives in Newburyport with his wife and two children, also serves on the Board of Directors for Newburyport Bank, Code & Circuit, Anna Jaques Hospital and the Beth Israel Lahey Health System IT Committee.
“I’m excited to join the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy Board of Directors. Not only have I spent many happy summers on Cape Cod as a boy, I have long been fascinated by sharks,” Dr. Bouton said, noting that he has participated in Lemon Shark tracking research at the Bimini Biological Field Station, been cage diving with Great White sharks at Guadalupe Island, and was lucky enough to SCUBA dive with Scalloped Hammerhead sharks at Gordon Rocks in the Galapagos Islands.
“I believe deeply in the importance of education, preservation and scientific research of all shark species,” he added.