Advances in medical technology continue to race forward as technology helps researchers unlock the mysteries of the human body and life. And yet the surface has hardly been scratched in securing the knowledge and skills required to alleviate major and chronic illnesses that plague billions of people. IFERS, the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships, is at the forefront of the fight by funding medical research and providing scholarships for aspiring doctors and medical researchers. Professor Newton Lee, Founder of IFERS, counts this as one of the most important aspects of the work his non-profit performs, which is considerable and wide-ranging.
Applauded by California State Senator Richard Roth for their efforts to raise awareness of Type 1 diabetes, IFERS has made it a priority to train healthcare professionals to diagnose this dangerous condition in adults and children. Understanding the human immune system is key to unlocking powerful information in the fight against the wide-range of debilitating autoimmune diseases, illnesses related to aging and, of course, cancer.
There are so many aspects of human life that just remain illusive; how one person can abuse their body to no end and never get sick while someone who lives a clean life goes away too young?; how viruses mutate and become immune to antibiotic treatments?; why a recessive genetic trait hidden for generations suddenly flips a switch during pregnancy and causes a baby to have a debilitating disease?; how a terminal medical diagnosis is wrong when the patient either wills him or herself back to health or creates the environment which facilitates their astounding recovery?; and of course how the powerful human mind interacts with the physical operations of the body?.
More is needed and the IFERS Wellness Center supports advanced research and applies integrative solutions with state-of-the-art technologies to achieve affordable physical and mental healthcare as well as elimination of diseases cost-effectively, resulting in better quality of life and longevity. For free consultation and sponsorship, please email wellness@ifers.org
Our Approach to Human Health
Human health is a complex modular entity at the intersection of all fields of human lore. It requires a dynamic harmony between individuals and their environments, individuals and other individuals, as well as individuals and their minds and bodies in the continuum of spacetime. This fact has been intuitively known since the dawn of humanity, and is becoming increasingly evident due to rapid scientific and technological advancements.
Despite this, modern approaches to health are still largely insular on a global scale, highly specialized and usually dismissive of alternatives. Western medicine has been centered on symptoms of disease, and is structured to maximize efficiency and expedience. Traditional medicine is often seen as an opposing rather than complementary approach because it focuses on natural remedies, is less regulated, and is often chosen by those whose needs are not fully satisfied by clinical experiences due to personal or cultural reasons.
Fitness, diet and nutrition regimes, as well as mental health domains such as education, cultural openness and exposure, mindfulness, meditation, religious participation, volunteering, and others are starting to gain more importance in today's society, and should be expected to gain more ground in health policy.
While scientific research continues to advance the medical understanding of disease mechanisms and offer cures, it is equally important to address the question of human health, mortality, and healthspan holistically, so that it will foster inner peace as well as global peace.
Our nonprofit Wellness Center is built on all pillars of health: mind, body, society, environment, and timescale. We integrate these elements in harmony using currently available and state-of-the-art technologies.
Quincy Jones and Newton Lee at American Film Institute
Wellness Team Bios
Dr. Greg Fahy PhD
Dr. Greg Fahy received his Ph.D. in pharmacology and cryobiology from the Medical College of Georgia in 1977 and worked at the American National Red Cross on kidney banking at cryogenic temperatures (cryopreservation) from 1977-1995.
He worked at the Naval Medical Research Institute and served as the Chief Scientist of two biotechnology companies from 1995-1997, until moving to California to join 21st Century Medicine (21CM) in 1998, where he rapidly became the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and Vice President of the company. While he is mostly known for his work on fundamental cryobiology and kidney cryopreservation, he has also had a lifelong fascination with the biology of aging, and in 2010 published a multi-authored book called The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension as the editor-in-chief.
In addition to continuing to serve as the CSO of 21CM, Dr. Fahy is currently conducting a human clinical trial of aging reversal based at Stanford University, the focus being on reversal of human immune system aging, which is believed to be a major cause of death and illness in people over the age of 65. Some notable recent accomplishments include publication of the first paper demonstrating survival of a kidney after cooling to -130oC, rewarming, and transplantation; the winning, with coworker Robert McIntyre, of the Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize; the achievement of institutional and FDA approval for his first human clinical trial; and 2 years of progress in his clinical trial with no serious side effects, and with great enthusiasm on the part of trial volunteers.
Current research includes demonstrating greatly improved methods of organ banking, the elimination of human autoimmune disorders, and the elimination of transplant rejection.
Dr. Cynthia Foster MD
Dr. Cynthia Foster received her M.D. degree in 1996 from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Due, in part, to her own natural healing from epilepsy without medications or surgery in her last year of medical school, she developed an interest in helping others heal naturally from incurable diseases.
Dr. Foster has spent more than 20 years in developing natural healing protocols and counseling patients. Since there were no medical doctors who were practicing holistically when Dr. Foster began her 100% holistic practice in 1997, she founded Dr. Foster's Essentials as an educational website to teach people how to heal themselves naturally and at home, without expensive lab tests or other medical interventions. Read more about CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) from Mayo Clinic.
Prof. Newton Lee
Prof. Newton Lee received his B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech, and his A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and honorary doctorate in Computer Science from Vincennes University. His first peer-reviewed research paper was "An Expert System for Information on Pharmacology and Drug Interactions" published in the International Journal of Computers in Biology and Medicine.
He was offered a research scientist job at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Instead, he was the founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs' first-ever commercial artificial intelligence tool, and inventor of the world's first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. He has been honored with a Michigan Leading Edge Technologies Award, two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company.
He believes in the power of citizen scientists, human-machine symbiosis, and artificial superintelligence in solving tough problems. In his book chapter "Google Versus Death: To Be, Or Not to Be?", he cites the computer game "Foldit" that took less than 10 days in September 2011 for its players to decipher the AIDS-causing Mason-Pfizer monkey virus that had stumped scientists for 15 years.
To put science, health, and technology at the forefront of American politics, Lee is the chairman of the California Transhumanist Party, and the education and media advisor to the United States Transhumanist Party.
Lima Mora
She is the founder and managing director of The Last Star. She is a Mixed Reality (MR) experience designer specializing in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR) and stereoscopy with a focus on immersive educational content/concept development, 360 solutions and Digital Health. Lima has lived the implications of severe mental health illness first hand through loved ones. The Last Star was bloomed from a desire to create tools to improve mental healthcare and increase patient accessibility to healthcare providers.
The Last Star (TLS) is a Virtual Rehabilitation Program that builds and provides the highest quality Virtual Reality (VR) and digital treatment tools for mental health, substance abuse and addictions. TLS solution targets contributing factors such as trauma, anxiety, depression and high risk personality traits in controlled virtual environments to form new behavioral patterns.
Bridging the gap between inpatient and outpatient facilities, TLS offers mobile solutions to keep patients on track to reduce relapse and the rate of recidivism.
Dr. Elena Rusyn, MD
Dr. Elena Rusyn is board-certified in anti-aging and regenerative medicine. She received her M.D. degree from National Medical University in Kiev, Ukraine and completed her residency training in Allergy and Immunology with sub-specialty in Cardiology. After her medical residency, she continued her postdoctoral studies at UNC-Chapel Hill Radiation Oncology Department, Harvard Medical School/MGH Department of Cancer Cell Biology, Gray Cancer Institute (London, UK), and Duke University Medical Center Departments of Neurobiology and MGM.
A medical scientist dedicated to enhancing the quality of life and extending the length of the human lifespan, she is the CEO of AmpliCell Medical, a company committed to tackling aging with an interdisciplinary approach and advancing stem cell regenerative medicine and research. She has worked around the globe as a women's health and hormone specialist. Among her many awards are the Individual Postdoctoral National Research Service Award, NIEHS.
She was appointed as a senior Immuno-Oncology scientist in Syntherica corporation where she contributed to developing and applying the surrogate antibodies technology in medical diagnostics.
Elena was a member of a team involved in research on understanding molecular mechanisms of cellular responses to oxidative stress from ionizing radiation. She contributed to the evaluation of the human health risk associated with exposures to low doses of ionizing radiation as well as the following cellular responses to ionizing radiation: apoptosis, DNA damage, gene expression, the bystander and low-dose hypersensitivity effects, genomic instability and mechanisms for regulation of DNA damage response by cell-cell communication.
She contributed to the discovery of the biological function of CLN3 protein and demonstrated that CLN3 binds to the sphingolipid galactosylceramide and aids in its transport from Golgi to lipid rafts. She showed that treatment with galactosylceramide partially restores the neurodegeneration caused by juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, a neurodegenerative disease caused by CLN3 mutation, and that it could be developed as a new therapeutic option.
She discovered that increased radiosensitivity of R-Ras oncogene expressing cells could be due to elevated oxidant production that exhausting antioxidant defense in those cells. Moreover, R-Ras overexpressing cells underwent type II physiological cell death (autophagy) in response to inhibition of p38 kinase, the potential for the therapeutic application.
Her work has been presented internationally and published in renowned peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Cell Biology, Oncogene, Cancer Research, Cell Host and Microbe, Nutrition and Cancer, Pediatric Research and the Journal of Immunology and Allergy.
Dr. Anca Selariu Ph.D.
Dr. Anca Selariu received her Ph.D. in Integrative Biomedical Sciences from Rutgers University where she developed an alternative vaccine for chickenpox and shingles. Her education also includes a Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry and one in Philology, as well as various studies in astrobiology, psychology, criminology, and nutrition.
She is an interdisciplinary biomedical scientist, philologist and incurable optimist. She shares a vision for an inter-galactic humanity within the next thousand years, and sees each human being alive today as a precious resource to realize this potential. She seeks to dedicate her efforts to three causes: 1) creating human bio-enhancements and anti-aging therapies using interdisciplinary knowledge and tools available, which will allow humanity to keep up and co-evolve with its own brain products; 2) educating the world on mental flexibility, so that prejudice, fear and discrimination become obsolete; 3) help design an ergonomic habitat for the far-future humanity, both on and above Terra.
She believes that our collective mind will always seek to conquer the impossible, and we owe the future humans the best of what we can do today. In March 2018, she gave a talk at TEDxCSU entitled "Future of life and the importance of being unreasonable", in which she proposed that, because evolution is not optional but rather a mathematical condition of existence, it is necessary that humans learn to use their ability for higher achievements in order to intentionally direct their evolution and to mitigate existential risk for all life on earth.
She has twelve years of biomedical research in herpes viruses and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, and three years in FDA/CGMP project management and business development. She is a founding member of the Future of Thought Consortium, and a member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Society for Neuroscience (SfN), American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and Eastern Psychology Association (EPA). In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, painting, maintaining a healthy mind-body connection and attending scientific conferences.
For more info go to http://www.IFERS.org.
IFERS & Winds of Freedom 2018 Peace Day Event
About IFERS:
Established in 2004, the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships (IFERS) is an award-winning California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity organization dedicated to improving society by providing resources to high achieving students, scientific researchers, community nonprofit projects, and educational organizations. We believe in changing the world for the better through education, research, and scholarships. Our ultimate goal is to create a better world with lasting peace, prosperity, and universal rights for all.