Dennis Fisher

Dr. Fisher is the President of the "P Less Than" Company, a consultancy. He assists pharma companies with clinical and regulatory strategies and conducts pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic analyses. Through 2000 Dr. Fisher was Professor of Anesthesia and Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco and an Editor of the journal Anesthesiology, and an academic colleague of Professors Lewis Sheiner and Stuart Beal. Between 2000 and 2003, he was Vice President for Medical Affairs at DURECT, an ALZA spin-off. In 2003, he resumed consulting full-time. E-mail: fisher@plessthan.com.

Steve Shafer

Dr. Shafer is Professor of Anesthesiology at Columbia University, Adjunct Professor of Anesthesia at Stanford University, and Adjunct Professor of Biopharmaceutical Science at UCSF. His research interests are in the mathematical modeling of intravenous and inhalational anesthetics, including population PK/PD, drug interactions, computer controlled drug administration, quantitative measures of anesthetic drug effect, and model-based pharmaceutical development. He is Editor-in-Chief of Anesthesia & Analgesia, and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics and the British Journal of Anaesthesia. E-mail: sshafer@columbia.edu.

Pamela Flood

Dr. Flood's main area of research is in the mechanism of action of general anesthetics and how central nicotinic inhibition by general anesthetics affects synaptic transmission. Her laboratory uses molecular biologic (chimeras and site directed mutagenesis), electrophysiologic and behavioral techniques to identify the inhibitory site for general anesthetics. Dr. Flood is an avid NONMEM user, and has perspectives on the use of NONMEM in basic science research, a very different perspective than the more common application of NONMEM to pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. E-mail: pdf3@columbia.edu