Archival Research Network by Porta Sophia

David Casimir is a patent attorney with Casimir Jones, an intellectual property law firm that specializes in biological and chemical technologies. David has a bachelor’s degree in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree and Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, and a law degree from Stanford University. In addition to his legal practice, David teaches at the University of Wisconsin law school and has guest taught courses at the University of Wisconsin business school and the University of Michigan school of pharmacy. David is a board member of the EHE Foundation (a rare cancer organization supporting research and patient services) and the Isthmus Project (a subsidiary of UW Health focused on innovation) and is an advisory board member for the University of Wisconsin Law School Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic. David is one of the co-founders of Porta Sophia, a psychedelic prior art library.

Tom Isenbarger is a shareholder and registered patent attorney at Casimir Jones, S.C, an intellectual property law firm in Madison, Wisconsin. He received a PhD in biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and a JD at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Prior to attending law school, Dr. Isenbarger was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and then was a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Isenbarger’s practice includes drafting and prosecuting U.S. and foreign patent applications and developing intellectual property portfolios. He regularly assists and advises clients in matters of post-issuance proceedings, due diligence review, licensing, patentability, freedom to operate, invalidity, and enforceability. He also counsels clients in technology commercialization and in other areas of intellectual property, including trademarks, trade dress, copyrights, and trade secrets.

Sisi Li, Ph.D. is a Data Architect at Porta Sophia, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, simple search tool for innovators and patent reviewers to find relevant prior art in the field of psychedelics. Porta Sophia is affiliated with the Usona Institute, which supports pre-clinical and clinical research to further the understanding of the therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other consciousness-expanding medicines. Dr. Li received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where her research focused on better understanding the epigenetic and molecular mechanisms underlying depression and anxiety disorders. Dr. Li’s passion for the field of mental health, and specifically in advancing psychedelic treatments of psychiatric disorders, led her to a position in which she can protect innovations surrounding psychedelic applications in the public domain. She previously had worked for 3 years as an R&D Research Scientist at Gregor Diagnostics, a prostate cancer diagnostics startup, where she was engaged in assay development, design and execution of clinical studies, project management, and grant writing.

Shahin Shams is the Porta Sophia Data Curator. She identifies psychedelic-focused documents in scientific and patent literature, curates prior art for the Porta Sophia online library, and researches companies applying for psychedelic patents. Additionally, she assists in generating third party submissions to the USPTO - directly addressing bad patent applications at the federal level. She is currently a Biomedical Engineering PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis with a scientific background in pharmacology and molecular biology. After defending her dissertation, she plans to attend law school to become a patent attorney specializing in clinical pharmacology and advanced biologics.

Amanda Rose Pratt is a PhD candidate in English with a concentration in Composition and Rhetoric and a minor in Science and Technology Studies who researches psychedelic rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

As Data Archivist at the psychedelic prior art library Porta Sophia, she works to integrate archival research into their prior art library, in part by engaging with a network of archival researchers who study psychedelics.

Amanda is also a founding member of an Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Activism and Environmental Research Working Group sponsored by the UW Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE); an advisory member of UW’s Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances; and a member of the Madison Psychedelic Society community group.

Charles Raison, MD, is the Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Distinguished Chair for Healthy Minds, Children & Families and Professor, School of Human Ecology, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Raison also serves as Director of Clinical and Translational Research for Usona Institute, as Director of Research on Spiritual Health for Emory Healthcare and as Visiting Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Raison’s research focuses on the examination novel mechanisms involved in the development and treatment of major depression and other stress-related emotional and physical conditions, as well as for his work examining the physical and behavioral effects of compassion training. More recently, Dr. Raison has taken a leadership role in the development of psychedelic medicines as potential treatments for major depression. He was named one of the world’s most influential researchers by Web of Science for the decade of 2010-2019. With Vladimir Maletic he is author of “The New Mind-Body Science of Depression” published by W.W. Norton in 2017.

Lucas Richert is George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also the Historical Director of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His recent publications include Cannabis: Global Histories (The MIT Press, 2021) and Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture (The MIT Press, 2019).