bioMérieux Press Conference at ADLM 2026

Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Microbiology, UCLA

Dr. Omai Garner is a Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Microbiology in the UCLA Health System. He received his PhD from UC San Diego in Biomedical Sciences. He was a Postdoctoral Clinical Microbiology CPEP Fellow in the Department of Pathology at UCLA, and a former McNair Scholar. Dr. Garner is Board Certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiology. Dr. Garner's research focuses on novel Point of Care Devices for infectious disease diagnosis in LMICs.

Dr. Garner works with UCLA’s Homeless Healthcare Collaborative on increasing access to testing.

Medical Director, Regional Laboratories and Point of Care, Medical Director, Reference Laboratories and PLUGS (Patient-Centered Laboratory Utilization Guidance Services), Department of Laboratories, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington

Dr. Astion is the Creator and one of the Founders of PLUGS, a non-profit lab stewardship organization of > 110 institutional members, which helps hospital and commercial laboratories, as well as IVD companies, improve stewardship. Dr. Astion is also Director of Regional Laboratories in the Department of Laboratories at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Washington. Previously, he was the Medical Director of Seattle Children's Department of Laboratories from 2013-2023, and before that he was the Medical Director of Reference Laboratories at the University of Washington for 15 years. He has authored more than 25 software titles, 50 peer-reviewed papers, 100 editorials and interviews, and a dozen PLUGS podcasts. He is working actively, through grants and intellectual property held by the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s, with the insurance industry to create laboratory stewardship rules for lab testing. Dr. Astion is a frequent speaker at professional meetings, where he lectures on issues related to laboratory stewardship and management. His awards include a national award for Patient Safety from ADLM, and a Professorship, named in his honor, at the University of Washington.

Vice President of Education, HealthyWomen 

Helaine Bader is a passionate public health advocate. Helaine’s career spans the fields of health education, communications and advocacy. Early in her career, she worked as a fellow in the breast cancer division of the National Cancer Institute. She later managed the global communications strategy for a Center of Excellence in Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline, followed by directing the global advocacy efforts in cervical cancer at Digene/QIAGEN. She has consulted with numerous organizations to create and implement educational and awareness campaigns addressing health disparities and health literacy in communities throughout the U.S. In 2026, Helaine was appointed as a patient advocate for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, part of NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network. She is also co-author of a bestselling textbook, New Dimensions in Women’s Health, now in its 9th edition. Helaine has a BA from University of Pennsylvania and an MPH from University of Pittsburgh.

Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at bioMérieux

Dr. Cooper is a graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine (Washington, DC) and specializes in infectious diseases and epidemiology (University of Maryland, Baltimore). He has been practicing medicine for more than 25 years and still devotes two days a month to this work.   

He spent 13 years with the Food & Drug Administration.  He was previously Chief Medical Officer at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics and spent eight years at Becton Dickinson.