Honorary Doctorate

David D. Halbert (’78) Chairman, Founder and CEO of Caris Life Sciences

David D. Halbert is the chairman, founder and CEO of Caris Life Sciences, the pioneering precision medicine company that helps patients receive better quality care through access to individualized medicine. With more than 40 years of experience, and a strong track record of growth and value creation in the energy, financial and healthcare industries, Halbert continues to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the United States. He is a passionate advocate of personalized medicine and leads Caris Life Sciences with a philosophy that more precise and individualized information will lead to dramatic improvements in the quality of care patients receive. Halbert has been tremendously influenced by his mother’s passing from cancer, as evidenced by his personal investment, commitment and unwavering dedication to making precision medicine a reality for cancer patients.

Prior to founding Caris Life Sciences, Halbert founded AdvancePCS® in 1987, a leading pharmacy benefits management company, where he served as chairman and CEO until it was sold to CareMark® in 2004 for $7.5 billion. Under Halbert’s leadership, the small, privately owned company grew into a publicly traded Fortune® 250 corporation with over $15 billion in annual revenue. AdvancePCS became the largest pharmacy benefit manager serving more than 75 million people – one in four Americans – and managed millions of prescription transactions annually, representing approximately $28 billion in drug expenditures.

Thereafter, Halbert formed Caris Capital® in 2005. Since its formation, he has managed and sold over $1.2 billion in assets acquired with a weighted average return of seven times the initial investment. Also in 2005, Halbert acquired Pathology Partners Inc., an Irving, Texas-based pathology company specializing in gastrointestinal pathology, which was later renamed Caris.

In 2008, Halbert acquired Molecular Profiling Institute (MPI), an early-stage life sciences company. Renamed Caris Life Sciences, the precision medicine company has grown to become a leader in molecular science and artificial intelligence. Caris’ suite of molecular profiling offerings assesses DNA, RNA and proteins to reveal a molecular blueprint that helps physicians and cancer patients make more precise and personalized treatment decisions. Caris has performed more than 455,000 molecular profiles helping cancer patients worldwide.

Caris continues to advance precision medicine with a novel blood-based platform that spans cancer detection, profiling for treatment planning and disease monitoring. Combined with proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Caris is actively helping physicians better identify and predict patient response to therapy, as well as support researchers and biopharmaceutical companies derive unique insights for drug development, clinical trials and target identification.

Halbert is the grandson of Dean Walling (‘30), a visionary founding director of ACU’s National Development Council during the Design for Development campaigns that built Moody Coliseum, McGlothlin Campus Center, Brown Library, Don H. Morris Center and Walling Lecture Hall, among other iconic buildings on campus. Halbert and his wife, Kathy (Gay ‘78), live in Colleyville, and their three children are all alumni of ACU: Kristen (Halbert ’04) Barstad, Patrick Halbert (’07) and Michael Halbert (’11). Over the years, the Halberts have provided for several endowed scholarships and funds to help build the Hunter Welcome Center. As part of ACU’s Vision in Action campaign in 2014, the Halberts gave $15 million through the Caris Foundation, making possible the Halbert-Walling Research Center, a 54,000-square-foot building for science labs, classrooms and offices, as well as $3 million toward Wildcat Stadium, providing for the Chuck Sitton Tower that houses suites, club level spaces and the press box.

Halbert and his family also created and solely support the Caris Foundation™, a non-profit, private foundation that aids impoverished people by helping to provide for their basic needs. Established in 2002, and headquartered in Colleyville, Texas, the award-winning Caris Foundation seeks to establish a local presence within communities in order to understand the people’s basic needs and implement solutions that are culturally relevant and sustainable across Africa and Haiti. The foundation employs more than 400 people. In 2017, the Caris Foundation was appointed to lead a $98.5 million dollar investment by the United States Agency for International Development to bolster Haiti’s health system and expand essential healthcare for up to 4.2 million people.

Dr. David Spetzler President, Caris Life Sciences

Dr. David Halbert will be hooded by his colleague, Dr. David Spetzler. Spetzler joined Caris Life Sciences in August 2009 and has led their research and development and laboratory operations in a multitude of roles. As president, he currently leads the company’s clinical operations, research and development, information technology, bioinformatics and biopharma services. Spetzler has generated more than 330 patent applications across 37 different patent families and co-authored more than 123 peer-reviewed journal articles.

As an innovator in molecular science and precision medicine, Spetzler has a relentless focus on improving patient care. He has led the development of each of the company’s clinical offerings, including launches of clinical Whole Transcriptome Sequencing in 2019 and Whole Exome Sequencing in 2020. More recently he led the launch of the company’s first AI-based clinical products, Caris GPSai™ and FOLFIRSTai™.