PHILADELPHIA – The Biotechnology Industry Organization will become known as the Biotechnology Innovation Organization by the beginning of 2016, incoming chairman Ron Cohen said during the keynote luncheon at the convention on Wednesday.

Cohen, who pursued a singing and acting career in New York City for five years before spending the next 30 helping to build Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc. and later founding and running Ardsley, N.Y.-based Acorda Therapeutics Inc. as its current president and CEO, said the name better reflects the essence of what its members are doing.

The organization's president and CEO Jim Greenwood said in a statement that the move will clarify "the heart of our industry – scientific innovation that will help to heal, feed and fuel the world."

As the new chairman, Cohen replaces Rachel King, CEO of Rockville, Md.-based Glycomimetics.

While sometimes self-described as a "struggling physician" during his acting years, Cohen said that friends have recently asked him about his biotechnology career, "'After 30 years of pushing that boulder up a hill, aren't you tired? Aren't you ready to pick up golf.' And, I thought, the only thing more frustrating than biotechnology is golf."

His goals as chairman include upholding the integrity of intellectual property, to support innovation, to streamline and accelerate product delivery, to focus on value rather than cost, to improve communication and to reach out to patient groups. As everyone seeks to make their lives meaningful, Cohen said he hopes to continue working in the field another 30 years or more.

"I get to work on this kind of stuff. What do I mean by that?" he said. "I mean the leading edge of innovation, the profound balancing of science and art, the greatest the human spirit has ever produced."

He put out a call to biotech executives, government, media and others working in life sciences to "conscientiously change the way we express ourselves" so as to elevate the respect for patients. In other words, a patient does not fail a therapy; the therapy fails them.

"The words count and communication counts, and even small changes in how we express ourselves can have an outsized impact over time," he said.

Cohen's talk followed a notable visit from astronaut Scott Kelly, live from the primary science module at the International Space Station, before a crowd of about 3,000 attendees. Kelly was flying over Australia as he discussed the 400 different scientific experiments being conducted at the station, some focused on "trying to improve our health as we age because things happen up here much more rapidly," Kelly said.

The loss of bone and muscle mass, and eye changes, in continuous microgravity provides opportunity for the Center for the Advancement of Science and Space to help form research partnerships with biotech companies. Whereas other astronauts have spent a year in space, Kelly said they "didn't have the ability to get the type of data we can now on our human health and performance and physiology. What I hope to learn is whether there's a cliff out there. Is there a cliff in regards to our physiology for six months or longer, and how do we mitigate those?"