Dr. Amirana is a Partner at Oxford focused on healthcare technology investing. He joined Oxford in 2005 as an Investment Manager with 15 years of industry-related experience in both large and small companies. He previously served as the Vice President of Business Development at St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) focused on electrophysiology, interventional cardiology and peripheral vascular intervention where he was also responsible for a 20 person R&D team. Prior to joining St. Jude Medical, Dr. Amirana was the CEO of Resolution Medical, a privately held cardiology company in Silicon Valley. Dr. Amirana has helped raise over $60M in venture financing which resulted in three IPOs: EP Technologies, Cardima, and MedicaLogic/Medscape. Dr. Amirana was a co-founder of Cardima and served there for seven years as Vice President of Marketing, Business Development and Chief Technology Officer. He was Vice President of Marketing at MedicaLogic through its IPO which raised $101M and achieved a ~$1.1B market capitalization. Dr. Amirana has launched cardiovascular products worldwide and holds various patents. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University and an M.D. from Eastern Virginia Medical School. He led the firm's investment in Nfocus Neuromedical (neurovascular implants). He serves on its board as well as the board of CardioFocus (atrial fibrillation catheter therapy). He previously served on the board of Flowmedica (targeted renal therapy for AKI) and led its acquisition by Angiodynamics (Nasdaq:ANGO). He is a Board Observer at Concentric Medical and also tracks the firm's investment in Cardiome (Nasdaq:CRME & TSE:COM).
Mara Aspinall is a biotechnology executive with a focus in the areas of oncology, diagnostics and personalized medicine. For the last seven years, Mara served as President of Genzyme Genetics, a leading provider of diagnostic services in the oncology and reproductive markets. Mara transformed the business from a small specialized player to one of the top five laboratories in the country. Since 2001, Genzyme Genetics has grown at 25% per year, achieving record revenues and profits. At Genzyme Genetics, Mara created and implemented a new vision and strategy: diversifying the business while setting the industry standard for quality. As a result, the team successfully expanded into growing field of oncology diagnostics through acquisition and organic growth. A key strategic focus was a renewed and disciplined emphasis on diagnostics research and development. The result--increased new product launches to 15+ per year, implementation of five new technology platforms and 100+ peer reviewed publications - advanced Genzyme Genetics to its current leadership position in the industry. Mara is an active leader in the public policy arena and in the current debate on personalized medicine. She spearheaded outreach initiatives to better educate health care community and policymakers about genetics and diagnostics and how it impacts medical care. She is currently a member of the Secretary of Health and Human Services' Advisory Council on Genetics and the Vice Chairman of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. She is a frequent speaker to national and international patient and industry groups. Most recently, Mara co-authored an article published in the Harvard Business Review titled "Realizing the Promise of Personalized Medicine." Previously, Mara was President of Genzyme Pharmaceuticals and led that business' transformation from a generics manufacturer to an international leader in specialized pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing. Mara launched her career at Bain and Company where she focused on strategy implementation work for health care and information companies. Mara is active in the Boston community, focusing on two issues - the fight against cancer and the expansion of educational opportunities for your children. Mara also is Chairman of the Board of Predictive Biosciences, a Massachusetts venture-backed company focused on a new generation of highly accurate urine based cancer diagnostics.
Dr. Bolen joined Millennium in 1999 as Vice President of Oncology and was promoted to Senior Vice President of Discovery Research in 2002. In this role, he headed all biological research in the areas of oncology, inflammation, metabolic disease and cardiovascular disease as well as all genomics, informatics and platform technologies.
In 2003 Dr. Bolen was appointed Senior Vice President of Research and Drug Discovery, a role in which he headed all biological research and related functions as well as all drug discovery functions. Dr. Bolen was appointed Chief Scientific Officer in 2006. Dr. Bolen was Vice President of Oncologic Diseases at Hoechst Marion Roussel from 1998 to 1999. Previously, Dr. Bolen was the Director of the Cellular Signaling Department at the DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto, California. At DNAX (a functional genomics and research division of Schering-Plough) Dr. Bolen was involved in immunology & oncology research and development efforts with Schering-Plough and Canji (the gene therapy division of SP). Prior to his appointment at DNAX in 1995, Dr. Bolen was Executive Director of Oncology Drug Discovery at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Professor and Member of the Graduate Faculty at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology. During this period, Dr. Bolen served as a Graduate Advisor in the Physiology and Neurobiology Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Prior to joining Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1991 Dr. Bolen spent ten years at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Bolen has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters. He has presented hundreds of lectures and seminars at leading universities; national and international scientific meetings. Dr. Bolen has served on numerous Journal Editorial Boards including the Journal of Virology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Current Topics in Virology. He has served on many study sections, panels and committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Cancer Research and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Michael W. Bonney has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Cubist Pharmaceuticals and as a member of the Board of Directors since June 2003. From January 2002 to June 2003, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer. From 1995 to 2001, he held various positions of increasing responsibility at Biogen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, including Vice President, Sales and Marketing from 1999 to 2001. While at Biogen, Mr. Bonney built the commercial infrastructure for the launch of Avonex. Prior to that, Mr. Bonney held various positions of increasing responsibility in sales, marketing and strategic planning at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, ending his eleven-year career there serving as National Business Director. Mr. Bonney received a B.A. in Economics from Bates College. Mr. Bonney is a director of NPS Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, and serves on the Boards of Trustees of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Bates College. Mr. Bonney is also a member of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, Health Section Governing Body.
Daniel Braunstein's experience in mechanical systems and analysis, electro-optical development, medical devices, project management, and manufacturing operations further enhances Design Continuum's team of practitioners and project leaders. Prior to joining Design Continuum, Dr. Braunstein was Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Optikos Corporation, an optical engineering consulting and instrumentation firm. As part of the executive team at Optikos, Dr. Braunstein was involved in strategic planning, department and infrastructure development, product planning, development, and sales. Daniel has worked within the optical, medical, semiconductor, and electronics packaging arenas with companies such as Speedline Technologies, Thales, Applied Materials, KLA Tencor, Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, and Bausch & Lomb, managing diverse programs involving confocal and fluorescence microscopy, endoscopy, respiratory therapy, optical metrology, video systems, image capture and analysis, and industrial robotics and control systems. Dr. Braunstein received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Daniel holds patents in the areas of image processing, optical wavefront measurement, fluid mechanics, precision fixturing, and electronics packaging.
Jerry is co-founder of SuturTek and co-inventor of its core technology. He has led the company from its inception, through product development and three rounds of venture capital fund raising. As co-founder of Acufex Microsurgical, the pioneer arthroscopy company, he was "present at the creation" of minimally invasive surgery, and as founder, CEO, and Chairman of American Surgical Technologies, introduced 3DScope, the first FDA approved three-dimensional video system for laparoscopic surgery. Jerry holds his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins, as well as graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and MIT.
Before launching Xconomy, Bob was a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies. He previously served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, leading the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and overseeing its expansion into three foreign markets, its introduction of electronic newsletters, and its organization of highly successful conferences. Earlier, as BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for "The Quality Imperative," a special issue of the magazine. Bob is also the author of three books about technology and innovation. Guanxi (2006) looks at Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) examines the work of a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and as an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation to many organizations, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
Lewis Cantley, Ph.D. is the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. Throughout his career, Dr. Cantley has been interested in the biochemical mechanisms by which growth factors and hormones control cell growth and cell metabolism and the defects in these control mechanisms that lead to diseases such as diabetes, immune disorders and cancers. In the course of this work, Dr. Cantley discovered a cell growth pathway involving the enzyme Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase (PI3K). This pathway is now known to be the most frequently mutated pathway in human cancers. His discoveries have led to the development of drugs to target this pathway for treating cancers. In recognition of his contributions to the understanding of human diseases, Dr. Cantley was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999) and the National Academy of Sciences (2001). He has received numerous awards, including the ASBMB Avanti Award for Lipid Research (1998), the Heinrich Weiland Preis for Lipid Research (2000), the Caledonian Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2002) and the American Association of Cancer Research/Pezcoller Award for Cancer Research (2005).
Abbie Celniker, Ph.D is the CEO of Taligen Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of drugs to treat severe inflammatory diseases through the modulation of the complement system. Dr. Celniker has been in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry for almost 25 years where she has worked in small and mid-sized biotechnology companies as well as mid-sized and large pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Taligen, Dr. Celniker was the Global Head of Novartis Biologics where she was responsible the oversight of the discovery and development of the Novartis biologics pipeline. Prior to this role at Novartis, Dr. Celniker was the Global Head of the Program Office for the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) where she was responsible for the global integration and oversight of the Novartis Discovery Portfolio. In a previous role at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Celniker led the pipeline portfolio review committee and headed Development Project Management and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Prior to Millennium, Dr. Celniker was at Wyeth, where she was assistant vice president for predevelopment and biopharmaceutical core technologies. She has previously held positions at Genetics Institute, Genentech Inc. and the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Celniker has a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at San Diego and earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Arizona.
Mr. Crane is Founder & CEO of Cerulean Pharmaceuticals. He has also been a venture partner at Polaris Ventures since April of 2002. From 2002 until 2006, Mr. Crane was President and CEO of Momenta Pharmaceuticals. He joined Momenta as the fifth employee and built the company into a public company, creating an advanced and diversified pipeline, entering into two strategic collaborations with the Sandoz division of Novartis, and raising $275 million. Prior to this, Mr. Crane was senior vice president of global corporate development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for leading Millennium's strategic partnering, mergers and acquisitions, and licensing activities, generating over $2 billion in partner funding and acquiring 19 development stage products. Prior to Millennium, Mr. Crane was a marketing executive at Dupont-Merck and a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and Arthur D. Little. He serves on the boards of?Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Adnexus and Vaccinex and is a member of the board of Children's Hospital Trust and a founder and member of the board of the Autism Consortium. He received his M.B.A. in 1992 and his B.A. summa cum laude and M.A. in 1986, all from Harvard University. Mr. Crane also attended Harvard Medical School from 1986 to 1988 before pursuing a business career.
Bob is Managing Director for the Partners Innovation Fund at Partners HealthCare, where he oversees the creation and launching of new ventures generated from Partners innovative research discoveries.
Bob has spent more than twenty-five years commercializing new technologies and promoting emerging businesses, including fifteen years early stage venture capital investing experience and culminating in his 2005 appointment by Partners to establish the Center for Innovative Ventures. In 2007, Bob and his team led the launch of the Partners Innovation Fund to accelerate technologies to market. Previously, he was a general partner at Egan-Managed Capital, a $150 million dollar Boston-based venture fund, after having served as Vice President of the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation, a 25-year-old early stage venture firm that funds technology-based companies in Massachusetts. Earlier in his career, he gained strategic operating expertise as a COO/CFO with start-up ventures and as a management consultant with Control Data Business Advisors. He holds an AB in Economics from Holy Cross College and an MBA from Suffolk University.
While serving in a leadership role on the boards of portfolio companies and developing strong relationships with co-investors from New England and across the country, Bob has reviewed more than 2000 business plans and invested in more than 40 companies. His portfolio has included companies developing leading-edge technologies in semiconductors, software, telecommunications, medical devices, manufacturing and advanced materials. He has extensive experience putting together syndicates of investors, corporations and third parties to fund technology companies through investment, partnership, joint development and research agreements.
Bob can be reached at rcreeden@partners.org.
Allison Formal, MBA, joined the Research Department of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as Vice President, Research Business Development. Allison has over twenty years of experience in business development, contracting, and project management in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Her previous positions include Vice President, Business Development, MediQuest Therapeutics, Vice President, Business Development, Neuralstem, Director, International Division, Watson Pharmaceutical. At LLS Allison is responsible for helping to identify and vet biotechnology and pharmaceutical company opportunities that come through the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), the negotiation and execution of contracts with industry partners and together with the TAP team, the post-contract project management of those partnerships. Allison also assumed responsibility for managing the LLS Intellectual Property portfolio. Allison received her MBA from Marymount University and her undergraduate degree from the American University.
Steve Gullansis is Managing Director of Investment team at Excel Medical Ventures. Dr. Gullans is an experienced investor, entrepreneur and scientist. Having worked with CB Health Ventures (CBHV) since its inception and with Dr. Petrillo since the mid 80's, Dr. Gullans has considerable first-hand experience with venture investing and entrepreneurship. As a Senior Advisor to CBHV, he worked closely with Dr. Petrillo and Mr. Blume to source deals, select portfolio company investments, assist in developing technologies, identify new markets, and assist with exits. In 2002, Dr. Gullans stepped in as a senior executive at US Genomics for two years to direct operations, recruit a new CEO, and assist with fundraising. In addition, with colleagues at Yale, he co-founded RxGen, Inc., a pharma services company where he served as CEO from 2004-2008. He also co-developed the technology that launched CellAct Pharma GmbH, a drug development company. He has been an active advisor to US Genomics, GeneOhm (acquired by Becton Dickinson - BDX), and BioTrove, as well as other biotech companies. Dr. Gullans is an expert in advanced life science technologies and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital for nearly 20 years. He has published more than 120 scientific papers in many leading journals, lectured internationally, and co-authored many patents. He received his B.S. at Union College, Ph.D. at Duke University, and postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine.
Hugh Herr directs the Biomechatronics group at The MIT Media Lab. He is Associate Professor at Media Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor, MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His research program seeks to advance technologies that promise to accelerate the merging of body and machine, including device architectures that resemble the body's musculoskeletal design, actuator technologies that behave like muscle, and control methodologies that exploit principles of biological movement. His methods encompass a diverse set of scientific and technological disciplines, from the science of biomechanics and biological movement control to the design of biomedical devices for the treatment of human physical disability. His research accomplishments in science and technology have already made a significant impact on physically challenged people. The Variable-Damper Knee Prosthesis has recently been commercialized by sur Inc., and is now benefiting transfemoral amputees throughout the world. In addition, the Active Ankle-Foot Orthosis is now in the process of being commercialized, and has the potential for improving the quality of life of millions of stroke patients within the U.S. alone. Professor Herr's work impacts a number of academic communities. He has given numerous invited and plenary lectures at international conferences and colloquia, including the IVth World Congress of Biomechanics, the International Conference on Advanced Prosthetics, the National Assembly of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the Highlands Forum XXII (Life Sciences, Complexity, and National Security), and the TEDMED International Conference. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, and has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Experimental Biology, the International Journal of Robotics Research, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. He has been invited to participate in joint funding proposals from other universities and corporations, and has served on research review panels including the National Institute of Health, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. His work has been featured by various national and international media, including Scientific American Frontiers, Technology Review, National Geographic, and the History Channel.
Ranch C. Kimball is President and Chief Executive Officer of Joslin Diabetes Center, the world's preeminent diabetes research and clinical care organization. As Joslin's seventh president and first business executive to hold these roles, Kimball sets the strategic direction and is focused on expanding the impact of Joslin on the healthcare epidemic of our time. Kimball joined Joslin in February 2007 after serving as the Secretary of Economic Development under Governor Mitt Romney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In this role he oversaw 22 agencies, four cabinet secretaries, more than 2,500 employees and a $2 billion total budget. Kimball has spent 25 years in the private sector helping businesses grow and is widely respected in the business community, with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino calling Kimball "one of the city's most respected and well-known business leaders." A member of the Board of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, he ran a private equity firm for Kissinger McLarty Associates and was a partner at Boston Consulting Group, working extensively with technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, media and healthcare companies. Jack Connors, Chairman of Hill Holliday and Chairman of Partners Healthcare, has said of him, "Kimball offers expertise in leadership, life sciences and a demonstrated ability to build relationships between legislative, business and academic communities." While in state government, Kimball led major reforms in improving Massachusetts' economic development and achieved a long record of legislative success. Kimball created the "Business Resource Team," the state's one-stop model for businesses seeking to grow in Massachusetts. In June 2006, the BRT celebrated its most significant victory, bringing Bristol Myers Squibb's billion dollar bio-manufacturing plant to Fort Devens. Kimball also helped write the Governor's Economic Stimulus Bill, took a role in promoting the Governor's healthcare reform package and toured more than 250 companies. Kimball has a demonstrated ability to build strong connections between state government, business and academic organizations for the purpose of finding new and innovative support for biomedical research. Susan Hockfield, Ph.D., President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has said, "Ranch brings not only extensive experience in management and public policy but also a deep understanding of the role that medicine plays in our lives, society, and economy." In 2006, Kimball received the Biotech Industry Organization's award for top state executive in the nation. The Mass Network Communications Council named Kimball one of its "Policy Makers of the Year" for 2005. Active in the community, he serves on the boards of Massport, the public authority which manages the airports, seaport and transportation infrastructure in Massachusetts, the John Adams Innovation Institute, the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative, Museum of Fine Arts, WGBH-TV, the Museum of Science, Wheelock College and Volunteers of America. Kimball received an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University.
Geoff MacKay has served in his current leadership role since December 2003. Mr. MacKay provides Organogenesis with significant global, commercial experience spanning the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Mr. MacKay has held numerous leadership positions within Novartis AG in roles such as Vice-President and Business Unit Head, Transplantation and Immunology at Novartis Canada, Vice-President of Tissue-Engineering in Novartis USA, Head of Global Sales Immunology and Transplantation based in Basel, Switzerland, and prior to that as Sales and Marketing Manager of Novartis Biotech Europe. Mr. MacKay has been specifically involved in the emerging field of regenerative medicine for the last decade.
Prior to joining Avila, Dr. Mahanthappa was a founding employee and subsequently Vice President of Scientific and Strategic Development at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. Serving as a management team member, he initially served as interim head of research during the company's first year and led business development efforts that resulted in partnerships with Merck, Medtronic, and Novartis. Prior to joining Alnylam, Dr. Mahanthappa was Manager of Business Development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and held a series of positions with increasing scientific and commercial responsibility at Ontogeny (now Curis). Dr. Mahanthappa earned his PhD in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mahanthappa is also an MBA graduate of the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Management at Babson College.
Dr. Mongan is president and chief executive officer of Partners HealthCare in Boston, an integrated health system founded in 1994 by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, both of which are nationally ranked as among the best hospitals in the U.S.
In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system also includes community and specialty hospitals, a physician network, community health centers, home health and long-term care services, and other health-related entities. Partners is one of the nation's leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization.
A professor of health policy and a professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Mongan also serves on the board of the Commonwealth Fund and chairs its Commission on a High Performance Health System.
to being appointed president and CEO of Partners in 2003, Dr. Mongan was president for seven years of Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest and oldest teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. He also served for fifteen years as executive director of the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, a large public hospital, and in seven of those years was also the dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine.
Beginning in 1970, Dr. Mongan spent 11 years in Washington, first as staff to the Senate Finance Committee working on Medicare and Medicaid legislation, and later in the Carter administration as deputy assistant secretary for health and associate director of the domestic policy staff in the Carter White House.
Dr. Mongan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the boards of the American Hospital Association and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and was a member of both the Medicare Prospective Payment Assessment Commission established by Congress and the Institute of Medicine's Commission on the Consequences of Uninsurance.
A native of San Francisco, Dr. Mongan received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, and his medical degree from Stanford University Medical School. He completed his internship at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, and served for two years in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Dr. Mongan has received numerous awards and was most recently recognized by Modern Healthcare as the Most Powerful Physician Executive in the U.S. in 2008.
Dr. Namchuk received his BSc with honours in Chemistry from the University of Alberta. He then studied Bio-Organic Chemistry with Steve Withers at the University of British Columbia, where he received his Ph.D. Upon completion of his graduate work, Dr. Namchuk moved to California where he was a HFSP Fellow at UCSF studying autoantigens associated with Type I diabetes. In 1996, he accepted a position with Cubist Pharmaceuticals as the head of the Enzymology group. At Cubist, he built a group responsible for assay development and enzyme QC for screening and counter screening purposes. In January of 1998, Dr. Namchuk joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He has held several positions at Vertex, including the Head of High Throughput Screening and the Worldwide Head of research for the Vertex/ Novartis Kinase Program. In this capacity, he has lead numerous drug discovery programs that focused mainly in the areas of infectious disease, inflammation and oncology. In 2005, Dr. Namchuk took on his current role as Vice President of Research for Vertex in Cambridge.
Ms. Pax leads the business development, marketing, clinical affairs and regulatory affairs functions for MicroCHIPS, a venture-backed developer of advanced medical devices for diabetes, cardiology and bone health. Ms. Pax is an experienced medical device executive with a track record of new business creation and market development for innovative medical technologies. At Hewlett-Packard Medical Products Group (now Philips Medical Systems), Ms. Pax held senior roles in marketing, strategic business planning and corporate partnering. As Vice President of Marketing for OmniSonics Medical Technologies, she led market development, product launch, post-market clinical studies and strategic product planning for the company's novel interventional vascular device business. Ms. Pax earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from the College of the Holy Cross, magna cum laude.
Gregory A. Petsko is Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacodynamics and Chair of Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University and Adjunct Professor at Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is also President of American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The research interests of Professor Petsko have always centered upon the structural basis of biochemical properties. His approach is to bring a chemical perspective to bear on problems in biochemistry, structural biology, cell biology, and human health. His primary research tools are: protein X-ray crystallography, molecular dynamics, site-directed mutagenesis and, more recently, yeast genetics. These tools are applied to diverse biochemical problems such as: the structural origins of enzyme catalytic power; the functional role of protein flexibility; the biochemistry and genetics of the quiescent state of the eukaryotic cell, using yeast as a model organism, and the causes and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. Dr. Petsko graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University in 1970, and received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he completed his doctoral research in 1973 under the direction of Sir David C. Phillips. After a brief postdoctoral sojourn in Paris with Prof. Pierre Douzou, he was an Instructor and Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Wayne State University School of Medicine from 1973 through 1978, where he twice received a Faculty Research Award. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he served as an Associate Professor of Chemistry from 1978 through 1985 and Professor of Chemistry from 1985 through 1989. In 1990 he was appointed the Lucille P. Markey Professor in Biochemisty and Chemisty at Brandeis University. From 1994 to 2006 he served as the Director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, at Brandeis Unviersity; and since 1996 has held the title of Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacodynamics, succeeding Prof. William P. Jencks, the first holder of this chair. On July 1, 2008, he began a 3-year term as Chair of the Biochemistry Department at Brandeis. Although directing a Center with 16 faculty and 200 staff occupied a considerable chunk of his time, Prof. Petsko always carried a full teaching load, and is proud of having taught freshman chemistry continuously, with only time off for sabbaticals, for almost 25 years. He also teaches critical thinking, protein crystallography, and the history of the detective story. His courses are consistently among the highest rated in the University. He has received numerous awards, including the Sidhu Award of the American Crystallographic Association for outstanding contributions to X-ray diffraction, the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 1986, and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1989. In 1991 he was awarded the Max Planck Prize, which he shared with Professor Roger Goody of Heidelberg for their work on the origins of some human cancers. In 1995 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2001 he was awarded the Lynen Medal (shared with Professor Janet Thornton), and was elected to the Institute of Medicine. In 2002, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he shared an award from the McKnight Endowment for Neuroscience with his Brandeis colleague, Professor Dagmar Ringe. He and Prof. Ringe also shared the Abram Sachar Medallion from the Brandeis University National Women's Committee in 2006. Prof. Petsko is the first man ever to receive this award, which he says means he at last may be getting in touch with his feminine side. Professor Petsko's research interests are the determination of protein three-dimensional structure and the relationship of that structure to biological function. Most of his work has been, and continues to be, done in collaboration with his friend and Brandeis colleague Prof. Dagmar Ringe. The tools he uses include X-ray crystallography, proteinengineering, yeast genetics and computational biophysics. He is currently focusing on several specific problems: enzymatic catalysis of hydrogen ion transfer, the role of metal ions in bridged bimetallic enzymes and the relationship of protein flexibility to protein function. In the Fall of 1995, his research activities expanded when he did a year's sabbatical work in yeast genetics in the laboratory of Professor Ira Herskowitz at UCSF. As a result, Prof. Petsko now has a budding yeast genetics program (pun intended), which is concerned with the biology of the quiescent state of the eukaryotic cell. In 2003, he and Prof. Ringe expanded the scope of their program yet again, this time in the direction of translational research aimed at curing human disease. They co-founded the new field of Structural Neurology, in which the tools of structure-based drug discovery are applied to find new treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Diseases, and Lewy Body Disease. To facilitate this work, they both accepted adjunct appointments as Professors of Neurology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Petsko is a co-founder of ArQule, Inc. of Woburn Massachusetts, one of the world's leading companies in combinatorial chemistry, and serves on the boards of several other biotechnology companies, including Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and Amicus Therapeutics. He is a member of both the Scientific Review Board and the Medical Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes. In 2007 he was elected President of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which, at over 12,000 members, is one of the largest scientific societies in the United States. From 1988 through 2003 Dr. Petsko was Executive Editor for the journal Protein Engineering, which he co-founded. For the past six years he has written a monthly opinion column in the journal Genome Biology that is widely read and reprinted. Dr. Petsko describes himself as overweight, out of shape and frequently grouchy, opinions that are not upheld by peer review. Besides his family, teaching and his work, he says there are only a few things that he really loves: dogs; hiking through deserts, mountains and rain forests; good writing, single-malt Scotch, and high-performance cars (he usually drives, however, a Jeep - something about Brandeis salaries). Though excited about his new research directions in yeast cell biology and neurodegenerative diseases, Dr. Petsko swears that his first love remains mechanistic enzymology. He also states that his greatest accomplishment is, and always will be, the more than 100 graduate students and postdocs that he has helped to train, a list that includes five Howard Hughes Investigators, two members of the National Academy of Sciences, and the second woman ever to head a Max-Planck Institute in Germany.
Vicky Richon joined Epizyme in October, 2008, from the Merck Research Laboratories, Boston, where she was Senior Director of Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. Prior to Merck, Vicky was a leading member of the scientific group at Sloan Kettering that discovered the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat (SAHA). This discovery was the basis of Aton, a company that Vicky co-founded and for which she served as Executive Director of Biology. Aton was acquired by Merck in 2004 and Vicky continued supporting vorinostat through its approval by the U.S. FDA in October 2006 for the treatment of cutaneous manifestations in patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL), a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Marketed under the name Zolinza?, vorinostat is the first histone deacetylase inhibitor approved for the treatment of cancer. Vicky has been a participating member of the American Association for Cancer Research since 1993 serving on program committees for the AACR annual meeting, AACR special conferences as well as review committees for AACR fellowships. Vicky received her B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Vermont and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska. She completed her post-doctoral research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Amarpreet Sawhney is the President and CEO of I-Therapeutix, Inc. a company focused on solving unmet needs in ophthalmic surgical wound closure and drug delivery. Prior to this he was Founder and CEO of Confluent Surgical, a biosurgery company, based in Waltham, MA. Confluent was acquired by Tyco Healthcare. Before Confluent, Dr. Sawhney was the technology founder of Focal, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme). Dr. Sawhney's innovations are the subject of almost 100 issued and pending patents in biomaterials and bio-surgery. His inventions include several "first of a kind" surgical sealants to be approved by the United States FDA and one of them, DuraSeal, was recognized by the FDA as one of the most significant medical device approvals of 2005. In addition to being an entrepreneur Amar, has also created a platform to support other entrepreneurs. He and his partner, Fred Khosravi, have founded Incept LLC, whose vision is to serve as an "enabler" of healthcare entrepreneurs. Incept counts among its companies, Embolic Protection, Inc. (acquired by Boston Scientific), Access Closure, Inc. and Square One Inc. in California, MarketRx Inc. in New Jersey (recently acquired by Cognizant), in addition to I-Therapeutix. Amar currently serves on the board of directors of Square One, Soteira, Access Closure, Augmenix, and I-Therapeutix and is also a Founder of the last three companies. Additionally Amar volunteers his time with other entrepreneurial organizations such as TiE Boston, MassMedic, and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year program. Dr. Sawhney and Confluent have been recognized by several awards including the MassMedic best startup company award, Frost and Sullivan Product innovation award, MIT Global Indus Technovators Award, the E&Y regional entrepreneur of the year award, Mass High Tech All Star award, and the University of Texas Outstanding Young Engineering Graduate award. Dr. Sawhney holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.
Prior to joining Charles River, Alain held positions managing pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety pharmacology groups for multiple disease indications within Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Massachusetts, Novartis Headquarters and Ciba-Geigy in Switzerland. Alain received his License, Master and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Nancy, France. He conducted his doctoral and post-doctoral research on drug evaluation and metabolism at the National Institute of Scientific and Medical Research (INSERM) for which he has received two international awards for distinguished research. Alain has received accreditations from the National List of Qualifications in both Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacology (France), and is presently Adjunct Professor of Pharmaceutics at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. He is an elected Member of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and is on the Editorial Board of Expert Opinion in Drug Discovery.
Currently the Woodford L. and Ann A Flowers University Professor at Harvard University, Dr. George Whitesides joined Harvard's Department of Chemistry in 1982 and served as Department Chairman from 1986 to 1989. Prior to joining Harvard, he was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. His present research interests include materials science, biophysics, surface science, polyvalency, microfluidics, optics, self-assembly, microfabrication, nanotechnology, and cell surface biochemistry. Dr. Whitesides has held advisory positions on the National Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Philosophical Society, among other organizations. He has received dozens of honors, including the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Pure Chemistry (1975), the Arthur C. Cope Award (1995), the DARPA Award for Significant Technical Achievement (1996), the National Medal of Science (1998), the Von Hippel Award (2000), the Dan David Award (2005), the Welch Award (2005), and the Priestley Award (2007). Dr. Whitesides is a co-founder of companies with a combined market capitalization of over $20 billion. In the early 80s, he co-founded biotechnology company Genzyme, which remains one of the world's leading biotechnology companies; in 1993 he cofounded GelTex, which was acquired by Genzyme for $1.2 billion; and in 1996, he cofounded Theravance, which went public in 2004 and currently has a $1.1B market capitalization. Professor Whitesides' more recent ventures include Surface Logix, WMR Biomedical, and Nano-Terra, Inc. George M. Whitesides was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1960 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1964.
Michael Weingarten is the Director for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center at the National Cancer Institute, one of 27 Institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. In this role, Mr. Weingarten manages all aspects of the NCI SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs including a portfolio of over $100M in grants and contracts annually. The SBIR and STTR programs are NCI's engine of innovation for developing and commercializing novel technologies and products to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. In his current role, Mr. Weingarten led a team that developed a set of key recommendations for optimizing the performance of the NCI SBIR program at the NIH. Those recommendations included the establishment of an SBIR Development Center to manage the NCI SBIR program. This Center is staffed with talented leaders from both industry and the NIH who have expertise in the development and commercialization of technology in the cancer field to optimize the returns the NCI achieves through this program. Mr. Weingarten also created and designed a brand new funding program for the NIH known as the SBIR Phase II Bridge Award, which more than triples the amount of funding available to applicants through the NCI SBIR Program. The Phase II Bridge Award will help small businesses bridge" the funding gap, known as the "Valley of Death," that currently exists between the end of the SBIR Phase II award and the next round of financing needed to advance a promising cancer therapy or imaging technology. The new Phase II Bridge Award is specifically designed to augment previously funded NIH-wide SBIR Phase II projects in the areas of cancer therapies and cancer imaging that require additional funding in order to achieve key technical and regulatory milestones along the path toward commercialization. This new award incentivizes partnerships between NIH's SBIR Phase II awardees and third-party investors and/or strategic partners. Prior to joining NIH, Mr. Weingarten was the Manager of Partnership Development activities for NASA's Technology Transfer program which included the SBIR program. In his 12 years with NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mr. Weingarten played a major role in the creation and design of NASA's Technology Transfer program - a network of 10 NASA research centers and six regional technology transfer centers. Mr. Weingarten has a bachelor's degree in political science from Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill., and a master's degree in political science from Columbia University in New York City.
On May 28, 2008, Dr. Susan Windham-Bannister was appointed by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Board of Directors to be the Center's first President and CEO. She officially assumed that position in July, 2008.
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center is a quasi-public entity created by the Legislature in 2006 to promote the life sciences within Massachusetts. The Center is at the heart of the state's new $1 billion life sciences law and is fast becoming the hub of connectivity for all sectors of the life sciences community - encouraging unprecedented public-private collaboration among industry, research, academia and government. The Center is making strategic investments in our life sciences workforce and in translational research at critical stages of the development cycle. These investments will foster and grow the Massachusetts life sciences Super Cluster, cultivating innovation at institutions whose research, development and commercialization of therapies, products and cures hold great promise for improving and saving lives.
Dr. Windham-Bannister is former Managing Vice President of the Commercial Strategy Group for Abt Bio-Pharma Solutions Inc. In that capacity, she managed a research-based consulting business that provides consulting services to firms in the life sciences -- health care delivery, pharmaceuticals, biotech, diagnostics, devices and healthcare information technology.
Dr. Windham-Bannister was a member of Abt Bio-Pharma Solutions' corporate management team, and a founding member of the commercial division of Abt Associates, the parent company.
Dr. Windham-Bannister has 35 years of consulting experience in life sciences and has worked with companies that represent all major industry sectors. A partial list of her clients includes Siemens Diagnostics, Roche, Pfizer, Genzyme, Eyetech, Sopherion, Sanofi, Novartis, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Tufts Medical Center, GE Healthcare, The American Cancer Society and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Within her client organizations, Dr. Windham-Bannister most often works with executive level management and/or Boards of Directors on assessment of market opportunities and commercialization strategy.
Dr. Windham-Bannister has co-authored two books: Competitive Strategy for Health Care Organizations and Medicaid and Other Experiments in State Health Policy. She also has written several articles on competition in today's health care marketplace.
She sits on a variety of Boards of Directors and is a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences on competitive strategy.
Dr. Windham-Bannister holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, a doctorate in health policy and management from the Heller School at Brandeis University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School. She completed her doctoral work under a fellowship from the Ford Foundation.
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