We are a catalyst for change

Brad Calvin

Brad Calvin is the CEO and co-founder of AsedaSciences. He has a broad, multidimensional business background with expertise in healthcare inclusive of diagnostics, devices and life sciences across diverse technologies and markets. During his thirty-year tenure in the healthcare industry, Calvin has held various executive level positions in general management, global commercial operations, marketing, sales and business development. Calvin has developed broad expertise across multiple disciplines and geographies, managing commercialization strategies, business operations and R&D on a global scale for companies such as Abbott, Digene, Beckman Coulter and most recently MaxCyte. He understands the workings of organizations from small start-ups to large, complex corporations. Calvin has demonstrated success at turning around under-performing operations and leading start-up businesses, global and regional commercialization strategies and product development in regulated markets.

Daniel H. Robertson, Ph.D. is an experienced, technical leader of innovation in science, information technology, computational methods, and research. Most recently, Dan was VP of Digital Technology, and Director of Applied Data Sciences at the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute (IBRI) where he initiated multiple collaborations with industrial and academic partners. These partnerships primarily focused on leveraging electronic health records and deep biological data to drive understanding in challenging health-related problems. Through these collaborations, Dr. Robertson brought significant funding and visibility to the growing Indiana Biosciences Research Institute, including a “Best Industry Collaboration” award at the Agrow Awards in 2018. Prior to the IBRI, Dan spent 17 years at Eli Lilly and Company in multiple technical, scientific, and IT leadership roles. This included the position of Senior Director in IT accountable for all IT systems and the informatics group supporting the global pre-clinical Discovery efforts in Lilly Research Laboratories. Well-published, Dan received his BS degree in chemistry from Florida Southern College and earned his PhD from Florida State University.

Bartek Rajwa

Bartek Rajwa is a Research Professor of Computational Life Science and Bioinformatics at the Bindley Bioscience Center at Purdue University. He is conducting studies on high-throughput cytometry, high-content imaging, biological image analysis, biological pattern recognition, and applications of statistical machine learning in cell biology, cancer research,  bioengineering, and agriculture (in particular, food science). With expertise in the integration of phenotypic screening and -omics technologies, Bartek’s research is focused on deciphering and interpreting complex phenotypic patterns observed via quantitative cell analysis. His work employs applied mathematics, computer science, and machine learning to provide a quantitative mathematical description of cellular systems’ functional role. Bartek has made significant contributions to the areas of biological data science and data mining, including introducing new technologies for clinical flow cytometry data analysis, microorganism identification algorithms, and spectral information processing approaches. Bartek is also an Associate Editor of “Cytometry Part A: Journal of Quantitative Cell Science.”

Dr. Michael Rafferty

Dr. Michael Rafferty is adjunct professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy and a consultant to drug discovery research programs both in industry and academia. Rafferty’s former positions include executive director of discovery technologies at Pfizer, and vice president of nonclinical development activities at Deciphera Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Rafferty is an inventor on 48 issued U.S. patents and co-author on 56 peer-reviewed papers.

Dr. Bryan Norman

Dr Bryan H. Norman is currently the Vice President of Drug Discovery at Enveda Biosciences. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Emory University and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State University. After three years at Monsanto/Searle, Norman joined Eli Lilly and Company in 1993, where he led multiple cross functional drug discovery efforts, many of which culminated in clinical candidates for oncology, endocrine and pain indications. In addition to his expertise in medicinal chemistry, Norman has significant cross functional drug discovery expertise in additional disciplines, such as biomarkers, pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) relationships, mechanisms of drug metabolism and toxicology. He has specific expertise in the mechanisms and mitigation strategies to avoid drug-induced liver injury (DILI). The breadth of his background has led to his service on many Due Diligence teams to assess potential in-license opportunities. Bryan retired from Eli Lilly and Company in 2017 and was Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is a Volume Editor and serves on the Editorial Board of Burger’s Medicinal Chemistry, Drug Discovery and Development, is on the Board of Directors of the Medicinal and Bioorganic Chemistry Foundation and serves on various grant review committees. He has published over 45 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, been named an inventor on over 30 U.S. patents and given many invited lectures at scientific conferences and universities.

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Dr Rob Young

Dr. Rob Young recently established his own medicinal chemistry consulting firm, Blue Burgundy, after a long and distinguished career with GSK at their UK R&D headquarters in Stevenage, where he was a Scientific Leader and elected GSK Fellow. Young’s early career charted significant contributions to six development candidates in antivirals (HIV/HBV/Herpes), iNOS and Factor Xa. He then moved to early-stage discovery, fulfilling leadership roles in numerous Hit-to-Lead programs, using diverse technologies including HTS, fragments, focused & designed screens and DNA-encoded libraries.  Substantive transnational programs also saw him involved with the GSK Diseases of the Developing World group in Spain, encompassing leadership of several Hit-to-Lead programs, plus mentoring and SAB roles. Expertise in Physical Properties and the Property Forecast Index were developed in a productive partnership with Alan Hill spanning may years, which was instrumental in setting new standards in drug discovery with chromatographic methods.  He was appointed to numerous GSK cross-disciplinary initiatives and communities including in silico predictive modelling, DMPK, Physical Chemistry, Stability and Safety. Young is author/inventor on 100 publications/ patent applications and an honorary visiting Professor, University of St Andrews. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford and completed his Post Doc at the Ben May Institute, University of Chicago.

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Dr. Daniel Flynn is a medicinal chemist and drug hunter with over 35 years of experience. For the past 20 years, Dr. Flynn was the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, a NASDAQ listed pharmaceutical company. While at Deciphera, he developed multiple drugs, including the on-market drug ripretinib (marketed as QINLOCK®), and a strong pipeline of kinase inhibitors. Prior to Deciphera, Dr. Flynn had senior scientific roles at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Monsanto/Searle and Warner Lambert Parke Davis. He has extensive expertise in medicinal chemistry, drug design, kinase inhibition, oncology and immunology. His research interests included oncology therapeutics, targeting tumor drivers, and also inhibitors of cancer cell adaptive response survival pathways. He is also Adjunct Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, at the University of Kansas. Prior roles and honors also included Chair of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, American Chemical Society Fellow, Founder of the Medicinal & Bioorganic Chemistry Foundation and the Steamboat Winter Conference on Medicinal & Bioorganic Chemistry. He is a past Senior Editor of Medicinal Research Reviews and has over 100 peer reviewed publications.

Dr. Vincent ShankeyDr. Jim Karkanias

Dr. Vincent Shankey received his Ph.D. degree in immunology and medical microbiology from the University of Florida School of Medicine (1977), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1977 to 1981. Dr. Shankey has used flow and image cytometry in his research for over thirty years, working in clinical flow cytometry for much of that time. From 1987 through 2001, Shankey was director of research for the Urology Department and scientific director of the Clinical Flow Cytometry laboratory at Loyola University Medical Center, Chicago. In 2001, Dr. Shankey was recruited to join the Advanced Technology Center/Systems Research Group at Beckman Coulter. During this period, the focus of his research was the development of novel approaches to measuring signal transduction pathways and their alterations in human disease. Dr. Shankey has over 60 publications focusing on different aspects of cancer cell biology and immunology.

Dr. Ian Cotgreave has been a Professor of Toxicology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, for over 20 years and is still affiliated to the Institute of Environmental Medicine there. He is currently Professor and Vice President of the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Safety at the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE). Previous roles also included Head of Molecular Toxicology and Global Discipline Leader at AstraZeneca, Preclinical Safety Assessment. Dr. Cotgreave has been at the forefront of toxicology research and strategy in relation to Sweden's participation in the European Union's 3Rs initiatives to replace, reduce and refine animal testing for chemical risk assessment. He was a member of the Swedish Medical Research Council's Evaluation Panel on 3R research for 6 years and was Co-Chairman of the Science Advisory Panel of the EU Commission / Cosmetics Europe SEURAT-1 Chronic Toxicity Consortium. He has been PI in the EU Flagship program on mechanism-driven risk assessment EuToxRisk, and is currently PI in its follow-up program, Eu RiskHunt3R. Ian is also a former member of ESAC, the science advisory board of the EUs ECVAM center for validation of new assessment methods.

Michael Lajiness

Dr. Michael Lajiness has extensive expertise in driving innovative change in small molecule drug discovery across several large pharmaceutical companies that included Upjohn, Pharmacia, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. He led the efforts at Upjohn/Pharmacia to acquire compounds to augment the compound collection with drug-like, diverse molecules. He also co-led the development of novel, in-house developed integrative compound information systems at Upjohn, Pharmacia, and Eli Lilly, used by the research teams to exploit internal and external drug discovery data. These key systems, Cousin, Chemlink, and Mobius have been recognized as industry leading by the user community. Lajiness also had a long history in developing novel techniques to identify and exploit SAR information, such as Structure/Activity Landscapes (the initial concept being SARI); integrative prioritization of compounds for testing (based on efficacy, counter screens, safety, and developability ratings); and measures of compound promiscuity.

Jim Karkanias

Jim Karkanias is a seasoned executive spanning a range of companies, from start-ups to multibillion dollar global corporations. His expertise spans corporate strategy, R&D, software development, resource management, business development and technical infrastructure in the pharmaceutical, life sciences and IT industries. Karkanias led teams in pioneering software developments including creation of a distributed system designed for remote collection of data from physicians prior to distributed system environments and widespread use of the internet as a business tool. Karkanias served at Microsoft® as senior executive in the Health Solutions Group, senior director of applied research and technology, and partner director of information services program management, and at Merck as an executive director. More recently, Karkanias started the ML and Data Science teams at Biohub, leading the technology platforms as CTO. He is currently the CEO of StatOS, a company aimed at applying novel AI and ML approaches to help create next generation healthcare solutions, and currently serves as a board member for OmniTier and Canary Medical. Karkanias holds 76 patents

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Dr. David Parkinson

Dr. David Parkinson is the President and CEO of ESSA Pharma and is a member of the Board of Directors of a number of pharmaceutical startup companies. Prior to ESSA, Parkinson was a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates. Previously, Dr. Parkinson served as president and CEO of Nodality, and in senior management positions in oncology research and development at Biogen Idec, Amgen and Novartis. Dr. Parkinson has held academic positions at Tufts and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. David Parkinson received his medical degree from the University of Toronto.

Bernard Munos is Founder of InnoThink, a consultancy focused on translating innovation research into better business models for the pharma industry and its stakeholders, and Senior Fellow, FasterCures (A Center of the Milken Institute), an “action tank” focused on speeding the discovery and development of new therapies for severe diseases. Previously, Munos served at Merck in positions of increasing responsibility for nearly three decades. Bernard is author of ‘The Innovation Chatroom,’ a blog dedicated to biomedical innovation published in Forbes Magazine. Munos is a Member of the Advisory Council and the Cures Acceleration Network Review Boards of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH), and a Member of the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development and Translation, National Academy of Medicine. Munos has been named one of the 25 most influential people in biopharma by FiercePharma.