Management
Gordon Ringold, Ph.D., Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Ringold was most recently CEO of the Glaxo-Wellcome Group's Affymax Research Institute, where he managed the development of novel technologies to accelerate the pace of drug discovery. He is a co-founder and director of Maxygen Corporation, a Managing Partner of Technogen Associates, L.P., a private investment firm, and has over fifteen years of experience managing the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals and novel, enabling life science technologies. Prior to Affymax, Dr. Ringold served as Director and Vice President of the Institute for Cancer and Developmental Biology at Syntex, now a division of Hoffman La-Roche. Dr. Ringold received his B.A. in Biology from UC Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from UC San Francisco. He was on the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and is currently a consulting professor there.
Michael Natan, Ph.D., Chief Technical Officer
Dr. Natan was most recently a full professor of chemistry at The Pennsylvania State University and the founder of Auspex Technologies, L.L.C., a technology holding company recently acquired by SurroMed. During his tenure at Penn State, he received a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Sloan Fellowship and research funding from the NIH, NSF, DARPA, EPA and USDA. Dr. Natan is the inventor of Nanobarcodes[TM] particles, holds patents in the field of colloidal metal nanoparticles, and is the author of over sixty published papers. Dr. Natan received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Yale University, a Ph.D. in chemistry from M.I.T. and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University.
August J. Moretti, Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel
Mr. Moretti was for 19 years a member of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe LLP, a national law firm, where he represented a number of life science companies, including Affymax and Maxygen. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
John Kollins, Vice President, Business Development
Mr. Kollins was most recently Director, Business Development at Elan Pharmaceuticals, where he initiated and completed a variety of strategic licensing and partnering transactions. He previously held management positions of increasing responsibility at Athena Neurosciences, Inc. and Immunex Corporation. Mr. Kollins received an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and a B.S.E. degree from Duke University.
Nancy Grove, M.D., M.B.A., Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Grove was most recently Vice President, System Laboratory Operations at Sutter Health, where she oversaw the operations of thirty-seven clinical laboratories, and Laboratory Medical Director at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. She received her M.D. from U.C.L.A. and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Grove is Board-certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, with professional interests in laboratory utilization, benchmarking and clinical effectiveness. Dr.Grove has been named to the SNOMED International Authority, the governance body for SNOMED. SNOMED is an emerging international standard for medical nomenclature classification, recognized in the U.S., U.K., and 32 other countries.
Howard Schulman, Ph.D., Vice President of Research and Development
Dr. Schulman was most recently full professor of neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and prior to that full professor of pharmacology at Stanford. He is a founding co-director of the Stanford Brain Research Center and former chairman of the Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Schulman is internationally recognized for his discovery and subsequent analysis of one of the key protein kinases responsible for transmitting information from calcium-linked hormones, neurotransmitters, and cytokines in heart and brain. He has been a consultant on both pharmacological and technical aspects of drug discovery to a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, some of whom are currently developing drugs targeting the kinase in CNS and cardiovascular arenas. He has 25 years of experience in pharmacology, signal transduction, biophysics, and biotechnology. Dr. Schulman received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry at Harvard University, studying lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. Subsequently he undertook postdoctoral research focused on pharmacology and signal transduction in the nervous system at Yale University School of Medicine under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard, Ph.D.
Virginia Tolan, Vice President, Human Resources
Ms. Tolan was most recently Vice President, Human Resources for InfoSeek Corporation, where she helped the company grow from an early-stage venture to a 710-employee, publicly held firm, which was acquired in 1999 by Disney Corporation. Ms. Tolan has over twenty years experience as a human resources professional and previously held human resources management positions at IDG Books Worldwide and Prudential Insurance. Ms. Tolan received an M.S. degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from Rutgers University and a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Colorado.
Christopher Becker, Ph.D., Director, Chemistry
Dr. Becker was most recently Senior Director of Proteomic Technology at ThermoFinnigan Corp., a leading mass spectrometry instrument company, where he led new instrument and methods development for proteomic applications. Prior to that, he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at GeneTrace Systems Inc., where he led development of genomic assays. Dr. Becker is an internationally recognized expert in the field of mass spectrometric analysis of biomolecules, and has more than 20 years of relevant experience. Dr. Becker received his B.A. from Columbia University in chemistry, his Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in chemistry, and performed post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Louis Dietz, Director, Engineering
Mr. Dietz previously held senior engineering positions at Biometric Imaging, where he made key contributions to the development of the company's microvolume fluorimetry and laser scanning cytometry technologies, and at Molecular Devices, where he contributed to the development of silicon biosensor technologies and high-performance absorbance and luminescence microplate readers. Mr. Dietz has more than a decade of experience developing optical and electronic instrumentation, primarily for bioanalytical and cell biology applications. Mr Dietz has five patents in the field of laser scanning cytometry, one in microwave frequency synthesizers, and several pending. He holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford University.
Jonathan Heller, Ph.D., Director, Informatics
Dr. Heller was most recently at Exelixis Inc., a leading functional genomics company, where he led the data mining group. He received his B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in Biophysics.
Aaron Kantor, Ph.D., Director, Cell and Molecular Biology
Dr. Kantor was most recently in research management at AmCell Corporation, where his group focused on magnetic cell separation for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Dr. Kantor was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University where his work focused on cellular and molecular aspects of B cell immunology and development of flow cytometry applications. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and B.S. in Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania.
William Leschensky, M.D., J.D., Director, Intellectual Property
Dr. Leschensky was most recently an associate at Fish & Neave, a leading intellectual property law firm, where his practice emphasized both litigation and prosecution of biomedical patents. He was previously an associate at Morrison & Foerster where his practice focused on patent litigation. Dr. Leschensky received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, his M.D. degree from the University of Illinois, and a B.S. degree in biochemistry from Iowa State University.
Andrea Perrone, M.D., Director, Clinical Development
Dr. Perrone received her M.D. degree from Georgetown University and is board certified. She completed her radiology residency at the University of Pittsburgh and received a B.S. degree in Finance from the University of Maryland.
Gordon Ringold, Ph.D., Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Ringold was most recently CEO of the Glaxo-Wellcome Group's Affymax Research Institute, where he managed the development of novel technologies to accelerate the pace of drug discovery. He is a co-founder and director of Maxygen Corporation, a Managing Partner of Technogen Associates, L.P., a private investment firm, and has over fifteen years of experience managing the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals and novel, enabling life science technologies. Prior to Affymax, Dr. Ringold served as Director and Vice President of the Institute for Cancer and Developmental Biology at Syntex, now a division of Hoffman La-Roche. Dr. Ringold received his B.A. in Biology from UC Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from UC San Francisco. He was on the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and is currently a consulting professor there.
Michael Natan, Ph.D., Chief Technical Officer
Dr. Natan was most recently a full professor of chemistry at The Pennsylvania State University and the founder of Auspex Technologies, L.L.C., a technology holding company recently acquired by SurroMed. During his tenure at Penn State, he received a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Sloan Fellowship and research funding from the NIH, NSF, DARPA, EPA and USDA. Dr. Natan is the inventor of Nanobarcodes[TM] particles, holds patents in the field of colloidal metal nanoparticles, and is the author of over sixty published papers. Dr. Natan received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Yale University, a Ph.D. in chemistry from M.I.T. and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University.
August J. Moretti, Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel
Mr. Moretti was for 19 years a member of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe LLP, a national law firm, where he represented a number of life science companies, including Affymax and Maxygen. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
John Kollins, Vice President, Business Development
Mr. Kollins was most recently Director, Business Development at Elan Pharmaceuticals, where he initiated and completed a variety of strategic licensing and partnering transactions. He previously held management positions of increasing responsibility at Athena Neurosciences, Inc. and Immunex Corporation. Mr. Kollins received an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and a B.S.E. degree from Duke University.
Nancy Grove, M.D., M.B.A., Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Grove was most recently Vice President, System Laboratory Operations at Sutter Health, where she oversaw the operations of thirty-seven clinical laboratories, and Laboratory Medical Director at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. She received her M.D. from U.C.L.A. and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Grove is Board-certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, with professional interests in laboratory utilization, benchmarking and clinical effectiveness. Dr.Grove has been named to the SNOMED International Authority, the governance body for SNOMED. SNOMED is an emerging international standard for medical nomenclature classification, recognized in the U.S., U.K., and 32 other countries.
Howard Schulman, Ph.D., Vice President of Research and Development
Dr. Schulman was most recently full professor of neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and prior to that full professor of pharmacology at Stanford. He is a founding co-director of the Stanford Brain Research Center and former chairman of the Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Schulman is internationally recognized for his discovery and subsequent analysis of one of the key protein kinases responsible for transmitting information from calcium-linked hormones, neurotransmitters, and cytokines in heart and brain. He has been a consultant on both pharmacological and technical aspects of drug discovery to a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, some of whom are currently developing drugs targeting the kinase in CNS and cardiovascular arenas. He has 25 years of experience in pharmacology, signal transduction, biophysics, and biotechnology. Dr. Schulman received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry at Harvard University, studying lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. Subsequently he undertook postdoctoral research focused on pharmacology and signal transduction in the nervous system at Yale University School of Medicine under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard, Ph.D.
Virginia Tolan, Vice President, Human Resources
Ms. Tolan was most recently Vice President, Human Resources for InfoSeek Corporation, where she helped the company grow from an early-stage venture to a 710-employee, publicly held firm, which was acquired in 1999 by Disney Corporation. Ms. Tolan has over twenty years experience as a human resources professional and previously held human resources management positions at IDG Books Worldwide and Prudential Insurance. Ms. Tolan received an M.S. degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from Rutgers University and a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Colorado.
Christopher Becker, Ph.D., Director, Chemistry
Dr. Becker was most recently Senior Director of Proteomic Technology at ThermoFinnigan Corp., a leading mass spectrometry instrument company, where he led new instrument and methods development for proteomic applications. Prior to that, he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at GeneTrace Systems Inc., where he led development of genomic assays. Dr. Becker is an internationally recognized expert in the field of mass spectrometric analysis of biomolecules, and has more than 20 years of relevant experience. Dr. Becker received his B.A. from Columbia University in chemistry, his Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in chemistry, and performed post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Louis Dietz, Director, Engineering
Mr. Dietz previously held senior engineering positions at Biometric Imaging, where he made key contributions to the development of the company's microvolume fluorimetry and laser scanning cytometry technologies, and at Molecular Devices, where he contributed to the development of silicon biosensor technologies and high-performance absorbance and luminescence microplate readers. Mr. Dietz has more than a decade of experience developing optical and electronic instrumentation, primarily for bioanalytical and cell biology applications. Mr Dietz has five patents in the field of laser scanning cytometry, one in microwave frequency synthesizers, and several pending. He holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford University.
Jonathan Heller, Ph.D., Director, Informatics
Dr. Heller was most recently at Exelixis Inc., a leading functional genomics company, where he led the data mining group. He received his B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in Biophysics.
Aaron Kantor, Ph.D., Director, Cell and Molecular Biology
Dr. Kantor was most recently in research management at AmCell Corporation, where his group focused on magnetic cell separation for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Dr. Kantor was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University where his work focused on cellular and molecular aspects of B cell immunology and development of flow cytometry applications. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and B.S. in Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania.
William Leschensky, M.D., J.D., Director, Intellectual Property
Dr. Leschensky was most recently an associate at Fish & Neave, a leading intellectual property law firm, where his practice emphasized both litigation and prosecution of biomedical patents. He was previously an associate at Morrison & Foerster where his practice focused on patent litigation. Dr. Leschensky received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, his M.D. degree from the University of Illinois, and a B.S. degree in biochemistry from Iowa State University.
Andrea Perrone, M.D., Director, Clinical Development
Dr. Perrone received her M.D. degree from Georgetown University and is board certified. She completed her radiology residency at the University of Pittsburgh and received a B.S. degree in Finance from the University of Maryland.