Associate provost

My career began in academia, with positions at U Mass Medical School, Brandeis University and Brown University, where I taught biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, and pursued research with NSF, NIH and American Cancer Society funding, studying a yeast dsRNA virus, and fundamental aspects of gene regulation, protein expression and secretion. As Head of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Merck, I was responsible for the discovery and development of new anti-microbial agents, as well as for the discovery of new leads from natural products for all of Merck's worldwide drug discovery programs. As an entrepreneur-scientist, I have held executive operating roles in companies financed by leading venture firms in biotechnology, and have played advisory roles at the seed, pre-seed, and investment stage for numerous other organizations, securing over $300 million in financing from corporate partners and investors. I was a founder and CSO of Mpex Pharmaceuticals, a development-stage pharmaceutical company with discovery, preclinical and late clinical stage programs in the infectious disease area, a founder and CEO of Iconix Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer and leader in the emerging field of chemogenomics and toxicogenomics, as well as a founder and COO of Microcide Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded company with clinical and pre-clinical programs, and one of the first biotech companies formed to focus on antibiotic resistant bacteria. At Kemin Industries, I ran a European pharma subsidiary, developing, registering and launching a proprietary probiotic, Anaban™, in European markets, and built one of India's leading preclinical CROs, Vanta Bioscience. I am an inventor on numerous patents in drug discovery and genomics, resulting in a number of clinical candidates including the first-in-class new anti-fungal antibiotic caspofungin, (marketed as CANCIDAS®), an aerosol fluoroquinolone (Aeroquin®), developed for cystic fibrosis infections, approved in Europe and Canada, and pending in the US, and a proprietary probiotic, Anaban™, in European markets, and have served on numerous advisory and editorial boards, including CARB-X and am a fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology. Most recently, I have returned to academia, at a major New Jersey public university, to lead a STEM Honors college that has become a model for training next generation STEM teaching and professional workforces. I have also founded the non-profit Institute for Life Science Entrepreneurship (ILSE; www.ilsebio.com), to advance early-stage academic-industry translational science in the NJ/NYC area. The Institute has partnered with the American Type Culture Collection to establish the Center for Translational Microbiology, where we work with collaborators, client life-science companies and start-ups in areas of advanced microbial genomics and bioinformatics, microbiome research, clinical microbiology and antimicrobial drug resistance. We are also an accelerator partner in the CARB-X Global Accelerator Network. I have hired over 1,000 scientists during my career, managing and mentoring at the bench level, post-docs, group leaders, department heads, VPs and Chief Scientific Officers, in academia and industry. I have structured my current position so that I can leverage these experiences with multiple companies and academic groups engaged in innovative translation science.