Who’s Who in Life Sciences – 2011 – Indianapolis Business Journal

Every business sector has influential players, whether they are in the public eye or wield their influence behind the scenes. In a monthly feature that runs in the first issue of the month, through October, IBJ is identifying those people in eight different industry categories.

Formidable brainpower sums up the individuals included in our list of Who’s Who in Life Sciences. While our other lists have been confined to the greater Indianapolis area, this list stretches well beyond, recognizing the regional nature of this field. In this predominately peer-nominated and peer-reviewed process, we’ve opened the field to doctors, researchers, attorneys, entrepreneurs and more. We should note that there will be a later list dedicated to health care and benefits.

Carrie Bates, 54
Managing Partner
Triathlon Medical Ventures

Carrie Bates had known the three managing partners of Cincinnati-based Triathlon Medical Ventures for a number of years when they approached her about joining their company. The trio believed that Triathlon, one of the largest venture-capital companies in the Midwest focused exclusively on life sciences, should have a senior person in key Midwest cities. Bates was their choice for the position in Indianapolis, and she joined the company in 2003. Bates sits on the boards of several of Triathlon’s portfolio companies: CS-Keys Inc., Expanding Orthopedics Inc. and Mitralign Inc. She was on the board of Remon Medical Technologies until Boston Scientific acquired it.

Before joining Triathlon, Bates ran Compass, the Silicon Valley venture and business development group operated by Guidant Corp., formerly based in Indianapolis. There, she led more than 20 investments and other transactions. Under her leadership, Guidant’s neurovascular incubator was launched and subsequently moved into an operating division. Bates began her career at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., where she was a pharmaceutical sales representative, manager of business development and ultimately director of finance for Advanced Cardiovascular Systems Inc., which Lilly purchased.

Bates serves on the board of the MidAmerica Health care Investors Network and the advisory board of Purdue University’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, the economic advisory board for Purdue’s Emerging Innovation Fund, Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business Life Science Industry Advisory Board and the Indiana Venture Club board. She also has been a judge for Purdue’s Burton D. Morgan Business Plan and National Life Science Business Plan competition. Bates has been a guest lecturer at both IU and Purdue.

Raised in Indiana, Bates graduated from the University of Evansville, with a bachelor’s in both computer science and finance. She obtained her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a certified public accountant as well. When she’s not up to her elbows in business, Bates may be in the garden, “getting my hands dirty,” she says. She holds a Master Gardener designation from Purdue. She also enjoys long-distance walking with her husband and friends.

D. Craig Brater, 65
Dean of Medicine
Vice President of University Clinical AffairsIndiana University

Craig Brater became dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine in 2000 and vice president of University Clinical Affairs in 2010. During his time as dean, the IU School of Medicine has increased the number of students it serves, its level of research funding, and the number of faculty who teach, see patients and conduct research.

Further, more than 600,000 square feet of space has been added to the school, ranging from multipurpose facilities in Fort Wayne and South Bend to the largest research building constructed at IU’s Indianapolis campus. Brater led the team that created the $155 million Indiana Genomic Initiative, funded by grants from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc., which supported the recruitment of scientists and other research initiatives. In 2009, he led a team to create the Physician Scientist Initiative, which was funded by a $50 million grant from Lilly Endowment.

A native of Oak Ridge, Tenn., Brater attended undergraduate and medical school at Duke University, completed his internship at Duke and his residency at the University of California-San Francisco. Following a fellowship and a year as a junior faculty member at UCSF, Brater spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In 1986, he joined the faculty of the IU School of Medicine, where he began the Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the Department of Medicine. Four years later, he was selected to chair the Department of Medicine, the largest department in the school. In 2000, he was named the ninth dean of the school.

Brater is president of the board of BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group. He either is or has been president of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the Association of Professors of Medicine, the Central Society for Clinical Research, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine. He also serves on the boards of IU Health and the Riley Children’s Foundation. In 2000, his alma mater conferred upon him the Duke Medical Alumni Award in recognition of his contributions to academic medicine.

Brater and his wife, Stephanie, have one daughter, who lives in Florida. The Braters are actively involved in the Indiana University-Moi University Faculty of Health Sciences exchange program in Kenya. Through this program, they met their Kenyan “son,” Michael, who has completed undergraduate and public health training at IUPUI and now works in public health in Malawi.

Darren Carroll, 49
Vice President of Corporate Business Development
Eli Lilly and Co.

About 16 years ago, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. lured native New Yorker Darren Carroll out of his New York law practice and to Indiana. Carroll had been practicing health care technology law at the time, and Lilly had recently acquired Arizona-based PCS, a large pharmacy-benefits-management company, along with some other health care IT companies. Carroll became legal counsel for that area of Lilly and later for the Prozac team during the height of that medicine’s successful run. He describes it as “an absolutely amazing experience.”

Carroll, though, hadn’t finished his run in the Northeast. He started Innocentive, a Lilly subsidiary at the time and ran it as CEO in the Boston area. When that company was spun off in 2005, Carroll returned to Lilly here. Today, Carroll is responsible for all business development, venture-capital and alliance-management activities for the company. He has also been vice president of new ventures, which includes the fund groups Lilly Ventures and Lilly Asian Ventures, the first venture-capital group of its kind in the pharmaceutical industry.

Carroll is chairman of the advisory board for the Indiana Future Fund and the INext Fund. He is a member of the board and executive committee of BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group. He also serves on the investment committee of the Indiana Seed Fund. He has served as member of the boards of Lilly Ventures and Lilly Asian Ventures portfolio companies. Carroll holds a bachelor’s from Syracuse University; a master’s of public administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse, where he is a member of the board of advisors; and a law degree from Syracuse University College of Law.

Kenneth Cornetta, 54
Joe C. Christian Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics
Indiana University School of Medicine

In addition to his duties at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Kenneth Cornetta is known for being co-founder, along with Butch Mercer, of Rimedion Inc., a vector technology company that is developing “orphan” drugs that treat rare, life-threatening genetic diseases, such as certain forms of cancer and blood disease. He is on the company’s scientific advisory board.

Cornetta received a bachelor’s in biological sciences from the State University of New York at Albany and his medical degree from Albany Medical College in 1982. He completed an internal medicine residency at IU and served as chief medical resident at Wishard Memorial Hospital. From 1986 until 1989, he was a National Research Service Award fellow at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he participated in the first approved clinical trial of a human gene transfer.

Next, Cornetta completed a hematology fellowship at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, then joined the faculty of IU, initially in the Department of Medicine. He served as director of the IU bone marrow transplant program from 1994 until 2001. In 2002, he became chairman of the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics.

As director of the Indiana University Vector Production Facility, Cornetta seeks to develop viral vectors for use in early-phase clinical gene-therapy applications. His laboratory is funded through the National Institutes of Health and has produced more than 20 Phase I and II trials throughout the United States. Cornetta is on the editorial boards of a variety of gene-therapy journals and in 2010 served as president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. He also serves on the board of BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group.

Beyond work, Cornetta spends his free time visiting his four children and daughter-in-law “who are dedicating their lives to civic causes in the U.S. and abroad.”
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Andrew Cothrel, 46
President and CEO
SonarMed

Andy Cothrel began his medical-products career with Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories. He landed in Indiana when he took a job with the local office of Germany-based Boehringer Mannheim, later acquired by Switzerland-based Roche. He worked his way across and up through the organization, accepting roles in research and development, operations, strategy, process development and general management. While amassing experience, he bounced around the globe: Japan, Europe and Puerto Rico, culminating with his promotion to vice president and site manager for Roche’s applied science business area.

Following a year of leading a variety of early-stage companies, in 2008, he joined West Lafayette-based SonarMed, working with the team to complete product development and obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance. The company’s first product, the SonarMed Airwave, will launch later this year. Beyond his position with SonarMed, Cothrel is president of Ohio-based Blue Marble Medical, a consulting practice, through which he serves on the board of Cientive Group, an Indianapolis-based information-management company that advises a number of early-stage companies. He has been actively involved in the state’s life sciences community through such organizations as the Indiana Health Industry Forum, the Indiana Biomedical Entrepreneur Network, the Indianapolis Private Industry Council and the BioFutures Initiative.

Cothrel earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from Ohio State University and his graduate degree from the University of Michigan, where he attended as a National Science Foundation Fellow. He has furthered his studies in business at Butler University, the University of Michigan, Cranfield University in England and the London Business School.

Richard DiMarchi, 58
Cox Professor of Biochemistry and Gill Chair of Biomolecular Sciences
Indiana University

Richard DiMarchi was drawn into life sciences for, as he says, the “intellectual challenge, privacy of the laboratory and satisfaction in improving human health.”

Although he is in academia now, having joined the Indiana University faculty in 2003, he began his career in the state’s premier life sciences incubator: Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., in 1981. This followed postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University, a New York center for research and graduate education in biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics and physics. He was directly involved in the discovery and development of several Lilly drugs, including Humulin, Humatrop and Evista. He is co-inventor of Humalog, the first biosynthetic protein approved for human use. Eventually, DiMarchi became the group vice president for biotechnology and product development at Lilly Research Laboratories, where he made major contributions to biotechnology and endocrinology.

When DiMarchi left Lilly in 2003, he founded Ambrx Inc., a California biopharmaceutical company, with Peter Schultz, and continues to sit on its board. In 2006, he co-founded and served as chief scientific officer of Carmel-based Marcadia Biotech, which was designed to create innovative treatments for people with diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases. The company was sold to Switzerland-based Roche in December 2010 for at least $287 million.

DiMarchi has received numerous awards, including the 2005 AAPS Career Research Achievement Award in Biotechnology, the 2006 ACS Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Service of Public Interest, the 2007 Carothers Award for Excellence in Polymer Sciences, the 2009 Watanabe Award for Life Sciences Research, the 2011 Merrifield Award for Career Contributions in Peptide Sciences and the 2011 Indiana University Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer. A New York City native, DiMarchi received his undergraduate degree from Florida Atlantic University and his doctorate from IU.

P. Ron Ellis, 49
President and CEO
Endocyte Inc.

Ron Ellis founded Endocyte Inc. along with fellow Who’s Who recipient Phillip Low and has served as the company’s president and CEO since 1996. Endocyte, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in West Lafayette, uses sophisticated chemistry to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells, leaving normal cells unharmed. This helps to minimize the toxicity of standard chemotherapy. Endocyte also develops diagnostic imaging tools to identify patients who can benefit from the therapy.

The company’s research and development platform includes multiple product candidates that have significant commercial opportunities, and it currently has multiple drugs in human clinical trials. Under Ellis’ leadership, Endocyte has successfully filed six investigational new drug applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Endocyte maintains full commercial rights to seven of its eight pipeline drugs.

Before joining Endocyte, Ellis was with Hill-Rom Co., the health care division of Batesville-based Hillenbrand Industries. While with Hill-Rom, he held a variety of senior management positions, including vice president of strategy and corporate development and vice president of the specialty-care division. Ellis holds a bachelor’s in computer science and an MBA, both from Brigham Young University, and a certification in regulatory affairs from Purdue University.

He is a member of the West Lafayette Parks and Recreation board, and he and his wife have three children.

Michael A. Evans, 67
Founder, President and CEO
AIT Laboratories

Michael Evans founded AIT Laboratories in 1990. The employee-owned Indianapolis company is an independent reference laboratory based in Indianapolis that specializes in compliance monitoring, forensics and pharmaceutical testing. Under Evans’ direction, AIT has been recognized locally and nationally for its commitment to employees, culture, education and training. It has been named one of the Best Places to Work in Indiana, most recently in 2010; and Training magazine called it one of the top 125 companies in employer-sponsored training and development programs. Evans personally was recognized as the 2008 Ernst and Young Midwest Entrepreneur of the Year.

Before founding AIT, Evans served as a tenured professor, director, faculty member and researcher at several institutions: the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He was also one of six scientists hired by the Chinese government and funded by the World Health Organization to help modernize the pharmaceutical industry in Sichuan Province. There he was a visiting professor of toxicology for Kunming Medical College and the Sichuan Institute of Materia Medica. (Evans reports that he can say hello, goodbye, thank you and bottoms-up in Chinese, “Although the last time I said hello in Mandarin at a Chinese restaurant, they thought I was asking for a dead fish!”)

Passionate about giving back to the community, Evans says his motto is “learn, earn, return,” with emphasis on learning and returning, while earning is the means through which he gives back. He serves on numerous boards, including those of Saint Joseph’s College and Indiana Tech, the science advisory boards of IUPUI, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Marian University College of Medicine. He also works with Project SEED and Providence Cristo Rey High School in Indianapolis.

Evans, who is from New Albany, holds a bachelor’s in biology and chemistry from St. Joseph’s College and a doctorate in toxicology from the IU School of Medicine. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Environmental Health Center for Environmental Toxicology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He served in the U.S. Army from 1968 through 1970 and is a disabled Vietnam veteran.
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Stephen L. Ferguson, 70
Chairman
Cook Group Inc.

When Steve Ferguson graduated from law school in 1966, he started his own law firm in Bloomington. It was a busy year. Ferguson also ran and won a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives, beginning his term in 1967. He served four terms. His involvement with Bill Cook, according to Cook’s biography, started as a friendship, stoked by their wives’ friendship and their mutual interest in sports. Cook turned to Ferguson for his legal knowledge often and finally persuaded the attorney to come work for Bloomington-based Cook Group Inc. In “The Bill Cook Story,” Cook says of Ferguson, “Steve’s contribution to the company has been immense … With Steve we got a lot of financial things in order.”

Today, Ferguson commands the parent of a group of worldwide companies involved in the research, development, manufacture and sale of medical devices. Ferguson appeared before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health in 1987 and again in 1990; in 1988, he appeared before the Orphan Products Board, Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Public Health Service to testify regarding the need for reforms in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cook credited Ferguson with being the driving force in change at the FDA.

Ferguson serves on the boards of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Indiana Health Industry Forum, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, Indiana Technology Partnership, 21st Century Research Fund, Medical Technology Leadership Forum, Regenstrief Foundation, Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute, Center for Human Growth and Bloomington Parks and Recreation Foundation. He also serves on the board of trustees of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is president of the board of trustees of Indiana University. Ferguson received his bachelor’s from Wabash College and his law degree, with distinction, from the IU School of Law. He is a Sagamore of the Wabash.

Fritz French, 52
Life sciences entrepreneur
“I was, and am, in-trigued by the intersection of medicine, technology andbusiness,” Fritz French said. He got early exposure to life sciences from family members who were in medicine and later from having been on the Eli Lilly and Co. audit team at New York-based Ernst and Whinney, a position he held for two years after graduating from the Indiana University School of Business.

He left for graduate school, obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School, and came home to Indiana to work for Indianapolis-based Lilly and eventually its spinoff, Guidant Corp. It turned out that coming home didn’t really mean living in Indiana. Between Lilly and Guidant, French moved a lot, living in Seattle, Philadelphia, California’s Silicon Valley and London, serving in various sales, marketing and management roles.

He left Guidant to serve as CEO of two life sciences startups, Carvascular Inc. and Zephyr Medical. He returned to Guidant in 2001 as vice president of global marketing for Guidant’s Vascular Intervention division, now part of Abbott Laboratories. In 2006, he was lured away by another startup: Carmel-based Marcadia Biotech, founded by Richard DiMarchi, Kent Hawryluk and the late Gus Watanabe. French was the first employee and CEO, leading the company, which developed therapeutics for the treatment of diabetes and obesity, until its sale to Switzerland-based Roche in December 2010.

“With much of my career having been in the cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity fields, I do my best to avoid these conditions by staying fit through running, biking and golf,” said French, who stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall. He has coached sports teams over the years and served on the board of Park Tudor School and on the pastoral council of St. Luke Catholic Church. French and his wife, Shele, have two children.

Antonio Galindez, 56
President and CEO
Dow AgroSciences

A native of Bilbao, Spain, Antonio Galindez left a job at Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture to join Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. in 1983. He started out as a field sales representative for agricultural products in Spain. From 1986 until 1992, he moved throughout Europe in various marketing and business positions for Dow, moving to Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences in 1989. (At the time it was DowElanco, a joint venture between Dow and Lilly.) He returned to Spain in 1992 as Dow’s country manager for Spain and Portugal, a role he held until 1995, when he was promoted to human resources director for Europe.

Galindez landed in Indianapolis in 1997, as global business leader in agrochemicals for Dow AgroSciences, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical. Galindez was named vice president of the Latin America trade area in 2002 and that year also added Europe and the Pacific to his responsibilities. He was named vice president of Dow Agro’s crops business in 2006 and moved into his current position in 2009. Galindez is known to be results-driven and passionate about people development. He created a talent-development program designed to help groom up-and-coming leaders within the company.

Galindez sits on the board of CropLife International, an organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture, and, locally, on the boards of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership and BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group. He serves as co-chairman of the National Future Farmers of America convention host committee, involved with Indiana’s hosting of the 2006–2012 conventions.

Influenced by his father, an agricultural engineer, Galindez received a degree in agriculture engineering from Madrid University in Spain and a master’s from North Carolina State University.

Harry Gonso, 63
Partner
Ice Miller LLP

Harry Gonso said he was always the kind of guy who “wanted to contribute somehow in a meaningful way.” At the beginning of the new millennium, Gonso directed that desire into life sciences. “I had a great deal of exposure to budding industries in Indiana.” And he saw that the state’s historic industries, like automotive and steel, were contracting. “It became painfully clear to me that life sciences needed to expand and create jobs.” With his background in new business ventures and corporate law, he believed he could catalyze growth.

In 2002, along with Jim Cornelius and several former Eli Lilly and Co. and Guidant Corp. business leaders, he formed Indianapolis-based Twilight Venture Partners LLC, the first life sciences venture-capital firm in Indiana. Twilight has made investments primarily in Indiana-based businesses, including Indianapolis-based Suros Surgical Systems and Carmel-based Marcadia Biotech, which Switzerland-based Roche acquired last year.

Gonso started practicing law with local law firm Bingham Summers Welsh and Spilman, today Bingham McHale. Then on April Fool’s Day 1980, Ice Miller invited him to join the firm. He accepted and has been a partner in the local firm ever since, today leading its life sciences practice.

Gonso shot onto the national scene in 1968, when, as quarterback of Indiana University’s football team, he led its first trip to the Rose Bowl, where the Hoosiers put up a spirited defense against the University of Southern California Trojans, starring O.J. Simpson. Gonso graduated from IU in 1970 and then from its law school. He remains actively involved with IU, where he is a member of the Kelley School of Business Life Sciences Advisory Committee; the IUPUI Advisory Board and its School of Sciences Advisory Committee; the Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine; and the external advisory committee for the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. He headed the university presidential search committees that led to the selections of both Tom Ehrlich and Myles Brand and the search committee that picked basketball coach Tom Crean. He served on the board of trustees from 1976 until 1994 and is now vice chairman of the IU Foundation.

In 2004, Gonso served as chairman of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ election transition committee, followed by two years as Daniels’ chief of staff, after which he chaired Daniels’ re-election steering committee. Gonso and his wife, Lucy, are parents of Christopher, Matthew, Sara and Ellie. Gonso enjoys tennis, biking, golf, walking, hiking and Sudoku.
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Ken Green, 56
Co-founder and Managing Partner
Spring Hill Venture Partners

Ken Green founded Spring Mill Ven-ture Partners, an In-dianapolis-based venture-capital firm, in 2004. Spring Mill focuses on investing in early-stage technology companies in both health care and information technology. Its portfolio companies include Illinois-based Akoya, a business intelligence software company; Indianapolis-based BioStorage Technologies, a biological specimen management, storage and logistics services company; and SonarMed Inc., a West Lafayette-based private medical-device startup founded on technology developed at Purdue University.

Green also assists the Innovate Indiana Fund, an Indiana University-based venture-capital fund focused on supporting entrepreneurial companies with deep ties to the university. The fund plans to invest in both seed and pre-seed opportunities emerging from IU.

A native of Toronto, Green received his medical degree at the University of Toronto. He then practiced medicine for eight years before turning to the entrepreneurial world. He earned his MBA at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina. Before founding Spring Mill, he served as CEO of Cincinnati-based Cutanogen Corp., a startup medical-device company that develops tissue-engineered skin for the treatment of burns. He also worked at Cincinnati-based SenMed Medical Ventures, where he investigated, sourced and managed investments in a broad array of technologies. Before that, he did strategic marketing for New York-based Bristol Myers Squibb.

Green sits on the boards of SynTherix, CS-Keys, Ifbyphone, Apex Therapeutics, Aarden Pharmaceuticals, Courseload and SonarMed. He chairs the biomedical engineering external advisory board at IUPUI and is a member of the research and development committee of the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana.

In his spare time, Green is an avid golfer and pursues photography and culinary arts as outlets of artistic expression.

Kem Hawkins, 63
President
Cook Group Inc. and Cook Inc.

Kem Hawkins joined Cook Inc. in 1981. He was recruited by founder Bill Cook himself, as a management trainee, and rose rapidly in the organization. After several assignments, he was appointed operations manager in 1982. The next year, the company dispatched him to Denmark as operations manager of William Cook Europe; a year later, he was named managing director. He returned to the states in 1985 as general manager of the Cook Critical Care division. In 1988, he was appointed vice president of Cook Critical Care. He piled on the responsibilities of president of Wilson-Cook Medical in 1997 and, in 1999, he became executive vice president of sales and marketing for Cook Group Inc. He was appointed to his current positions in 2001, having risen from the stock department to the president’s office in just under 20 years.

Beyond his role as president, Hawkins serves on several Cook Group company boards, as well as the Ivy Tech capital campaign board and the Applied Biology and Biomedical Engineering advisory board at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Hawkins is past president of the YMCA of Bloomington. He is a recipient of several awards.

Hawkins earned his bachelor’s in musical education in 1971 and his master’s in education in 1974, both from Indiana University. Upon graduation, he taught school—as a music teacher and band director—for seven years at Binford Middle School in Bloomington and three years at Bloomington High School.

Ronald D. Henriksen, 71
President and CEO
EndGenitor Technologies Inc.

Ron Henriksen is at heart a venture capitalist, a deal maker and an entrepreneur. Sizing up a company, its business plan and leadership is his strong suit. That analytical ability, honed at Harvard Business School, where he got his MBA, has carried him far.

Currently, Henriksen is wrapped up in Indianapolis-based EndGenitor Technologies, the state’s first adult vascular stem-cell company, which he founded in 2006 with Dr. Carlos Lopez. The company’s sole focus is on commercializing cell products from adult tissues that are free from any ethical controversy. Henriksen is also chief investment officer of Indianapolis-based Twilight Venture Partners LLC.

Following his graduation from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s in industrial administration, the Iowa farm boy spent four years in the U.S. Navy, serving as an officer on two ships. He headed to Harvard University and then came back to the Midwest to work for Irwin Management in Columbus, Ind., followed by years at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. Since then, he has covered a lot of ground, working for Lilly in Brazil, Mexico and Central America for six years and then becoming the company’s first director of corporate business development. While he held that job, he negotiated more than 20 business collaborations between Lilly and startup biotech and medical-device companies.

In 1993, some venture capitalists in California recruited him to run Khepri Pharmaceuticals; he returned to Indiana after that company was acquired in 1995, and soon became president and CEO of Indiana University’s Transfer Organization. During his five years in that position, he increased licensing activities 300 percent and founded a local educational software company, Angel Learning, that was sold to Blackboard in 2009 for more than $90 million.

Henriksen is chairman of San Diego-based Cytori Therapeutics Inc. He and his wife, Penny, live on a farm near Avon and have a son who lives in New York.

David L. Johnson, 58
President and CEO
BioCrossroads

David Johnson’s name pops up in almost every corner of the life sciences arena. He is one of the four founders and the leader of BioCrossroads, a privately funded, regional market-development and investment group focused on innovation in life sciences and biotechnology.

Additionally, he is manager of the Indiana Seed Funds I and II, which are pre-venture funds raised and run by BioCrossroads, and the Indiana Enterprise Fund, BioCrossroads’ early-stage investment fund. He is actively involved in the $73 million Indiana Future Fund I, an early-stage sciences venture-capital fund managed by Credit Suisse, and in INext Fund, a follow-up fund, also managed by Credit Suisse.

As a result of BioCrossroads’ initiatives and investments, Johnson serves on two seed-fund startup portfolio company boards, seven not-for-profit boards, six not-for-profit or foundation board executive committees, and three university advisory boards. The boards include the Indiana Health Information Exchange Inc., the Purdue Research Foundation, Central Indiana Community Partnership Foundation Inc., and CS-Keys Inc., a breast-cancer diagnostic startup company.

Before joining BioCrossroads full time, Johnson was an equity partner at Baker and Daniels LLP, an Indianapolis law firm he joined in 1983. Before that, he was legal counsel and a professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 2000, he was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. Johnson graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, where he was named a Rhodes scholar and tapped for Phi Beta Kappa. He received an additional degree from New College, Oxford University, and his law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1979.

Johnson has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects, including education, foreign affairs and economic growth. He is married to Anne Nobles, an executive at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.; they have a daughter who is in college.
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Ghassan S. Kassab, 46
Thomas J. Linnemeier Guidant Foundation Chair Professor
IUPUI

The University of California-San Diego awarded Ghassan Kassab all of his degrees: a bachelor’s in chemical engineering, a master’s in engineering sciences and a doctorate, summa cum laude, in bioengineering. Following graduation, Kassab stayed at UC-San Diego until five years ago, when he was recruited by IUPUI’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and the late local life sciences champion Gus Watanabe. He pulled up stakes and moved to Indiana, where he assumed his current duties in teaching and research in biomedical engineering and surgery and cellular and integrative physiology.

Kassab is drawn to work that helps establish medical-device companies. He holds more than 100 patents in the areas of diagnosis and treatment of heart failure, aortic aneurysm and obesity. His intellectual properties have resulted in four startups—Flowco, CardiAcc and SARP, which broadly target cardiovascular disease and heart failure, andGRest, which targets obesity—with the potential of others in the pipeline. His current scientific interests are in cardiovascular and gastroenterology systems in health and disease. He has published more than 300 articles and academic papers.

Kassab is the recipient of an eye-opening number of awards: the National Institutes of Health Young Investigator Award, the American Heart Association’s Established Investigator Award, the Farriborz Maseeh Best Research Award, the Abraham M. Max Distinguished Professor Award and the Eminent Engineer Award of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. He is a fellow of the AHA, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Physiological Society. He serves on two NIH study sections, which are prestigious panels that review and evaluate research proposals submitted to the NIH.

In his down time, Kassab reads, practices martial arts and spends time with his boys, Gabriel and Gianno.

Wade Lange, 54
President and CEO
ImmuneWorks

Wade Lange charts his career with a succinct philosophy, which he credits to educational psychologist Patricia Alexander: “Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.”

It works well for someone like Lange, who braves the world of startups. Lange, Ronald Meeusen, Michael Klemsz and fellow Who’s Who recipient David Wilkes founded Indianapolis-based ImmuneWorks in 2006. Lange leads this emerging biotechnology company in developing novel treatments for serious lung diseases. The company recently entered into an agreement with the Maryland pharmaceutical firm Lung Rx to develop its lead compound, which treats idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; the first human clinical trials were initiated last year.

Lange has a broad and diversified background in the medical industry. Before founding ImmuneWorks, he led Lange Advisors, a consulting firm that provided business-development services to health care, medical-device and pharmaceutical companies. He also was CEO of the Indiana Health Industry Forum from 2000 through 2005. Before that, he worked for 13 years as general manager of West Pharmaceutical Services Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company. Under his leadership, West’s consumer health care research business unit was one of the nation’s leading contract research organizations in its field. Lange launched his career with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. in sales, market research and new-product marketing.

A lifelong Hoosier, Lange grew up in West Lafayette. He earned his bachelor’s in pharmacy from Purdue University and his master’s in industrial administration from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue. He and his wife, Candace, have two sons, one a recent Purdue grad and the other a junior at Purdue. He enjoys golf and working around the yard. He is chairman of the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization and, along with his wife, supports St. Mary’s Child Center.

John C. Lechleiter, 57
Chairman, President and CEO
Eli Lilly and Co.

In 2005, when John Lechleiter was tap-ped as Lilly’s president and chief operating officer and joined the board, market watchers tracking Lilly predicted that the chemist would succeed Sidney Taurel in leading the company one day. That day came sooner than some expected, when Taurel announced his plan to retire in 2008. Lechleiter became president and CEO in April of that year and chairman in December.

A level-headed businessman, Lechleiter was well-matched with the company, which he joined in 1979 as senior organic chemist in process research and development. His promotions came rapidly: He headed that department by 1982 and, in 1984, moved to England to serve as director of pharmaceutical product development for Lilly Research Centre Ltd. He returned to the States in 1986 as manager of research and development projects for Europe.

He continued to ascend the corporate ladder, moving up to director of development projects management, then adding pharmaceutical regulatory affairs to his palette. In 1991, he was named executive director of pharmaceutical product development and vice president in 1993. He became senior vice president of pharmaceutical products in 1998 and executive vice president in 2001.

Lechleiter holds a bachelor’s in chemistry from Xavier University. He later studied organic chemistry as a National Science Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, where he received both his master’s and doctoral degrees. In 2006, he received an honorary doctorate of business administration from Marian University.

He is a member of the American Chemical Society, Business Roundtable and Business Council. He serves on the boards of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, United Way Worldwide, Xavier University, Life Sciences Foundation, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership and 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee. He is also on the board of Nike Inc. Lechleiter and his wife, Sarah, have three children: Daniel, Andrew and Elizabeth.

Sengyong Lee
Professor and Program Chairman for Biotechnology
Ivy Tech Community College-Bloomington

Sengyong Lee is at the heart of the life sciences program at Ivy Tech Community College’s Bloomington campus. The program is headquartered at the new Indiana Center for Life Sciences, opened in 2009 and created through a partnership between Monroe County government, Ivy Tech and the Bloomington Life Sciences Partnership. The center was created to support the growth of the life sciences industry in Indiana by educating and training the work force for jobs in the life sciences.

Lee developed the curriculum for the new associate’s degree program in biotechnology, established a degree-transfer program agreement with Indiana University, hired faculty, established a partnership with biotech companies, including Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., Illinois-based Baxter International Inc. and Bloomington-based Cook Group Inc., and made a number of the design and purchase decisions for the facility. Graduates from the biotechnology program are working at major life sciences companies throughout the state.

He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Miami University and worked with Dr. J. Jose Bonner at Indiana University for his postdoctoral research fellowship. He received his master’s in biology from Ball State University and his bachelor’s in biology from Yon Sei University in South Korea. His education projects have been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation. In both 2005 and 2007, he received the Chancellor’s Apple Award for Outstanding Faculty Member at Ivy Tech. He is the executive director of the Bioscience Educators Alliance of the Midwest.
(page 6)

Philip A. Low, 63
Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
Purdue University

Following a year of postdoctoral work at the University of Massachusetts, Philip Low joined the Purdue University faculty in 1976, but, in truth, he had the campus in his DNA. Low’s father, too, was a nationally renowned scientist and on the Purdue faculty. Despite his Purdue connection, Low first headed to Brigham Young University, where he earned his bachelor’s in chemistry and then to the University of California-San Diego, where he earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry.

A prodigious researcher, Low has been granted or filed for 35 patents for novel therapies and diagnostic agents. Six agents based on his work are undergoing human clinical trials. He has published more than 300 research articles and sits on five editorial boards.

Low founded Endocyte Inc. in 1996, along with Ron Ellis, a fellow Who’s Who recipient. The biopharmaceutical company, based in West Lafayette, uses sophisticated chemistry to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells, leaving normal cells unharmed. This helps to minimize the toxicity seen with standard chemotherapy. Endocyte also develops diagnostic imaging tools to identify patients who can benefit from the therapy. The company, which employs 65 people at its Purdue University Research Park office, had its initial public offering in February. Low has served on National Institutes of Health study sections—panels that review and evaluate research proposals submitted to the National Institutes for Health; and received one of NIH’s highly esteemed MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) awards, which recognize researchers who have demonstrated superior competence and outstanding productivity in their research efforts. He has received both of Purdue’s research awards, the Herbert Newby McCoy Award and the Sigma Xi Award, and several international awards. He lectures beyond Purdue about 25 times each year.

Jan M. Lundberg, 58
Executive Vice President for Science and Technology, Eli Lilly and Co.
President, Lilly Research Laboratories

A newcomer to Indianapolis, Jan Lundberg joined Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. in 2010, following a decade at London-based AstraZeneca, where he was global head of discovery research and a member of the senior executive team. Lilly’s hiring Lundberg was heralded as a coup for the company because of his stellar track record at AstraZeneca, where he was instrumental in delivering more than 150 drug candidates to the company’s pipeline.

Like Lilly CEO John Lechleiter, Lundberg is a scientist. A native of Sweden, Lundberg received his Ph.D. from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, where he became a professor in the department of pharmacology before moving to industry. He did his undergraduate work at both Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He has published approximately 500 scientific articles, mainly related to mechanisms of cell signaling in the nervous, cardiovascular, endocrine and respiratory systems.

According to the Institute for Scientific Information, he is one of its most highly cited authors. He has won a variety of research awards and has been a member of the advisory board for drug approvals at the Swedish Medical Product Agency. In 2003, he was appointed an honorary doctor of pharmacy at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Lundberg has served on several committees, including as chairman of the Ph.D. and postdoctoral program at the Karolinska Institute, the evaluation committee for the Swedish Medical Research Council, and the executive advisory board of the Swedish Medical Products Agency Registration of New Drugs. He currently serves on PhRMA’s science and regulatory committee and on the boards of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group.

Keith March, 47
Professor, Departments of Medicine, Cellular and Integrative Physiology and Biomedical Engineering
Indiana University School of Medicine and Krannert Institute of Cardiology

In 2010, Keith March established the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, the first Veterans Affairs-sited center dedicated specifically to moving adult stem-cell therapies from the laboratory to patients. The center, which brings together multiple interdisciplinary faculty and staff members, is led by March and co-director Dr. Michael Murphy. In addition to this role, March is a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine; director of the Indiana Center for Vascular Biology and Medicine; and director of IU’s Vascular and Cardiac Center of Adult Stem Cell Therapy.

March has dedicated his career to bringing new medical approaches to patients. His research has resulted in more than 40 patents worldwide, 19 of them in the United States, with others pending. He invented the Closer, a suture-mediated device used to close the puncture wound in an artery following heart catheterization. In 1999, a division of Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories acquired the company that had developed the device technology. The Closer allows the patient to walk off the table and is used annually in about half a million patients around the world.

March’s laboratory focuses on vascular biology, with a particular emphasis on the function and translational study of stem cells found in one’s own fat tissue. March is recognized as a leading expert in the field of adult stem-cell research. His publications include more than 110 manuscripts, and he was the editor of the first book dedicated to cardiovascular gene transfer.

In addition to his research roles, March has served as president of the International Federation of Adipose Therapeutics and Science and serves as the chief medical adviser for the Cell Therapy Foundation.

Born in Boston and a prodigy from the get-go, March moved straight from seventh grade to St. Francis University in Fort Wayne, where he received his undergraduate degree; he earned his combined medical and doctoral degrees from Indiana University and IUPUI. He has been on the faculty of the IU School of Medicine since 1990.

Jennifer Marcum, 40
CEO
Sentry BioPharma Services

Right out of college, with a bachelor’s in biology, Jennifer Marcum went to work for Mississippi-based Chemdal Corp., which specialized in super-absorbent polymers that can hold 50 times their weight in liquids (think ultra-thin diapers). Marcum started as a lab technician and moved to increasingly senior positions there and then at Baxter Pharmaceutical Solutions (then Cook Pharmaceutical Solutions in Bloomington), directing product strategy and implementation from planning through production.

Marcum, along with an experienced team, including her husband, W. Dwayne Marcum, founded Sentry BioPharma in 2004. The company provides FDA-compliant packing products and supply-chain management services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical-device firms. The company has particular expertise in temperature-sensitive products. As CEO, Marcum looks for ways to improve the company’s service-delivery processes and forges global partnerships.

Before founding Sentry BioPharma, Marcum ran Marcum Professional Solutions LLC, where she provided advice and training to life sciences, pharmaceutical and biotech companies in a wide range of areas.

Marcum grew up in Crest Hill, Ill., which she describes as “wonderful.” She graduated from the University of St. Francis, having sandwiched in studies at the University of Alaska, an opportunity that presented itself when a cousin lived in Fairbanks. In 2003, Marcum earned professional certification from the Project Management Institute, a global trade organization.

Beyond work, Marcum supports a variety of charitable organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, and enjoys hiking, jogging, playing tennis, backyard bird-watching, gardening, cooking and reading.
(page 7)

Suzanne O’Shea, 57
Partner
Baker and Daniels

Suzanne O’Shea focuses her law practice in health care and life sciences initiatives. She admits, “I got into this area of the law totally by chance.” She explains that, as newlyweds, she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C., where “I threw in my application at the old Civil Service department, asking to be assigned anywhere. I ended up at the FDA, and it stuck.” Even though her background is in English literature, she is fascinated by life sciences and all the things being discovered in the field.

O’Shea spent 21 years as regulatory counsel for the Food and Drug Administration and was most recently product classification officer in the Office of Combination Products, where she was responsible for classifying each product as a drug, device, biologic, human tissue or combination product, a designation for those products whose classification was unclear or in dispute. When her first child was born, O’Shea jumped off the career track for seven years, then returned to the FDA. The FDA conferred a number of awards upon O’Shea: Commendable Service in 1996, Award of Merit in 2002, Outstanding Service Award in 2005 and O’Shea’s most treasured: Equal Opportunity Achievement Award in 2007. She received it for facilitating an undergraduate seminar on race at the University of Maryland.

In 2007, O’Shea moved to Indianapolis. She says, “I was delighted to learn about the thriving life sciences community in Indianapolis.” At Baker and Daniels, O’Shea is with the FDA practices group. She is experienced in developing regulatory strategies that can enable innovative, cutting-edge technologies to navigate their way through the FDA.

Raised in Connecticut, O’Shea earned her undergraduate and law degrees at Indiana University, and her LLM, an advanced law degree, in administrative law from the National Law Center at George Washington University. She holds a long-cherished ambition to bicycle cross-country, which she thinks about “as I am painting my house and mowing the lawn.”

Jim Pearson, 44
President and CEO
NICO Corp.

Jim Pearson is cur-rently leading NICO Corp., incorporated in 2007 and operational in early 2008, through its startup phase. NICO is an Indianapolis medical-device company focused on the minimally invasive biopsy and removal of intracranial, skull-base and spine tissue.

Pearson has reason to think he will succeed. He has amassed more than 18 years of experience in the medical-device and health care businesses and has successfully built three other companies. (The trio boasted combined first-year revenue of more than $15 million.) NICO joins Pearson with many of the team from Indianapolis-based Suros Surgical Systems Inc., his last startup.

Suros pioneered the MRI-guided, minimally invasive breast biopsy. In 2006, the company was acquired for $280 million by Massachusetts-based Hologic Inc. in a merger-acquisition. Of the deal, Pearson says, “The great news for Indiana is all the jobs stayed here even after the sale.” Pearson and others of the management team stayed on for just shy of two years to ensure a smooth transition.

Prior to joining Suros, Pearson founded Summit Medical, a specialty capital equipment-distribution company that focused on midrange capital equipment, such as cosmetic and surgical lasers, intraoperative and diagnostic ultrasound units and cryosurgical devices. The company was profitable within 18 months and was acquired in 1998 by Medibuy.com, which, Pearson says, was also “very much a startup.” He worked there for four years as president of the equipment division for North America.

Pearson is a graduate of Indiana University and is a strong supporter of educational and athletic charities. He volunteers as a high school wrestling coach in the Hamilton Southeastern school district. He has three children. In 2007, he was named Ernst and Young’s Midwest Entrepreneur of the Year.

Jack J. Phillips, 46
President and CEO
Roche Diagnostics Corp.

Jack Phillips moved to Indianapolis in 2010 to head Roche Diagnostics’ commercial operation in its North American region. Phillips also serves as a member of the leadership team of the Swiss company. Indianapolis is Roche Diagnostics’ North American headquarters, and about 2,900 of the company’s 80,000 global employees are based here.

The diagnostics division develops and produces medical tests that provide information to help health care professionals find the right treatment for patients and deliver optimum care.

Although new to Indianapolis, Phillips is a Roche veteran, having joined the company in 1999, working for Ventana Medical Systems in Tucson, Ariz., which is a cancer-diagnostic company and part of Roche Group. He has held a variety of leadership roles, most recently as senior vice president of commercial operations for North America and Japan. Before joining Ventana, Phillips worked for Bayer Diagnostics and Motorola.

From an early age, Phillips always had a strong interest in science and technology. When he saw the opportunity to enter that field, he seized it. Phillips’ professional passion for health care seeps into his private life. He serves as corporate recruitment chairman of the American Diabetes Association Indiana Tour De Cure. He is a member of the Council of Ambassadors of the Indianapolis office of the American Cancer Society and leads Roche support of the American Heart Association.

A native of Kentucky, Phillips holds a bachelor’s in marketing from Northern Kentucky University. He is married with three children and is an endurance athlete and avid cyclist.

Alan H. Rebar, 61
Senior Associate Vice President for Research, Purdue University
Executive Director, Discovery Park

Discovery Park sits at the center of Purdue University’s interdisciplinary research efforts, and Alan Rebar sits at the head of Discovery Park. Appointed executive director in 2005, Rebar took the helm after the building and startup phase, funded in large part by a $26 million gift from Lilly Endowment Inc. in 2001. Discovery Park comprises a number of centers, including the Bindley Bioscience Center, the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and the Oncological Sciences Center.

Rebar can claim an unusual distinction: He is one of a handful of pre-veterinary students who showed such promise that he leapt into graduate school after only two years of undergraduate work at Purdue, so his doctor of veterinary medicine is actually his first degree. He then earned his Ph.D. in 1975, also from Purdue. Following a brief stint in mixed animal practice, he became an assistant professor of veterinary clinical pathology at Purdue and later an experimental pathologist at the Lovelace Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute in Albuquerque, N.M. In 1979 he returned to Purdue as an associate professor, becoming a full professor in 1983, head of the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, 1993-1996; associate dean for research 1989-1996; and dean of research 1996-2005.

Rebar continues to teach veterinary clinical pathology. He is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists, where he has been on the council and served as president. He has written 10 books and monographs, 17 textbook chapters and more than 100 scientific articles. He is an internationally recognized expert in clinical laboratory medicine and has consulted widely with the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. He has been awarded a variety of honors, including the Award of Merit from the American Animal Hospital Association, the Gaines Cycle Fido Award for outstanding contribution to small-animal medicine and surgery and the Waltham Award in recognition of outstanding activities and contributions by a veterinarian resulting in the improvement of the well-being of companion animals.

Married to a veterinary ophthalmologist, Rebar has a son in the School of Education at Purdue.
(page 8)

Jörg Schreiber, 56
President
White Arrow Consulting LLC

Jörg Schreiber isn’t the retiring type, so while he technically retired from the local office of Switzerland-based Roche Diagnostics (previously Boehringer Mannheim) in 2005, he is just as involved in life sciences as he ever was. Schreiber founded Indianapolis-based White Arrow Consulting LLC to advise small and midsized life sciences companies in technology, commercialization, operations, strategy, fundraising and personnel issues.

Born and raised in Germany, Schreiber holds a master’s and a Ph.D. in physics from Giessen University in Germany, where he specialized in biophysics. He did postdoctoral work at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

He went to work for Roche in 1986 and moved to the United States with the company in 1994. He worked in research and development and operations, before taking over R&D in the United States in 1996. In that position, overseeing project teams in different locations and from different cultures, Schreiber recognized the critical role of not only keeping the product development pipeline open but also the communication pipeline, so knowledge gained could be shared. In 2001 Schreiber was named vice president of R&D and business development for the newly created MyDoc.com, Roche’s Internet-based medical practice.

Schreiber sits on the boards of Cientive Group Inc., an Indianapolis-based data-management and consulting company; the Center for Enterprise Leadership at Boston University; and the Connectivity Industry Consortium. He chairs the boards of the Indiana Health Industry Forum and AION Diagnostics Ltd., an Australian company that is dedicated to improving medical-imaging systems. He is on the Dean’s Industry Advisory Council of the School of Engineering at IUPUI. He is also involved in the International Center, the Ensemble Music Society and the Carmel Symphony Orchestra.

Anantha Shekhar, 53
Director
Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute

Anantha Shekhar is the founding director of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, a collaboration among Indiana University, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame, as well as public and private partnerships. The institute facilitates the conversion of scientific discoveries in the lab into clinical trials and new patent treatments in Indiana and beyond. CTSI was established with a $25 million award from the National Institutes of Health.

Shekhar is also the Raymond E. Houk professor of psychiatry, a professor of pharmacology and neurology, the associate dean for translational research at the IU School of Medicine and IU’s assistant vice president for research.

Shekhar’s areas of expertise include basic and clinical research on anxiety, schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders, and stress-induced psychiatric and medical conditions. His work focuses on developing treatments for these disorders and has resulted in a number of patents for novel therapies that are still in development. Through CTSI, he has partnered with Indiana biotech companies to accelerate the development of products. He has published extensively and mentors a number of young scientists. He is president-elect of the National Society of Clinical and Translational Sciences and serves on many NIH panels.

Born in India, Shekhar received his medical degree from St. John’s Medical College in Bangalore. He moved to the United States in 1982 to further his medical education and received a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1991. He has been on the faculty at the IU School of Medicine since 1989. He is actively involved in Mental Health America and the Indiana Health Industry Forum and seeks to increase public awareness and participation in health care in general.

Shekhar and his wife, Dr. Gina Laite, have two children, one in college and one in graduate school.

Deborah Tanner, 46
Executive Vice President, Group President of the Research and Development Laboratories
Covance

Deborah Tanner has been with Covance for more than 20 years. Covance, a Corning Inc. spinoff, is headquartered in Princeton, N.J., and is one of the world’s largest drug-development companies. She has held positions in quality assurance and marketing and led a variety of scientific groups in both the early and late stages of drug development.

She spent two years in Covance’s United Kingdom office, where she was responsible for Covance’s analytical services in Europe. She came to Indianapolis in 2001, when she was named vice president of global clinical trial-management services and operations for the company’s central laboratory business. In 2006, she was promoted to corporate senior vice president and president of central laboratory services and discovery support and translational services. Last year, Tanner was appointed to her current position. The research and development laboratories she oversees comprise 18 laboratory sites around the globe and span the entire drug-development continuum.

Covance opened its Indianapolis operation in 1986. Tanner joined Covance’s Madison, Wis., office in 1987. Before that, she had worked for Perrigo Co., an over-the-counter drug manufacturer, in Michigan, where she grew up.

Tanner sits on the board of BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group, and the life sciences advisory board of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. She is a member of the Society of Toxicology and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. She is involved in United Way of Central Indiana, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Tour de Cure, which supports the American Diabetes Foundation. Tanner and her husband have two teenage children; she enjoys cycling, reading, cooking and hiking. She holds dual undergraduate degrees in life sciences/chemistry and business administration and accounting from the University of Wisconsin. She also earned an MBA there.

William Tierney, 59
President and CEO
Regenstrief Institute Inc.

The Regenstrief In-stitute, founded in 1969, named William Tierney executive director last year. A joint venture between the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County and the Regenstrief Foundation Inc., the institute was created to help apply the techniques of biomedical science, computer science and industrial engineering to medical care. At the same time Tierney was named executive director, he was named associate dean for health care effectiveness research at the IU School of Medicine.

The responsibilities don’t stop there: He is a Chancellor’s Professor and Sam Regenstrief Professor for Health Services Research at the IU School of Medicine, as well as associate dean for clinical effectiveness research and chief of medicine at Wishard Memorial Hospital and Wishard Health Services.

Tierney teamed up with the Regenstrief Institute in 1980, when his stethoscope was still shiny and new. He completed a two-year fellowship at the institute in biomedical informatics and health-services research. He graduated from IU in 1973 and headed to its School of Medicine. He did his residency in internal medicine and joined the IU School of Medicine in 1979.

Tierney’s research focuses on implementing electronic health-record systems in both hospitals and outpatient clinics in Indiana and Kenya, where the med school has a partnership with the Moi University School of Medicine. The system has grown to support a network of more than 50 primary-care clinics, with records from more than 3 million visits by more than 300,000 patients. It has been expanded to become Open MRS, the most widely implemented open-source electronic health records system in the developing world. Tierney helped implement one of the first computer-based provider order-entry systems in the country at Wishard.
(page 9)

David S. Wilkes, 54
Executive Associate Dean for Research Affairs
Indiana University School of Medicine

David Wilkes went to medical school on an Air Force scholarship. As a major in the Air Force, he directed the intensive-care unit at Carswell Regional Hospital at Carswell Air Force Base, in Fort Worth, Texas. He said, “After my three-year obligation to the Air Force was done, I went to University of Texas Southwestern to complete my training in pulmonary medicine and to start my research training.” The Indiana University School of Medicine recruited Wilkes from there in 1992.

Today Wilkes is a board-certified pulmonary and critical-care physician, and his laboratory has been funded continually since 1994 by the National Institutes of Health. He is the August M. Watanabe Professor for Medical Research and a former Harold Amos Fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a past member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH. Wilkes serves on the editorial boards of many biomedical research journals and has published numerous basic science research manuscripts focused on the immune-pathogenesis of lung-transplant rejection.

Discoveries from Wilkes’ laboratory were the basis for founding ImmuneWorks Inc., a biotech company based in Indianapolis that is developing novel treatments for patients with immune-mediated lung disease, such as lung-transplant rejection and pulmonary fibrosis. Wilkes has received awards for mentoring and national recognition for his efforts to increase diversity at the IU School of Medicine.

An avid road cyclist, Wilkes has traveled to France to climb some of the same mountains that cyclists do in the Tour de France. He enjoys cooking as well. Married for 30 years, he and has wife have two children: a daughter, who is a third-year medical student at IU, and a son, who just completed his degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University and is headed to graduate school. Wilkes grew up in the Philadelphia area, obtained his undergraduate degree at Villanova University and his medical degree from Temple University.

George R. Wodicka, 50
Professor and Founding Head of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Electrical and Computer EngineeringPurdue University

When George Wodicka joined the Purdue University faculty in 1989, the Department of Biomedical Engineering was borrowing office and lab space in the Potter Engineering Building, built in the 1970s. Nine years later, a department summary listed 19 affiliated faculty on the West Lafayette campus, with three dedicated to biomedical engineering. Today there are 48 affiliated faculty, 16 of whom are dedicated to biomedical engineering. And then there’s the sparkling $25 million building, the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, dedicated in 2006. Wodicka has led the school in not only size but also scope and impact.

Under Wodicka’s leadership, the Weldon School has developed a research partnership in nano-medicine with the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, founded a joint graduate education program with the University of Puerto Rico—Mayagues, created the Purdue Imaging Center in partnership with GE Healthcare, endowed the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Development at Purdue and established a National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Institute with the Indiana University School of Medicine. The school had only a graduate program when Wodicka started, but it now has an undergraduate program, accredited just five years after accepting its first student.

Wodicka was born in Malvern, N.Y., and attended Johns Hopkins University for his bachelor’s in biomedical engineering, receiving both department and university awards. He was awarded a fellowship from Raytheon Co. to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his master’s in electrical engineering and computer science, as well as for his Ph.D. in medical engineering. From 1987 through 1989, when he was awarded his Ph.D., he was a graduate instructor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, after which he headed to Purdue. Just two years after arriving on campus in 1989, Wodicka received the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award. It was neither the first nor the last of the awards for Wodicka, who has received a number of additional teaching awards, plus the Faculty Award of Excellence in Leadership from the Purdue College of Engineering in 2009 and the Outstanding Commercialization Award for Purdue University Faculty in 2010. He is the recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and is a Guggenheim fellow.

Alisa Wright, 47
Chief Executive and Compliance Officer
BioConvergence LLC

If there were a booster club for life sciences here, Alisa Wright would be in charge. She speaks passionately about the life sciences talent pool in the state, the excellent work ethic and the efforts the community makes to move the field forward. “Indiana is way ahead of the game in life sciences,” she says. Her own history is a case study in what Indiana has done right.

When Wright was a youngster in Seymour, she won a number of health-and-safety awards in 4-H, one of which took her to Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., which honored the young 4-Hers. Wright recalls a demonstration, back when lasers were new, showing how the sound of a baby crying could be turned into light. She was captivated and thought that science seemed “pretty cool.” Her first full-time job was at Lilly and even today her Lilly mentor, since retired, advises her at BioConvergence.

BioConvergence, which started operations in 2006, helps develop products, does small-scale production for clinical trials, handles distribution and ensures that products comply with federal regulations—essentially acting as a bridge between the startup’s great idea and commercial production. As Wright explained, “It takes too much time and too much money to develop life sciences ideas. I want to help cut time and costs and reduce risk so that products can be brought to market.”

After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s from Purdue University, Wright landed in Bloomington working for Cook Group Inc. and has stayed, as her husband works for Cook. Her industry and community interests include ISPE, an international life sciences trade group; BioCrossroads, a central Indiana life sciences advocacy group; Purdue’s School of Pharmacy; the Indiana University School of Informatics and the IU Kelley School of Business; and United Way. She is passionate about demystifying math and science for young students, who might be intimidated by the subjects, and works to improve math and science education through the I-STEM Resource Network, a public-private partnership.

Raul E. Zavaleta, 57
CEO, Indigo BioSystems Inc.
Partner, Volatus Advisors LLC

If 10,000 hours is the magic number for mastery, Raul Zavaleta, with 25 years in life sciences, has hit the target in startups. Through Volatus, an Indianapolis-based enterprise development consulting firm for entrepreneurial companies, Zavaleta helps clients with strategic visioning, business planning and capital structures. Indianapolis-based Indigo BioSystems, where Zavaleta serves as CEO, provides automated data analysis, management and integration to clinical diagnostics reference laboratories and life sciences markets.

Born and raised in El Salvador, he didn’t speak English when he moved to Los Angeles at age 19. He says, “I went to work as a cabinetmaker’s apprentice with my father while I went to school at night. After a year, I had managed to learn English well enough to enroll in East LA Community College.” He was playing soccer with a local semi-professional team when the coach for the University of California at Los Angeles saw him and recruited him with a soccer scholarship. Along with his bachelor’s in chemical engineering, he earned conference honors in soccer all four years and was team captain for three.

In 1985, he and three friends had the idea to start the first clinical laboratory exclusively for clinical trials. “We pitched a business plan to several investors and pharmaceutical companies,” he said. One of those companies was Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. One thing led to another and in 1986, Zavaleta moved to Indianapolis to start his first venture, SciCor, which quickly became a leader in laboratory services for the pharmaceutical industry. Princeton, N.J.-based Covance, née Corning Lab Services, later absorbed the company.

Beginning in 1993, Zavaleta became involved in a series of technology companies, some of which are related to data collection, storage and distribution: Avantec, an electronic data-collection company adopted in pharmaceutical clinical trials; and Performance Assessment Network, a Web-based system for distribution, administration and analysis of professional assessments, tests and surveys. PAN was acquired by Talx, which was acquired by Equifax.

Zavaleta also has worked with Strategies for Tomorrow, a national consulting firm involved in the exchange of medical records by hospitals, physicians, clinics, diagnostic laboratories, public health officials and patients; Strand Analytical Laboratories, a private laboratory that handles outsourced DNA testing for forensic applications; and Semafore Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage drug discovery and development company.

Before foraging into the entrepreneurial frontier, Zavaleta worked for Dow Chemical, American Hospital Supply and Smith Kline Beecham Laboratories. In Indiana, he serves on the board of trustees of Marian University, and the boards of the United Way of Central Indiana, the Central Indiana Community Foundation, the Indiana Health Industry Forum and the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce.•

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