Our Team
Our Team is a combination of technology experts and hungry sales hunters who combine their skills to articulate complex value propositions for Technical and Economic buyers of Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and Laboratory companies.
Our teams are reinforced by a panel of Industry and Scientific Advisors.
PharmaNest Operations Team:
Florence Brellier, Ph.D.
Oncology Drug Discovery professional (formerly from Novartis Research Foundation) with hands-on and project management experience in drug discovery research with a practical knowledge of both the Academic and Industry drug discovery processes and frameworks in Oncology and its related sub-segments including: extensive 2D and 3D cell culture experience, tissue engineering expertise, broad molecular biology and biochemistry, histology expertise and bio-informatics expertise.
Li Chen, Ph.D.
Formerly with ImClone Systems (Eli Lilly & Company), Hoffmann-La Roche, and Zeus Scientific. Li Chen is an experienced pharmaceutical research scientist familiar with most in-vivo and in-vitro techniques and related workflows used in industry. More specifically, Li Chen is experienced in assay development and validation, demanding regulatory and quality assurance frameworks, related technology transfers, and management of programs with CROs or technology vendors. Her expertise include pre-clinical and clinical programs for drug discovery and development in therapeutic areas including infectious, inflammatory, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, and oncology.
Delphine Davan-Gatti, MS
Delphine supports PharmaNest and its client in the downstream market development activities to support an effective "first-in-country" market entry process, such as prospect identification and qualification, commercial presentations, international events, and synchronized market presence / lead generation programs. Delphine has been Business Development manager and Head of Sales for various Life-Sciences European companies
Sam Kongsamut, Ph.D.
Dr. Kongsamut brings +25-years of experience in both big pharma and small biotech companies.His work at big pharma includes pharmaceutical R&D and business development experience at Sanofi. He managed various-sized groups of scientists in biochemical pharmacology that served multiple project teams in the neuroscience area, and was a member of the CNS Board that managed the CNS project portfolio.
Kimberly A.
Levin, MD, FACP,
Having
over 10 years experience as a Pathologist and Medical
Director in both the commercial laboratory and suburban hospital setting, Kimberly has been practicing anatomic and
clinical pathology for 20 years and is board certified in hematopathology and
cytopathology. She is well-versed with tissue and specimen preparation,
processing, and diagnosis, in addition to virtual image analysis, flow
cytometry, and light microscopy.
Mathieu Petitjean, Ph.D.
Former Chief Marketing Officer at General Electric and Leader of P&L Operations at GE Healthcare. Held several business, product and technology leadership roles with GE Clinical Services and GE Medical Systems. His technology expertise span accross the spectrum of Physical Instrumentation. He has extensively published and created intellectual property in the areas of Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Semiconductor Bandgap Engineering and Medical/Cellular Imaging.
PharmaNest industry Advisory Board
Christophe Arbet-Engels, MD, Ph.D.
Dr. Christophe Arbet-Engels is the former Vice-President, Metabolism - Clinical Development and Medical Affairs at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI). Since he joined BI he has been heading the US Clinical Development & Medical Affairs-Metabolic group supporting a large portfolio of molecules for the treatment of Diabetes either in development, in launch phases or on the market. Parts of his responsibilities are included within the Diabetes Alliance between BI and Eli Lilly.
Claude Benchimol, Ph.D.
Claude Benchimol served as the Senior Vice President of Research & Development at Life Technologies Corporation (Invitrogen Corp.) since September 2003. Before joining Invitrogen, Dr. Benchimol held technology leadership roles for 25 years at General Electric. He served as VP of global technology for GEs Medical Systems, Information Technologies. Dr. Benchimol received a masters degree in engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in France, as well as a masters and doctorate degree in System Science from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Myles Fennell, Ph.D
Scientific Leader, Neurosciences Assau Development, MSK-CC
Myles is an expert in drug discovery and in vitromodels with extensive experience in High-Content Screening and Neuroscience. During his time atWyeth and Bristol-Myers Squibb he has been a leader of several drug discovery teams and technology initiatives including High-Content screening and the use of stem cell derived models for drug discovery and development. At GigaCyteMyles was the Director in charge of developing and launching products based on neural stem cells and building collaborations with pharma and academia.
Ralph Garippa, Ph.D.
Dr. Garippa is the Head of the newly created RNAi Core facility at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Ralph is the former Head of Cell-Based High Throughput Screening (HTS) and Microscopic Imaging-based High Content Screening (HCS) at Hoffmann-La Roche’s Nutley NJ Site.
Prior to this role, Ralph was Roche's site manager for the Perkin Elmer / Evotec-Zeiss Ultra High Throughput Screening platform. He is former member (2005-2008) of the Scientific Advisory board for the MLSCN Roadmap Project at the NIH.
Joanne Gere
Joanne Gere is the Executive Director at the BioPharma Research Council, a non-for-profit producer of high-content educational programs for the biotech/pharmaceutical research community. Joanne is a versatile business strategy and communications professional. Her leadership assignments address the dynamic interplay between strategic thinking, validation of business assumptions, and actionable plans.
The BioScience Collaborative was founded by Ms. Gere in 2007 as a framework for consulting with life science. In addition to working directly with growing businesses, she has organized many symposia, round-tables, and conferences.
Ed Kuspiel
Chair, LRIG (Laboratory Robotics Interest Group) Mid Atlantic
Edward Kuspiel received a B.A. and B.S. in Engineering from The College of New Jersey in 1981. Working as a Senior Engineer for Wallace and Tiernan, Ed designed electronics and control software used in new products for chemical process instrumentation. Since 1986, Ed has been with Bristol-Myers, Squibb where he is a Group Leader in Discovery Informatics and Automation. During his tenure at BMS, Ed has developed multiple novel robotics systems, laboratory instruments, and specialized controls used in pharmaceutical research.
Lisa Minor, Ph.D.
Lisa is a Biomedical Expert with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of technologies used for Drug Discovery Research, Screening and Assay Development and safety pharmacolohy. Most recenly at Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D, she led several initiatives to evaluate and implement screening and cellular imaging technologies. She chairs several Cell-based assay development meetings and is an active speaker in the same. Lisa is an NIH grant reviewer and on the Editorial Board for NIH Assay Development Manual. She is a past Board, serving two terms for the Society for Biomolecular Sciences and is a member of the Board of Scientific Counsellors for the National Toxicology Program.
Karl-Heinz Ott, Ph.D:
Karl-Heinz is a scientist experienced in drug discovery and development across the pharmaceutical portfolio, including oncology, immunology, metabolic diseases, and neuroscience. Most recently at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Frederic Pla, Ph.D.
Vice President, Corporate Business Development, for Life Technologies, San Diego, CA
Fredeirc leads external growth and M&A initiatives for Life Technologies in areas such as molecular medicine and applied markets. Frederic joined Life Technologies in 2005 as Vice President and General Manager of the Diagnostics Business. Prior to joining Invitrogen, Frederic Pla held key global managerial positions at GE Healthcare, including General Manager of Cardiology Care, General Manager of Clinical Enterprise Solutions, and General Manager for the Cardiovascular Information Systems business. Frederic He is a holder of 23 U.S. patents. Frederic Pla holds a Ph.D. in Acoustics from the Pennsylvania State University and is a holder of 23 U.S. patents.
Adam J Simon, Ph.D
13 years at Merck Research Laboratories in the field of discovery, analytical fit-for-purpose validation of neuroscience biomarkers across multiple disease areas and in support of Imaging ( PET, MRI, MRS), Molecular Profiling and Experimental Medicine projects. Initiated and leadinternational collaborations with renowned Alzheimer biomarker thought leaders. Alzheimer's disease biomarker advisor to FDA