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Johan Pontin
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Emerald BioStructures
Mr. Pontin has served as Emerald BioStructure’s Executive Chairman since November 2009, in which he has been responsible for leading the Company’s business strategy, and has over 15 years of broad international experience in strategic planning, venture and private equity investments, and corporate and business development. Mr. Pontin previously served as Founding and Managing Partner of Pod Venture Partners, an international closely held private equity firm. He also previously served as Group Manager of Corporate Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions at ASSA ABLOY AB and as a management consultant in the Financial Advisory Services group at Coopers & Lybrand LLC. Mr. Pontin has a Bachelor’s degree from Carroll School of Management at Boston College and served as a PT Boat Commander in the Royal Swedish Navy.
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Alex Burgin, Ph.D.
Chief Operating Officer, Emerald BioStructures
"We are always emphasizing communication - working with our clients to understand the target and their ligands is the key to every successful collaboration."
Alex has over fifteen years of experience in pharmaceutical research and twenty years of experience in studying enzyme structure/function relationships. Alex received his Ph.D. in genetics at Indiana University in 1990, and then completed his post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health focusing on bio-organic chemistry and enzyme mechanism. He joined Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals in 1994 as a Senior Scientist, and became Group Leader in 1995. In 1998, Alex joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at San Diego State University where he directed an active research lab studying the mechanism of DNA recombinases, topoisomerases and phosphodiesterases. In 2001, Alex joined deCODE biostructures as Director of Molecular Biology and oversaw gene synthesis, cloning, bacterial fermentation and assay development. In 2006, Alex became Chief Operating Officer of Emerald BioStructures and oversees all client gene to structure projects and internal structural biology programs. Alex has published over 50 peer reviewed papers and is an inventor on 8 issued patents.
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Diana R. Wetmore, Ph.D.
Vice President of Business Development & Alliances, Emerald BioStructures
“Emerald BioStructures leads the field in high throughput protein structure determination. Our combination of award-winning instrumentation and technical expertise makes us the leading CRO for fast and cost efficient service.”
Diana has an extensive background operating at the interface of business and science in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to joining Emerald BioStructures, she was Vice President of Alliance Management for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics, Inc (CFFT) where she managed the strategic planning process for the CF Foundation supported therapeutics pipeline and identified and launched multiple new discovery and development projects with industry collaborators. During this period her efforts helped shepherd many compounds or biologics into the clinical development pipeline. Prior to joining CFFT, she held positions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. At Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals (now Bristol Myers Squibb), she was part of the crystallography group and studied protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions using calorimetric methods. During her 5-year tenure at Scriptgen Pharmaceuticals, now Anadys, she led the fragment discovery and drug design group before moving to Sr. Director of R&D Project Management. At Geneprot, Inc., she served as the Chief Technical Officer for that proteomics-based target discovery company. Diana obtained her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Calgary in Canada, where her interest was in studying the contributions of ligand binding to protein folding and stability.
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Chris Tauer
Chief Financial Officer
Chris Tauer, Chief Financial Officer, joined Emerald in November 2009 with 11 years of Life Science experience. He oversees all financial and administrative operational activities of the Company. Prior to joining Emerald in 2009, Chris held several positions within deCODE genetics, Inc., (NASDAQ: DCGN) from 2002 – 2009, which concluded with Vice President of Finance, U.S. Operations. Prior to working with deCODE, Chris worked for MediChem Life Sceinces, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCLS) from 1999 – 2002 where he was involved in M&A activity (acquisition of Emerald BioStructures & ThermoGen, Inc.) and MediChem’s IPO in 2000. Chris received his B.A. in Accounting from Eastern Illinois University.
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Bart Staker, Ph.D.
Senior Group Leader
"We have invested heavily in automation and workflow management allowing us to greatly increase the number of structures solved while shortening the delivery time."
Bart has been the lead scientist on numerous structure determination research collaborations and is currently Site Manager forSeattleStructuralGenomicsCenter for Infectious Diseases (SSGCID). Bart oversees all protein crystallography and structure determination for SSGCID as well as development of automation for high throughput cloning of codon engineered gene constructs, expression, purification and crystallization. Bart joined Biostructures in 2000 as a Research Scientist after earning his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan in 2000. Bart has managed and led client structure determination projects since the inception of client research operations at biostructures. Bart has published 15 peer reviewed journal articles and is an inventor on 3 issued or published US patents.
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Doug R. Davies, Ph.D., P.M.P
Senior Project Leader
"One of the keys to our success across dozens of projects is our collaborative approach. At Emerald BioStructures we strive to provide clear communication and facilitate an ongoing scientific dialog with our clients. We believe this culture results in great science, not just great customer service."
Doug has been the lead scientist on numerous structure determination research collaborations and is currently responsible for technology development at Emerald BioStructures including fragment based crystallography. Doug oversees development and deployment of Emerald BioStructures' Fragments of LifeTM (FOL) library, a novel collection of small molecule metabolites used for fragment based drug discovery. Doug joined Biostructures in 2005 as a Senior Research Scientist after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. Doug earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. Doug has published 14 peer reviewed journal articles, 11 as first author.
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Thomas E. Edwards, Ph.D.
Senior Project Leader
"Communication is the most important aspect of a successful collaboration, from business development to the delivery of intellectual property. Projects are most successful when information is communicated effectively such that each and every person involved in the project is able to perform his or her job to its maximum potential."
With a wide expertise on RNA, DNA and protein structural biology, Tom has been at the forefront of numerous successful structure determination research collaborations. In addition, Tom is the protein purification group leader at Emerald BioStructures and a crystallographer for the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Diseases (SSGCID). Prior to joining Emerald in 2007, Tom obtained a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Washington and was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Tom has published 17 peer reviewed journal articles, 9 as first author.
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