Philip is Founder and Managing Partner of Evolution Venture Partners and a registered representative of Ecoban Securities Corporation. He is also the Founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Reset Pharmaceuticals. Philip has extensive experience in investment banking, merchant banking and the management of small and mid-size companies. He has participated in over 150 public and private debt and equity offerings in his career. He has been involved in over $1 billion in financings for early stage companies. Philip was Founder and Managing Partner of Foundation Ventures, an investment banking and advisory firm serving the life sciences industry. Previously, Philip was Founder and Managing Director of BlueStone Capital Partners, a global investment and merchant bank focused on small and mid-cap growth companies. He was also Founder and Managing Director of Trade.com Global Markets, a global technology and financial services provider to leading financial institutions worldwide, including ABN Amro and Standard Chartered Bank. His responsibilities included starting up and managing Trade.com's Asia Pacific headquarters while based in Singapore. The combined entities of BlueStone and Trade.com had over 600 employees with offices in New York, California, New Jersey, Florida, Frankfurt, London, Vienna, Mumbai, Dehli, Sydney, and Singapore. Philip has extensive experience working with major international banks and equity sponsors. In addition, he has significant expertise in the operations and restructuring of small and mid-cap companies. He has served on numerous boards of directors and has been a guest lecturer on various topics, including technology startups and financial services at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Philip received his B.A. from Northwestern University.
John Andreadis is Founder and Managing Partner of Evolution Venture Partners and a registered representative of Ecoban Securities Corporation. He is also Founder and Member of the Board of Directors of Reset Pharmaceuticals. He has 25 years of experience in the investment banking and asset management business. He has been instrumental in structuring over $1 billion dollar in strategic transactions and financings for domestic and international biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to Founding Evolution Venture Partners he was Founder and Managing Partner of HealthPro BioVentures which provided a vast array of advisory services including strategic partnering, M&A advisory and capital formation to the life sciences industry. John was a Founder and Managing Director of BlueStone Capital Partners and was instrumental in raising the initial capital for the firm that grew to more than 600 employees in five years. As a founding partner at BlueStone, he was a member of the Private Placement Group and had a key role in the financing and structuring of companies across multiple industry groups with a focus on high technology and healthcare. John began his career at Lehman Brothers in 1988 as a Financial Consultant. He is experienced in raising capital for and advising early stage growth companies and has been actively involved with over 100 public and private financings. He was also a successful trader in aggressive growth and biotech companies and has a comprehensive knowledge of the equity markets.
Jorge is a Strategic Partner at Evolution Venture Partners. Jorge heads up EVP's Molecular Diagnostics activities. Dr. Jorge Leon is internationally recognized for his pioneering work in molecular diagnostics. Dr. Leon holds a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from New York University, and completed his postdoctoral studies at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and Columbia University in NYC. Dr. Leon’s subsequent academic research focused on developing monoclonal antibody-based tumor marker assays and radio-immuno imaging devices, which are currently in wide use. In the early 1990s, Dr. Jorge Leon transitioned into industry, playing an integral role in establishing and leading the molecular diagnostics laboratories at Quest Diagnostics. As Director of Molecular Diagnostics, Senior Director of Biotechnology Development, and Vice President of Applied Genomics, Dr. Leon spent twelve years developing Quest’s molecular diagnostics strategy, which is now the world’s largest molecular diagnostics service laboratory. In 2003, Dr. Leon founded Leomics Associates, Inc. a consulting firm committed to helping develop molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine (pharmacogenomics) in the United States and globally. Dr. Jorge Leon and his experienced team specializes in identifying breakthrough opportunities and industry trends, and helps start-up businesses, academic centers and established companies successfully build and commercialize innovative business strategies, product pipelines, and test menus.
Dr. Adam Gazzaley obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, completed Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley. He is now the David Dolby Distinguished Professor in Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco and the Founder / Executive Director of Neuroscape, a translational neuroscience center engaged in technology creation and scientific research. He designs and develops novel brain assessment and optimization tools to impact education, wellness, and medicine practices. This novel approach involves the development of custom-designed, closed-loop video games integrated with the latest advancements in software (brain computer interfaces, GPU computing, cloud-based analytics) and hardware (virtual/augmented reality, motion capture, mobile physiological recording devices, transcranial electrical brain stimulation). These technologies are then advanced to rigorous research studies that evaluate their impact on multiple aspects of brain function and physiology. This utilizes a powerful combination of neurophysiological tools, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Dr. Gazzaley is also co-founder and Chief Science Advisor of Akili Interactive, a company developing therapeutic video games and co-founder and Chief Scientist of JAZZ Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in experiential technology to improve human performance. Additionally, he has been a scientific advisor for over a dozen companies including Apple, GE, Nielsen, Deloitte, Janssen, and Pepsico, as well as the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Dr. Gazzaley has filed multiple patents for his inventions, authored over 160 scientific articles, and delivered over 700 invited presentations around the world. His research and perspectives have been consistently profiled in high-impact media, such as The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Discover, Wired, PBS, NPR, CNN and NBC Nightly News. He wrote and hosted the nationally-televised PBS special “The Distracted Mind with Dr. Adam Gazzaley”, and co-authored with Dr. Larry Rosen the MIT Press book: “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World”, winner of the 2017 PROSE Award in the category of Biomedicine and Neuroscience. Dr. Gazzaley has received many awards and honors, including the Society for Neuroscience – Science Educator Award, a 2020 Global Gaming Citizen Honor and was named in Newsweek's 2021 Inaugural list of America’s Greatest Disruptors. He is a Board of Trustee and Science Council Member and Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.and a Board of Trustee and Science Council Member of the California Academy of Sciences.
Gary E. Solomon, MD, is an associate professor in the department of medicine at New York University Langone School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Department of Rheumatology. He received his medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he also completed his postgraduate training in medicine. He went on to complete a fellowship in rheumatology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Solomon is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology by the American Board of Internal Medicine, former president of the New York Rheumatism Association, and a member of the American College of Rheumatology. Dr. Solomon has participated in numerous advisory boards for developing drug treatments and has spoken extensively to both physician and patient audiences in the field of rheumatology. He directs the Center for Arthritis and Autoimmunity, where he treats patients with various inflammatory conditions, including but not limited to Rheumatoid and Psoriatic Arthritis. For 30 years, he was the Director of the Arthritis Clinic at the New York University Medical Center’s Hospital for Joint Diseases. He also served as consulting rheumatologist to the NYU Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Clinic.
Dr. Sklar is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist in a large clinical practice in suburban Chicago. For over ten years, he has been recognized as a leader in the treatment of a wide variety of problems in women's health including low and high-risk obstetrics, preventative medicine, contraception, infertility, pelvic pain, routine gynecology, urinary incontinence, menopausal medicine and gynecologic surgery. He is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and he serves as an active participant in multiple local and regional quality assurance and peer review committees. Dr. Sklar received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his medical degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. During his residency at Loyola University of Chicago, he conducted research on the impact of amniotic fluid on the latency to delivery of patients with preterm prematurely ruptured membranes. He has a strong interest in, and was recognized for excellence in student and resident medical education. More recently, Dr. Sklar has been working towards the development of processes and mechanisms to improve quality and efficiency in the hospital setting.
Mr. Gerbsman is a nationally recognized crisis/turnaround professional who has been involved in maximizing enterprise, stakeholder and shareholder value in a broad variety of industries. He has worked with a wide spectrum of senior and junior lenders, bondholder groups, venture capital and equity sources, private investors and institutional groups. He has acted in the capacity of Crisis Turnaround CEO, Crisis Consultant, Private Investment Banker, Examiner for the Office of the United States Trustee, a member of the Board of Directors of various companies and Advisor to stakeholder groups. Mr. Gerbsman formed the Technology Recovery Group in 1999 in order to maximize stakeholder value for under-performing, under-capitalized and/or under-valued Technology/Internet companies and their Intellectual Property. Mr. Gerbsman has been a featured speaker and panelist discussing maximizing enterprise, stakeholder and shareholder value for under-performing, under-valued and under-capitalized low-tech and Technology/Internet companies and their Intellectual Property at the Turnaround Management Association, American Bankruptcy Institute, Distressed Investing Seminars, eMediatainment and eVenture forums, among others.
Jan-Anders Karlsson is the former CEO of Verona Pharma. He has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with many successes in the drug discovery and development areas in both large pharmaceutical and biotech companies where he built entrepreneurial drug discovery and development cultures. Before joining Verona Pharma, Jan-Anders was the CEO of S*BIO Pte Ltd in Singapore from 2005, which discovered 6 novel drug candidates and brought the lead JAK2 inhibitor pacritinib to phase 3 and the HDAC inhibitor pracinostat to phase 2, raised venture funding and established multiple international drug-development and commercial partnerships. Prior to joining S*BIO, Jan-Anders was the Executive Vice President, Global Research of Bayer Pharma, where he was a member of the Executive Management Committee and responsible for the company's global drug discovery organization. He worked with Bayer from 1996 and before this he held management positions with increasing responsibility in Rhone-Poulenc Rorer from 1990 to 1996 and Astra AB from 1979 to 1990.
Dr. Zimberg is the medical director of Advanced Radiation Centers of New York. He is a board-certified radiation oncologist involved in the treatment of lung and gastrointestinal cancers, with strong expertise in head and neck, prostate and breast cancers. Dr. Zimberg performed his radiation oncology residency training at the renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, where he was chosen from all residents to receive the American Cancer Society’s Clinical Fellowship award. Dr. Zimberg lectures regularly before both community and medical audiences on topics including: prostate, breast, colo-rectal and lung cancers.
Dr. Kosciessa has over two decades of research, business development and marketing leadership experience. Dr. Kosciessa has gained extensive experience in international marketing, management and business development through his career. He also has collected valuable knowledge in product development through his scientific background and experience in managing research groups. Dr. Kosciessa completed is PhD at Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany in Molecular Biology in 1993 followed by a three year Post Doctoral Program at the multinational Pharmaceutical Company, Schering AG – now Bayer AG - in Neurosience/neurodegenerative diseases. During his research carrier he published several papers in scientific journals.
Scott L. Kauffman has more than 25 years of senior executive and board leadership experience with both public and private companies, and is a widely recognized industry leader and expert in the fields of digital entertainment, Internet media and consumer marketing. Mr. Kauffman is the former Presiding Director of MDC Partners (NASDAQ:MDCA), an advertising agency holding company, and the Chairman of several venture-backed Internet companies. Prior to focusing exclusively on board work, Mr. Kauffman was the President & CEO, and a member of the board of Geeknet (NASDAQ:GKNT), the parent company of SourceForge, Slashdot and ThinkGeek. He joined Geeknet shortly after Yahoo! acquired BlueLithium, where he served as President & COO.
