Magali Haas, MD, PhD, MSE
Founder and CEO, Orion Bionetworks

Dr. Haas founded Orion Bionetworks in July 2012 and serves as its CEO and President. Magali has over 15 years of pharmaceutical executive and clinical research experience, predominantly at Johnson & Johnson, where she assumed broad end-to-end development leadership roles in medical marketing, full clinical development, early development, and translational and biomarker sciences in psychiatry and neurology.  She successfully filed NDAs in the US and Europe for risperidone indications in Autism, Adolescent Schizophrenia, Juvenile Bipolar Disorder and Conduct Disorders.  She also led Development Teams evaluating compounds for Depression, Neuropathic Pain, Epilepsy, and Migraine Disorder.

She served 3 years as Chief Science and Technology Officer for One Mind for Research, a nonprofit organization launched in May 2012 by Patrick J Kennedy.  She orchestrated the launch of One Mind’s seminal programs, Apollo, an informatics research portal and, Gemini, an international TBI/PTSD research program.

As an “intrapreneur” at J&J she established the first Neuroscience Translational Medicine & Integrative Solutions department, and co-founded the first Companion Diagnostics Center of Excellence as well as J&J’s Healthcare Innovation team.  She serves on several advisory boards including the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, Brain Canada, Prophase, Pear Therapeutics and IMEC for nanoelectronics.

Magali earned her BS in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and her MD PhD with distinction in neuroscience from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.

Keith O. Elliston, PhD
Consulting Scientific Director

Keith O. Elliston, PhD is an experienced scientist and entrepreneur with expertise in the development and growth of new life science and technology businesses, from both operational and investment perspectives. As a scientist, Keith specializes in Systems Biology; he built and managed the Systems Biology program for CHDI, the Huntington’s Disease foundation, and has been a co-founder and Chief Scientist for the tranSMART Foundation, and has more than 40 peer reviewed scientific publications. As an entrepreneur, Keith is a co-founder and CEO for Virtual-Rx, a virtual pharma platform company, was Co- founder, President and CEO, of Selventa (nee’ Genstruct), a venture-backed systems biology platform company, and CEO and co-founder of Viaken Systems, a venture-backed informatics service provider, among others. Keith began his career at Merck, where he built and led the Bioinformatics and Genomics programs, and ran the Merck Gene Index, a privately funded public genome effort that published the first sequence for 90% of expressed human genes. Keith has successfully built biotechnology businesses from startup through IPO, and established profitable and capital efficient companies working both with Venture Capital and as a founder or advisor. Keith combines extensive experience in pharmaceutical R&D, biotechnology and information technology, with successful executive and team leadership into a unique set of skills that drives innovation and value.

Andreas Jeromin, PhD
Consulting Biomarkers Director

Andreas Jeromin, PhD, has established research programs in translational neuroscience in both industry and biotech for the last 15 years and co-authored more than 100 publications. He has also been elected a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. Andreas Jeromin has led biomarker qualification programs in diagnostics and therapeutics in acute neurological injury and neurodegeneration in roles with increased responsibilities. This included several drug development program from POC to a NINDS-supported phase III trial (Protect III). He also supports as member of the SABs or steering committee, several biomarker qualification efforts such as ADNI, the Coalition against Major Diseases (CAMD) directed by the Critical Path Institute (C-PATH), the Alzheimer’s Association CSF QC and biomarker assay standardization initiatives in other CNS disorders, including MS (Accelerated Cure), ALS and PD. He is the founder and CSO of Atlantic Biomarkers, LLC, and joined Quanterix, Inc. as scientific and medical advisor in 2014.

Thomas P. Oberst
Consulting IT Director

Thomas P. Oberst leverages his 35 years of experience in high tech and financial services as Principle and Chief for Advanced Strategic Technology, to provide vision and technical leadership in the area of Big Data and Big Data Analytics and in Cyber Security in voluntary support of Orion’s mission.

His career has spanned 20 years in high tech working, mostly in product development for startups which were later purchased by Hewlett Packard, and EMC. His more recent career was spent working in the Enterprise Architecture and Technology Group at Fidelity Investments where he helped design, develop and deploy some of the most advanced systems used anywhere in Financial Services.

Tom has expertise in computer and server architecture, system design, development, systems engineering and deployment of secure, highly scalable, globally deployable information infrastructure.

Tom earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from Union College, and master degrees in Computer Science and Business from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Harvard Business School.

Allison Provost, PhD

Scientific Program Manager

Allison Provost is overseeing Orion’s Initiative on Biomarkers in Neurodegenerative Disease, which seeks to facilitate development of brain disease diagnostics through translational approaches. To date, she has successfully led a program at Orion to develop bioinformatics tools for biomarker discovery and is currently working with the Orion team to interpret the MS 1.0 biomodels and integrate findings across the different modeling strategies. She received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and Sackler Fellow in Psychobiology. In her dissertation research she used optogenetics and cutting edge technologies in live brain imaging to elucidate a deeper understanding of neuromodulation in healthy brains and the activity dependent nature of the formation of neural circuits. In addition to her academic research, she has devoted much time to service projects such as volunteering as an Americorps to work with homeless individuals in the Bay Area and leading a mentoring program at Harvard that served hundreds of students and faculty.

Dr. Winnie Pong

Scientific Program Manager Intern

Dr. Winnie Pong completed her doctoral work in retinal neurobiology at Boston University and post-doctoral research in brain cancer immunology at Washington University Medical School in St Louis. Winnie has additionally worked as a consultant and project manager in The Biotechnology and Life Science Advising (BALSA) Group and Scientific and Market Life Science Advising (SCIMALS) and gained communications and marketing experience as National Communications Vice Chair of Women In Bio.

Alden Masonis, PhD, Senior Strategist and Founding Partner, Percolation Communications LLC

Alden is a senior strategist and founding partner of Percolation Communications LLC, as well as founding partner of its parent company, Blue Ocean Pharma LLC. He has 17 years experience working in the medical/marketing communications industry.

Alden has extensive therapeutic area expertise in neurology and psychiatry, including the areas of epilepsy, mood and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, migraine, and neuropathic pain. Alden has additional therapy area expertise in infectious diseases, rheumatology, diabetes, oncology, and cardiovascular disease.

Alden received his doctoral degree from a joint program in neuropharmacology between Rutgers University Graduate School and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. His thesis research established the first evidence for a direct interaction between androgenic and anabolic steroids and the gamma aminobutyric acid receptor system in rat brain. His postdoctoral research, in neuroendocrinology and reproductive physiology, was completed at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland.

Chancey A. Wesner, Senior Director Program Services, Percolations Communications LLC

With more than 30 years’ experience in pharmaceutical medical communication, Chancey has hands-on experience managing content development, advisory boards, print, multimedia, and Web-based programs.

Much of Chancey’s career has been devoted to managing the workflow for the US division of Excerpta Medica (EM), a global medical education/communications company. Working with senior management there, she was fortunate to be invited to direct and implement the launch of their CME journal clinical CORNERSTONE^®. She also was responsible for managing the Quality Control, Graphic Arts, and Production departments. During her tenure there, recognizing the need to streamline workflow and improve efficiency, she developed two procedure manuals.

Chancey gained additional experience with e-learning technology and Web-site development at Newton Gravity Shift and Accelera.

Working with most of the major pharmaceutical companies throughout the United States, Chancey has had the opportunity to work with key thought leaders in numerous areas, including anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antihypertensives, anti-infectives, anti-inflammatories, antipsychotics, antivirals, cardiology, and oncology.

Chancey has managed key opinion leader debriefs via live Web casts, multimedia programs, print, and advisory boards for many of the major pharmaceutical companies, including Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli-Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Graceway , Janssen Pharmaceutica, Merck & Company, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, sanofi-aventis, Teva, and Watson Pharmaceuticals.

Chancey has taken advanced courses in graphic arts and production at the Mercer County Vocational/ Technical School and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Heather Lasseter, PhD, Medical Writer, Percolation Communications

Heather Lasseter earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the field of behavioral neuroscience. Her doctoral dissertation research, which focused on the neural underpinnings of cocaine addiction, earned the 2012 Linda Dykstra Distinguished Dissertation Award in Social Sciences. After earning her doctoral degree, Heather was awarded a post-doctoral Cancer Research Training Award to pursue a health communications fellowship at the National Cancer Institute.

Heather is now a Medical Writer for Percolation Communications LLC, where she provides coverage of scientific meetings and develops a variety of high-quality scientific deliverables, including content for US and ex-US advisory boards and scientific symposia as well as enduring materials, manuscripts, white papers, congress activities, and educational materials. Heather has experience with a number of CNS-related disease states, including mood and anxiety disorders, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.

Evelyn Albu, PhD, Percolation Communications LLC

Evelyn Albu is a medical education professional with experience on both the corporate and agency side of medical education. Evelyn has experience in a wide variety of therapeutic categories. In CNS, Evelyn has planned and implemented a 2 year series of educational programs in Parkinson’s disease as well as having experience in developing medical educational programs for MS related to the interferons and developmental medical education programs for rituximab, and fingolimod prior to launch.

Evelyn received her PhD from Georgetown University Medical School. She has experience in pre-clinical and clinical research at BMS and Schering Corporation. She has served in various management capacities for a number of medical education providers including Integrated Communications, Applied Clinical Communications/Ingenix, SynerMed, GenQuest/BioGenesis, Helix Medical Communications, and Percolation Communications.

Gloria Dunn, Associate Program Manager, Percolation Communications LLC

Gloria Dunn is an Associate Program Manager for Percolation Communications LLC. She has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, spending most of that time at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Gloria has experience working with key opinion leaders and global medical/marketing managers in the anti-infectives and anti-fungals areas, routing programs through the approval process, and all facets of the administrative field.

Since joining Percolation Communications LLC, Gloria has worked on symposia development and implementation, including venue selection, contracts, and finance. She also has experience with opinion leader mapping and debate programs, webinars, and advisory boards.

Gloria has a BS in business management from Marymount Manhattan College.

Arielle Landsberg, Design Director, Tone Creative

Arielle Landsberg is the co-founder and Design Director of Tone Creative. Arielle specializes in targeted graphic design for print and web, brand strategy, and content development. She is a graduate of Skidmore College.

Dan Vidali, Creative Developer, Tone Creative

Dan Vidali is the co-founder and Creative Developer at Tone Creative. He has over twelve years of web design and development experience, as well as a background in music and recording engineering. He is a graduate of Skidmore College.