Salvatore Mascia is the Founder & CEO of CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals. He was the former Strategic Project Manager at the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, where he led the integration of the first end-to-end continuous manufacturing process for pharmaceuticals. At the end of the project, he was presented with the “Leadership Award” that recognized his leadership role at the Center. Salvatore has gained experience in strategic management and fund raising in addition to leadership skills via various roles of responsibility within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Among those, he co-founded “Professionisti Italiani a Boston” in 2009, and served as President of the “Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club” in 2006/07. He also ran a pharmacy business for 2 years. Salvatore completed a post-doc at MIT in Chemical Engineering and holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK and a BS and MS in Pharmacy (summa cum laude) from University of Perugia, Italy.
Bayan Takizawa is a co-founder and the Chief Business Officer at CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals. Before joining CONTINUUS, he was a consultant with The Chartis Group, an advisory firm that provides strategic and operational support for hospitals and healthcare systems. Prior to Chartis, Bayan was a senior analyst at Actin Biomed, a healthcare venture capital firm. In addition, Bayan has worked at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, where he studied the economic impact of a novel continuous chromatography technology. This work led to his Master’s Thesis, which was nominated for “Best Thesis Award” within the Leaders For Global Operations Program at MIT. Bayan has an MD from Yale, an MS in Engineering Systems and MBA from MIT, and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell. He has multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Jonathan Fleming is the President and CEO of Q-State Biosciences, an early stage company that has developed an all-optical electrophysiology platform that can be leveraged in cardiac and neuronal drug discovery, cardio- and neuro-toxicity screening, mechanistic studies, and model development and validation. He is the former managing partner of Oxford Biosciences, a venture capital firm specializing in life science technology based investments.
Mr. Fleming has been in the investment business for over thirty one years, starting and financing growth companies in the United States, Europe, Israel and Asia. Prior to joining OBP in 1996, he was a Founding General Partner of MVP Ventures in Boston, MA. He began his investment career with TVM Techno Venture Management in Munich, Germany. Mr. Fleming has also co-founded Medica Venture Partners, a venture capital investment firm specializing in early stage healthcare and biotechnology companies in Israel. Mr. Fleming is a director of several private companies including Leerink Partners, a Boston based investment bank specializing in healthcare companies. In addition, Mr. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Business, and a Member of the Board of NEHI, a healthcare oriented think tank and policy advocacy group. Mr. Fleming holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Andrea Semprini Cesari is Vice President of IMA Active Division that led efforts in our Series
A investment. Mr. Semprini has extensive international commercial management experience, having managed complex sales organizations located in almost all areas of the world. Andrea has participated in the acquisition of companies in India, Spain, Germany and Italy and achieved the harmonization and integration of the different commercial organizations. Andrea has a degree in Law from the University of Bologna, Italy.
I.M.A. is based in Bologna, Italy, and has manufacturing facilities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. I.M.A. is a leading manufacturer of pharmaceutical and food packaging and processing equipment. I.M.A. Active specializes in the design and manufacturing of lines for the processing and primary packaging of oral solid dosage products.
Bernhardt L. Trout is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He is currently Director of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing and the Co-Chair of the Singapore-MIT Alliance Program on Chemical and Pharmaceutical Engineering. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees from MIT and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, he performed post-doctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute.
Professor Trout’s research focuses on molecular engineering, specifically the development and application of both computational and experimental molecular-based methods to engineering pharmaceutical formulations and processes with unprecedented specificity. Since 1999, he has focused on molecular engineering for biopharmaceutical formulation, primarily liquid formulation, but also lyophilized formulation. A major aspect of his research focuses on developing both microscopic and macroscopic models to design stable formulations efficiently. In 2007, together with several colleagues from MIT, he set up the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, a $65 million partnership with the objective of transforming pharmaceutical manufacturing. In addition to Novartis, he has worked with many other pharmaceutical companies in research or consulting. He has published over 130 papers and currently has 8 patent applications submitted.
Charles L. Cooney is the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering and the founding Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (1966) and his Master’s (1967) and Ph.D. (1970) degrees in Biochemical Engineering from MIT. After a short post-doctoral time at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research, he joined the MIT faculty in 1970 as an Assistant Professor and became a full Professor in 1982. Among his many honors, Professor Cooney has received the 1989 Gold Medal of the Institute of Biotechnological Studies (London); the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; and the James Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Microbial and Biochemical Technology. He was elected to the American Institute of Medical and Biochemical Engineers and in 2009 was elected to the first class of American Chemical Society Fellows. In July 2012 he was awarded Honoris Causa by Ramon Llull University in Barcelona.
Ajaz Hussain’s professional goal is to contribute towards improve predictability of medicinal product development, manufacturing and associated regulatory processes. As the Deputy Director Office of Pharmaceutical Science he led some of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s major initiatives to develop regulatory policies that already have, and will continue to have, a significant impact on product development and approval in many geographies. His corporate experience includes leadership of the development and/or regulatory submissions of first-in-class Biosimilar, Follow-on Protein and Complex Generic products at Sandoz. At Philip Morris International, he took on the challenge of higher levels of uncertainty (regulatory and business) and product complexity to build strategies and systems to successfully move forward development programs on plant-based vaccines, products for tobacco harm reduction, and ensure credibility of scientific evidence to seek regulatory discussions and submissions. His experience at Wockhardt has helped him to understand the opportunities and talent companies in India have, the challenges they face, and how they can bring forward effective solutions to maintain and enhance competitiveness and credibility. He also has an extensive teaching experience, he served as a tenured Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Cincinnati, where he established a research program on Computer Aided Formulation Design. Based on his broad experience in academia, US FDA, and industry he founded his consulting practice Insight Advice & Solutions LLC.
Dr. Hussain received PhD in Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics from the University of Cincinnati (1986). He has published over 100 scientific articles and is a frequent invited speaker at scientific conferences. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the Swiss Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences and recipient of several awards at FDA including the FDA’s Scientific Achievement Award and a the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Cincinnati.
Allan S. Myerson is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to his position at MIT he was the Philip Danforth Amour Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago where he served as Provost and Senior Vice President (January 2003 – June 2008) and Dean of Engineering and Science (January 2000 – January 2003). Professor Myerson also served on the faculty at Polytechnic University (NY), Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Dayton. Professor Myerson was educated at Columbia University (BS) the University of Virginia (MS and Ph.D.). The Myerson research group focuses on separation processes in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry with an emphasis on crystallization from solution. Professor Myerson is a co-PI in the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing at MIT. He has published 5 books including the Handbook of Industrial Crystallization, 190 papers, and is the inventor on 35 U.S. patents. Professor Myerson has consulted for over 100 companies worldwide and was honored in 2008 with the American Chemical Society Award in Separations Science and Technology.
Tom van Laar received his B.S. In Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Northwestern University (Kellogg). He began a long career in manufacturing with Sybron Corporation and GE Plastics before beginning to work in pharmaceuticals with Searle for 19 years (Searle was bought by Monsanto and later became Pharmacia). Tom joined Novartis in 2002 as head of US manufacturing for the Pharma division and was promoted in late 2004 to Head of Global Technical Operations based in Basel, Switzerland. Technical Operations had 24 manufacturing sites around the world supporting a $32 bio Pharma business. In addition to his overall operational responsibilities, Tom led the first ever Lean manufacturing and Process Oriented organization transformation in Novartis. In 2007, Tom also initiated the first ever transformation to truly continuous manufacturing for the Pharma industry in partnership with MIT. Tom retired from Novartis in early 2013 to return with his wife to the US. After a 6 month break, he is beginning to consult in the areas of pharmaceutical manufacturing and organizational transformation.
Tim Jamison was born in San Jose, CA and grew up in neighboring Los Gatos, CA. He received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley. A six-month research assistantship at ICI Americas in Richmond, CA under the mentorship of Dr. William G. Haag was his first experience in chemistry research. Upon returning to Berkeley, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Henry Rapoport and conducted undergraduate research in his group for nearly three years, the majority of which was under the tutelage of William D. Lubell (now at the University of Montreal). A Fulbright Scholarship supported ten months of research in Prof. Steven A. Benner’s laboratories at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, and thereafter he undertook his PhD studies at Harvard University with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber. He then moved to the laboratory of Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University, where he was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow. In July 1999, he began his independent career at MIT, where his research program focuses on the development of new methods of organic synthesis and their implementation in the total synthesis of natural products.
