Industrial Advisory Board

The Bioengineering Industrial Advisory Board unites a diverse group of bright and enterprising leaders from across the sector to create a strong resource pool for students, faculty, and administrators, as the department continues to grow and thrive. Building new corporate relationships and offering leadership and support, the Board meets twice annually—in the fall and spring. They ally with faculty to better define the Board’s goals, and to pinpoint the needs of the department to devise new, innovative solutions and methods.

Currently, the Department IAB members are:

Name and Affiliation Biography
Karim Azer
Karim Azer
Head of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology and DMPK Modeling, Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute
Karim Azer joined Axcella, a local biotech company focused on designing and developing amino acid combinations as therapeutics. He is leading their systems biology platform.

Azer has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years, employing a wide variety of modeling, both mechanistic and empirical, and computer science approaches to address drug discovery and development questions in R&D.

BS in Mathematics as well as Computer Science from Rutgers University
MS in Applied Mathematics from Courant Institute at New York University
PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University

Sam Burd
Sam Burd

Consultant
Sam’s “For More and Better Developments” consults on engineering development, entrepreneurial ventures, and community improvement projects. Sam started his career engineering medical devises and managing engineering groups. Following that, his employment focused on biotech apparatus and systems. Then to form his own company, Medical and Biotech Development, Inc. was incorporated for engineering and business consulting. For his engineering, he received 19 US patents.

For business development, Sam lectured for 9 years at UC Berkeley Engineering Department’s Entrepreneurial Design Class. He co-founded The Spark Group assisting entrepreneurial starting ups and was the CEO of Si. Valley Instruments. Included in his consulting career, he helped established corporations form internal “intrapreneurial” groups and negotiated with universities and coordinated with legal firms on patent applications and patent related policies.

Volunteer work included: managing an innovation group within Engineers Without Borders; forming a neighborhood NGO working on healthcare, recruiting volunteer educators, and environmental upgrades; registering voters, and organizing political actions; preparing buildings and their residents for emergencies.

BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University
MBA from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School

Jeff Cerier
Jeff Cerier
President, Sage Product Development, Inc
Jeff Cerier formed Sage Product Development, Inc. with two partners in order to provide fast, efficient and creative product development services to medical device companies. He previously led the product development effort to develop an innovative skin grafting system for Momelan, and was one of six industry professionals who co-founded TDC Medical (now Vention Medical), a medical device product development and manufacturing service provider. He has served as Vice President of Product Development at NDO Surgical and has also been Group Manager within the engineering department at ACT Medical, and Director of Patents and Technology for UroMed Corporation.

BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University
MS in Engineering Management from Northeastern University

David M. Cronin
David M. Cronin
Chief Business Officer, Biotech
Cognition Corporation
David M. Cronin is a Founder and Chief Business Officer – Biotech at Cognition Corporation. David has >25 years of executive leadership experience helping companies develop and commercialize Software-as-a-Service solutions for the Life Sciences industry. David uses his knowledge of systems engineering, industry standards & regulations, and Structured Content and Data Management (SCDM) guided workflow systems to develop innovative solutions for improving data integrity & reports, product development processes, and life cycle management outcomes. David also serves as the Co-Chair for the International Council On Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Healthcare Working Group.

BS in Electrical Engineering and MBA from Northeastern University

Richard Gedney II
Richard Gedney II
Founder, CEO, Technical Director, ADMET, Inc.
Richard T. Gedney II is the founder, CEO and Technical Director of ADMET, which has built an enviable reputation in retrofit/upgrade packages for a large range of electromechanical and servohydraulic materials testing machines, regardless of age or machine type. It now sells to over a dozen sectors including automotive, aerospace, biomedical, construction, plastics, metals, test labs, and university sectors as well as major government agencies. Customers include Lawrence Livermore National Lab, GE, DuPont, Boeing, US Steel, John Deere, Bechtel, Medtronic, and Harvard Medical School.

BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University
MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jonathan P. Gertler
Jonathan P. Gertler

CEO and Managing Partner, Back Bay Life Science Advisors
Dr. Jonathan P. Gertler has been advising life science companies since the 1990s, providing counsel on franchise and therapeutic-area strategies and corporate and business development activities, as well as advising clients on planning and the execution of value-creating transactions. He has served as Senior Partner and Managing Director of Leerink Swann Strategic Advisors, has led several investment banking groups, and has founded three start-up companies. Jonathan was also a practicing academic vascular surgeon and has published extensively in clinical vascular surgery and endothelial and smooth muscle cell biology. He is a frequent speaker and writer on strategic issues facing life science companies at all stages and currently serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at Boston University School of Medicine. He trained at Columbia University, Yale New Haven Hospital, and the Massachusetts General Hospital; he has also served as Chief of Vascular Surgery at SUNY-HSCB in New York, as well as Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the MGH.

BA from Wesleyan University
MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
MBA in Health Policy and Management from Boston University

Vahé Ghahraman
Vahé Ghahraman
Senior Director, Head of Global Regulatory Operations, Apellis Pharmaceuticals
Vahé is the head of Global Regulatory Operations at Apellis Pharmaceuticals, where he has established this function with all the relevant infrastructure within the Regulatory Affairs Department. His activities focus on preparation and life cycle management of major and routine investigational and marketing medicinal applications, implementation of regulatory submissions, publishing, information management systems, and process improvement.

He has over 20 years of industry experience, having various leading roles at Alexion, Takeda, Dyax, and Millennium, among others, where he was involved in the preparation and approval of several new medicinal products. Prior to transitioning to industry, Vahé served as the Laboratory Director and Lecturer at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University.

BS, MS, and PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University

Harry Glorikian
Harry Glorikian
General Partner, Scientia Ventures
Glorikian currently serves as a General Partner at Scientia Ventures , a VC firm focused on upleveling companies that have the potential to transform healthcare. In particular, the firm targets businesses at the cutting edge of life sciences with an emphasis on computational biology and chemistry, the digitization of medicine and digital therapies. Additionally, Glorikian serves on the boards of StageZero Life Sciences (TSX: SZLS), a publicly traded healthcare technology business dedicated to the early detection of cancer and multiple disease states through whole blood, and Drumroll Health, which develops AI technologies to foster closer partnerships between patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare companies.

Before joining Scientia Ventures, Glorikian was an entrepreneur. He grew and sold his own healthcare consulting company, Scientia Advisors, which served some of the global technology and healthcare companies in the world, many of which were on the Global 500 and Fortune 500. Glorikian also served as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence to GE Ventures – New Business Creation Group, leading to the founding of Evidation Health and DrawBridge Health. He is the author of The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer, MoneyBall Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market and the diagnostics textbook Commercializing Novel IVDs: A Comprehensive Manual for Success, and is the host of The Harry Glorikian Show podcast series

Jeffrey Gold
Jeffrey Gold
retired
From March 2014 to January 2016, Mr. Gold was President and CEO of Myoscience, Inc., a privately-held medical device company focusing on Focused Cold TherapyTM for the treatment of peripheral nerve conditions. From January 2012 to March 2014, Mr. Gold was CEO at Velomedix, Inc., a medical device company focused on therapeutic hypothermia for patients experiencing heart attack, stroke or cardiac arrest. Prior to January 2012, Mr. Gold was a Venture Partner for Longitude Capital, a healthcare venture capital fund from January 2007 through December 2011. Mr. Gold was President and CEO of CryoVascular Systems, a peripheral vascular disease device company, from 2001 through its sale to Boston Scientific in 2005. From 1997 to 2000, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Cardio Thoracic Systems, Inc., a company engaged in the development and introduction of devices for beating-heart coronary bypass surgery. Prior to that, Mr. Gold spent 18 years with Cordis Corporation in a variety of senior management roles including Vice President of Manufacturing and Vice President of Research and Development, and was a co-founder and President of Cordis Endovascular Systems, a subsidiary engaged in the interventional neuroradiology and peripheral vascular businesses. He served on the board of directors of Corindus Inc. (NYSE: CVRS) through its acquisition by Siemens and AngioDynamics, Inc (NASDAQ: ANGO) until his retirement in 2019. He currently serves on the Board of several privately held start-up medical device companies and is a member of the Executive Committee for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Florida and a member of the Commercialization Advisory Board for the Cleveland Clinic. Mr. Gold holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and an MBA from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and is a graduate of GE’s Manufacturing Management Program.
Sridar Natesan
Sridar Natesan
Vice President of External Innovation and Partnering, Sanofi-Aventis SA
Prior to taking his current role at Sanofi in 2009, Dr. Sridar Natesan served as their Scientific Site Head and as a Senior Distinguished Scientist. He also co-led the stem cell initiative, all while leading multiple scientific teams focused on drug discovery and holding several other senior management positions. He has established major partnerships with major academic and medical institutions, biotechnology companies, as well as various disease foundations, and has served on several committees and boards including the Industry Committee of International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), Mass BioEd and U Mass Center for Clinical & Translational Science.

PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Calgary