Virginia Bio Elects New Board Members

RICHMOND, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The membership of Virginia Bio elected seven new members to the statewide trade association’s governing board of directors during their annual meeting held in Richmond this week. The new members include: Nee-Yin Chou of CW Optics, Alan Connor of Cadence Inc., Alex Euler of CIT, Frank Gilg of UNOS, Jim Powers of HemoShear, Jason Walsh of Mediatech Inc. and Kenneth Wong of the Virginia Tech Northern Virginia Center.

“Taken together, the Virginia Bio board represents the experience, knowledge, passion and diversity that today makes the Virginia bioscience community a leading engine of innovation and economic development”

“Virginia Bio is honored to have these industry leaders join our board of directors,” said Mike Grisham, chairman of the Virginia Bio board of directors. “As a membership-driven industry organization, the support and guidance of people of this caliber is critically important to our mission.”

The membership also re-elected eight returning members to the board: Jeff Conroy of Innovative Biologics, Mike Drzal of LeClair Ryan, Mike Grisham of GPB Scientific, Mike Innes of Cary Street Partners, Krishna Kodukula of SRI International, Scott Meza of Greenberg Traurig, Christian Plaza of Cooley, and Paul Romness of Boehringer-Ingelheim.

“Taken together, the Virginia Bio board represents the experience, knowledge, passion and diversity that today makes the Virginia bioscience community a leading engine of innovation and economic development,” noted Virginia Bio CEO Jeff Gallagher, “bringing new discoveries to the marketplace and the clinic, improving health and patient care, and creating Virginia jobs.”

The Virginia Bio board is comprised of 24 industry leaders from all regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia as well as an Advisory Board and an Academic Council. For more information about the leadership of the Virginia Bio, please visit http://www.vabio.org/board-of-directors.

Biographies of the new members of the board:

Nee-Yin Chou, Ph.D.

Nee-Yin Chou is the President and CEO of CW Optics in Seaford, VA. Dr. Chou has more than 25 years of scientific management experience in the field of laser spectroscopy and optics. She holds a M.S. in Organic Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and is a member of the SPIE and the Association for the Advancement of Wound Care, a Fellow of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, and an alumna of Springboard Enterprises, a highly selective and unparalleled premier venture-catalyst platform that helps build great women-led businesses. Dr. Chou is passionate about sharing the joy of learning science, engineering and math with others, especially young people, and her volunteer work reflects her values. Her local involvement includes being a member of the York County School District Education Committee, the Advisory Board of the Physics, Computer Science, and Engineering Department at CNU, and the Executive Committee of the Sensors Technology Cluster in Hampton Roads. The Virginia Lawyers Media has recently selected Dr. Chou as one of the 2012 "Influential Women of Virginia."

Alan Connor

Alan Connor is President of Cadence, Inc., a leading life science company providing outsourced design and manufacturing solutions for surgical devices and scientific applications based in Staunton, VA. Alan has 15 years of diverse medical device industry experience in sales, marketing, product development and commercialization, and operations. Prior to entering the medical device field, he held roles as an engineer and project manager in high-tech industries and as a management consultant. He holds a degree in engineering and an MBA and his hobbies include flying, golf

Alex Euler

Alex Euler is the Investment Director for CIT’s GAP BioLife Fund - the most active seed stage life-science fund in the Mid-Atlantic. As Investment Director, Alex is responsible for deal sourcing, company screening, due diligence, and deal structuring. He also serves as CIT’s board representative for the fund’s life-science portfolio companies. Alex has over 10 years experience working with start-ups, most recently serving as Director of the Life Science and Technology Incubator at bwtech@UMBC and program manager for the Northrop Grumman Cync Program, a corporate venture accelerator program for emerging cybersecurity companies. Alex also served as Communications Manager for MdBio, one of the largest biotechnology trade associations in the country, where he led a number of initiatives designed to assist Maryland’s 300+ emerging bioscience member companies. Alex holds a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from UMBC, studied biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, and holds an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. He has authored several scientific papers in a diversity of areas from molecular biology to physical chemistry and spectroscopy.

Frank Gilg

Frank Gilg is the Director of Commercial Operations and Sales for United Network Organ Sharing (UNOS), where he leads and manages the sales and marketing of multiple for profit business units, including the Transplant Informatics Institute, TII Informatix, UNOS Meeting Partners and UNOS’s international transplant system consulting practice. A senior level sales and consulting executive with over 25 years in the healthcare industry, he has been with UNOS for the past eight years. Prior to UNOS he held sales and marketing positions with numerous software and consulting companies specializing in the healthcare market. Mr. Gilg graduated from VCU with a B.S. in Business in 1985.

Jim Powers

The Board of Managers elected James C. Powers as Chairman and interim Chief Executive Officer of HemoShear in August 2008 and he became full-time CEO in February 2009. Prior to joining HemoShear, Mr. Powers spent 20 years as an executive in the pharmaceutical R&D services sector. He spent 18 years in executive management at PRA International, a global clinical research organization serving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. He oversaw PRA's growth from a niche data-management-services provider to a full-service clinical trials management organization, and expanded its operations and customer base from being U.S.-centric to becoming global. Mr. Powers launched PRA's oncology therapeutic focus, a market in which PRA continues to be a leader, and he was instrumental in strategic planning and eight acquisitions. During his tenure, the company grew from annual sales of less than $1 million to more than $450 million and from a few employees to a global work force of more than 3,000. He was recently a board member of CellzDirect, Inc., a leading provider of drug metabolism and hepatotoxicity testing products and services, which was acquired by Invitrogen. He was also a board member of Averion International, an international contract clinical research organization. He was an adviser to Tall Oaks Capital and the Coulter Translational Research Partnership in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. Mr. Powers received a BS in Administration and Management Science from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Jason Walsh

Jason T. Walsh joined Mediatech, Inc. in Manassas in December 2011 as Business Director, to lead the business upon Corning Incorporated’s acquisition of the manufacturer of media and sterile solutions for the life sciences industry. Jason has extensive experience at Corning, in consulting and in work with start-up companies throughout his career. Previously with Corning he served as Director of New Platforms for Corning’s Advanced Life Sciences group, as Director of Corporate Strategy & Development executing transactions including the acquisition of Costar Corporation into the Life Science business, and as Assistant Operations Chief of Staff, supporting the chairman/CEO of Corning. At Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, he was General Manager of Quest Diagnostics’ Long Island New York region and Vice President of Corporate Development during Quest’s acquisition of SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories. For McKinsey & Company, Jason worked in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Products Practice and as an entrepreneur-in-residence for start-up clients. Additionally, he independently consulted with a variety of start-up and turnaround businesses to provide management and financing assistance. Jason earned a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland and served on St. John’s board for nine years. He earned his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Jason and his wife and son live in McLean.

Kenneth Wong, Ph.D.

Kenneth H. Wong has a B.A. in Physics from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. His primary area of expertise is medical imaging, and he has applied this knowledge over several fields including proton radiotherapy, prostate cancer staging, CyberKnife radiosurgery, interventional oncology, military working dogs, and ultrasound for combat casualty care. He also directs the Biomedical Technology Development and Management (BTDM) program, an executive-format MS degree offered by Virginia Tech. In 2012, Dr. Wong was appointed interim associate dean of the graduate school in the National Capital Region and interim director of the Virginia Tech Northern Virginia Center.

About Virginia Bio

Virginia Bio is the premier statewide non-profit trade association for life science industries in Virginia. Celebrating its 20^th year, Virginia Bio is an advocate for the biopharmaceutical and device industries among federal, state and local policy-makers. Virginia Bio is the official state affiliate of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). To learn more, visit www.vabio.org.