Christine Copple, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Starise Ventures, Inc.
Dr. Copple is President and CEO of Starise Ventures, Inc. Starise provides team-based services to entrepreneurs and investors designed to mitigate the intrinsic risks of translating biomedical discoveries from bench to bedside. As Vice President for North America for Eireium, Inc. (see www.eireium.com) Dr. Copple is working with the Eireium team to European companies find partners and advance their programs. Previously, she was President and CEO of ASM Resources, Inc. the venture arm of the American Society for Microbiology. With over twenty years as a senior executive in biotechnology growth companies, Dr. Copple has experience in early-stage investing, public offerings, private/venture investments, joint ventures, licensing and partnering, public corporate reporting, public relations, investor relations, international marketing, product development, regulatory affairs, legislative affairs, facilities design/build-out and training entrepreneurs. Dr. Copple was the Chief Operating Officer at Neuralstem, Inc., an emerging company commercializing a CNS stem cell technology platform. Before joining Neuralstem, she ran the Office of Industry Liaison for the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute where she provided entrepreneurial guidance and services for faculty and start-up companies. For the ten years prior to relocating to Maryland, Dr. Copple was V.P. of Marketing & Investor relations for the Boston-based public company Microfluidics International. Dr. Copple received her B.S. degree from the University of East Anglia and her doctorate from the University of Birmingham Medical School in the United Kingdom. She came to the U.S. to join the Cell Biology Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York.
Lisa Beth Ferstenberg, MD
Director of Consulting Services
Technical Resources International, Inc.
Dr. Ferstenberg is a clinical research methodologist with over 28 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry where her area of focus has been demonstration of safety and efficacy of drugs to treat cancer, autoimmunity and other immunologic conditions. During her early tenure at Lederle Laboratories, she oversaw adverse event reporting for vaccines, anti-cancer drugs, and the antibiotic piperacillin. At Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, she was similarly responsible for overseeing adverse event reporting for polyclonal immunoglobulin and cyclosporine before undertaking the clinical development of cyclosporine for autoimmune diseases in phases I-III. Dr. Ferstenberg was one of Sandoz’s representatives on an ICH sub-committee where she assisted in clarifying terminology later incorporated into ICH standard operating procedures for reporting adverse events internationally.
As a Medical Monitor for multiple studies of new drugs, stem cells, vaccines and immunotherapies, Dr. Ferstenberg has held primary responsibility for pharmacovigilance and vaccinovigilance for a number of biotech start-up companies utilizing new chemical entities, hematologic stem cells, recombinant protein vaccines, dendritic cell therapies and novel vaccine constructs. She is the author of the chapter on Vaccinovigilance for the Manual of Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance, Second Edition, Edited by Barton Cobert, M.D., FACP, FACG, FFPM, Jones and Bartlett Learning, in press (4/1/2011 release).
Dr. Ferstenberg is a serial entrepreneur, an instructor at the Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University and at the Founders Institute, serves as Chief Medical Officer for a few small biotech start-up companies, and a consultant for early stage life science ventures.
David J. Fink, Ph.D.
Director of Entrepreneurial Services
University of Maryland, Baltimore County/ Research and Technology Park
David Fink's career in biotechnology and biomedical product development spans over 30 years as a researcher, research manager, consultant, entrepreneur and officer of several start-up biotech companies. Dr. Fink was trained in chemical engineering at the Universities of Cincinnati and Michigan, and he was a post doctoral fellow in biochemistry at Purdue University. He then joined Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, where he conducted and managed research on more than 100 projects over a 12-year period. In 1986 he founded his own biomedical consulting business, Bio-Integration Inc., which was active until 1997. In 1988, he founded and served as President of CollaTek, Inc., in collaboration with Gattefossé SA of Lyon, France, to develop and commercialize technology licensed from Battelle for manufacturing collagen-based medical implants. Dr. Fink became the second employee of Osiris Therapeutics at the time it was founded in 1993. Osiris is a Maryland-based tissue regeneration company with a platform technology based on adult stem cells. Dr. Fink joined Chondros, Inc., a start-up cell therapy company in Baltimore, as its first employee in 2001, and continued as its President and COO until November 2003. From 2005-2008, Dr. Fink served as Vice President for R&D of Cell Targeting, Inc., a cell therapy start-up in Cleveland, Ohio. He has authored 40 scientific papers and book chapters, and he has been awarded 22 US patents.
As Director of Entrepreneurial Services for bwtech @ UMBC's Research & Technology Park, Dr. Fink advises approximately 25 early-stage incubator companies. He is the Program Manager for bwtech's Clean Energy Technology Incubator, and is a co-Principal Investigator and Instructor for the INNoVATE™ program.
Cherie Nichols, MBA
Program Manager, INNoVATE™
Cherie Nichols serves as the Program Manager for the INNoVATE™ program and faculty fellow in the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. She provides extensive bioscience management and leadership skills to design, strengthen, and grow existing programs centered on the business of life sciences. She also served as the Director, Office of Science Planning and Assessment, National Cancer Institute (NCI), where she provided leadership for science planning, evaluation, analysis and implementation efforts on behalf of the National Cancer Institute, an organization of significant size and resources with an ambitious goal of reducing the burden of cancer. Throughout Ms. Nichols’s 25 plus career, she has held positions of increasing responsibility where she has produced results through strategic planning and the implementation and evaluation of programs and policies. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Maryland, with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Ms. Nichols later earned her Master of Business Administration with honors.
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