Management and Board of Directors

Terence S. Russell, Ph.D., President and CEO, member Board of Directors

Dr. Russell is an experienced entrepreneur and scientist.  He is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Makoto Life Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the identification of novel pharmaceutical targets in oncology, urology, and allergic inflammation.  Dr. Russell is also a founder of Critical Biologics Corporation, a critical care pharmaceuticals company.  Previously, Dr. Russell was the Managing Partner of Vevionics, LLC, an engineering research and design company that developed innovative technologies for industrial process control and measurement.  He was also the founder of LifeBeam Technologies, Inc., a high-speed genomics technology company where he was the inventor of LifeBeam’s patented core DNA sequencing technology.  In addition to his entrepreneurial efforts, Dr. Russell has conducted research at Harvard University and Boston University on a wide range of topics; from detectors for biological warfare agents to genetically engineered proteins used in anti-counterfeiting applications.  Dr. Russell is also the Managing Partner of Zensei Analytics, LLC, a Boston-based new venture creation and consulting company.  He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University.

James W. Fordyce, Chairman of the Board of Directors

Mr. Fordyce is Managing Partner of MEDNA Partners LLC, a private advisory firm, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The firm provides advisory services in the medical and life sciences fields. Mr. Fordyce has more than 25 years of experience as a private equity investor. He was a founding General Partner of Prince Ventures LP, where he was responsible for investments in a number of early stage private companies in the biotechnology, medical device and medical services sectors. Mr. Fordyce has served as a member of the boards of both private and public companies. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and degrees from both Oxford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Fordyce is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, based in New York City. He is an Honorary Life Trustee of the American Cancer Society and has served on the boards of a number of health care related not- for-profit organizations.

Matthew D. Shair, Ph.D., Founder, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Shair is Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He was also a founding faculty member of the Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology at Harvard University. Professor Shair received his Ph.D. with Dr. Sam Danishefsky from Columbia University, and received an M.S. degree from Yale University. He continued his post-doctoral work as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellow in the lab of Stuart Schreiber at Harvard, helping pioneer the development of diversity oriented synthesis and chemical genetics. In 1997, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University and was promoted to Professor with tenure in 2002. Professor Shair’s laboratory works on the synthesis of small molecules, many of them natural products, which are useful in studying cell biology. His lab is also studying the cellular target and mechanism of natural products that have unique biological properties. His lab completed syntheses of the natural products CP-263,114 and longithorone, has developed new reactions in organic synthesis, and they have, in collaboration with Tom Kirchhausen's lab at Harvard Medical School, discovered small molecules for studying aspects of vesicular traffic and Golgi organization. Dr. Shair’s awards include the Dreyfus New Faculty Award and the Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award in Organic Synthesis, an Eli Lilly Grantee Award, the Astra-Zeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award, and the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.  Professor Shair was one of the founding scientists of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he is currently an advisor.  Professor Shair is also an advisor to Enanta Pharmaceuticals and Novartis.