People
Management Team:
Jeffrey H. Price
MD, PhD, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, previously founded Q3DM Inc in 1999 and it was sold to Beckman Coulter Inc in 2003. Dr. Price is an associate professor at The Burnham Institute where he also trains graduate students from Bioengineering at UC San Diego. He began his career in high throughput microscopy research in 1987
Patrick M. McDonough
PhD, Vice President of Biological Studies, received his Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and has held appointments in cell and molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego Medical School, and San Diego State University Department of Biology. Dr. McDonough's expertise is focused in subcellular structure and dynamics of cardiac muscle, skeletal muscle, fibroblast, astrocytoma, nerve, kidney, and cervical tumor cells using fluorescence microscopy.
Casey Laris
Director of Marketing & Applications, brings a broad business background and more than ten years experience in high-content screening to Vala. He served most recently as a principal in Dipath Inc., providing consulting services to leading companies in the field. Casey was product manager for cell imaging and analysis at Beckman Coulter, Inc. and has held research and commercial positions with the University of California, San Diego and Q3DM Inc. Casey has helped develop and launch a number of successful products, and his work has appeared in peer-reviewed publications, including Genome Research. Casey was trained as a chemist with an emphasis on molecular biology and applied mechanics, and earned a B.S. with honors from the University of California, San Diego.
Randy Ingermanson
PhD, serves as Director of Software Engineering. Randy holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley and has nearly twenty years experience in scientific software development. He has directed a number of complex software projects in industrial physics, applied engineering, and bioscience. Randy has special expertise in numerical solution of large numbers of nonlinear equations, in object-oriented analysis and design, and in image-processing applications. He is also a multi-published author, with one nonfiction book, six novels, and about a dozen writing awards to his credit.
Staff:
Patrick C. Valentino
JD, serves as corporate counsel to the Company. Mr. Valentino is a partner with Corporate Counsel Group LLP, a San Diego based law firm focusing on corporate transactions, licensing of intellectual property and early and mid-stage financings. Mr. Valentino also held positions with several investment banks executing transactions relating to public and private securities, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnering and venture financings.
Ross Whittaker
Ph.D., M.B.A., Research Scientist, Received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego via the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral program. Dr. Whittaker's expertise is in the area of signal transduction, with an emphasis on cardiac signaling pathways activated during acute ischemic stress, such as during a heart attack. Dr. Whittaker also holds an M.B.A. from the San Diego State University School of Business.
Piyush Gehalot
M.S., Biomedical Instrumentation Engineer, received his Master of Science Degree in Biomedical Engineering from UT Arlington/UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Piyush has a background in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering and his areas of interest include application and device design for data/image acquisition and analysis. Prior to joining Vala Sciences, his work experience at UT Southwestern Medical Center involved developing tools and graphical user interface for image analysis and visualization using object-oriented design. Piyush heads up Vala Science's Service Department.
Fabio Cerignoli
Ph.D., Research Scientist, received his Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine from University of L'Aquila (Italy) and performed Postdoctoral Research at The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, CA. Dr. Cerignoli's areas of expertise include stem cell growth and cardiac differentiation, signal transduction and cancer proliferation. He brings the most disparate techniques to solve biological problems.
Board of Directors:
Mark McWilliams
MSME, Director, currently serves as CEO of Medipacs, an early stage medical device firm bringing to market a series of miniature, disposable infusion pumps. Prior to Medipacs, Mark was Director of Cell Imaging and Analysis at Beckman Coulter after the sale of Q3DM to Beckman in December 2003. He was Chief Executive Officer and Director of Q3DM, a life -sciences startup that brought to market a high-speed imaging and analysis system for life science research and diagnostics. Prior to Q3DM, Mark was founder and COO of Medication Delivery Devices (MDD), an alternate care infusion systems company that was acquired by Baxter Healthcare in 1996. Mr. McWilliams served as a VP of Research and Development at Baxter Healthcare for three years following the sale of MDD. Prior to MDD, he served as Product Development Manager at the founding of Block Medical where he was responsible for bringing the company's first two FDA approved products rapidly to market. Block was sold to Hillenbrand Industries in 1991. Mark serves on the board of directors of Spectra Science, a cancer diagnostic instrument compnay. He earned his MSME from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his BSME from Northeastern University and holds eight utility patents.
Paul J. Dostart
CPA, J.D., LL.M., Director and Co-Founder, serves as Vala’s Interim Executive Vice President. Mr.Dostart co-founded Q3DM Inc and has helped several of his law clients join the Inc. 500 list of America ’s most rapidly growing closely held businesses. Mr. Dostart is active in governance and regulatory issues affecting San Diego ’s biotechnology research community and also serves as a Board Member of the Neurosciences Institute.
Founding Team:
Edward Hunter
PhD, Founder, Director, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Q3DM Inc, has extensive experience in object-oriented software design, machine vision and medical imaging systems. Dr. Hunter was the chief software architect of the CytoShop software at Q3DM Inc that now runs the Beckman Coulter IC-100.
Ivana Mikic
PhD, Co-Founder, received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC San Diego, her MS in Biomedical Engineering from Ohio State University , and was a key member of the Q3DM CytoShop software development team. Dr. Mikic’s computer vision experience, coupled with her bioengineering background, enables Vala to rapidly prototype and develop new assays.
Scott Callaway
Co-Founder, was a key member of the Q3DM CytoShop software development team. Prior to his work at Q3DM, Mr. Callaway was a software engineer at Computer Associates International and at Digigami Inc.
