2012 Judges

Dr. Braunstein is a board-certified cardiologist and internist, and co-founder and Managing Partner of LifeTech Development (LTD) Partners, a life sciences venture partnership. He is also co-founder and CEO of LifeTech Research, an affiliate of LTD established in 2003 for the purpose of providing technical and market due-diligence research services to institutional investors and emerging companies. Dr. Braunstein has played a lead operational role in the start-up of numerous life sciences companies.

He currently sits on five corporate boards: C2N Diagnostics, an Alzheimer’s diagnostics / biomarker company; Tivorsan Pharmaceuticals, a biologics company developing a recombinant protein for a neuromscular disorders; Centegen, Inc, a therapeutics company developing novel agents against drug-resistant staphylococci; and NexGen Medical Systems and Correx, device companies each developing minimally-invasive surgical and vascular interventional devices.

Dr. Braunstein received his M.D. with highest distinction from Northwestern University Medical School in 1996. Subsequently, he trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School until 1999, and as a Fellow in Cardiovascular Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson National Clinical Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Additionally, he completed an M.B.A. with management focus in 2004 and maintained an Assistant Professor cardiology faculty position at Johns Hopkins University.

He remains an advisor to the Hopkins Carey School of Business, and is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University. In addition to his various management responsibilities, Dr. Braunstein currently maintains an Adjunct Assistant Professorship at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) and the Yale School of Medicine.     

Michael has served as the lead Healthcare Partner at the global private equity firm Centerstone Partners since 2008, and was previously a venture capitalist with EGS Healthcare Capital Partners (2002-2008). Michael has also held management positions at Revogenex, Inc., Merck & Co., and Forest Laboratories, and early in his career was a Pharmaceutical Research Analyst at ING Barings.

Michael holds advanced degrees in business and science, with an M.B.A. from New York University, an M.S. from the University of Rochester, and a B.S. from Johns Hopkins University.

Jeffrey DiFrancesco

Jeffrey is the Founder and Executive Director for Avancer Group, Inc. and its predecessor company BioPharm CA, Inc. His professional conviction is "Closing the gap between vision and reality!"

Academically, Jeffrey is an adjunct Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Business, Mayes College of Healthcare Business and Policy, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate courses in capital investment and finance and performs primary research on the operational performance of clinical trials.

Educationally, Jeffrey holds a M.S. in Finance from Johns Hopkins University, a M.S.E. in Engineering Science from Penn State University, and a B.S. in Mathematics from Illinois Institute of Technology. He also has certificates in mergers and acquisitions from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Level 1 Change Agent from Conner Partners, and Black Belt Six Sigma from Goodwin College of Drexel University.

Philanthropically, Jeffrey is or has been on the not-for-profit boards of the Salvation Army (Board Officer, Executive Board, Task Force Chair), Girl Scouts Council of Eastern Pennsylvania (Property Committee), United Nations on Global Leadership and Capacity Development (OHRLLS) for Business Leading Global Change, Mayes College of Healthcare Business and Policy (Executive Board of Advisors), Boy Scouts of America (Executive Board) and National Adoption Center (Board Member).

William “Bill” Enright joined Vaxin in June 2008 and currently serves as a Director, President & CEO.  Prior to joining Vaxin, Bill spent six years with GenVec, Inc. with increasing responsibilities including the Head of Business Development.  Bill brings more than 22 years of experience in a variety of positions within the life science/biotech industry, including time as a consultant, a bench scientist and 12 years with Life Technologies, Corp. (previously Invitrogen), working in various senior level licensing, business management, manufacturing and research roles. 

Bill received a Master of Arts in Molecular Biology from SUNY at Buffalo and a Master of Science in Business Management from Johns Hopkins University

Charles Goldstein

Since 1998 Charles has been BD's Vice President, Research and responsible for BD Technologies in Research Triangle Park, NC. BD Technologies operates a small Life Science focused effort in Singapore, BD Technologies engages in technology development in support of downstream product development carried out by the businesses.  In addition, Charles and his organization champion and introduce new Innovation practices at BDT and also across BD. Charles leads the Steering Committee responsible for BD's Technology Leadership Development program part of a broader initiative to provide a pipeline of talent for the company.

Charles has been with BD since 1988; from 1988 to 1998 Charles was Vice President of R&D for BD's Hypodermic and Injection Systems business. During this period the major product development work was done for BD’s highly successful safety products. Prior to joining BD Charles led the product development efforts for Millipore Corp in Bedford, Massachusetts.

Charles has a Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University an M.S.E. degree from Johns Hopkins and a B.Ch.E. degree from the City College of New York.  Charles has numerous publications in the field of Rheology and has given many technical talks. Charles is member of numerous professional organizations and engages in outside charitable and philanthropic efforts on behalf of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Princeton University. Charles serves on advisory committees for the Chemical Engineering Dept at Princeton, the Whiting School of Engineering at Hopkins, the Chemical and BioMolecular Engineering Dept also at Hopkins and the joint BioMedical Engineering Dept. at N.C. State and the University of North Carolina.

Most recently Charles has become increasingly interested and has become knowledgeable about Innovation leadership in large established multi national companies and globalization of R&D.

Dr. Gautam Gulati

Dr. Gautam Gulati works and plays at the intersection of health, education, innovation, design, technology and entrepreneurship. He currently serves as Chief Medical Officer and SVP Product Management for Physicians Interactive Holdings, responsible for building a product portfolio designed to address the future technology & marketing needs of our health customers.  Additionally, Dr. Gulati is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School where he teaches a course titled "Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship". As an outpost to his academic musings, Dr. Gulati acts as an industry advisor to a number of change-makers and innovators in the health field through his idea experiment lab called GULATI.

In his spare time, Dr. Gulati is actively involved as a business mentor, advisor and competition judge for both Johns Hopkins Carey Business School as well as Columbia Business School; he is also on the advisory boards of Digital Health Coalition, Blueprint Health, Health & Wellness IDEAS Salon, Global Voices of Health, and several other start-ups/non-profits. Oftentimes he can be found at various industry events sharing a few words of wisdom and authoring written pieces through several blog outlets, including MM&M, FreelanceMD and Gulatology.

Prior to the above, Dr. Gulati served as SVP for Digitas Health, leading the Science & Medicine Division of the NYC office.  Additionally, he served as a Life Sciences Strategy Consultant with The Frankel Group and Global Medical Director for IntraMed/Sudler & Hennessey. As an entrepreneur, he had co-founded Medical Acumen, a medical market research and physician KOL communications firm. As a physician consultant, he provided strategic recommendations for the FDA as well as for various healthcare related internet companies, including MDLinx.

Dr. Gulati obtained both his M.D. and M.P.H. degrees from The George Washington University School of Medicine and Public Health and his M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School. He clinically trained in Internal Medicine at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, MD.

Currently, Dr. Gulati lives in the NYC area with his beautiful wife and baby boy, and has clocked hundreds of thousands of miles driving up and down the northeast corridor of I-95.

Dr. Jacobovitz has over 20 years experience in technology based entrepreneurship, business strategy and marketing with startup as well as fortune 500 companies worldwide. She has held senior management positions in Telecommunication, Biotechnology and Biofuels, has co-founded and supported technology based start-up companies worldwide, and is an accomplished researcher with many published peer reviewed papers and 6 filed patents. She was part of the management team that contributed to Corvis $1 billion IPO, and has extensively consulted and developed corporate and marketing strategy for companies in Brazil, USA and EU that contributed to millions of dollars in private equity investments and International Bank loan.

Dr. Jacobovitz is a Program Director for the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship, a member of the Technology Transfer Committee and Technology Commercialization advisor at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Dr. Jacobovitz holds a MS in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from UNICAMP (Sao Paulo, Brazil).

Al Lauritano

Albert is Director, Business Development for BD Technologies, responsible for technology development, management and commercialization and BD's life science incubator. He has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technology industries. Prior to joining BD, he held executive business development positions at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Icagen and D-Pharm Ltd after starting his career at Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals where he served in senior clinical, marketing and business development positions in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. He has published in the field of diabetes and received an MSc Pharmacology from Rutgers University.

Derek Lewis

Dr. Rothman has over 30 years of product development and senior management experience and is currently the VP of Applied Research and Technology Development at BrainScope Company Inc.  At BrainScope, he is responsible for the translation of clinical research into new products and applications, adding value through the development of intellectual property, and driving product performance through algorithm development and optimization.

Prior to joining BrainScope, Dr. Rothman was the VP of Research and Development for Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT), leading the development of EEG based systems for detection of asphyxic brain injury and seizures in critical care applications, achieving two 510(k) cleared products in three years.  Before IBT, Dr. Rothman was a consultant to GE Healthcare’s Maternal and Infant Care Division, VP of Operations for Metasensors (a startup company developing a microfluidic system for respiratory gas analysis), Director of Engineering for IGEN International (manufacturer of systems for high throughput drug screening, food testing, and clinical diagnostics), and Senior VP and Chief Technical Officer for CardioLogic Systems (manufacturer of automated systems for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and cardiac assist).  He also held a variety of positions at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and Black & Decker’s medical products division.  He teaches in the areas of technology commercialization and engineering management and has 12 patents.

Dr. Rothman holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.     

Mark Stacey

Bio will be available shortly

Mitsi Ushio

Misti is a Managing Director at Harris & Harris Group.  Prior to joining Harris & Harris Group in 2007, Misti worked at Merck & Co. for over 10 years in BioProcess Research & Development focused on vaccines and biologics, and was a Technology Licensing Officer at Columbia University.

Misti currently serves on the board of Ancora Pharmaceuticals Inc. and OpGen, Inc and she is involved with Ensemble Therapeutics Corporation,  Mersana Therapeutics, Inc., Senova Systems, Inc. and Champions Oncology, Inc.  She was also involved with BioVex, Inc. (acquired by Amgen). 

She was graduated from Johns Hopkins University (B.S., Chemical Engineering), Lehigh University (M.S., Chemical Engineering) and University College London (Ph.D., Biochemical Engineering).

Additional Judges to be Announced