Ribomed's Management group is comprised of a diverse group of highly qualified individuals with the common goal of providing top quality products and research to the medical community while also delivering significant return for our investors.

Michelle M. Hanna, Ph.D. – Chair, Board of Directors: Dr. Hanna, the founder and CEO of Ribomed Biotechnologies, received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1983 and did her postdoctoral work in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She was an Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at UC Irvine College of Medicine where she received young investigator awards from the American Cancer Society and the Beckman Foundation. Dr. Hanna was a tenured Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma until August 1999, when she founded Ribomed Biotechnologies. Over the past 23 years, Dr. Hanna has been awarded over $10 million in grants and contracts from the ACS, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)/National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)/NIH, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Homeland Security Advanced Projects Agency (HSARPA). Her work has resulted in numerous peer-reviewed publications, three book chapters, four issued patents, and multiple pending patents.

David L. Alberts, M.D.: Dr. David S. Alberts has been the Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center since January 2005. He is a Regents' Professor at the UA College of Medicine and served as director of the Arizona Cancer Center's Cancer Prevention and Control Program since 1989. He is currently Chairman of the Chemoprevention Implementation Committee at the NIH, a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors at the National Cancer Institute, and scientific advisor to a number of other national cancer-related organizations. In 2001, Dr. Alberts received an Outstanding Service Award for Cancer Care. He is the inventor on 12 patents in the area of tumor treatment and prevention and has received several million dollars in extramural funding for his work on cancer prevention. Dr. Alberts serves on the editorial board of several cancer journals and is himself the author of over 350 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Mario R. Capecchi, Ph.D.: Dr. Capecchi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2007 with Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans. Dr. Capecchi is best known for pioneering the technology of gene targeting in mouse embryo-derived stem (ES) cells that allows scientists to create mice with mutations in any desired gene by choosing which gene to mutate and how to mutate it. He received his B.S. in chemistry and physics from Antioch College in 1961 and his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University in 1967 under the guidance of Dr. James Watson. From 1967-69 he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. In 1969 he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Harvard School of Medicine and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971. In 1973 he joined the faculty at the University of Utah as a Professor of Biology. Since 1988 Dr. Capecchi has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; since 1989, a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine; and since 1993, Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology. He is also co-chairman of the Department of Human Genetics. Dr. Capecchi is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1991) and the European Academy of Sciences (2002). In addition to the Nobel Prize, his prestigious awards include the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award (1992), Gairdner Foundation International Award (1993), Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize (1994), German Molecular Bioanalytics Prize, (1996), Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (1996), Baxter Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences (1998), Colby Presidential Endowed Chair (1999), Italian Premio Phoenix-Anni Verdi Award (2000), Spanish Jiménez-Diáz Prize (2001), Albert Lasker Award (2001), National Medal of Science (2001), John Scott Medal Award (2002), Massry Prize (2002), Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research (2003), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2002/03) and the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (2005).

George Christoffersen, Ph.D.: Dr. Christoffersen has over 35 years of in vitro diagnostic industry experience. He received his M.S. at the University of Wisconsin and earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology, Biochemistry, Virology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina. He has held senior management and development positions at American Biogenetic Sciences, Inc., Genzyme Corporation, Solvay Animal Health, Prototek, Marion Laboratories, Millipore, IBL, ENLI and Abbot Laboratories. His accomplishments include developing manufacturing protocols, rapid assay formats and a monoclonal antibody development program. He has been responsible for identifying, evaluating and licensing new technologies. Products that have been developed and introduced into the market place under his direction exceed $500 million in annual sales.

Edward Gelmann, M.D.: Dr. Gelmann is the chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine and deputy director for clinical research in the cancer center at the Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Gelmann’s lab has been at the forefront of work on NKX3.1, a protein solely expressed in the prostate and shown to be the prostate cancer suppressor protein first downregulated at initiation of prostate cancer. Before coming to CUMC, Dr. Gelmann was chief of the Division of Clinical Sciences in the Department of Oncology at Georgetown University. He also directed the Clinical Research Management Office and the Program in Growth Regulation of Cancer at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a graduate of Stanford University Medical School and received his oncology training at the National Cancer Institute.

Max Gottesman, M.D., Ph.D.: Dr. Gottesman is the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. He is the Director of the Institute of Cancer Research, College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, New York and a Charles H. Revson Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Microbiology at Columbia University. He earned his M.D. (1960) and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology (1965) from Yale University. Dr. Gottesman is Chairman of the Scientific Council of International Laboratories of Biophysics and Genetics and served as Head of the Biochemical Genetics Section of the National Cancer Institute from 1970 to 1985. He is an editor for the Journal of Molecular Biology and has served as a member of the editorial board for Virology. Dr. Gottesman is the author of over 150 papers in the area of genetic regulation.

David McCarthy, Ph.D.: Dr. McCarthy earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center followed by postdoctoral training in Molecular Genetics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Dr. McCarthy was on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma for 19 years prior to joining Ribomed Biotechnologies, Inc. His academic research interests in DNA repair and DNA recombination were supported by grants from the NIH, the Department of Defense and the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). Dr. McCarthy joined Ribomed in 2001 as Director of Genomics.  In 2004 he was promoted to Chief Science Officer. Dr. McCarthy is responsible for scientific development including management of the laboratory staff as well as scientific interactions with contractors and granting agencies.

David Brown: Dave Brown is the president and founder of Dave Brown Development. He received a B.A. in Business Administration from Loyola Marymount University and in 1991 established a successful design center operation for a top-100 production homebuilder. In 1994 he founded Floor Art, a flooring installation and service provider to the residential building community. The National Association of Home Builders recognized Floor Art in 2007 with an award for quality. This award, modeled after the Malcom Baldrige criteria, was the first acknowledgment of a flooring company in NAHB's history. Dave is also the founder of a software development company that provides solutions to production homebuilders. His latest project, Builder Design Center Magazine, with a circulation of over 10,000, is a trade publication targeting the design center construction market.

Joan Koerber-Walker: Joan Koerber-Walker is the CEO of the Arizona Small Business Association a 3,000 member business organization representing over 200,000 employees across the state. She is Chairman of the Board of CorePurpose, Inc, which she founded in 2002. In 2004, she was recognized by the Stevie Awards, the “Oscar” for women entrepreneurs as one of the leading entrepreneurial women in the United States and again in 2007 as one of the nation’s leading small business executives. Prior to founding CorePurpose, she was instrumental in the development of Avnet’s ASIC/FPGA business and the launch of Avnet’s first Telesales operation. She serves as President of the National Speakers Association/Arizona, as Chairman of the Opportunity through Entrepreneurship Foundation and is a member of the W.P.Carey Executive MBA Advisory Board.

David Laughlin: Mr. Laughlin was the founder and President of Metro-Plex Information Systems, Inc. and Nation-Wide Repair. He was also the Founder and CEO of Heartland Services, Inc. and Sunflower Repair Service, Inc. His most recent company is TechStar, Inc., founded in 1996. TechStar, Inc. provides temporary IT services to its customers. He has a B.S. in Business Administration from Saint Benedict’s college where he has served on its Board of Directors as Chairman of the Finance Committee and also serves on the Executive Committee. In the past Mr. Laughlin worked as a Marketing Representative for Ortho Pharmaceutical and was in Sales and Sales Management for the Xerox Corporation.

Jerry L. Ruyan: Mr. Ruyan was President and CEO of Meridian Diagnostics, Inc, a publicly traded company that develops diagnostic test products for the global medical industry. He is familiar with developing growth for a company from start-up to identifying market potential, nurturing product development, operating successful organizations and accessing public markets. He guided Meridian through each stage to create a thriving, and still growing, public company. Mr. Ruyan was one of the founders of Redwood Ventures in 1995. He serves on the boards of the following companies: Hemagen Diagnostics, Inc., Meritage Hospitality Group, Inc, and Schonstedt Instrument Company. Mr. Ruyan is a trustee for Ashland University where he received a B.S. degree in Biology. He received his Master’s degree in Microbiology from the Ohio State University.

Michelle D. Schechner: Ms. Schechner is a Senior Vice President at Bank of America, with over twenty years of financial services and capital markets experience. She has held business development and management positions with Bank One and PNC Financial Services. During her tenure at Bank One, she spent three years with Banc One Mezzanine Corporation, a $270 million fund that provided investment capital for growth, acquisitions, buy-outs and recapitalizations. Ms. Schechner spent the first thirteen years of her business career at PNC Financial where she managed a New York LPO corporate lending team, led the restructuring of international correspondent banking and was responsible for building and managing a sales, marketing and trading business for PNC Securities Corporation. She has earned degrees from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh (M.B.A.) and the University of Pittsburgh (B.A.).

Garth L. Splinter, M.D.: Dr. Splinter earned a MBA from the Harvard Business School and his M.D. from the University of Oklahoma (OU). In 1987, he joined the faculty of OU College of Medicine, where he served as the Director of the Health Sciences Center for Health Affairs and Rural Health Programs and part-time Medical Director for the Oklahoma State Employees Group Insurance Board. From 1991-1994, he served as the Special Assistant on Health Care Issues and was Chair of the Commission on Oklahoma Health Care. In 1994, Dr. Splinter was appointed by the Governor as Chief Executive Officer of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. In his last year with the agency, he served as the Southwestern Regional Representative to the American Public Services Association (APHSA, formerly APWA). In 1999, he served on the Committee on Serious or Complex Medical Conditions for the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Splinter currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and as the Chief Medical Officer of the University Hospitals Trust.