board of directors
Jacqueline Brandwynne
Since 1981, Ms. Brandwynne served as President and CEO of Brandwynne Corporation, which has co-founded and assisted in the development of several healthcare and biotech companies. Ms. Brandwynne is a business strategist with more than 25 years of experience working with companies such as American Cyanimid, Bristol Myers/Clairol, National Liberty Life, Seagram &Sons and Neutrogena. From 1974 to 1981 she was in charge of developing Citicorp's global business strategy. From 2000 to 2006, Ms. Brandwynne was a director of Microvision, Inc., a public company that develops sophisticated miniature displays. She has served in multiple advisory roles in several administrations, including as an Advisor to the Council of Economic Advisors, a member of the US Trade Representatives Services Policy Advisory Committee, a negotiator of the North American Trade Agreement, a participant in GATT negotiations and a member of The Committee on Critical Choices for America, and Chair of an Economic Summit at the White House. She currently serves on the boards of Pacific Union Bank, the Proteus Venture Biotech Fund and on several non-profit boards, including the Cedars-Sinai Health Systems Board of Governors and the California Institute of the Arts.
Colonel Richard A. Cowell, USA, (Ret.)
Colonel Richard A. Cowell, USA, (Ret.) has served as a director since June 2007. Colonel Cowell retired in 2011 as a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., where he was involved in advanced concepts, technology experimentation and integration, and establishing new business operations. Prior to joining Booz Allen Hamilton in March 1996, Colonel Cowell served in the United States Army for 25 years. Mr. Cowell serves as a director and Chair of the Audit Committee for Microvision, Inc. He holds a Top Secret security clearance with special accesses based on a special background investigation. Mr. Cowell holds a B.S. degree in accounting from Ohio State University.
Helen Kim
Ms. Kim currently serves on the Board of Directors at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals and as the Chief Business Officer of NGM Biopharmaceuticals, a privately held drug discovery company. Ms. Kim was previously the president and CEO of Kosan Biosciences Inc., where she restructured and repositioned the company prior to the successful sale of Kosan to Bristol-Myers Squibb. She also held senior positions at Affymax, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Protein Design Labs and Chiron Corporation. In addition to her industry experience, Ms. Kim recently served as Chief Program Officer for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Ms. Kim has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University and a M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Manish Singh, Ph.D., MBA
Prior to joining ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Dr. Singh was a Director of California Technology Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm in Pasadena, California, from June 2003 to December 2007. During his tenure at California Technology Ventures, Dr. Singh co-lead investments by that firm in several life sciences companies, including Aliva Biopharmaceuticals, SurgRx, Vivant Medical, Angioscore and Ceregene. He also acted as the interim CEO of Aliva Biopharmaceuticals, a human monoclonal antibody production company focused on creating a greater diversity of antibodies, and was a board member or observer for several companies, including Aliva, Angioscore and Ceregene.
Before joining California Technology Ventures, Dr. Singh spent 14 years in various scientific and managerial positions in research, product development, manufacturing, and business development at Genetic Therapy, Inc. (acquired by Novartis Pharmaceuticals), Chiron Corporation, and Cell Genesys, where he was responsible for the process development, scale-up, technology transfer, and manufacturing of several gene therapy products. During this time he worked on a number of preclinical and clinical programs in oncology and hemophilia.
Dr. Singh holds ten issued patents and patent applications, and has been an invited speaker at several national and international conferences on gene therapy, cell therapy and drug delivery. Dr. Singh received his BS in Chemical Engineering from IIT (Roorkee, India), MS in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and did his post-doctoral work at the American Red Cross in Biomedical Sciences. He also received his MBA at the Anderson School at UCLA, where he was a Deutschman Venture Fellow and a Patrick J. Welsh Entrepreneurship Fellow.
Rahul Singhvi, Sc.D., MBA
Dr. Rahul Singhvi is a visionary and a business leader in the vaccine and pharmaceutical industry. He is Managing Partner and co-Founder of Axella Solutions, LLC, a healthcare consulting firm, and MLV Healthcare Partners, LLC, a New York based boutique merchant bank. Prior to cofounding Axella and MLV Healthcare Partners, Dr. Singhvi served as the President & CEO of Novavax, Inc, a NASDAQ listed, development stage biotechnology company. During his tenure at Novavax, he transformed Novavax from a distressed specialty pharmaceutical Company into a premier vaccine development company. Under his leadership, Novavax's valuation rose from $35M to almost $300M. When he left the company in April 2011, Novavax enjoyed a robust pipeline of important clinical and preclinical stage vaccine candidates, including those against influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and other infectious diseases.
While at Novavax, Dr. Singhvi developed a non-dilutive financing strategy through partnerships with governments and international companies. These partnerships included a major contract with the United States government agency HHS-BARDA worth over $179MM that was critical for Novavax to finance its pandemic and seasonal flu vaccines through licensure. Other key partnerships included those with GE Healthcare (manufacturing), LG Life Sciences (Korea), Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited (India) and Avimex (Mexico). Dr. Singhvi raised over $100 million for Novavax through multiple financings.
Prior to joining Novavax in 2005, Dr. Singhvi served in a number of positions at Merck & Co., where he helped develop several vaccines, including Zostavax®, the only vaccine on the market to prevent shingles.
Dr. Singhvi was named one of the most influential Marylanders in the healthcare field by The Daily Record in 2010. During the same year, Novavax was named one of the ten most innovative companies in the biotechnology industry by Fast Company magazine. Dr. Singhvi is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and serves on the Board of Directors of Immunocellular Therapeutics (OTC: IMUC), a US public company working on cancer vaccines.
Dr. Singhvi graduated as the top ranked chemical engineer from IIT, Kanpur, India and obtained both his M.S. and Sc.D degrees in chemical engineering from MIT. He also received an MBA degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.
John S. Yu, M.D.
Dr. Yu is a member of the full-time faculty in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. An internationally renowned neurosurgeon, Dr. Yu's clinical focus is on the treatment of malignant and benign brain and spinal tumors. He is also conducting extensive research in immune and gene therapy for brain tumors. He has also done extensive research in the use of neural stem cells as delivery vehicles for brain cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.
He was inducted into Castle and Connelly's America's Top Doctors in 2005. Dr. Yu has published articles in a number of prestigious journals, including The Lancet, Cancer Research, Cancer Gene Therapy, Human Gene Therapy, Journal of Neuroimmunology, Journal of Neurological Science and Journal of Neurosurgery.
Dr. Yu earned his bachelor's degree in French literature and biological sciences from Stanford University and spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris studying French literature. He also pursued a fellowship in immunology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and master's degree from the Harvard University's Department of Genetics. He completed his neurosurgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In addition, he was a Neuroscience Fellow at the National Institutes of Mental Health in the Neuroimmunology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1988 to 1989 and was a Culpepper Scholar at the Molecular Neurogenetics Unit at that hospital from 1993 to 1995. Dr. Yu's other honors include the Preuss Award, Joint Section on Tumors, American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurologic Surgeons in 1995. He received the Academy Award from the American Academy of Neurological Surgery at its 1996 annual meeting. Other honors include the Young Investigator Award from the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in 2000, the National Brain Tumor Foundation Grant in 2001, and the Mahaley Clinical Research award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in 2005.