Board of Directors [DRAFT]

Mr. Buckner is Founding Member and Managing Partner, Brokerage and Advisor Services at The Tenant Agency. Mr. Buckner is a graduate of the University of Maryland, and a licensed real estate broker in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.  He spent the first 10 years of his career with a global real estate firm in Washington, DC.  He now specializes in working with nonprofit organizations, professional services companies, trade associations, and high growth technology companies in the DC region to identify opportunities for taking advantage of real estate market conditions. Mr. Buckner is an expert in reducing costs and increasing flexibility for clients, creating work environments that promote productivity, innovation, and collaboration in a cost-effective manner.  Past and current clients include the FNIH, the National Association of Community Health Centers, the National Park Foundation, the American Telemedicine Association, the Society of Developmental Biology, and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Dr. Catalano is an International Trade Analyst with the U.S. International Trade Commission. She received her BS in chemistry and BA in English from the University of Rochester, her MBA in international business from the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and her PhD in pharmacology and experimental therapeutics from the University of Maryland.  She completed the FAES Advanced Studies in Technology Transfer program and has contributed to that FAES curriculum as an instructor and lecturer.  Dr. Catalano is accountable for analysis on subjects such as trade valuation, supply chain integration, economic modeling assistance, trade and investment policies, and visits to factories to evaluate manufacturing sites. She was appointed as liaison between her agency and the Office of the President, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for a one-year term on technical matters. She provides contribution analysis and advice to the USTR that has use in negotiations at the World Trade Organization. Dr. Catalano works with a team of attorneys, economists, and accountants who analyze information for international disputes and produce informative publications for Congress and the public. She previously held the positions of chemist and biologist at the FDA for 10 years, working for six of those years as the FDA representative to the International Conference on Harmonization acting as a negotiator and diplomatic leader to create innovative standards to be integrated into management processes for numerous countries. At the FDA she was chair for the large-scale data group at her Center, and she led her group towards a successful working solution to integrate novel technology containing unprecedented large-scale data into new management practices.

Mr. Ferguson is Special Advisor for the NIH Office of Technology Transfer. A former chemist at the NCI and biotech industry product manager, Mr. Ferguson holds master's degrees in Business Administration (George Washington University) and Chemistry (University of Cincinnati) as well as a BS in Chemistry (Case Western Reserve University).  A registered Patent Agent and a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP), Mr. Ferguson is faculty and chair for the FAES Academic Programs Department of Technology Transfer, Business and Industry as well as faculty for the Biotechnology Industry Organization “BIO Boot Camp” along with being a former Executive-in-Residence at the Johns Hopkins University Cary Business School.  He has received the Association of University Technology Managers President’s Award and Service Award, the NIH Director’s Award, the FAES Instruction Award, three “Deal of Distinction” awards from the Licensing Executive Society, seven Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards, and 15 NIH Merit Awards in recognition of his activities in technology transfer and education.

Dr. Ho serves on the FAES Board of Directors in his personal capacity. He is Deputy Chief, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute and Director of the NCI Antibody Engineering Program. He received a BS from East China Normal University and an MA from San Francisco State University. He received his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Ira Pastan at the NCI. Dr. Ho became a Tenure Track Investigator at the NCI in 2008 and was promoted to Senior Investigator in 2015. His laboratory studies the molecular basis of cell surface receptors and designs novel antibody therapeutics. The antibodies, CAR T cells, and immunotoxins developed in his lab are being tested at preclinical and clinical stages for liver cancer, neuroblastoma, mesothelioma, and pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Hohman retired from the NIH in 2019, and currently provides technology consulting to government, industry, and academic institutions. He received his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Maryland and the NIH, where his PhD advisor was Dr. Earl Stadtman at NHLBI. After a postdoctoral position in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he returned to the NIH for a second postdoctoral appointment during which he studied IgE receptor-mediated activation of mast cells. In 1992, Dr. Hohman joined Oncor Inc, a biotechnology company that specialized in DNA diagnostics based on fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). He became Vice President of Research and Development and helped Oncor produce the first FDA-approved FISH-based DNA diagnostic test, HER-2/neu, for women with breast cancer.  While at Oncor, Dr. Hohman established a research products division; in 1998, this division was sold to Intergen and he became Vice President for Research and Development of the newly formed Intergen Discovery Products. In 2000, Dr. Hohman was recruited back to NIH to become Chief of the Research Technologies Branch (RTB) at NIAID. The RTB is a $15 million program that provides state-of-the-art technologies to the Division’s 120 principal investigators and 500 postdoctoral and clinical fellows. Dr. Hohman managed a staff of 60 scientists who developed technologies in the fields of flow cytometry, confocal and electron microscopy, structural biology, genomics, and bioinformatics.

Dr. Hopmann received her PhD from University of Minnesota, 1984, Institute of Child Development. Dr. Hopmann was a faculty member in the Psychology Department of Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, where she supervised honors theses, chaired the college’s Curriculum Department, founded and chaired the college’s IRB, and co-founded the Junior Faculty Caucus, a group of untenured faculty who met regularly to discuss professional development issues. In 1985, Dr. Hopmann joined the Pediatrics Department at Brown University’s School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor (Clinical) at the Child Development Center. She founded a research program in Language and Communication Disabilities, focusing on children with Down syndrome. She was a member of Rhode Island Hospital’s IRB for seven years. Dr. Hopmann worked at the NIH as a Scientific Review Administrator and Associate Director for Staff Development and Training for the Scientific Review Branch at NICHD for 17 years until her retirement in 2017. She assembled and ran the first Biobehavioral and Behavioral Sciences Subcommittee for NICHD, and administered reviews of behavioral developmental science of individual-initiated grant and career development applications and program projects. She co-founded SPRIG (Scientific Program and Review Interest Group), the first intramural/extramural NIH interest group, reflecting her interest in improving NIH science management and the quality and enjoyment of work at NIH. She conducted workshops on the NIH grant application process at international and national conferences in pediatrics and developmental psychology. Dr. Hopmann had three years of prior experience in federal administration as a research fellow in the Office of Research and Evaluation for the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF). She administered the Quality Research Centers (QRCs) for the Head Start Bureau, and supervised the Head Start Research Scholars program, two-year grants for PhD candidates doing research with children in Head Start programs.

Mr. Ibex is a semi-retired certified public accountant (CPA) with a forensic accounting and investigations practice. He is a professor of accounting and auditing. He received his BS and MBA in Accounting from Penn State University. Mr. Ibex was partner in a forensic accounting firm formed in 1987 through 2010, which began as Winters & Ibex, CPAs, merged into Rosenfarb & Winters, CPAs, and merged again in Marcum, LLP. Prior to self-employment, Mr. Ibex worked for United States Army office 1967 – 1969 (active service), began his career as an auditor with Arthur Andersen & Co. (1965-1980), and was chief financial officer for two corporations. Mr. Ibex has served in many organizations in a volunteer and elected capacity as a Rotarian, elected to Board of Education (17 years of service), elected to town council (7 years of service), treasurer of Rotary Foundation Asbury Park [NJ], and Cancer Support Community. He is Chair of the FAES Audit Oversight Committee.

Dr. Klinman is Chief Scientific Officer at Cobro Ventures. He obtained his MD and PhD in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his fellowship training in rheumatology at National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, where his research focused on understanding the molecular and cellular basis of autoimmune disorders. He joined the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), earned tenure, and was promoted to Senior Investigator and Captain in the Public Health Service (PHS). In 2007, he transferred to the National Cancer Institute as Chief of the Immune Modulation Section in the Cancer and Inflammation Program, where his lab developed methods to improve anti-cancer immunity in the tumor microenvironment. He is the holder of numerous patents related to use of immunomodulatory CpG oligonucleotides. Dr. Klinman is the recipient of Outstanding Service, Meritorious Service, and Distinguished Service medals from the PHS, two Technology Transfer awards from the NIH, a Mentor of Merit award from the NCI, and is a member of the governing board of the International Society of Vaccinology.  He retired from the NIH in 2019 and is currently the CSO for a private investment firm focused on software and biotech.

Dr. Koretsky is Chief, Laboratory of Functional and Molecular Imaging, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He received his BS from MIT, PhD from UC Berkeley, and did postdoctoral work with Robert Balaban at NIH. Dr. Koretsky moved to NINDS in 1999 as Chief of the Laboratory of Functional and Molecular Imaging as well as to direct two trans-NIH facilities, the NIH MRI Research Facility and the Mouse Imaging Facility located in the NIH in vivo NMR Center. Prior to coming to NIH, he held the Eberly Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and was a Principal Investigator in the Pittsburgh NMR Center for Biomedical Research. In 2006, Dr. Koretsky was appointed Scientific Director (SD) of the NINDS intramural research program, where he served until 2018.

Dr. Levin is Chief, Section on Eukaryotic Transposable Elements, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He received his BA in Chemistry from Oberlin College and his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School and in 1992 joined the intramural program at NIH as a tenure track investigator in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).  He served on several committees including the NICHD tenure and promotions committee and the NIH Central Tenure Committee.

Dr. McLaughlin is Deputy Chief, National Institute on Drug Abuse Office of Extramural Policy and Review. He received his AB in biochemistry from UC Berkeley and his PhD in molecular symbiology/physiology from the University of Iowa, and after NIH, NSF, and NRC postdocs at Notre Dame, Texas A&M Medical School, and the CDC, was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, and the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine. His research was funded continuously for 22 years by grants and contracts from NIH, NSF, AID, and WHO. He was co-editor for BioPlatform and SmallCapsOnline biotechnology analysis groups, co-developed several marketed clinical diagnostic products, and was director of the molecular diagnostics, microbiology, and parasitology clinical laboratories and deputy director for the IU Health University Hospital’s clinical diagnostic laboratories. His research advanced molecular phylogeny with an emphasis on evolution, diagnostics, and drug development, and included research on malaria, pneumonia, and viral infections including AIDS.  He joined NIAID in 2000 as a Scientific Review Officer, and in 2005 moved to NIDA as chief of the Scientific Review Branch, and in 2020 to Deputy. He contributed to several trans-NIH and NIDA workgroups and committees, notably eSubmission, Appendix, NIH Review Users Group and Review Policy Committee, and worklife, genetics/epigenetics, AIDS, and Neuroscience workgroups. He co-manages the NIH Mitochondria Interest Group (2000-) and co-managed the NIH Biocomputing Interest Group (2005-2016).

Mr. Mkanganwi is an accounting and finance executive. He received his BS (Honors) from the University of South Africa, and his Executive Masters in Leadership from Georgetown University. He is also a licensed Chartered Accountant (Zimbabwe) and CPA (Virginia, USA). Mr. Mkanganwi is Director of Financial Accounting and Reporting, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI), Controller, International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm), and Founding Board Member and Treasurer, US Friends of AbleChildAfrica. At GAVI, Mr. Mkanganwi led the design and implementation of new financial reporting and financial risk management policies and procedures, bringing them up to best practice for the industry. At IFFIm, Mr. Mkanganwi led all accounting, financial reporting and audit related aspects of several significant and complex IFFIm financing transactions that received several awards, including “Social Impact Deal of the Year” from Islamic Finance News and “Achievement in Transformational Finance Award” from The Financial Times. Mr. Mkanganwi was Manager, Audit and Assurance Services, Deloitte & Touche, Southern Africa (1994–2001); Senior Manager, Audit and Enterprise Risk, Deloitte & Touche, New York and Washington, DC (2001–2009). He is vice chair for the FAES Audit Oversight Committee.

Dr. Mukoyama is Senior Investigator, Laboratory of Stem Cell and Neuro-Vascular Biology, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. He obtained his PhD in Developmental Biology from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. David Anderson at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the NHLBI as a tenure-track investigator, and has been a Senior Investigator since 2014. Research in his laboratory is aimed at understanding fundamental mechanisms in the branching morphogenesis and patterning of the nervous system and vascular system at the single-cell level using high-resolution whole-mount imaging and genetic tools.

Dr. Murphy is Chief, Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He obtained his AB in Biochemistry from Princeton and his MD from Cornell. He completed his residency and served as a chief resident in Internal Medicine at NYU-Bellevue Medical Center before coming to NIAID as a Clinical Fellow in Infectious Diseases. He was promoted to Senior Investigator in NIAID in 1992, and in 2003 became the founding Chief of a new NIAID lab, the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology. Dr. Murphy's research focuses on basic, translational, and clinical studies related to G protein-coupled chemotactic receptors of the immune system. Recently, his research focus expanded to include basic and clinical studies of WHIM syndrome, a primary immunodeficiency disease caused by mutations in CXCR4.  He has published 321 papers in immunology, two of which have been selected as Classics by Science Magazine, and he has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the Henry Kunkel Society.

Ms. Norcross is a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in private practice and the federal government. Ms. Norcross served the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in its Legal Division for 33 years, retiring from the role of Chief, Appellate Litigation Unit. At the FDIC, she supervised lawyers who briefed and argued appeals pending in federal and state courts across the country involving directors’ and officers’ liability, federal tax, commercial, bankruptcy, banking, employment and administrative law issues. Before that, she supervised lawyers in FDIC’s Commercial Litigation Unit who represented the FDIC at the trial level in cases that arose in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. She has been involved in some of the largest bank failures in the nation’s history, including as FDIC’s chief negotiator for the settlement of large lawsuits arising out of the failure of Washington Mutual Bank. Ms. Norcross also taught Appellate Advocacy at American University’s Washington College of Law, where she received the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and holds licenses to practice law in Maryland, DC, Texas and NJ. She has filed briefs or appeared before every Federal Circuit Court, numerous Federal District Courts, and many state courts.

Dr. Schechter is Senior Investigator and Chief, Molecular Medicine Branch, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. He received an MD from College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. In 1965, he joined the Laboratory of Chemical Biology (now MMB) with C.J. Epstein and C.B. Anfinsen. Dr. Schechter has researched protein folding, hemoglobin and its diseases, nitric oxide and nitrite ions in blood and vascular function. He was the acting NIH Historian from 2006-2007, and has been Senior Historical Consultant since 2008 to present. Dr. Schechter has been on faculty at FAES, George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. He is co-Editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. He chairs the FAES Bookstore Committee and chairs the FAES Nominating Committee.

Karen Sibley, Ed.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 2003, Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management), is a forward thinking academic leader, addressing the evolution in innovative technologies and fast-changing higher education circumstances to create access to high quality learning opportunities in times that demand continuous knowledge acquisition across the learner spectrum, from young people to mid-career and senior executive leaders. She is responsible for expanding on Brown’s highly successful undergraduate and graduate programs by creating access to education through new instructional models, technology and interdisciplinary graduate programs for professionals, new online courses for undergraduates and pre-college students and programs for Brown alumni. Responsible for a staff of over 70, more than 350 faculty and courses each year, over 8,500 students enrolled, a $30 million+ budget, and a number of high level collaborations with external and internal partners including the IE University in Madrid and Brown’s Graduate Schools of Public Health, Medicine and Engineering, the Watson Institute for International Affairs and Public Policy, the Swearer Center for Public Service, and the newly launched Center for Entrepreneurship. Board level and organizational leadership roles have included University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Association of University Summer Sessions, and the North American Association of Summer Sessions, all of which she served as President. Dr. Sibley is past Chair of the Alumni Advisory Board for the Executive Doctorate, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania.

Ms. Thomas retired from service as a health facility planner with the Department of Defense, specifically the Defense Health Agency, Facilities Enterprise, MILCON Division. She obtained her BSN from Boston College and her MS in Nursing Administration and Health Services from Georgetown University.  She has more than 30 years of experience in health plan accreditation/regulatory compliance, clinical healthcare, quality management, strategic management, product development/marketing, and most recently, health facility planning. Ms. Thomas was responsible for Military Health System (MHS) facility requirements planning and creation of planning artifacts that support the Defense Health Agency Capital Investment Decision Model process for Congressional appropriations. Her position involved utilization of predictive software programs to analyze facility space requirements and develop programs for design using evidence-based and world class design practices for clinical and hospital construction and renovations. Ms. Thomas is also involved in working groups including MHS Facility Criteria Review, Pre-Construction Change Management, Facility Functionality Assessment and Strategic Visioning for Real Estate Inventory Management. From 2000 to 2015, Ms. Thomas developed and marketed the healthcare consulting department at Professional Services Network, Inc.  She recruited and coordinated a network of expert consultants who assisted healthcare organizations to prepare for various accreditations including National Committee for Quality Assurance, The Joint Commission, and URAC.

Dr. Wright is Program Director, Big Data and Computational Science, Division of Neuroscience and Behavior at National Institute of Drug Abuse, where she oversees the program that advances NIDA’s Strategic Plan for Data Science. Having trained in both neuroscience and computer science, Dr. Wright envisions how big data science can be used to understand the biological underpinnings of disease, and she is committed to promoting opportunities for cutting edge computational capabilities to be combined with biomedical research. Her portfolio includes data curation, sharing, access, reproducibility, security, analysis, harmonization, quality metrics and standards, and visualization. She serves on many NIDA, NIH-wide and multi-agency committees, including the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, the Helping End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative, the Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) initiative, and the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program. She works closely with the Office of Data Science Strategy on implementation of the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science.

Dr. Leitman received her BA and MD at Brown University and completed Internal Medicine Residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She arrived at the NIH in 1983 as a fellow in the Clinical Center Department of Transfusion Medicine, became Chief of the Blood Services Section in 1985 and Deputy Chief of the Department in 1992.  Her research was directed at maximizing the safety of blood and apheresis donations, evaluating iron homeostasis in frequent donors, and leading randomized clinical trials of the efficacy of therapeutic apheresis. In 2014, after 31 years in transfusion medicine, Dr. Leitman retired from the NIH to become the director of the Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP), where her primary role is to develop the academic curriculum that participating student scholars follow during their residential research year at the NIH. Dr. Leitman served as past president of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and vice chair of the Board of Directors of the NMDP, and held numerous leadership positions at the AABB (formerly American Association of Blood Banks).  She has been honored with the NIH Distinguished Clinical Teacher Award and the NIH Clinical Center Director’s Award.