Our Team

Bill brings a breadth of experiences 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, Inc. (acquired by Thermo-Fisher), 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.

He established a laboratory during his first position at the University of Utah and directed the HIV clinic. He moved to the University of Rochester as Associate Professor for 5 years, before becoming Infectious Diseases Division Chief and tenured full Professor at the University of California, Davis. His academic research centered on leishmania and HIV vaccine development and led to him joining Vical, a DNA vaccine developer as Chief Medical Officer in 2002. In 2005 he joined the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research as Global Head of Infectious Diseases Translational Medicine and Research. In September 2008 he moved to Shanghai as VP for Translational Sciences in Asia for Novartis. In September 2010 he joined Aeras, a non-profit Product Development Partnership with a mission to develop global tuberculosis vaccines, as the Chief Scientific Officer, and became CEO in February 2013. He has over 150 authored publications.

Tom joined Vaccitech in the spring of 2016. Having successfully built Vaccitech to a late clinical stage biopharmaceutical company as CEO, in his role as CSO, Tom focuses more specifically on the science, research and development that underpin Vaccitech’s next generation T-cell induction products.

Graham qualified as a solicitor in London in 2005, before moving to co-found technology company MET, which was subsequently sold to a group of private investors. He was an investment fund manager at Matrix Securities and then worked for 9 years as an operator and investor to develop a portfolio of life sciences companies held by Animatrix Capital LLP. Graham’s focus has been on operating and developing early stage products and companies targeting the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. One of these was Agalimmune, where Graham led the licensing, funding and development of a novel cancer immunotherapy and played a lead role in the company’s successful sale to NASDAQ-listed BioLineRx in 2017. Graham holds a BA Hons degree in Law with French from Newcastle University.

Robin joined Pharming from Sweden-based Karolinska Development AB (publ.) (KDEV: SS), where he was CFO and Head of Business Development. Mr. Wright was CFO and Head of Business Development at Orexo AB (publ.) (ORX: SS) in Sweden prior to this. Before going to Sweden, he worked in private equity and corporate finance advisory roles, including long periods at Citibank Salomon Smith Barney and Barclays de Zoete Wedd. He has completed over 170 global license and M&A transactions as well as several hundred financing transactions in debt and equity within the pharma/ biotech sector. Mr. Wright holds a BA degree in Chemistry from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in the UK.

Alex was a medical student and junior doctor in the Oxford training deanery before transitioning to investment banking. He has over 12 years’ experience in the healthcare and other investment banking sectors, including equity and debt capital raisings, mergers and acquisitions as well as licensing transactions gained at UBS and Lazard. Alex holds a BA in Physiological Sciences and a BM BCh from Oxford University.

He is a former member of the NIH Recombinant Advisory Committee (RAC), the past President of a start-up vaccine company (Codevax), and the current director of the UR’s Upstate Stem Cell cGMP Facility – which supports the development of cGMP-compliant cell production methods and the manufacturing of cell-based products for clinical trial.  He joined the UR in 1990 and has over 25 years’ experience as a molecular virologist, working principally on HIV and the influenza virus.

IVI’s oral cholera vaccine, prequalified by Sanofi and EuBiologics, is used around the world to prevent that deadly diarrheal disease. IVI’s typhoid conjugate vaccine is entering Phase II testing by two vaccine companies. Dr Kim is a graduate with high honors and highest honors in History and Biology, respectively, from the University of Hawaii, and received an MD degree from Yale University School of Medicine. Prior to IVI, Dr. Kim led the Army’s advanced development program for HIV vaccines, the RV144 HIV vaccine trial and correlates analysis, and a molecular virology laboratory at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. 

He is the Director of the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Pardoll attended Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his M.D., Ph.D., in 1982 and completed his Medical Residency and Oncology Fellowship in 1985. He then worked for three years at the National Institutes of Health as a Medical Staff Fellow. Dr. Pardoll joined the departments of oncology and medicine in 1988. Over the past two decades, Dr. Pardoll has studied molecular aspects of dendritic cell biology and immune regulation, particularly related to mechanisms by which cancer cells evade elimination by the immune system. He is an inventor of a number of immunotherapies, including GVAX cancer vaccines and Listeria monocytogenes-based cancer vaccines. Dr. Pardoll’s basic immunology discoveries include the identification of γδ-T cells, NKT cells and IKDC. He elucidated the role of Stat3 signaling in tumor immune evasion and in Th17 development, leading to the discovery that Stat3-driven Th17 responses promote carcinogenesis. Dr. Pardoll discovered one of the two ligands for the PD-1 inhibitory receptor and leads the Hopkins cancer immunology program that developed PD-1 pathway-targeted antibodies, demonstrating their clinical activity in multiple cancer types.