Our Team

Erika Smith, MBA

CEO
​Over the last 25 years, Erika successfully advanced dozens of companies and technologies in life-sciences by leading the launch of three investment funds:  the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale, the YEI (Yale) Innovation Fund, and the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) BioLife Fund in partnership with Johnson & Johnson.  Erika holds board roles at BIO and at CVG, the venture capital organization of CT. She is an invited TedX presenter, received an Innovation Award from Senator Chris Murphy, and co-authored a playbook for best practices of "Empowering Women Entrepreneurs" sponsored by JPMorgan Chase (INBIA).  Erika received a bachelor’s in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering and MBA from Vanderbilt University.

Steve Strittmatter, MD, PhD

Founder & Scientific Advisor
​Steve is the Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology and co-founded the Yale Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair. 

George Maynard, PhD

President & CSO
George has 27 years of pre-clinical development and medicinal chemistry experience. Previously he worked at Hoechst and Neurogen.

Craig Hackett, PhD

VP Process Science & Manufacturing
Craig has 30+ years of process development and manufacturing experience, developing recombinant proteins  as subunit vaccines and biotherapeutics. Previously he worked at Acorda Therapeutics, Curagen, and Protein Sciences.

Gilbert Block, MD, PhD

 Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Block has 30+ years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience focusing primarily on neurologic and neuroinflammatory diseases, rare and ultra-rare orphan disorders, psychiatric diseases and pain. Dr. Block is the founder and principal of The Willmatt Group, LLC, a biotechnology and pharmaceutical consulting company. Previously he worked at Merck, AstraZeneca, Cephalon, Cambridge Neurosciences, i3 Global, Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals, and Vtesse Pharmaceuticals. He was previously on the faculty of the Departments of Neurology at Cornell University Medical College/New York Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine/Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an Adjunct full professor at Drexel University School of Medicine. Dr. Block is a member of the external review boards of the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) and the Bridging Interventional Development Gaps (BrIDGs) groups at NIH, and a founding member of the American Society of Experimental Neurotherapeutics. Dr. Block received his PhD and MD at Case Western Reserve University. 
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Crista Adamson, PhD

Director Clinical Engagement
Crista sustained a C5 spinal cord injury in 1985 when she was 20 years old. She was awarded a scholarship from the Swim with Mike Physically challenged athletes fund at USC where she completed her BA and MS in 1991. She received her PhD in 2001 from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her postdoctoral fellowship, as well as her position as a research associate, focused on therapeutic strategies for treatment, regeneration, and recovery in spinal cord injury at the Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience.

Ann Hollmann
​Office Manager

Anjali Walia, Yale '21
Intern

Board of Directors

Gregory Ho, JD​

Co-Founder and President,
Spring Mountain Capital, LP
BIO
Gregory Ho is a co-founder and President of Spring Mountain Capital, LP, a private investment management firm that focuses on alternative asset investing.  Previously, he was a Principal and Chief Financial Officer of McKinsey & Company, Inc. and led the financial and tax planning for the firm and its worldwide partner group.  He is currently a member of the Investor Board of Venture for America, a member of the board of directors of IsoPlexis Corporation, and an advisor to several early stage companies in the ed tech, consumer products, and food service sectors.  Mr. Ho received a JD from Columbia Law School and a BS from Yale College.  He is a member of the New York Bar and the California Bar.

John Puziss, PhD​

Director Business Development,
​Yale Office of Cooperative Research
BIO
​​John leads the Business Development team at the Yale University Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), evaluating the commercial potential and patentability of Yale technologies, developing commercialization strategies, and negotiating licenses and collaborative R&D agreements to maximize the potential of these technologies. 

David Wurzer​

Executive VP and Chief Investment Officer, Connecticut Innovations
BIO
​​Dave manages the investment function at Connecticut Innovations. He has extensive senior-level experience in operations and finance, including more than 10 years as executive vice president, treasurer and CFO of CuraGen Corporation, a former CI portfolio company. Dave was also involved in negotiating strategic and business development alliances with several pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including Roche, Bayer and Amgen-Freemont (Abgenix). 

Sean Cassidy, MBA​​

Chief Financial  Officer,
Arvinas
BIO
​Mr. Cassidy is the Chief Financial Officer of Arvinas. He has over 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, including formerly serving as Chief Financial Officer of ReNetX Bio; Chief Financial Officer of CuraGen Corporation (NASDAQ: CRGN), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company; and Director and Controller of 454 Life Sciences Corporation, a life sciences company that developed and commercialized next generation DNA sequencing instruments and reagents. Earlier in his career, Mr. Cassidy served at Deloitte. Mr. Cassidy holds an MBA and BS from the University of Connecticut and is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Connecticut.

Advisory Board

Andrew Blight, PhD

Former Chief Scientifc Officer at Acorda Therapeutics, Inc.
BIO
Andrew Blight received his PhD from the University of Bristol in the UK and completed postdoctoral fellowships in the U.S. (at NYU) and Germany (Max Planck Institute).  He subsequently held faculty positions at New York University Medical Center (1980-1987), Purdue University (1987-1992) and the University of North Carolina where he was Professor and Director of the Neurosurgery 
Research Laboratory from 1992-1998. He joined Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. in 1998 and was Chief Scientific Officer from 2004 to 2017. In academia, Dr. Blight specialized in research on the pathophysiology of spinal cord injury (SCI), particularly on the role of inflammation and demyelination.  At Acorda, he extended his earlier academic studies on the clinical therapeutic application of 4-aminopyridine in SCI and multiple sclerosis (MS), including the two largest multicenter clinical trials in chronic SCI to date. These efforts culminated in an FDA approval for treatment of walking in MS in 2010. He has also been involved in management of a number of other preclinical and clinical research programs in SCI, MS and stroke. Dr. Blight was a charter member of the National Neurotrauma Society and previously served as Secretary, Treasurer and Vice President. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Neurotrauma. He is a reviewer for a number of agencies engaged in SCI funding and is active in international efforts to improve clinical strategies for therapeutic development in SCI . He is co-chair of the Spinal Cord Outcomes Partnership Endeavor (SCOPE) a collaboration between academia, industry and non-profit and government funders of research in this area. 

Sven M. Jacobson, MBA

CEO at Remedy and Martin Pharmaceuticals
BIO
​Sven is a co-founder and the CEO of Remedy Pharmaceuticals, a clinical stage pharmaceutical company that repurposes drugs to treat life threatening CNS diseases. Sven has lead Remedy through multiple financing rounds, three Phase 2 clinical studies, and in May 2017, the sale of the company’s lead product CIRARA (now BIIB093) to Biogen for an up-front of $120 million plus milestones and royalties. At the time of its sale, CIRARA was being developed as a treatment for brain swelling following large hemispheric infarction (a type of severe ischemic stroke), with secondary indications in traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. A serial entrepreneur, Sven is also a co-founder and the CEO of Martin Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on non-CNS orphan indications, and a co-founder and board member of Critical Diagnostics, a diagnostics company focused on cardiac disease. Sven received his Bachelor of Science Engineering (BSc Eng) and MBA degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Daniel P. Lammertse, MD

Former Medical Director of Research at Craig Hospital
BIO
​Dr. Lammertse is the former Medical Director of Research at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, having retired from his work at that institution in 2016 after 35 years of service. Dr. Lammertse received his M.D. from Ohio State University in 1976 where he also completed his residency training in the Department of Physical Medicine in 1979. He is board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (ABPM&R) and the sub-specialty of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine. He has served on the Board of Directors of the American Paraplegia Society (APS) and the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA). He served as President of ASIA from 2001-2003. He was co-project director of the Rocky Mountain Regional Spinal Injury System from 1997-2016 and served as chair of the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research (NIDRR) SCI Model Systems Project Directors from 2000-2006. He has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine and was a member of the Spinal Cord Injury Medicine Examination Committee of the American Board of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He has been awarded the American Paraplegia Society Excellence Award in 2008 and the American Spinal Injury Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. Dr. Lammertse has an appointment as Clinical Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Colorado. He currently serves on the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation Board of Directors and is a founding member of the Spinal Cord Outcomes Partnership Endeavor (SCOPE). He is an internationally recognized as an expert in spinal cord injury clinical care and rehabilitation who has authored numerous scientific publications on topics in spinal cord injury, including ventilator-dependent tetraplegia, aging in persons with SCI, and the conduct of clinical trials in SCI.

Kevin Malobisky, PhD, RAC

Chief Regulatory and Strategic Operations Officer at Tavanta Therapeutics
BIO
​Dr. Malobisky is currently the Chief Regulatory and Strategic Operations Officer at Tavanta Therapeutics, where he is responsible for developing and executing all global regulatory strategies, a robust quality management system, and overall strategic operations across the organization.  With over 30 years of executive leadership and global drug development experience, Dr. Malobisky has an established track record of success building and leading teams in both large pharmaceutical and small biotechnology organizations. 

Prior to joining Tavanta, Dr. Malobisky was the Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs, Quality, and Compliance at Achillion Pharmaceuticals where he led the successful regulatory and quality development of the first-in-class, oral factor D inhibitor danicopan for the treatment of the rare diseases paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and C3 Glomerulopathy (C3G). Under his leadership, danicopan was granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the Food and Drug Administration and PRIME designation by the European Medicines Agency. Previously, Dr. Malobisky was the Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs, Quality, and Pharmacovigilance at Karyopharm Therapeutics where he led their first successful New Drug Application submission for XPOVIO® (selinexor) tablets for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma and built and implemented the Quality Management System at the company.  In addition to his experience in rare disease and biotechnology, Dr. Malobisky has also held positions of increasing responsibility at Sanofi, Roche Molecular Systems, and Hoffmann-LaRoche. 
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After earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology from the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Malobisky earned his Master of Science degree in Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance from Temple University School of Pharmacy and his Doctorate with distinction in Organization and Management from Capella University School of Business and Technology. Dr. Malobisky is Regulatory Affairs Certified (RAC) and serves as an independent advisor to Allyx Therapeutics.
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