| Elizabeth Donley is CEO of Stemina. Ms. Donley brings a unique combination of business and legal experience to Stemina. She has more than a dozen years of experience in intellectual property, law and business management. Ms. Donley served as General Counsel and Director of Business Development for WARF for more than eight years. During those eight years, Ms. Donley negotiated hundreds of license, sponsored research and collaboration agreements between industry and WARF, the intellectual property management organization for the University of Wisconsin. Ms. Donley also served as Managing Director of both WARF subsidiaries: WiSys Technology Foundation (WiSys) and WiCell Research Institute (WiCell). WiCell distributes human embryonic stem (HES) cells, trains researchers worldwide and conducts important research involving many aspects of HES cell research. In 2005, WiCell was awarded a $16 million contract by the National Institutes of Health to serve as the National Stem Cell Bank.
Prior to joining WARF in 1998, Ms. Donley practiced law with the law firm of Quarles & Brady in the areas of intellectual property law, business transactions, securities and corporate law. She holds a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School, an M.B.A. in finance from the UW-Whitewater and an M.S. in bacteriology from the UW-Madison. |
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Gabriela Cezar is CSO of Stemina and is a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she pioneered the application of metabolomics to stem cell biology. Her research involves human embryonic stem (hES) cells, cancer stem cells and cells derived from hES cells such as neurons, cardiomyocytes and hepatocyte-like cells. In addition, Dr. Cezar heads the Stem Cell Safety Sciences Lab at UW and is a scientific collaborator with WiCell Research Institute. Overall, her research program is focused on unraveling biochemical pathways of neurodevelopmental disorders and cancer. Prior to joining the faculty at UW-Madison in 2005, Dr. Cezar served as a senior principal scientist at Pfizer Inc., working on global projects to incorporate stem cells in drug discovery and toxicology. In her role at Pfizer, Dr. Cezar developed mouse embryonic stem cell-based models for drug discovery in multiple therapeutic areas and predictive toxicity, including a model for cardiotoxicity (QT prolongation) with cardiomyocytes from mouse ES cells.
Dr. Cezar is a member of Standard & Poor’s Society of Industry Leaders and serves on the scientific advisory board of stem cell technology and patient advocacy organizations. She is an internationally renowned invited speaker at numerous conferences. |