Our team

William W. Li, M.D.

Scientific Advisor

William W. Li is President, Medical Director, and Co-founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation. Will trained in the lab of Dr. Judah Folkman, pioneer of the angiogenesis field, and has been actively engaged in angiogenesis research and clinical development for 22 years. Under Will’s leadership, the Foundation has developed a unique social enterprise model based on international collaborations with leading medical academic centers, biopharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, and the Food and Drug Administration. As President, Will has testified and presented before congressional and other government panels on the impact of angiogenesis in healthcare, and lectures widely on angiogenesis-related topics in front of clinical, government, and industry audiences. He is involved in national and international efforts to advance the applications of angiogenesis-based therapeutics across diverse medical fields, including oncology/hematology, cardiology, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, dermatology, and wound care. He has been published in Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and other leading peer-reviewed medical journals. Will received his A.B. with honors from Harvard College, and his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania. He completed his internship, residency, and fellowship training in General Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Will has held appointments on the clinical faculties of Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Wound Care Specialists, and has served as advisor and consultant to leading global public and private companies.

Richard Boles, M.D.

Medical Director

Dr. Boles completed medical school at UCLA, a pediatric residency at Harbor-UCLA, and a genetics fellowship at Yale. He is board certified in Pediatrics, Clinical Genetics and Clinical Biochemical Genetics. His current positions include Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, and Director of the Metabolic and Mitochondrial Disorders Clinic at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Boles practices the “bedside to bench to bedside” model of a physician-scientist, combining a very active clinical practice in metabolic and mitochondrial disorders with basic researchas director of a mitochondrial genetics laboratory at the Saban Research Institute. Dr. Boles’ clinical and research focus is on polymorphisms (common genetic changes) in the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA, and their effects on the development of common functional disorders. Examples include migraine, depression, cyclic vomiting syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome, autism and SIDS. He has 50 published papers on Mitochondrial disease.

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R. Ward Pulliam, M.D., F.A.C.C.

Scientific Advisor

R. Ward Pulliam, M.D., joined The Heart Group of Lancaster General Health in 2004. He completed a cardiology fellowship at University of Pennsylvania while finishing a two-year electrophysiology fellowship. Board certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, Dr. Pulliam is qualified in pacemaker and ICD implantation, including a large volume of biventricular implantations. He performs all types of cardiac ablations with a special interest in ventricular tachycardia and atrial fibrillation ablation. He received his medical degree from the University of Mississippi Medical School and performed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Emory University Hospitals in Atlanta. He also served a fellowship in cardiovascular disease at Tulane University Hospitals in New Orleans prior to his training at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pulliam is a member of the Heart Rhythm Society.

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Melissa L. McKernan, M.D., F.A.C.C.

Scientific Advisor

Before coming to Lancaster and joining the highly respected team of cardiovascular physicians at The Heart Group of Lancaster General Health, Dr. McKernan distinguished herself as an intern, resident and fellow at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She served two fellowships at Penn, one in cardiovascular disease and another in cardiovascular electrophysiology, and she presented research findings at the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. She earned her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. McKernan is a member of the American College of Physicians, the American Medical Society and the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, and she is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. McKernan is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and cardiac electrophysiology.

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David A. Novis, M.D., FCAP

Medical Director

Dr. David Novis is a healthcare consultant specializing in Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. He is a recognized expert, author and lecturer in pathology practice, clinical quality, medical outcome assessment, patient safety, medical service delivery and best practices methodologies. He has considerable experience in laboratory and pathology strategic planning, practice management, business and anatomic pathology laboratory outreach. Dr. Novis has practiced Laboratory Medicine and Pathology for 30 years.

He is currently is the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Speaker of the House of Delegates and serves on and is a CAP’s Board of Governors, Finance Committee, Council on Membership and Professional Development, and Council on Government Affairs. He is an inspector and Team leader for CAP’s Laboratory Accreditation Program. Dr. Novis was Vice Chairman of the CAP’s Quality Practices Committee. Much of his work in this area has been incorporated into CAP Laboratory Accreditation requirements. He has also served on the CAP Cancer, Education, and Point of Care Testing Committees.

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Jocelyn Burke, Ph.D.

Founder & Scientific Advisor

Jocelyn is co-founder of Courtagen Life Sciences and serves as a Scientific Advisor. She is former Vice President of Packard BioScience Company and founder and General Manager of its BioChip Ventures Division. Dr. Burke’s achievements at Packard span the development and commercialization of more than 25 new products for life sciences research, including instrumentation and software for detectors, imagers, liquid handlers, microarrayers, and robotic workstations, as well as reagent products including solid scintillator detector flow cells, high-throughput screening assay reagents, and biochip substrates. Dr. Burke leveraged Packard’s PiezoTipnology™ and HydroGel™ substrate to enable the protein microarray market and championed the development of novel protein chips resulting in the first proof of concept of a quantitative six-plex assay for cytokines. Her division collaborated to prove protein microarrays for cytokine profiling (43-plex) and biomarker discovery (186-plex). Dr. Burke introduced Homogenous Time-Resolved Flourescence (HTRF™) to high-throughput screening for drug discovery and pioneered the first successful commercialization of reagents for proximity assays not based on the use of radioisotopes. Dr. Burke’s many achievements while at Packard BioScience supported the company’s IPO and subsequent acquisition by PerkinElmer, Inc. Dr. Burke earned her Ph.D. degree in Natural Products Chemistry from The Ohio State University.

Jocelyn earned her Ph.D. degree in Natural Products Chemistry from the College of Pharmacy at The Ohio State University; Jocelyn earned a B.S. degree in both Chemistry and Marine Science from the University of Tampa.

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Kate Sheldon, Ph.D.

Director, Assay Development

Kate has over 15 years of industry experience. Prior to joining Courtagen, Kate was a Group Leader at BioScale, where she led the development of high sensitivity immunoassays for the detection of impurities in bioprocess samples. Previously, Kate was with IDEXX Laboratories Inc., where she held a variety of scientific and management positions dedicated to the development of novel point of care solutions for the veterinary market.

Kate received a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Acadia University in Nova Scotia and Master’s and PhD degrees in biochemistry from The University of Toronto in Ontario.

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Jason Warner, Ph.D.

Director, Bioinformatics

Prior to joining Courtagen, Jason was Head of Bioinformatics at RainDance Technologies. At RainDance, Jason developed workflows and pipelines for next-gen sequencing analysis and primer design, as well as optimized assays for the RDT1000 target enrichment platform. Prior to RainDance, Jason contributed to the development of the SOLiD next-gen sequencing platform at Applied Biosystems.

Jason completed his postdoctoral training in bioinformatics and technology development at Harvard Medical School. Jason completed his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology from Tufts University School of Medicine and a holds a BA in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.

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Matthew J. Parisi

Director Operations & Quality

Prior to joining Courtagen Life Sciences, Inc., Matt was the Director of Operations at Beckman Coulter Genomics, formerly Agencourt Bioscience. Matt’s role at Beckman included managing and leading the production, customer support, quality, and supply chain organizations. Matt led the team to adopt ISO 13485-quality system and was the driving force to ensure that the lean manufacturing principles on which Agencourt was founded continued to remain best practice. Matt was also responsible for designing and implementing LIMS and ERP Systems.

Prior to joining Agencourt, Matt worked at the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research (now the Broad Institute) as an associate on the Quality and Materials Team. Matt holds a B.S. in Biology from Boston College.

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Andria Devoe, CPA

Corporate Controller

Andria has over ten years of experience in Corporate Accounting and Finance. Prior to joining Courtagen, Andria was the Manager of Accounting at Beckman Coulter Genomics (formerly Agencourt Bioscience) where she had responsibility over a 75+ million life sciences company within broad areas of accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, and cash management. Notably during that time she was involved in the accounting and finance management of the Cogenics Inc. acquisition by Beckman and managed a significant project for the ERP construction, implementation and subsequent financial reporting consolidations for several international and domestic acquisition sites. While the majority of her experience has been within the biotechnology industry, she has also had exposure to retail distribution and non-biotech manufacturing environments.

Andria received her Masters of Science degree in Accountancy from Bentley College, graduating with Cum Laude honors. She is a Certified Public Accountant and Notary Public in Massachusetts and has been a member of the American Institute of CPA’s and Massachusetts Society of CPA’s.

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Timothy Olcott, MBA

Senior Manager, Manufacturing

Tim is a co-founder of Courtagen Life Sciences. Previously worked for Agencourt Bioscience from its 2001 inception through its acquisition by Beckman Coulter in 2006, leaving in 2007 to pursue an MBA. Throughout Agencourt’s rapid growth, Tim worked in manufacturing services. His responsibilities included purchasing, inventory planning and control, quality management, facilities management, and new product development. Most notably Tim led a task force that implemented lean manufacturing practices in the laboratory, maintaining a low cost structure to drive margins and other key indicators. Tim also served on the New Product Development committee at Agencourt and managed the release of several successful product launches.

Tim earned his undergraduate degree in Business/Finance at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He left Agencourt in 2007, a year after the merger with Beckman Coulter, to pursue an MBA at Babson College. While studying at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College he worked as an intern for the Boston Harbor Angel group coordinating deal screening and due diligence activities. Tim graduated from Babson in June of 2009.

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Barry Garvin, MBA

Sr. Director, Software Development

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Amir Zare, M.S

Genetic Scientist

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Yvonne Helbert

Scientist