Basilard Team
Company Board of Directors and Executive Team
Brynley Lee, Founder, President and CEO, Board Member
Brynley Lee is an experienced Transactional CEO and the CEO of Basilard BioTech, a company he spun out of the technology incubator while CEO-In-Residence at UC Riverside. This is his second life sciences company. Prior to that, he was a former Fortune 100 technology sector senior executive turned Transactional CEO, having run several private companies successfully through turnarounds and several others through successful M&A transactions (both buy and sell-side) wherein he guided the transition to new ownership as the on-the-ground operations executive in charge. He holds a M.S. in International Political Economics from the University of Southern California.
Paul Conley, Board Member
Dr. Paul Conley is the Preferred Stock representative on the Board of Directors of Basilard BioTech. Paul has 15 years of operating experience, including as founding CEO of Brightside and Appfluent Technology. Before that he spent six years at Los Alamos National Labs leading doctoral and post-doctoral research projects in the computational modeling of high explosive materials and components. Since 2007, Paul has been a venture capital investor (Paladin Capital, Vertical Venture Partners, General Inception, et. al.) in early stage technology and biotech companies, leveraging his scientific and operating experience to help them succeed and grow. Dr, Conley has a PhD in Computational Physics from UC San Diego.
John Foster, Board Member
Dr. John S. Foster is on the Board of Directors of Basilard BioTech. He was President and co-Founder of Owl Biomedical, Inc., now a subsidiary of Miltenyi Biotec. Owl is producing the world’s first commercial cell sorter for human therapeutics. Dr. Foster was previously the Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and co-Founder of Innovative Micro Technology, a developer and manufacturer of MEMS serving diverse industries including Bio-medical. He was previously the COO of Applied Magnetics Corporation, VP of Worldwide Operations and was the Managing Director of Applied Magnetics Malaysia. Dr. Foster has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford (1984) and is the holder of 60 patents.
Sammy Datwani, Board Member
Dr. Sammy S. Datwani is the Vice President of Development at Synthego. He has previously been Head of Technology Development at Inscripta, Sr. Director of R&D and Principal Scientist at Labcyte (Beckman Coulter Life Sciences) and was also at Eksigent Technologies and Caliper Life Sciences. His career focus has been on the development of emergent life sciences technologies, particularly revolutionary biotech tools and microfluidics-based instruments. Sammy serves on the Board of Directors for the Life Science Angels, the Society of Laboratory Automation & Screening (SLAS) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering. Dr. Datwani was inducted to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE). He received his Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Lynne R. Rollins, CFO
Lynne R. Rollins has over 38 years’ experience in the healthcare industry in the areas of finance and business development. Ms. Rollins has been the CFO for numerous start-up pharmaceutical, medical device, and agricultural companies. Prior to that, she was with Baxter Healthcare Corporation for 19 years. Her positions there included Vice President of Business Development for the Cardiopulmonary Business, Vice President of Finance for the Cardiopulmonary Business (Bentley Division) and numerous finance positions within the Hospital Products Group of the Corporation. Ms. Rollins received her MBA from Pepperdine University.
Faysal Ahmed, Senior Development Engineer
Faysal Ahmed leads the technical design, development and validation of Basilard BioTech’s current and next-gen scaled prototypes of Celletto technology. He performs all aspects of microfluidic and MEMS-based instrumentation utilization and FEA/CFD simulation efforts in the context of current and future design to perfect and align Celletto device geometry capabilities to the needs and specifications of the non-viral (ex-vivo) gene delivery requirements of our target CGT industry partners. He was previously at Adagio Medical, Masimo Corp, Replenish and Celula, and has contributed to research at Northwestern University. He holds an MS in Biomedical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Advisory Board
David Webb, Sr. Scientific Advisor, Cell Therapy
Dr. Webb is CEO of Synbal, Chairman of the Board of Agragene and Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Research Institute (since 2011). He was previously Vice President, Research at Celegene where his teams placed six drugs into clinical development and at Syrrx, Cadus Pharmaceutical Corporation and Syntex. He was Adjunct professor of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College, Consulting Professor of Cancer Biology at Stanford University, a member of the Department of Cell Biology at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology and an Associate Professor of Human Genetics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He has published over 200 peer reviewed publications and has served on numerous editorial boards and study sections (NIH, NSF, VA) in Immunology. Dr. Webb received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University and was a Dernham Junior Fellow in Cancer Research at UCSF.
Dennis Yost, Sr. MEMS Development Technical Advisor
Dennis Yost has 30+ years of semiconductor and MEMS industry experience, including at Texas Instruments, Applied Materials and Novellus Systems. As CEO of Cavendish Kinetics, he moved the company from an R&D focus to producing the first high volume qualified MEMS variable capacitors for cell phone applications. He was recently CEO of Deca Technologies leading the company’s introduction of revolutionary wafer level chip scale packaging (M-Series) and transition from a manufacturing to an IP business. Dennis has authored multiple papers and holds multiple patents in semiconductor device technology and MEMS. He received his MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Jon Ellis, Scientific Advisor, Cell Therapy Process Development
Jon Ellis brings 20 years of experience in cell therapy technology and process development to
Basilard BioTech. His background is in GMP laboratory management, implementation of new
technologies from feasibility testing through to commercial launch and the automation of cell therapy
manufacturing. He has held these roles in large multinational biopharmaceutical companies,
academic centers of excellence and pioneering start-ups. He was formerly the head of cell therapy
at Invetech and CSO at Cellio Biotech. He has deep familiarity with Basilard’s Celletto technology
(since our launch) and is an active advisor to the company, helping to chart our commercial path.
Masaru Rao, Founder, Inventor, MEMS Industry Advisor
Dr. Masaru (Masa) Rao is the CTO Emeritus of Basilard BioTech and still consultants on all our next generation Celletto™ development. He is an Associate Professor (Department of Mechanical Engineering) at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests lie in the development of novel microdevices to address critical unmet needs in biology and medicine, an example of which is Celletto™, developed in his lab. Dr. Rao received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Rao is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. His research is funded by a variety of federal/industrial sponsors, and his work has been published in leading journals, such as Science, Nature Materials, Nano Letters, and others.
Christopher Ballas, Founder, Co-inventor, Scientific Advisor
Dr. Chris Ballas is co-inventor of the Celletto™ technology and an experienced adult stem cell and gene therapy research scientist with expertise in regenerative processes and wound repair. He is a Senior Vice President of Manufacturing at Innovative Cellular Therapeutics. He has additional expertise in process development, manufacturing, testing, clinical trial management, new technology development, along with significant experience in R&D and cGxP environments. He specializes in gene therapy, non-viral delivery, viral vectors, stem cells, transplantation biology, regulatory, and microinjection within the CGT discipline. He received his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Kurt Petersen, MEMS Industry Advisor
Dr. Kurt Petersen wrote the review paper “Silicon as a Mechanical Material,” IEEE Proceedings (May 1982) while at IBM. This paper is the most frequently referenced work in the field of MEMS. Since 1982, Dr. Petersen has co-founded six companies in MEMS technology, including NovaSensor, Cepheid, and SiTime. He was awarded the prestigious IEEE Medal of Honor in 2019 as well as the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal in 2001 for his contributions to the commercialization of MEMS. Dr. Petersen is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He received his degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT and is a member of the Silicon Valley Band of Angels.
Marshelle Warren, MD, Scientific Advisor
Dr. Warren is the Chief Medical Officer for SQZ BioTech. Prior, she was a Senior Advisor with Allovir, a clinical stage cellular therapy company (part of the Elevate Bio portfolio) who previously held the position of Chief Medical Officer and Senior VP of Research & Development at Viracta Therapeutics. She has also been VP of R&D at Atara BioTherapeutics, Executive Director at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Senior Medical Director at Gilead Sciences and Medical Director at Amgen among other distinguished positions. Dr. Warren is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology and received her MD from the University of Nebraska Medical School. She holds several patents in areas relative to cell-based therapies and is well published in this discipline.
Tariq Warsi, Scientific Advisor
Dr. Tariq Warsi is the Head of Technical Operations at Novome Biotechnologies, overseeing development, manufacturing, and quality. He was previously Vice President of Research and Product Development at Capricor Therapeutics and before then, an Operations Lead at Amgen, initially leading the Bioassay/Immunoassay teams in pre-pivotal biologics before overseeing delivery of analytical methods for autologous cell therapies and their TCR-T cell therapy programs. Dr. Tariq Warsi was also a Staff Scientist at Stanford University after receiving his Ph.D at UC Riverside in Cell and Molecular Biology and doing his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Department of Systems Biology.
Sara Jones, Scientific Advisor
Dr. Jones is the Senior Director of Technical Strategy in Synthetic Biology and Cell Engineering at General Inception. She was previously a Scientist focused on Vector Biology and Microscopy at Beam Therapeutics and a postdoctoral associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Sara’s background covers many years of research experience in both academic and industry settings with a focus on cutting edge technologies and tool development for genome editing, novel viral approaches to gene delivery and biological imaging (focus on fluorescent live-cell and super-resolution imaging). Dr. Jones received her Ph.D in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University.
Christine Brown, Scientific Advisor (Pending)
Dr. Christine Brown is the Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Departments of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Immuno-Oncology. As Deputy Director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratory, Dr. Brown provides scientific oversight for the preclinical research program, as well as the ongoing clinical trial program focused on the development of CAR-engineered T cells for the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumors. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Leukemia & Lymphoma Scholar during her postdoctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University.