About Us
Leadership Team
Terry Lo
Terry Lo
Terry pioneered and led the early commercial success of spatial biology and mIF, first as GM for PerkinElmer’s tissue business, and then as President of Akoya Biosciences. Prior to this, Terry led the global adoption of HPV testing for cervical cancer primary screening at Roche Molecular. Terry also has extensive experience in International markets including GM of China and Japan, and Head of International Strategy at Hologic, and Director of Corporate BD APAC at BMS.
Phil Gardella
Phil Gardella
Phil is an accomplished, operationally oriented finance executive with more than 25 years of start-up experience through Fortune 500 finance & accounting, and Big 4 public accounting organizations. Currently providing fractional CFO services including as part of a team of industry skilled controllers specializing in building the finance and accounting functions at early-stage companies. In addition to Vizgen, current and prior companies include Sherlock Biosciences, Arbor Biotechnologies, Ultivue, 908 Devices, Quanterix. He is a Certified Public Accountant in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and holds a MBA from Babson College and a BSBA in Business from Northeastern University with honors.
Dale Levitzke
Dale Levitzke
Dale Levitzke joins Vizgen Inc. from Dropworks Inc where he led all aspects of Marketing, Sales and Service for the companies Serial Flow Digital Droplet platform. Previous to this Dale held various Worldwide Sales and Commercial roles including nanoString Inc. (ticker NSTG) where he was VP of Worldwide Sales, having taken the company from <$10MM in revenue through IPO to >$125MM in global revenues over 5.5 years. Prior to this, Dale was with illumina Inc. (ticker ILMN) where he led commercial activities for the PCR Division following the company’s acquisition of Helixis ($114MM), where he headed Global Sales as Senior Director. Dale earned a Bachelor of Science with honors degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
Peidong Wang
Peidong Wang
Peidong is a serial entrepreneur and was a co-founder of Ahura Scientific utilizing Raman and FTIR spectroscopy. His work helped pioneer a new field of applications based on rugged hand-held spectroscopy which led to its acquisition by Thermo Fisher. Peidong also co-founded CoreTek which was acquired by Nortel. He is a recipient of the G. N. Hatsopoulos award at Thermo Fisher and is also an inventor with 15 issued patents in laser technology, opto-mechanics, and analytical instrumentation.
Bob Koshgarian
Bob Koshgarian
Bob is an accomplished business leader with over three decades of experience in medical device and biotech manufacturing. He has successfully led multiple cGMP and life science instrument, reagent and consumables manufacturing and supply chain operations in a variety of business settings, from early-stage startups (CytoLogix, acquired by Dako) to multi-site leadership for Roche Diagnostics’ sequencing and target enrichment businesses, where he also served on the Global Operations Leadership Team. Bob has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Yoni Bock
Yoni Bock
Yoni is a seasoned technology and genomics professional with 15+ years of experience successfully leading the development of next generation sequencing products and technologies (instruments, library preparation, genetic assays, and therapeutics) in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life science industry. Yoni has been instrumental in launching, developing, and significantly enhancing the bottom-line profitability and quality across products and technologies in GXP, CLIA, and RUO environments for companies including Illumina and 10x Genomics. Yoni received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from The University of California, Santa Cruz.
Seamus Gillespie
Seamus Gillespie
Séamus has 25+ years’ experience in financial analysis in the Biotech, Medical Device and Electronic Materials industries. During his career, he has gained international experience from muti-year expatriate assignments in Asia, France, and the UK. Séamus is a fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants and has a Master of Business Studies degree from the Smurfit School of Business.
Gerry Zang
Gerry Zang
Gerry has 20+ years’ experience in companies in different stages of their life cycles, providing strategic guidance and tactical support across global sites. She has worked in a variety of industries, most recently in biotechnology, life sciences, and healthcare/medical device including Bio-Techne, Exosome Diagnostics, Takeda, Partners Healthcare, and Shire. Gerry is committed to ensuring that Vizgen employees thrive as our business grows and evolves. Gerry has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial/Labor Relations with a major in statistics from Cornell University, and a juris doctorate degree from University of Buffalo.
George Emanuel
George Emanuel
George has spent the past decade developing high-throughput spatial profiling technologies including extending MERFISH technology to profile 10,000 genes in the same sample. George received dual undergraduate degrees from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University.
Jiang He
Jiang He
Co-founding member of Vizgen, Jiang has been recognized with numerous awards including Forbes 30 under 30 in Healthcare, Spotlight Scholar at AIF, and STAT Wunderkind awardee. He completed his postdoc at MIT, and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in Xiaowei Zhuang’s lab.
Elizabeth Hicks-Kridel
Elizabeth Hicks-Kridel
Elizabeth has over a decade of life science commercial experience in sales and business development. She started her career at Thermo Fisher Scientific (Life Technologies/Invitrogen/Applied Biosystems) where she developed an expertise in genomics, molecular technologies and diagnostics, and then moved into the single-cell research arena.
Elizabeth received a BA in Neuroscience from Smith College and an MS in Biotechnology from Georgetown University.
Scientific and Technical Advisory Board
Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD
Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD
Xiaowei is a professor of Science, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Physics at Harvard University and an Investigator at HHMI. Xiaowei’s lab is known for the development of both MERFISH and STORM for super resolution microscopy. She has won numerous awards including the 2021 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2019 NAS Award for Scientific Discovery. Xiaowei has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine.
David Walt, PhD
David Walt, PhD
David is a leader in scientific innovation and has founded and invested in successful companies for over 20 years; his public companies include Illumina, Quanterix, and 908 Devices and his start-ups include Sherlock Biosciences, Ultivue, and Arbor Biotechnologies. David is a Professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Wyss Institute, and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. David has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019.
Jeffrey Moffitt, PhD
Jeffrey Moffitt, PhD
Jeffrey is the co-inventor of MERFISH technology, developed in Xiaowei Zhuang’s lab. He is applying MERFISH to the construction of cellular atlases on a wide range of tissues with a particular focus on the interface between host and microbial communities. Jeffrey has his PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley where he developed novel methods for manipulating single molecules. Jeffrey is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and was named Pew Biomedical Scholar in 2019.
Susan Tousi
Susan Tousi
Susan Tousi is Chief Commercial Officer at Illumina, where she leads global sales, commercial operations, and commercial strategy and enablement. Susan combines her extensive general management leadership and deep technical knowledge of Illumina’s product portfolio to ensure the global commercial success of the organization. She is committed to empowering Illumina customers with innovations to further unlock the power of the genome.
Susan has been with Illumina since 2012, and previously led the product development organization as Chief Product Officer. During that time, she was responsible for global engineering, consumables, sequencing applications, IVD, software and informatics development efforts: During this time, she oversaw the most impactful decade of product launches including: HiSeq X, NovaSeq, MiSeq Dx, NextSeq 550Dx/1000/2000, iSeq, VeriSeq NIPT, TSO500, COVIDSeq, DRAGEN, and Illumina Connected Analytics. Additionally, she led the acquisition of Edico Genomics, BlueBee, and Enancio, combined with Illumina’s existing software solutions, these new capabilities enable scalable, seamless, end-to-end software solutions that drive the utilization of genomic data and accelerate the adoption of genomic data in clinical care.
Susan has more than 25 years of R&D and business leadership at Fortune 100 technology companies and within the life sciences industry. Formerly, she was Corporate Vice President and General Manager for Eastman Kodak’s Consumer Inkjet Systems organization. Prior to joining Kodak, Susan was an R&D program manager for Phogenix Imaging LLC, a joint venture start-up of Hewlett-Packard and Kodak. She previously spent 10 years with Hewlett-Packard in technical and management roles. Along with many academic honors, she has received numerous awards in both business and technology. In 2018, Susan was elected to the National Academy of Engineers. Susan was named one of the 50 Top Diverse Leaders for 2020 by the California Diversity Council and is a member of the International Women’s Forum, a global organization of preeminent women of significant and diverse achievement.
Susan holds an MBA degree from UCLA and an Honors BS in Engineering Science and Mechanics from Pennsylvania State University.
Susan serves as an executive trustee at the world renowned La Jolla Playhouse and on the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering Dean’s Council of Advisors.
Board of Directors
Marijn Dekkers
Marijn Dekkers
Marijn E. Dekkers is founder and chairman of Novalis LifeSciences LLC, an investment and advisory firm for the Life Science industry that he founded in 2017. From 2010-2016, Dr. Dekkers served as CEO of Bayer AG in Leverkusen, Germany. From 2002-2009, he was CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Waltham, MA, USA. He started his career as a research scientist at General Electric’s Corporate R&D Center in Niskayuna, NY, USA.
David Walt, PhD
David Walt, PhD
David is a leader in scientific innovation and has founded and invested in successful companies for over 20 years; his public companies include Illumina, Quanterix, and 908 Devices and his start-ups include Sherlock Biosciences, Ultivue, and Arbor Biotechnologies. David is a Professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Wyss Institute, and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. David has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019.
Terry Lo
Terry Lo
Terry pioneered and led the early commercial success of spatial biology and mIF, first as GM for PerkinElmer’s tissue business, and then as President of Akoya Biosciences. Prior to this, Terry led the global adoption of HPV testing for cervical cancer primary screening at Roche Molecular. Terry also has extensive experience in International markets including GM of China and Japan, and Head of International Strategy at Hologic, and Director of Corporate BD APAC at BMS.
Matt Posard
Matt Posard
Mr. Posard brings over 30 years of general management and commercialization experience in the life sciences, therapeutics, and diagnostics industry to the Board of Directors. He is the Founding Principal of Explore DNA, a life sciences executive consulting firm, a position he has held since March 2016. Since 2017, he has provided advisory services to CEOs for several emerging life sciences companies. From February 2017 to April 2018, Mr. Posard served as President and Chief Commercial Officer of GenePeeks, Inc., a genetic research company. From March 2015 to April 2016, he served as Chief Commercial Officer of Trovagene, Inc., a molecular diagnostic biotechnology company. From February 2006 to February 2015, he held various commercial and general management positions at Illumina, Inc., a genomics company focusing on DNA sequencing, including senior executive positions overseeing Global Sales, Marketing, and General Manager of Clinical and Consumer Genomics as well as New and Emerging Markets. Mr. Posard holds a BA degree in Management Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Keith L. Crandell
Keith L. Crandell
Keith Crandell is a Managing Director and Co-Founder of ARCH Venture Partners, L.P., a global seed, and early-stage venture capital firm focused on innovations in the life and physical sciences. Keith holds an M.B.A. from The University of Chicago (Booth), an M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a B.S. in Chemistry and Mathematics from St. Lawrence University.
Andrea Jackson
Andrea Jackson
Andrea Jackson is a Director at Northpond Ventures on the firm’s convergent technologies team. Andrea is a Board Director at several digital health and patient engagement companies, including Deep Lens, Hawthorne Effect, Octave Bioscience, Outcomes4Me, and SimBioSys. She is also a Board Director at life science software technology companies, including Saama, Scitara Corporation, Syapse, and VieCure; as well as at R&D solutions companies, including Codex DNA (NASDAQ: DNAY), Elephas Bio, Isolation Bio Inc. (formerly General Automation Lab Technologies), Refeyn, and Vizgen. Andrea also served on the board at Current Health (acquired by Best Buy) and NanoView Biosciences (acquired by Unchained Labs). Previously, Andrea was the commercial lead at Farcast Biosciences, an oncology clinical diagnostic company. Prior to Farcast, Andrea held various senior commercial leadership roles in life science startups and large companies such as PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI) and Millipore. Before her operating roles, Andrea worked in JPMorgan’s Healthcare Investment Banking team and focused on life science tools, diagnostics, and biotechnology companies. Andrea received an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. with honors from Washington University in St. Louis.