Board of Directors
ÂGary J. Kurtzman, MD, Chairman of the Board
Gary is Managing Director in the Life Sciences Group at Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (www.safeguard.com) (NYSE: SFE), a provider of growth capital for entrepreneurial and innovative technology and life sciences companies. At Safeguard, Gary is intimately involved with every Safeguard Life Sciences partner company, leveraging his medical expertise to assist businesses to grow their products and services, as well as to discover new partnering potential in developing entrepreneurial companies. Gary has held various positions at BioAdvance, Pluvita Corporation, Genovo and Avigen, and began his career with Gilead Sciences, Inc. as virology group leader.
Gary Kurtzman received his BS from Stanford University and his MD from Washington University and post-doctoral training at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and Stanford University. A board-certified internist from Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO, with a hematology sub-specialty, Gary serves on various academic and biomedical boards, as well as the board of directors for Neuronyx, Inc. and Safeguard Scientifics’ portfolio companies: Advanced BioHealing, Alverix, Avid Radiopharmaceutics and NuPathe.
James D. Merselis, Director
Mr. Merselis graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology. He continued his education at Harvard Business School where he received an Advanced Management Program Certificate. Before joining Alverix, Mr. Merselis served as President and CEO of HemoSense, Inc. (AMEX: HEM), a POC diagnostics company focused initially on providing patients and physicians with rapid test results to help manage the risk of stroke with the drug warfarin or Coumadin. HemoSense was acquired by Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc. (AMEX: IMA) in late 2007 for $265 million. Prior to his tenure at HemoSense, Merselis served as President and CEO of Micronics, Inc., a microfluidics company that develops near patient in vitro diagnostic products for disease diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring. In addition, he held a number of positions over twenty-two years with Boehringer Mannheim Diagnostics (now Roche Diagnostics). He currently serves on the board of Chembio Diagnostics, Inc. (OTCC/BB: CEMI), a developer and manufacturer of proprietary rapid diagnostic tests. Merselis is also Chairman of Akrotome, Inc., a newly-formed business with the mission of advancing surgical cancer treatment with new imaging agents that give surgeons rapid and direct visual differentiation between diseased cells and normal tissue during surgery.
David Tennenhouse, Director
David is a partner at New Venture Partners (www.nvpllc.com), the leading venture capital firm dedicated to corporate technology spin-outs. David came to New Venture Partners from Amazon.com, where he was Vice President of Platform Strategy and CEO of its A9.com subsidiary. Prior to Amazon/A9, David was Vice President and Director of Research at Intel Corporation and Chief Scientist and Director of the Information Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Dr. Tennenhouse received his BASc and MASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and obtained his PhD at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. He has held academic appointments at MIT in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and in the Sloan School of Management. David is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is currently a Director of Alverix, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the International Computer Sciences Institute (ICSI). He is also an advisor to Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley.