Appointments

Mel Wong has been appointed BioAlberta’s new president. Wong brings a wealth of government management experience, intimate

knowledge of life sciences, as well as an extensive network of international, intergovernmental and industry relationships. Prior to his appointment as president of BioAlberta, he served as the Assistant Deputy Minister of Technology and Industry Partnerships Division at Alberta Innovation and Advanced Education for over ten years. Prior to that Wong held the executive director’s role in the Research and Technology Commercialization Division of Alberta Innovation and Science and several other management roles within the Government of Alberta. Wong graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Arts and Science in Economics. He also holds a Management Development Certificate from the University of British Columbia.

Transition Therapeutics Inc. announces the appointment of Carl Damiani as president and chief operating officer. Since joining Transition in 2003, Damiani has held the roles of chief operating officer, vice-president of business development and director of business development.

ProNAi Therapeutics Inc. has named Dr. Barbara Klencke as its new chief development officer. An accomplished oncology drug developer, she made substantial contributions to the development and approval of numerous oncology products, including Kyprolis, Kadcyla, Avastin and Tarceva. Previously, she served as senior vice president, development at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Amgen Inc., from January 2011 to June 2015, and was the group medical director in product development, oncology at Genentech, Inc. Prior to that, Dr. Klencke was the medical director at Chiron Corporation, a biotechnology company later acquired by Novartis International AG, and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. She holds a B.S. from Indiana University and an M.D. from the University of California, Davis.

Calgary Scientific Inc. has named Dave Waldrop as its new executive vice president, sales and marketing. Waldrop is also a member of Calgary Scientific’s office-of-the-president, a four member team of senior executives responsible for collaboratively making strategic corporate and operational decisions, as well as reporting to the board of directors. He joins Calgary Scientific after a successful 18 year executive career at Microsoft, where he was a key driver of designing and building a number of company-wide initiatives in various roles in business development, sales, strategic alliances, channel development, and product marketing. He most recently focused on advising startup and Fortune 500 companies on strategic level sales, marketing and partnering initiatives, and assisting them in executing state-of-the-art sales and channel management strategies.

The Peter Munk Cardiac Centre has named Dr. Eric Horlick as the inaugural Peter Munk Chair in Structural Heart Disease Intervention. In this role he will head the research efforts of the Congenital Intervention Service and Transcatheter Valve Program, both highlyspecialized, unique programs offered at the cardiac centre. Dr. Horlick is a cardiologist and associate professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

ESSA Pharma Inc. has appointed Dr. David Parkinson to its board as an independent director. He currently serves as a board director for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and as the chairperson of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) finance and audit committee. Additionally, he is a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Among his past roles, he served as president and CEO of Nodality, a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company and as senior vice president, oncology research and development, at Biogen Idec. He also served as vice president, oncology development, at Amgen and was vice president, global clinical oncology development at Novartis. Prior to joining industry, Dr. Parkinson worked at the National Cancer Institute, serving as the chief of the Investigational Drug Branch, then as acting associate director of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program. Other past roles include: past chairman of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Biologics Advisory Committee, time with the National Cancer Policy Forum of the Institute of Medicine and he was co-chair of the Cancer Steering Committee of the NIH Foundation Biomarkers Consortium. He has also served as a member of the FDA’s science board, as an elected board director of the American Association of Cancer Research and of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Response Biomedical Corp. announces the promotion of Dr. Barbara Kinnaird to the position of CEO. She replaces Dr. Anthony Holler who was serving as interim CEO since September 2014. Dr. Kinnaird has over 20 years of research and business experience primarily in the

fields of point of care testing and in vitro diagnostics. Since joining Response Biomedical Corp. in August 2004, Dr. Kinnaird has held several key management positions including responsibilities for Product Development, Quality, Regulatory, Manufacturing and Sales. She a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia at the B.C. Children’s Hospital in the Department of Pediatrics. She conducted her post-doctoral research at the Michael Smith Laboratories in genomics and gene expression profiling, in collaboration with the B.C. Genome Sciences Centre and consulted for the Proteomics division of Incyte Genomics Inc.

Mel Wong

Dr. Barbara Kinnaird

Dr. Kelly McNagny, professor in the Department of Medical Genetics, and co-director of the Biomedical Research Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) as co-scientific director alongside Dr. Michael Rudnicki, senior scientist and the director of the Regenerative Medicine Program at the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. McNagny obtained his PhD in cellular immunology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1990. Dr. McNagny has received a number of awards including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research scholarship, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Senior scholarship, and the 2002 Showell-Pfizer Junior Faculty Award from the American Association for Immunology. He is also an active member of the Canadian AllerGen and Stem Cell Network Centres of Excellence. Dr. McNagny replaces UBC’s Dr. T. Michael Underhill who has recently completed his term as co-scientific director and division chair for target validation.

Michiel de Jongh has joined Monsanto Canada as president and general manager of Monsanto’s Canadian business operations. In this position, he will be responsible for the overall strategic direction of Monsanto Canada, as well as management of Canadian business operations to ensure marketing and sales plans deliver continued growth to Monsanto Canada’s seeds, traits and chemistry businesses. In addition to his responsibilities in Canada he will also serve on Monsanto Company’s global commercial leadership team and its management advisory council. De Jongh replaces Mike McGuire who retired from Monsanto Canada in January of this year. De Jongh began his career with Seminis in Spain in 2004 and joined Monsanto Company through the acquisition of Seminis by Monsanto in 2005. During his 11 years with the company, he has undertaken a number of roles around the globe including vegetable global manufacturing human resources director; human resources director and sales director in Latin America south; president for Korea; and regional director for Japan. Most recently, Michiel was the business lead for Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, responsible for growing Monsanto’s business in Eastern Europe.