Robert Klupacs joined Circadian Technologies Limited as an executive in August 2005 and was appointed as Managing Director of the Company on 1 March 2008. He is also an Executive Director of all of the Company’s wholly owned subsidiaries and Chairman of subsidiary company Syngene Limited. Mr Klupacs is a registered Australian patent attorney and has been involved in the biotechnology industry for over 20 years. He has significant expertise in technology commercialisation and corporate structuring and has negotiated and closed a number of major licensing transactions with international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies throughout his career. Prior to his position at Circadian, Mr Klupacs was CEO of ES Cell International Pte Ltd (ESI), a pioneering company in the development of human embryonic stem cell technologies based in Singapore. Prior to his role at ESI, he spent two and a half years running the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development (MIRD) in Melbourne as its Chief Operating Officer, where he founded six start-up companies, and before that was employed for over 11 years by Zenyth Therapeutics Limited (formerly Amrad Corporation Ltd), with the last four years in that company as a member of the executive team and Director of Intellectual Property.
Management
Steven Zammit is a CPA with a Business Degree from RMIT and a Masters of Banking and Finance from Monash University, with over twenty years of experience in senior finance roles in a range of small and large Australian companies. Steven was most recently Chief Financial Officer of Oliver Hume Real Estate Group for three years and prior to that was General Manager Commercial & Finance and Company Secretary for ASX listed Molopo Energy Limited.
Richard Chadwick, who joined Circadian in February 2008, is qualified as both a European and Australian patent attorney. Richard joined Circadian from FB Rice & Co, where he had been working for five years in the Biotechnology Group. Prior to that, Richard had 10 years’ experience in intellectual property in the UK. This included working as an in-house attorney at Dow Corning Limited and five years working as an in-house attorney at Unilever.
Megan Baldwin joined Circadian in January 2008 and is responsible for research and development of Circadian’s product pipeline and team leader of Circadian’s ophthalmology program. Prior to joining Circadian, she was employed at Genentech (now Roche), the world leader in the field of angiogenesis-based therapies for cancer and other diseases. Her experience included several years as a researcher in the group of leading angiogenesis expert Napoleone Ferrara, before moving to Genentech’s commercial division and having responsibility for corporate competitive intelligence activities. In these roles, she developed extensive commercial and scientific knowledge in the field of anti-angiogenic and oncology drug development. Megan has a scientific background of more than 15 years, focused on angiogenesis and therapeutic strategies for cancer and ophthalmological indications. She holds a PhD in Medicine from the University of Melbourne, having conducted her doctoral studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.
Ian Leitch has been Director of Clinical Research of Circadian Technologies Ltd since September 2011. He has over 15 years of research and management experience from drug discovery through clinical development in biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies. For the five years prior to joining Circadian, he was a member of the Medical Sciences group at Amgen Inc in Thousand Oaks California involved in the development of novel therapeutics in Amgen’s oncology pipeline. In his role as Senior Manager in the Early Development Oncology Therapeutic Area, he had responsibility for the oversight, design, management and execution of Phase 1-2 clinical studies in oncology. Prior to joining Amgen, he spent eight years at Miravant Medical Technologies in Santa Barbara California. He held positions of increasing responsibility including Senior Program Manager for Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Study Director for Ophthalmology. At Miravant he managed pre-clinical efficacy studies, developed relationships with Key Opinion Leaders and designed Phase 1-2 clinical studies in a collaboration with the Cardiovascular device company Guidant Inc. He previously, held the position of NHMRC Senior Research Officer, at the University of Newcastle, and was based at the John Hunter Hospital in Australia. He received his PhD from the Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine at Monash University in 1993 and completed part of the degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara as part of an Education Abroad Program Scholarship.
Susan Foran is a qualified pharmacist with broad expertise in product development, project management and medical affairs. Her previous experience includes roles with leading multinational firms GlaxoSmithKline and Kendle Pty Ltd, and with small biotechnology companies. In these roles, she contributed to the development of numerous products, including pre-clinical, clinical and post-marketing programs. Susan has also managed her own consultancy business, providing product development advice and project management services to a number of Australian biotechnology companies.
Mike Gerometta has been with Circadian since December 2008 and is principally responsible for the outsourcing of Vegenics’ research and cGMP manufacturing activities. Mike has over 20 years’ experience in the Australian biotechnology industry, most recently as Chief Operating Officer of Q-Gen, QIMR’s translational research, manufacturing arm. He has also spent 19 years at Agen Biomedical, occupying a variety of positions and roles, most recently as Research and Product Development Director. In this role he was responsible for the chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC), pre-clinical program and patent management for Agen’s ThromboView® project, a blood clot imaging agent. Previously, he has worked at Biotech Australia, Sydney, and together with earlier positions at Agen, developed numerous successful immunodiagnostic assays for the medical, veterinary and food industries across various diagnostic platforms for the laboratory and point-of-care. He was awarded his PhD in biotechnology from the Queensland University of Technology and has a degree in chemistry from the University of Technology in Sydney.
Melinda Lowe commenced as Project Manager with Circadian in 2010. She has responsibility for coordinating the inter-disciplinary development activities associated with the development of our lead compounds VGX-100, VGX-200 and VGX-300. Melinda holds a PhD in Medicine from Monash University and has over 20 years’ experience in Australian biomedical research, principally in the fields of immunologically mediated disease and virology. She moved into project management in 2005 whilst at Starpharma Holdings Limited, a company developing nanotechnology products for pharmaceutical, life-science and other applications. Since then, as a Senior Development Manager with Medicines Development Limited, Melinda has worked on the development of a novel lipopeptide vaccine technology, and a practical and affordable conjoint treatment option for chronic viral infections.
Angus Tester has held the position of Senior Research Scientist at Circadian since February 2009. He is responsible for conducting and managing the pre-clinical research undertaken at the Circadian research laboratory, located within CSIRO. Angus completed his PhD in Biochemistry at Monash University and subsequently has spent over 10 years working in the field of cancer research. He has gained extensive skills and experience using models of human cancer within laboratories based in both Australia and North America.