Vincent F. Simmon, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Board
James Cardarella
Board Co-Chair
Cristina Rizza, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer and Director
Gregory Benford, Ph.D.
Director
Yaron Brook, Ph.D.
Director
Peter LePort, M.D.
Director
Vincent F. Simmon, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Board
Dr. Simmon holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Microbiology from Brown University.
He has served at President, CEO and Director at Cortex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AMEX: COR) where he entered five drugs into Phase II clinical trials (Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, MCI, ADHD and Autism/Fragile X).
Later, as COO of Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Dr Simmon initiated a Phase 2a trial in Europe for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and organized strategy of the development of novel bi-specific antibodies for cancer.
Most recently Dr. Simmon was Chairman, President CEO and director of XYTIS, Inc., a privately held development stage company developing small molecules to treat brain trauma and psychiatric conditions.
James Cardarella
Board Co-Chair
Mr. Cardarella was Chairman and CEO of Carlton Forge Works. When he took over the company it was worth approximately $10 million. When the company was sold approximately 10 years later, it was worth $850 million.
Cristina Rizza, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer and Director
Dr Rizza is an Internist and a Cardiologist. She has spent the past thirty years caring for mostly geriatric patients and has a life-long interest in the molecular genetics of aging. Dr. Rizza graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Bologna, Italy in 1975. After moving to the U.S. in 1976, she received her training in Internal Medicine at the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and her Cardiology training at the UCLA VA program in Los Angeles. The author of several published papers, she has experience in basic and clinical research as-well-as drug testing for efficacy and toxicity.
In her role as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Rizza is responsible for the biological and clinical annotation of Genescient’s inventory of genes associated with the diseases of aging. She is also involved in the selection of therapeutics for testing and in the recruitment and testing of successful therapeutic substance candidates in human subjects.
Gregory Benford, Ph.D.
Director
Gregory Benford is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, where he was a Professor of Physics.
He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and the Universities of Turin and Bologna. In 1995 he received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. With more than 200 scientific publications, his research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His research has been supported by NSF, NASA, AFOSR, DOE and other agencies. He is an ongoing advisor to NASA, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the CIA.
Dr. Benford is also the author of more than thirty books, nearly all still in print. His work has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. His non-fiction Deep Time received much praise in 1999 and he won the United Nations Medal in literature in 1994.
Gregory Benford became Emeritus from the University of California, Irvine, in 2006 in order to found and develop Genescient.
Dr. Brook was born and raised in Israel. He served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel. In 1987 he moved to the United States, where he received his MBA and Ph.D. in finance from the University of Texas at Austin; he became an American citizen on May 28, 2003. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, where he focused on financial institutions and market ethics. He is co-founder of BH Equity Research, a financial advisory company, of which he is presently managing director and chairman.
Yaron Brook is also president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and a frequent guest on radio and television shows. He has appeared on Fox Business News, Fox News (The O’Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN (Talkback Live and the Glenn Beck Program), CNBC (Closing Bell and On the Money), and C-SPAN.
Dr. LePort, is a full-time surgeon in Orange County, CA. He lectures nationwide on free market reform in healthcare, particularly on the benefits of medical savings accounts.
Peter LePort is a member of the board of directors of The Ayn Rand Institute and of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. He is co-author of a healthcare reform proposal that discusses voluntary, tax-free medical savings accounts and high-deductible personal health insurance, and which includes a method to privatize Medicare.
Dr LePort earned his medical degree from Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, and is a former assistant professor of surgery at that institution. He is a member of the Faculty of the American College of Surgeons.