Management Team

Surendra Chaturvedi, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Surendra Chaturvedi completed his Ph.D. degree in 1993 from the University of Oklahoma. After completing his degree, he moved to Northwestern University and worked with Prof. Robert Letsinger (father of gene machine) where he became accomplished in various aspects of natural and modified DNA synthesis. Afterward, he worked in a contract manufacturing company at Kansas and later joined Applied Biosystems, CA. At Applied Biosystems, he worked in Protein Business Unit and developed an automated organic synthesizer. Later he decided to join Orchid Bioscience in search of a growing company similar to Applied Biosystems. He directed research and development efforts (organic synthesis) and quality control department. Dr. Chaturvedi has 15 publications including patent. He has presented papers at various international conferences. Dr. Chaturvedi's synthetic skills include multi-step organic (small molecules, nucleosides, peptides, steroids, amino acids, heterocycles, metabolites of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and solid-phase DNA and peptide syntheses. Specific research activities include parallel synthesis of small molecules on solid-phase as well as solution-phase using robotic instrument. Dr. Chaturvedi vast experience also includes analytical method development and hands on experience with IR, UV, NMR, MS, GC, CD, CE, HPLC, electrophoresis, and fluorescence spectroscopy, as well as method development. Dr. Chaturvedi possess extensive experience working under cGMP and ISO guidelines.

Barry Lynn, MBA, CPM. Board of Directors

Barry Lynn, C.P.M. is Vice President of Supply Chain Management for a medical device company called ACMI Corporation. He has over 20 years of experience in supply chain management with expertise in procurement, planning, M&A and developing supply chain partnerships. Previously, Mr. Lynn was Sr. Director of Corporate Materials Management for Orchid BioSciences Inc, who is a biotech leader in genetic diversity. Prior to joining Orchid, Mr.Lynn was VP of Supply Chain Management for Bristol-Myers Squibb where he worked for 10 years in both medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Mr.Lynn has a C.P.M. from the Institute of Supply Management, MBA from Rider University and BSIE from NJ Institute of Technology.

Michael Kochersperger Board of Directors

Michael Kochersperger has over 16 years of new product development at Applied Biosystems, and Orchid Bioscience. He has successfully developed SNPstream UHT Genotyping Systems, Model 530 Organic Combinatorial Synthesizer, model 173A MicroBlotter Capillary HLPC Sample preparation system and 49X Procise cLC Protein Sequencer systems. His responsibilities included management of system component integration, development plan generation, project schedule maintenance, resource requirement assessments, documenting product specifications and features throughout development cycle, maintaining all product documentation to meet ISO 9001 requirements. Identify and develop with external contract manufacturing partner. Guide a multidisciplinary team and support functions through all of product development phases to ensure project and corporate goals were surpassed. He also developed a new line of consumables; micro-bore HPLC columns for both systems. As a Product Manager, he was responsible for developing market strategies, formulating models, conducting market research and international sales training. Interacted closely with Worldwide Sales organization and R&D to address corporate margin and profit requirements. Provided upper management and manufacturing with quarterly and yearly forecasts. Generated sales literature, advertisements and pricing strategies that increased market penetrate and market share. He has also managed product installations, field upgrades, warranty/non-warranty maintenance and spare part inventory for multiple ABI product lines within designated territory. Maintained good customer relations with all users and provided assistance and support when needed.

Michael C. Pirrung, Ph.D. Board of Directors

Michael Pirrung received his Ph. D degree in organic chemistry at UC-Berkeley in 1980 under the direction of Clayton Heathcock, and did postdoctoral work with Gilbert Stork at Columbia as an NSF postdoctoral fellow. He began his academic career at Stanford in 1981, and during 1989 served as a Senior Scientist at Affymax Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA. In 1990 he moved to Duke University. He has been a visiting professor at UC-Berkeley, Baylor College of Medicine, Oxford, and UC-San Diego. He has held Hertz, Sloan, and Guggenheim fellowships and a NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. He was recognized with the 1991 AAAS-Newcomb Cleveland Prize and the 1993 Intellectual Property Owners Distinguished Inventor Award for the patent arising from that work. He is a Fellow of AAAS. He advises a number of industrial research organizations as a consultant (Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories) or a member of the Scientific Advisory Board (Orchid Biosciences, Genicon Sciences, Oasis Biosciences, and NimbleGen). He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, monographs, and reviews, and holds 14 US and foreign patents.

Rafael Kopla Board of Directors

Rafael Kopla completed his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1991. He spent the early part of his career designing, integrating and programming factory automation and packaging machinery. In recent years he joined Hudson Control Group as a Senior Systems Engineer designing and programming robot systems for High Throughput Screening labs. Later he directed the Engineering department, which developed and manufactured a robot and a plate stacker, which are commonly used in many research labs. Afterward he decided to join Orchid Biosciences as a development engineer. At Orchid Biosciences Rafael was involved in developing a laser based imaging instrument, which is designed to image micro array plates for a SNP detection system. Rafael is proficient in many programming languages such as Visual Basic, C, Visual C++, Assembler and PLC. He is familiar with many computer platforms, Embedded controllers PC104 devices and Programmable Logic Controllers. During his career he developed many software interfaces, GUIs and drivers for many laboratory instruments such as plate readers, plate washers, dispensers, advanced liquid handling system, mass spectrometer and more.