Senior Executive Officers
William M. Caldwell, IV
Chairman and CEO
Mr. William Caldwell serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and has a 30-year management career working with emerging technologies and restructuring distressed corporate environments. During his career, he has served in senior executive positions both in marketing and finance. He has worked with Booz Allen and Hamilton; the Flying Tiger Line Inc.; Van Vorst Industries; and Kidder Peabody. He started a firm specializing in corporate financial and strategy planning, which was instrumental in restructuring over $1.0 billion of debt for over twenty companies and partnerships. He was a pioneer in the satellite radio auctions as president of Digital Satellite Broadcasting Corporation; assisted in the financing, and became president and ultimately CEO in the restructuring of CAIS Internet. He has advised corporations, both public and private, in technology, telecommunications, retailing, real estate, hospitality, publishing, and transportation. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Southern California and was a Multinational Enterprise Fellow at the Wharton Graduate School of Finance. He serves as a director of Lee Pharmaceuticals (LPHM.PK) and King Koil Franchising Corp.
Robert Lanza, M.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Lanza joined ACT in 1999. Dr. Lanza has over 25 years of research and industrial experience in the area of stem cells and regenerative medicine. From 1990 to 1998, he was Director of Transplantation Biology at BioHybrid Technologies, Inc., and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has several hundred scientific publications and patents, and has authored/edited 20 books, including the “Handbook of Stem Cells” (as Editor-in-Chief), Principles of Tissue Engineering, XENO, the Yearbook of Cell & Tissue Transplantation, and One World: The Health & Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (as editor, with forewords by C. Everett Koop and former President Jimmy Carter). He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied as a student in the laboratory of Richard Hynes (MIT), Jonas Salk (The Salk Institute), and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman (Rockefeller University) and Rodney Porter (Oxford University). He also worked closely (and coauthored a series of papers) with the late Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. Dr. Lanza received his B.A. and M.D. Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar.
Edmund Mickunas
Vice President of Regulatory
Mr. Mickunas, a recent addition to the ACT team, is the Company’s Vice President of Regulatory. Mr. Mickunas is in charge of spearheading the company’s effort to translate its cutting edge research into FDA approved therapies ready for clinical trials. Mr. Mickunas is working with Dr. Robert Lanza and ACT’s Development Team to finalize and submit the IND for the RPE program to the FDA. Mr. Mickunas brings 28 years of experience from a number of disciplines including biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceuticals. He has worked in preclinical program development, clinical affairs, regulatory affairs/compliance and quality assurance, and has worked closely with all disciplines involved in product development. Prior to joining Advanced Cell, Mr. Mickunas was Executive Director, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance for Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation, a privately held gene therapy and genomics-focused biotech company. Mr. Mickunas was previously Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance for Control Delivery Systems, Inc., where he managed the submissions of IND filings, among other responsibilities. He also held senior regulatory positions at Bioheart, Inc., Cytomed and Del Laboratories. He received his B.S. and pursued graduate studies in human biochemistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University, as well as a Masters Degree from Fairfield University.
Roger Gay, Ph.D
Senior Director of Manufacturing
Dr. Gay serves as Advanced Cell’s Senior Director of Manufacturing. Dr. Gay is responsible for Process Development and Clinical Manufacturing at Advanced Cell. For the past 28 years, he has been involved in clinical manufacturing and product development at a number of biotechnology companies specializing in cell-based products and services including Organogenesis, Diacrin, Genvec and Mytogen. He has extensive experience directing and leading product development and clinical trial manufacturing for cellular products having planned and executed R&D programs leading to market introduction of first-ever products for two biotechnology companies prior to joining Advanced Cell. He received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Rochester in 1980 and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.
Rita Parker
Director of Operations
With Advanced Cell since 2005, Ms. Parker brings a 20 year career in management to her role as the Company’s Director of Operations. A native of Massachusetts, she has held senior positions in marketing and operational management, focusing on paving the way for local businesses to expand their geographical footprint and increasing their technological and productive capabilities by introducing new and efficient information technology products and systems; a few of these companies include Digital Equipment Corporation, Computer Devices, and Banyan Systems, Inc.