Board

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

AxoSim’s Board of Directors represents over 6 decades of experience as entrepreneurs and senior executives in life sciences and emerging technologies. Perhaps as importantly, our Board believes in AxoSim’s vision and is committed to driving AxoSim’s mission to enable advancements in human health, so that patients in need can get the care they deserve. Behind the passion, the Board collectively has launched 6 successful companies, taken 3 companies public with valuations of over $2B, raised over $325M in financing, and worked for decades in venture capital. Our Board is passionate about making a difference, having served on boards for the National MS Society, community groups, and environmental non-profits.

Lowry Curley, PhD

Board Member

Lowry is co-founder and CEO of AxoSim. He drives the vision and implementation for product […]

Lowry is co-founder and CEO of AxoSim. He drives the vision and implementation for product development and industry adoption of AxoSim’s Nerve-on-a-Chip®, with the goal of making a significant global impact on healthcare and medicine. Lowry received his PhD at Tulane University in biomedical engineering, focusing on tissue engineering and neuroscience. Following several postdocs, including a stint in Belgium, Lowry realized the only way to translate research breakthroughs outside of the lab was through commercialization, which drove him to return to New Orleans and begin AxoSim’s efforts.

David Weiner, MD

Board Member

David has over 20 years of experience in the discovery and clinical development of novel […]

David has over 20 years of experience in the discovery and clinical development of novel therapeutics for neurological disease. David started his career at ACADIA Pharmaceuticals, where, over a ten-year period, he held a series of discovery research and clinical development roles working on multiple CNS therapeutics, most notably Nuplazid/Pimavanserin, a serotonin 5-HT_2A inverse agonist recently approved for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease related psychosis. David formerly led EMD Serono’s global early clinical development activities in neurology and has extensive experience in rare disease drug development, having served as CMO and Interim CEO for Proteostasis Therapeutics Inc., and most recently as CMO at Lumos Pharma. David received his MD from the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, SUNY at Buffalo, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda.

Dale Pfost, PhD

Board Member

Dale has 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor and business executive. His areas […]

Dale has 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor and business executive. His areas of expertise include biotechnology, high-tech, corporate strategy and corporate governance. Dale has been the founding CEO of five biotechnology companies, three of which became publicly traded with valuations of over $2 billion. Dale has successfully completed 22 financings with dollar totals in the hundreds of millions. He has overseen M&A deals for nine companies and served as a director at multiple public and private firms. Dale was recently the US-based General Partner at Advent Life Sciences, a leading life sciences venture capital fund in London. He holds a BS degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a PhD in physics from Brown University.

Mike Katz

Board Member

Mike has been with Benson Capital Partners since its inception in 2019. Mike grew up […]

Mike has been with Benson Capital Partners since its inception in 2019. Mike grew up in Silicon Valley and married a New Orleanian. He spent the first half of his career as venture capitalist in San Francisco and New York at firms like Battery Ventures and Greycroft before helping start the U.S. investing practice for both Alibaba and Naspers. He received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown, his MBA from Columbia, and is an adjunct professor at Tulane teaching Entrepreneurial Management.

Joe Truhe

Board Observer

Joe is a partner with Jefferson Capital, a New Orleans-based private equity firm. In addition […]

Joe is a partner with Jefferson Capital, a New Orleans-based private equity firm. In addition to sourcing, diligence and execution of fund investments, Joe has led the development and implementation of the firm’s Opportunity Zone investment program. Prior to joining Jefferson Capital in 2013 he was a Portfolio Manager with Hancock Whitney Bank in New Orleans where he oversaw the company’s Trust accounts and served as the Energy sector analyst for the Hancock Horizon Funds. Prior to Whitney, he was an analyst and member of the investment committee at HFR Asset Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund platform in Chicago, Illinois. There, he reviewed and maintained investment discretion over the firm’s Event Driven and Asia-focused hedge fund allocations. He was also responsible for the expansion of the firm’s Asia-focused fund offerings. Joe holds a BA in Economics from Yale University, and he is a CFA charter holder and a member of the CFA Society of Louisiana.

Scientific Advisory Board

AxoSim’s Scientific Advisory Board comprises both industry and academic expertise. Representative experience includes key opinion leaders in microphysiological systems, organ-on-a-chip models, electrophysiology, toxicology, contract research, and drug discovery. Our members are committed to changing the research paradigm for treatments of some of the most devastating neurodegenerative diseases in the world. These diseases affect hundreds of millions, and we will not want to sit by idly. We couldn’t ask for a better group to guide our mission to revolutionize the way that biopharmaceutical companies develop neurological drugs.

Michael Moore, PhD

SAB Chairman

Michael is co-founder and CSO of AxoSim and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at […]

Michael is co-founder and CSO of AxoSim and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University, with nearly 20 years of experience in biomaterials, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine. He received his PhD from the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and has experience commercializing laboratory-based technology from there as well as from his postdoc with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT. AxoSim is one of three startups to begin in Michael’s lab, though it is the only company he maintains direct involvement.

Edward Spack, PhD

SAB Member

Edward (Ted) is the Consulting Executive Director of R&D at AxoSim, helping to coordinate activities […]

Edward (Ted) is the Consulting Executive Director of R&D at AxoSim, helping to coordinate activities between business development, internal operations teams, and external research partners. He has several decades of start-up biotech experience, including co-founding a biotech and mentoring local SF Bay area and international entrepreneurs on innovation and biotech management. He also led a multi-institutional translational science consortium (Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSF, UCSD, SRI International) and managed an innovative grant program developed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Prior to working in biotech, Ted received his PhD in cellular immunology from The Johns Hopkins University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Randolph Ashton, PhD

SAB Member

After graduating from the Thomas Jefferson Governor’s School for Government and International Studies, Dr. Ashton […]

After graduating from the Thomas Jefferson Governor’s School for Government and International Studies, Dr. Ashton received his BS from Hampton University (Hampton, Virginia, 2002) and PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY, 2007) in Chemical Engineering. During graduate school, he researched how to engineer biomaterials at the nanoscale to regulate the fate of adult neural stem cells. He continued to pursue his interest in stems cells and tissue engineering as a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Berkeley’s Stem Cell Center. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Principle Investigator of the Stem Cell Bioprocessing and Regenerative Biomaterials laboratory at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Dr. Ashton’s lab develops novel tissue engineering methodologies to derive brain and spinal cord tissues from human pluripotent stem cells, which can be used to create groundbreaking regenerative therapies and models of neurological disorders.

Jules Selkirk, PhD

SAB Member

Julie is an experienced in vitro pharmacologist with over 25 years of drug discovery experience […]

Julie is an experienced in vitro pharmacologist with over 25 years of drug discovery experience in biotech and big pharma such as Pfizer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Bristol Myers Squibb. Julie’s passion lies in the interrogation of drug:receptor interaction and downstream signaling pathways, specifically in native settings to better understand in vitro to in vivo translation for the design of the best assay systems for successful drug hunting. Much of Julie’s career has been spent in the neuroscience space with the hope of bringing thoughtfully designed medicines to patients with such high unmet medical need.

Pat Dougherty, PhD

SAB Member

Dr. Dougherty’s research interests have focused on the mechanisms by which inflammation, somatic and nerve […]

Dr. Dougherty’s research interests have focused on the mechanisms by which inflammation, somatic and nerve injury alter the function of the central and peripheral nervous systems. For the past 22 years, Dr. Dougherty has held appointment as Professor of Pain Medicine at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center with his recent work centered on determining the mechanisms of neuropathic pain experienced by cancer patients. The work has been composed of parallel studies conducted in both humans and animals. Overall, his work has resulted in the publication of 208 manuscripts and 31 book chapters and has received greater than 11000 citations with an h index of 67.