Our Team

Co-Founders

Arnon Lavie, PhD

President, CEO, CSO

Arnon Lavie obtained his PhD degree from Brandeis University (Waltham, MA) and completed his post-doctoral training at the Max Plank Institute in Dortmund, Germany. In 1999 Arnon joined the University of Illinois at Chicago where he became a full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics in 2010. He is an expert structural biologist with documented success in modifying the substrate specificity of medically relevant enzymes. Arnon is the author of over 80 peer-reviewed publications. Arnon has multiple patents and has licensed several of his discoveries.

Amanda M. Schalk, PhD

Chief Operating Officer

Amanda earned her undergrad degree in biochemistry on a full-ride scholarship from Eastern Michigan University and went abroad to Goettingen, Germany to earn her Master's and PhD degrees in Molecular Biology from the prestigious International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. She spent 5 years as a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Lavie at the University of Illinois at Chicago characterizing the structures and enzymatic activities of L-asparaginases, resulting in multiple first author peer-reviewed publications. She also has experience as the operations manager at a startup where she also has gained experience as a virtual lab manager.

Ying Su

Senior Scientist

Ying is a very enthusiastic medical scientist, whose diligence, expansive knowledge and experience in research methods, and demand for top quality work add another valuable add another layer of expertise to the EbD team. She has been working as a Senior Research Specialist and Lab Manager for the past 14 years at University of Illinois at Chicago. Never shrinking from a challenge, Ying hikes and mountain bikes through dangerous terrain in her free time.

Scientific Advisory Board Members

Alexander Lyubimov, PhD/MD

Director of the Toxicology Research Laboratory at UIC

Oversees one of only 5 labs in the USA granted an NCI contract to study safety and toxicity of new anticancer drugs. He has conducted numerous preclinical efficacy and safety programs on potential therapeutic agents and devices, the results of which were used for over 30 successful drug submissions and approvals by the FDA. He has recently designed, directed and overseen the entire IND packages of 3 drugs successfully approved by the FDA for clinical trials.

Yogen Saunthararajah, MD

Professor of Medicine and Co-Leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Porgram at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute Case Comprehensive Cancer Center

Long-standing practicing hematologist-oncologist and physician-scientist with specific clinical and research interests in AML. He provides direct advice regarding clinical translation and assists with additional pre-clinical in vivo models to move Enzyme by Design's therapeutics towards the clinic.

Lewis B Silverman, MD

Director of Clinical Research and Clinical Care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Associate Chief of Pediatric Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Silverman’s major research focus is in childhood ALL, and is Chair of the DFCI ALL Consortium, which runs multi-center clinical trials in children and adolescents with newly diagnosed ALL. He is a renowned KOL in ALL and has pioneered new treatments and approaches aimed at improving survival rates.

Wendy Stock, MD

Anjuli Seth Nayak Professor of Leukemia Research at the University of Chicago

Co-chair of the leukemia committee for the NCI-sponsored cooperative clinical trials group, the Alliance, where she leads the research efforts in ALL at the national level. She has designed and led both early phase and pivotal national trials for patients with acute leukemia and has published over a hundred peer-reviewed papers in this area.

Industry Advisors

Stephen Morales, MBA

Stephen Morales has over 20 years of experience in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries leading operational and strategic initiatives. He began his career designing and manufacturing innovative medical devices. Then became a global leader in Merck and Schering-Plough where he successfully launched several cardiovascular, women’s health and OTC products across three continents. Stephen holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Michael S. Rosen, MBA

Michael S. Rosen is Managing Director of Rosen Biosciences Strategies LLC, a life science economic development consultancy focusing on the development of science parks and clusters, and enabling international life science companies to enter the U.S. market and assist U.S. companies globalize. Prior to this, for approximately 9 years, he was Senior Vice President, New Business Development for the Science + Technology Group at Forest City Enterprises, a U.S. real estate development company which develops and builds science parks across the U.S. Mr. Rosen worked with key research universities affiliated with Forest City parks, such as Johns Hopkins (Baltimore), MIT (Boston), and Northwestern University (Chicago), and successfully brought numerous life science companies from Germany, Japan and New Zealand into these parks.

Atul Khare, PhD/MBA

Atul Khare is VP, Project Management, Eton Pharmaceuticals a specialty pharmaceutical company, with 25 years of Life Sciences R&D and commercialization experience. Atul has held leadership positions at Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Akorn Inc., Pfanstiehl Inc. and FONA International Inc. Atul received his Ph.D., Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Atul has authored or co-authored over 50 journal articles, proceeding papers and abstracts, and 5 patents.