Management Team
Arnon Lavie, PhD
Co-founder, President, CEO, CSO, Director
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
Co-founder, COO, NIH Grants PI, Director
Amanda Schalk earned her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry on a full-ride scholarship from Eastern Michigan University. She then pursued her Master’s and PhD in Molecular Biology at the esteemed International Max Planck Research School and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. Following her doctoral work, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Lavie’s lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she engineers their superior L-asparaginases, leading to multiple first-author publications in peer-reviewed journals and patents.
Currently, Amanda oversees EbD's National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants and manages IND-enabling studies across various contract research organizations (CROs). Her leadership and contributions to translational science have been widely recognized—she was named a Chicago 40 Under 40 Translational Scientists by Halo, received the Early Career Innovator Award from AWIS Chicago, and was honored as one of Crain’s Chicago Business Notable Women in STEM.
Ying Su
Co-founder
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 layer of expertise to the EbD team. She has been working as a Senior Research Specialist and Lab Manager for the past 20 years at University of Illinois at Chicago. Never shrinking from a challenge, Ying hikes and mountain bikes through dangerous terrain in her free time.
Gary Gordon, MD/PhD
Head of Clinical Development
An accomplished pharmaceutical executive and strategic business leader, Dr. Gordon has extensive experience in the development of drugs from first in-human studies to approval and commercialization.
Dr. Gordon brings innovative approaches to the process, leveraging advantageous regulatory pathways and close collaborations with investigators, patient advocacy groups and key academic and government consortiums.
Dr. Gordon has held key leadership roles across multiple pharmaceutical companies, most recently serving as Chief Medical Officer at Ayala Pharmaceuticals and previously holding the position of Vice President of Oncology at AbbVie where he was instrumental in advancing the company’s oncology portfolio, contributing significantly to its growth in the field. His leadership helped secure the approval of venetoclax, facilitated major acquisitions, and fostered strategic collaborations. Notably, he was part of the AbbVie-Genentech team who won the 2017 Prix Galien award for Best Pharmaceutical Product.
Before his tenure at AbbVie, Dr. Gordon was Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Ovation Pharmaceuticals from 2001 to 2003. His career in the pharmaceutical industry began in 1995 at G.D. Searle, a division of Monsanto that later became part of Pharmacia.