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About Andrew Fuhrmeister

In his current position, Andrew serves as the overall leader for Element Iowa City, formerly JMI Labs, and is charged with ensuring the company's continued leadership position in the industry. Key duties include maintaining and developing new business with new and existing sponsors and fostering the company vision on the current and future direction of the business to maintain its competitive position in antimicrobial development services.

Past Experience

Mr. Fuhrmeister has served in the healthcare industry for almost his entire service career.

Education

Mr. Fuhrmeister has a Bachelor degree in Business Administration and a Master of Arts Degree in Accounting, both from the University of Iowa. He holds a non-licensed certificate as a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Iowa.

About Mariana Castanheira, Ph.D.

Dr. Mariana Castanheira is responsible for designing and overseeing antimicrobial and antifungal drug development projects, surveillance studies, and molecular projects that characterize resistance mechanisms. Dr. Castanheira is the leading author for over 100 peer-reviewed publications, presents annually at major field conferences, and maintains a global network of research collaborators.

Associations

Dr. Castanheira was an Associate Editor for Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (2008-2014) and is currently an Editor for MSphere (since 2015).

She is a member of the Editorial Board for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Microbial Drug Resistance, and Drug Resistance Updates, as well as serves as an ad hoc reviewer for many other microbiology journals.

More recently Dr. Castanheira became involved in the program committees for important international conference in Microbiology and Drug Development and is an active advisor in the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Subcommittees for Antimicrobial and Antifungal Susceptibility Testing.

Education

Dr. Castanheira has a science degree in Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Dr. Castanheira completed her Masters in Science and Doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees for evaluating molecular epidemiology and resistance mechanisms of gram-positive and -negative bacteria at Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo (UNIFESP).

She also received training at the Department of Pathology and Microbiology of the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK) to study beta-lactamases. Dr. Castanheira built on the knowledge she gained at Bristol by dedicating the past 15 years working on discovering and characterizing genes encoding beta-lactamases and other resistance mechanisms.

About Helio Sader, M.D., Ph.D., FIDSA

Dr. Helio Sader has primarily worked on national and global antimicrobial surveillance programs and new drug development. He is responsible for designing and overseeing antimicrobial surveillance studies and new drug development projects. His work encompasses scientific research, data analysis and medical writing. Dr. Sader is also responsible for the preparation of abstracts/poster for scientific meetings and manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Sader has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed articles and 25 book chapters.

Past Experience

Prior to his current position, Dr. Sader was an Associate Professor and the director of the Special Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at the Infectious Disease division of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, performing antimicrobial resistance, hospital epidemiology, new drug development, and antimicrobial resistance surveillance research for Brazil and the Latin America region.

Associations

Dr. Sader is a member of the following:

• Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society for America
• Editorial Board for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
• Editorial Board for the Journal of Chemotherapy (Italy)
• Editorial Board for Brazilian Journal of Infectious Disease
• Serves as an ad hoc reviewer for many other microbiology and infectious disease journals
• American Society for Microbiology

Education

Dr. Sader completed his medical school training and Master’s degree in Infectious Diseases at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, Brazil, and then joined the Department of Internal Medicine for a residency (1987 – 89) and a fellowship (Master degree, 1990 – 91) in Infectious Diseases. His international fellowship started in 1991 when Dr. Sader trained in Clinical Microbiology in the Department of Pathology at the University of Iowa with professors Ronald Jones and Michael Pfaller. After completing the Ph.D. program in December 1993, Dr. Sader achieved the position of Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at the UNIFESP.

About Rodrigo E. Mendes, Ph.D.

Dr. Rodrigo Mendes is responsible for planning, designing and overseeing microbiology projects related to antimicrobial drug development and surveillance for bacterial drug resistance. Moreover, Dr. Mendes has been involved in molecular studies for further characterization of Gram-negative and -positive organisms and in investigations of resistance mechanisms and epidemiology typing. Dr. Mendes is the leading author for over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and conference presentations.

Past Experience

Prior to his current position, Dr. Mendes was employed as a Research Scientist at Genaco Biomedical Products Inc., A Qiagen Subsidiary. There, he was responsible for the Research and Development Division to advance a PCR-based multiplexing technology for diagnostic tests.

In addition, Dr. Mendes was previously responsible for a molecular diagnostic laboratory responsible for the detection and quantification of numerous human pathogens using PCR amplification-based methods.

Associations

Dr. Mendes is an Associated Editor from Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (Since 2014) and currently member of the Editorial Board for Microbial Drug Resistance. He also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for many other clinical microbiology journals.

Education

Dr. Mendes has a science degree in Pharmacy with specialization in Clinical Laboratory Science. His Masters in Science and Doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees involved, respectively, the investigations of sexually transmitted diseases in HIV-positive and pregnant women and the characterization of antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in Gram-positive and -negative bacteria.

The Doctoral (Ph.D.) degree partially occurred during a fellowship training at the Department of Pathology and Microbiology of the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK). Furthermore, Dr. Mendes continued his research in the field of molecular clinical diagnostics and mechanisms of resistance during his postdoctoral fellowship.

About Michael D. Huband

In his current position, Michael is responsible for overseeing new antibacterial and antifungal surveillance and drug development projects including protocol design, data analysis, and medical writing including abstracts, posters, reports, and publications. He has authored or co-authored more than 80 publications and 140 presentations at both national and international meetings.

Past Experience

Mr. Huband began his pharmaceutical research career in antimicrobial drug discovery and development in 1988 at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis where he contributed to the discovery and development of enoxacin, cefdinir, clinafloxacin, and sparfloxacin. He joined Pfizer in 2000 where he became a Senior Principal Scientist in Infectious Disease Research supporting preclinical and clinical candidates including dalbavancin, linezolid and sulopenem. Prior to to his current position, he was a Principal Scientist and Team Lead at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals where he contributed to the discovery and development of ceftazidime-avibactam, ceftaroline, and zoliflodacin.

Associations

Mr. Huband serves as a member of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute M23 quality control working group subcommittee and is a former-president and secretary of the Michigan Branch of the American Society for Microbiology. He serves as an ad hoc reviewer for microbiology journals.

Education

Mr. Huband completed his B.S. degree in Microbiology at The University of Michigan and graduate coursework in molecular and cellular biology at Eastern Michigan University.

About Michael A. Pfaller, M.D. 

Dr. Pfaller’s academic and research interests include molecular epidemiology of nosocomial fungal infections, antifungal therapy, and antifungal susceptibility testing, as well as the diagnosis and control of nosocomial infections.

Past Experience

Dr. Pfaller is Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City Iowa, where he was Professor in the Department of Pathology and Co-Director of the Molecular Epidemiology and Fungus Testing Laboratory.

Associations

Throughout his career, Dr. Pfaller has written or co-written over 700 peer-reviewed articles, more than 100 book chapters, and 15 books. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Clinical Microbiology Reviews and Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Currently, he is Co-Editor in Chief of the 11th edition of the ASM Manual of Clinical Microbiology.

Education

Dr. Pfaller received his medical degree at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, where he also completed a residency in Laboratory Medicine and a research fellowship in microbiology and infectious disease. Dr. Pfaller is board-certified in Clinical Pathology and is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Academy of Microbiology.

About Tim Doyle

Timothy Doyle is an Associate Director for Molecular and non-traditional therapies. In his previous role as Operations Manager, Tim provided direct and functional supervision for all laboratories and departments. Currently, Tim is responsible for directing aspects of the Molecular lab including data generation, data review and analysis, and overseeing the design and implementation of bioinformatic pipelines. He also guides all microbiome related studies—16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomics—as well as studies involving bacteriophage testing.

Past Experience

Prior to joining the company in 2015, Tim was a Research Scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He was primarily responsible for the in vitro characterization of lead molecules for various antimicrobial discovery campaigns, as well as the design and execution of numerous high throughput assays. Prior to Vertex, Tim was a Senior Research Assistant at Cumbre Pharmaceuticals, where he worked on whole-cell screening and assay development for various target-based and cell-based antimicrobial drug-discovery programs. Tim has published more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.

Associations

Tim is an ad hoc reviewer for several journals, including mSphere and International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

Education

Tim completed his B.S. from Winona State University in Winona, MN and his M.S. in Microbiology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.

About Ryan Arends, Ph.D.

In his current position, Dr. Ryan Arends is responsible for overseeing drug development and surveillance studies, publication generation, liquid handling systems, and managing high throughput screening campaigns. Dr. Arends has authored or coauthored over 20 microbiological publications in peer-reviewed journals and is fluent in computer programming.

Past Experience

Prior to his current position, Dr. Arends was a Research Scientist II at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he was an integral member of the antimicrobial discovery team that progressed multiple scaffolds from HTS screening hits to lead optimization compounds. Dr. Arends was also responsible for optimizing and performing bacterial growth inhibition assays to support medicinal chemistry efforts.

Associations

Dr. Arends is a member of American Society for Microbiology, European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and Infectious Diseases Society of America as well as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals.

Education

Dr. Arends completed his PhD and postdoctoral fellowship in microbiology at the University of Iowa.

About Marisa Winkler

Dr. Marisa Winkler is an Associate Director for Clinical Trials and the CLIA Laboratory Director. Dr. Winkler is responsible for designing and overseeing clinical trials and involved in new drug development projects and national and global antimicrobial surveillance programs. Her work encompasses scientific research, data analysis, and medical writing, including preparation of abstracts/posters for scientific meetings and manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Winkler has authored or coauthored over 25 microbiological and infectious diseases publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Past Experience

Prior to her position with Element, Dr. Winkler was an Assistant Professor at Emory University and the Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Emory University Hospital Midtown. She participated in infectious disease patient care in the inpatient and outpatient setting.

Associations

Dr. Winkler is a member of American Society for Microbiology, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and Infectious Diseases Society of America as well as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals.

Education

Dr. Winkler completed the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP, M.D., Ph.D.) at Case Western Reserve University (2009-2017). Her Ph.D. was in the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology under the supervision of Dr. Robert Bonomo studying β-lactamase structure-function relationships and the underlying mechanisms of resistance in multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections.  After graduation from medical school in 2017 she completed internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA and infectious diseases fellowship at the joint Massachusetts General Hospital-Brigham and Women’s Hospital program. She subsequently completed a year of clinical microbiology training in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.