Elma S. Hawkins, Ph.D., MBA

President and CEO, Co-Founder

Elma S. Hawkins, Ph.D., MBA, is a veteran of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Dr. Hawkins' multi-decade career encompasses pioneering efforts in patient-specific product development and executive roles in clinical research, corporate development, fund raising, and general management. She is the President, CEO and co-founder of Redpin Therapeutics as well as Chairman of Epibone. Previously, she served as President and CEO of Lion Biotechnologies as well as Vice Chairman of Antigenics. She also held various positions at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis, Genzyme, ADVR and the Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts Medical School. She is the founder of Viridian Pharmaceuticals and co-founder of Tohi Ventures.

Dr. Hawkins has numerous degrees including a PhD in Organic Chemistry and an MBA with specialization in entrepreneurship.

David Bleakman, Ph.D.

Chief Scientific Officer

David Bleakman is the Chief Scientific Officer of Redpin Therapeutics. David has extensive experience in drug discovery research and development. He joined Redpin following his 25 year career at Eli Lilly and Company where he served in roles of increasing responsibility. His most recent role was as Lilly’s Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and Neuroscience Site leader, New York. His work focused on the discovery of new drug targets and clinical candidate molecules for both neurological and psychiatric disorders. David was responsible for generating new target hypotheses, leading research programs, designing, planning and executing research plans to advance both small and large molecules through early research and development stages, into clinical development and eventual launch. He has also initiated and led several corporate scientific collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. David earned his PhD from Kings College London, University of London and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago. David is the author of multiple patents and over 90 peer reviewed publications.

Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D.

Marilyn M. Simpson Professor, The Rockefeller University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Jeffrey Friedman, an alumnus of The Rockefeller University, is a physician scientist studying the regulation of food intake and body weight. In December 1994, he gained worldwide prominence when his research group reported the isolation of the obese (ob) gene in mice and humans. In July 1995, his group announced that the ob gene is responsible for producing a previously unknown hormone, which he named leptin—from the Greek word leptos, meaning thin. Also found in humans, leptin plays a key role in controlling appetite, energy expenditure, and fat storage.

In 1996, Dr. Friedman and his associates demonstrated that leptin’s weight-reducing effects depend on the hormone’s interactions with receptor molecules on cells in the hypothalamus, a brain region known to regulate food intake and body weight. The Friedman laboratory is continuing its ongoing genetics research in human populations, designed to expand their understanding of the causes of obesity and frequently associated conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and atherosclerosis.

Dr. Friedman received a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.D. from Albany Medical College, which named him its 1996 alumnus of the year. He completed a residency at Albany Medical Center Hospital and a gastroenterology fellowship at Cornell University Medical College, and then earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Rockefeller in 1984. He remained at Rockefeller as a postdoctoral fellow, and in 1986 he was appointed an assistant professor and an assistant investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He became a tenured professor and founding director of the Starr Center for Human Genetics in 1995, a Howard Hughes investigator in 1996, and the University’s first Marilyn M. Simpson Professor in 1999.

Dr. Friedman received the 2019 Wolf Prize, the 2010 Lasker Award for Basic Science, the 2013 King Faisal Prize, the 2007 Kovalenko Medal for Medical Science from the National Academy of Science, the 2007 Danone International Prize, the 2009 Shaw Prize for Life Sciences and Medicine, the 2010 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate, and the 2010 Robert J and Claire Pasarow Foundation Award. He received the Passano Foundation Award and a Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2005. Friedman is also the recipient of the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the University of Goteborg’s Jacobaeus Prize, the TOPS Award from the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, the Banting Prize from the British Endocrine Society, the Rolf Luft Award, the Wertheimer Award, the Osborne Mendel Award, the Steven C. Beering Award, the Janssen Award for Special Achievement in Gastroenterology, the 2001 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Metabolic Research. His work was also listed in Time Magazine’s Best of Science Section in 1995 and 1996. Friedman also received the Grand Prize from Popular Science in 1995.  He has also delivered dozens of named lectures. Dr. Friedman was elected to the National Academy of Science in 2001 and the Institute of Medicine in 2006 and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (2018). His 2002 article in Science, “A War on Obesity, Not the Obese” was also selected for publication in the 2004 volume of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 (Houghton Mifflin).

Dr. Friedman was a scientific founder of Millennium Pharmaceuticals, which led the fields of genomics and personalized medicine and Envoy Therapeutics which employed an enabling new profiling technology to develop a new generation of drugs with previously unattainable cell specificity. Both companies were acquired by Takeda, Inc., Millennium in 2005 and Envoy in 2012. He was also Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Amylin Pharmaceuticals prior to its acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb. He is also the chair of the SAB at Bay City Capital, a San Francisco based Venture Capital Firm. Friedman is frequently called upon for consultation by numerous other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies as well as journalists with an interest in obesity, metabolic disease and nutrition.

Scott Sternson, Ph.D.

Group Leader, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Research Campus

Scott Sternson is a co-founder of Redpin Therapeutics, Inc. and is a Group Leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus. His research develops chemogenetic tools to remotely control neurons for research and therapeutic applications. He is also a leader in the study of neural circuits that control appetite. Dr. Sternson received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University, and his work was licensed by Acetylon and later acquired by Celgene. He has been honored with the Helmholtz Foundation Young Investigator in Diabetes Award, the Linda and Jack Gill Transformative Investigator Award, and the Phillip Sharp Lecture on Neural Circuits from MIT. He holds multiple patents related to his groundbreaking research.

Michael Kaplitt, M.D., Ph.D.

Vice Chair, Research, Neurological Surgery; Professor of Neurological Surgery; Director, Movement Disorders and Pain, Weill Cornell Medicine

Michael Kaplitt, M.D., Ph.D., is an expert in various surgical therapies for trigeminal neuralgia as well as novel therapies for more complex craniofacial pain, and he is also a recognized leader is surgery for movement disorders and refractory pain. He is also an internationally recognized pioneer in the application of gene therapy to the brain and nervous system, having co-developed adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology for use in the brain and nervous system in 1994. He has published over 100 articles and has edited two books on these subjects, with publications from his lab appearing in the most prestigious international journals, including Science, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and Lancet. His basic science lab has received funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2004 and has also been the recipient of major funding from the Department of Defense and several major private foundations.

Dr. Kaplitt graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1987 with a degree in Molecular Biology and Russian Studies. He enrolled in the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. Program and received his Ph.D. in Molecular Neurobiology in 1993 from The Rockefeller University and his M.D. in 1995 from Cornell Medical College. Following his Neurosurgery residency and chief residency at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, he completed a fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery with Dr. Andres Lozano at the University of Toronto.

Sarah Stanley, MBBCh, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Institute, Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai

Sarah Stanley, Ph.D. studied medicine at Cambridge University where she graduated with first class degree in zoology and won several prestigious prizes. She completed her clinical training and MRCP in London teaching hospitals, studied for a PhD at Imperial College, London, and became a National Health Service Consultant, with equivalent board certification in internal medicine and endocrinology. Funded by the Medical Research Council, she moved to the United States to study at Rockefeller University pursuing her ambition to make research break-throughs that would have more impact on patients than current therapies available for many endocrine disorders. She established her own lab at Mount Sinai where is funded by NIH and ADA. She recently won the Helmholtz Young Investigator Diabetes Award prize for her work on magnetogenetics. Her current research focus is on understanding the neural regulation of glucose metabolism.

Jonathan S. Dordick, Ph.D.

Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences, Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Jonathan S. Dordick is the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with joint appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences. He is also the Senior Advisor to the President for Strategic Initiatives. Prof. Dordick served as the Vice President for Research from 2012-2018, the Director of Rensselaer’s Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies from 2008-2012, and as Department Chairman of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer (1998-2002) and Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa (1995-1998).

Prof. Dordick received his B.A. degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held chemical engineering faculty appointments at the University of Iowa (1987-1998), where he also served as the Associate Director of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1998-present) where he also holds joint appointments in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences. Prof. Dordick’s research group includes chemical engineers, bioengineers, materials scientists, biologists, chemists, microbiologists and computational and AI scientists all focused on gaining a quantitative understanding of biological principles and applying them to advance bioengineering and biomanufacturing, stem cell engineering, and drug discovery.

Prof. Dordick has received numerous awards, including the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Marvin J. Johnson Award and the Elmer Gaden Award both of the American Chemical Society, the International Enzyme Engineering Award, and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers. He presently serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards for several biotechnology companies and venture capital firms, and has cofounded several companies, including EnzyMed (now part of Albany Molecular Research, Inc.), Solidus Biosciences, Inc., and RedPin Therapeutics. He has also served on multiple White House-sponsored panels and committees in biomanufacturing. Dr. Dordick has published over 370 papers and is an inventor/co-inventor on over 40 patents and patent applications.