Gabor Forgacs
David H. Donabedian
David H. Donabedian, Ph.D., will serve as Chief Executive Officer of Axial and will also serve on its Board. Dr. Donabedian is an accomplished business development and strategy executive with extensive leadership experience. Dr. Donabedian has a track record of building companies, most recently as a Venture Partner at Longwood Fund.
Prior to joining Longwood, Dr. Donabedian has held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical companies including AbbVie and GSK. At AbbVie, Dr. Donabedian served as Vice President & Global Head of Ventures and Early Stage Collaborations where he led a global team that completed significant transactions across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of development. Prior to AbbVie, Dr. Donabedian served as Vice President Global New Deal Strategy and Development at GlaxoSmithKline, and Senior Manager at Accenture’s Strategic Services Consulting Group.
He holds a BA in Chemistry from St. Anselm College, a Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He currently serves on the Board of Alcyone Life Sciences, a privately held CNS company which he co-founded.
Dana Graves
In addition to his appointment as a Professor, Department of Periodontics, Dr. Graves is also Vice Dean for Scholarship and Research and Director, Doctor of Science in Dentistry Program at Penn Dental Medicine. He also served as Interim Chair of the Department of Periodontics from 2015 to 2017. His key research interests are in the areas of inflammation and diabetes as they relate to periodontal disease and the loss and repair of connective tissue and bone.
Rebecca Santelli
Maria Marco
Professor Marco’s team is investigating the ecology and molecular genetics of beneficial bacteria associated with plant surfaces and mammalian digestive tracts. Organisms of particular interest in the Marco lab are Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) found in plant and gut environments. LAB are important for the production of (fermented) food products and specific strains are currently being applied as probiotics to deliver health benefits in the human gut. This lab aims to understand the molecular adaptations and activities of LAB in the context of the indigenous plant and gut microbiota to improve food production and maintain human health.
Bruce Taillon
Andrew Gewirtz
Andrew Gewirtz, university center professor at Georgia State University, specializes in research on innate immunity, microbiome, intestinal inflammation and obesity/diabetes. Inflammation plays a central role in many disease states, and his goal is to understand the normal mechanisms by which pro-inflammatory signals protect against microbes and discern how they go awry in disease states. His primary area of focus is on the intestinal epithelium.
Gewirtz earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine.
David Sela
David Sela is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Science. Moreover he holds an adjunct appointment in the Dept. of Microbiology and Dept. of Microbiology and Physiological Systems at the UMass Medical School. Dr. Sela’s research is focused on the mechanisms by which breast milk molecules direct the population structure, and often function, of microbiota that colonize the infant gastrointestinal tract. Dr. Sela joined UMass Amherst after conducting postdoctoral research with David Mills in the Foods for Health Institute at University of California, Davis and David Relman at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Professor Michelle McGuire
Shelley McGuire received her BS in biology from the University of Illinois (1986), an MS in nutritional sciences from the University of Illinois (1988), and a PhD in human nutrition from Cornell University (1994). Her research focuses primarily on understanding better how maternal dietary intake and nutritional status influence breast health, milk composition, and duration of postpartum amenorrhea.