Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
Officers:
Co-Chair, Secretary Greg Bialecki
Co-Chair, Secretary Glen Shor
Greg Bialecki
Secretary, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development
Secretary Greg Bialecki oversees the Commonwealth's business development, housing & community development, and consumer affairs & business regulations undersecretariats. As Governor Patrick's chief housing and economic development advisor and cabinet member, Secretary Bialecki has oversight of fourteen state agencies.
Prior to his appointment as Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Bialecki served as the Undersecretary of Business Development. He also leads the Governor's Development Cabinet, which improves coordination across several Cabinet Secretariats involved in high level initiatives geared towards strengthening the Commonwealth's economic position.
He has been the architect of the Patrick-Murray Administration's Growth Districts Initiative, oversaw the implementation of the Massachusetts Opportunity Relocation & Expansion (MORE) Jobs capital program, and created an "Industry of the Month" series to strengthen relationships with key economic drivers in the state. Secretary Bialecki also served as the Commonwealth's first Permitting Ombudsman in which he executed the Chapter 43D Expedited Permitting Program and chaired the Interagency Permitting Board.
Before joining the Patrick-Murray Administration, Bialecki enjoyed a twenty year career as a real estate development and environmental lawyer at the law firms of Hill & Barlow and DLA Piper Rudnick, where his work focused on the major urban redevelopment projects in the Greater Boston area. He also worked extensively with public agencies, non-profit organizations and private landowners on land conservation and open space protection matters throughout the Commonwealth. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Secretary Glen Shor
Secretary, Executive Office for Administration and Finance
Glen Shor brings proven fiscal management to the Executive Office of Administration & Finance at a time when uncertainties stemming from the fiscal cliff and a slower-than-expected economic recovery are creating budget challenges for the Commonwealth. He spent the last two-and-a-half years as the Executive Director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the state's official public health insurance exchange. Shor has overseen the successful re-procurement of the Commonwealth Care program for low-to-moderate income adults, leveraging a 12 percent decrease in rates over two years while maintaining comprehensive, affordable coverage for members. Shor served as a key member of the team that crafted the Commonwealth’s health care cost-containment law the Governor signed in August 2012. Previously, Shor served as an Assistant Secretary for Health Care Policy and Deputy General Counsel within the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. There he played a critical role in overseeing the early policy decisions of the Health Connector and the financing of health care reform. Before serving in the Patrick-Murray Administration, Shor was a senior policy director and Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, a senior policy aide and counsel to former U.S. Representative Martin T. Meehan and U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, and a public interest attorney defending the constitutionality of our nation's campaign finance laws in U.S. Supreme Court litigation. Secretary Shor is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Shor currently resides in Needham with his wife Ellen and daughter Lila.
Edward J. Benz, Jr., M.D.
President and CEO, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Edward J. Benz, Jr. M.D. is President and Chief Executive Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, CEO of Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care as well as Principal Investigator and Director of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Care and a member of the Governing Board of Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center. An internationally recognized hematologist, Dr. Benz received his training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, and Harvard Medical School. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Hematology.
Dr. Benz continues to be an active NIH funded investigator. He has authored over 300 peer reviewed articles, reviews, chapters and abstracts. He is a co-editor of Hematology: Principles and Practice and of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine for which he and his colleagues received the Royal Society of Authors Textbook Award. He is an associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Benz' accomplishments have been recognized by a number of distinctions, including membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is a past president of the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Cancer Institutes.
Josh Boger, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO (Retired), Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Joshua Boger is the former founder and CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated.
He served in the additional role of Chairman of the Board from 1997 until 2006, and currently serves as a Board Member. Dr. Boger served as Vertex's Chief Scientific Officer from 1989 until 1992 and has been a Director since Vertex's inception. Dr. Boger served as Chairman of Bio, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, from 2007-2009.
Dr. Boger holds a B.A. in chemistry and in philosophy from Wesleyan University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Harvard University. His postdoctoral research in molecular recognition was performed in the laboratories of the Nobel-prize winning chemist, Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg, France.
Prior to founding Vertex in 1989, Dr. Boger held the position of Senior Director of Basic Chemistry at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey, where he headed both the Department of Medicinal Chemistry of Immunology & Inflammation and the Department of Biophysical Chemistry.
Robert L. Caret, Ph.D.
President, University of Massachusetts
Robert L. Caret was elected President of the five-campus, 68,000-student University of Massachusetts system on January 13, 2011. Ranked as the 19th best university in the world in the Times of London's 2011 World Reputation Rankings, UMass was established in 1863 and consists of the flagship campus in Amherst, along with campuses in Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell and Worcester.
President Caret, a native New Englander, assumes the presidency of the University of Massachusetts after completing highly successful presidencies at San Jose State University and Towson University. President Caret presided over periods of significant growth at both universities and gained nationally acclaim for eliminating race-based graduation disparities at Towson.
Active in regional and national organizations and boards, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the CollegeBound Foundation, the Board of Directors for 1st Mariner Bancorp and the Board of Advisors for Evergreen Capital LLC. He recently served on the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics and served on their Presidential Advisory Group and the Football Academic Working Group. He has also served on the American Flag Foundation Board of Directors (2006-2009), the Board of Directors of the American Council of Education (ACE), the Board of Directors for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the Maryland Governor's Workforce Investment Board, and the Maryland P-20 Leadership Council. He currently serves on the Executive Steering Committee of the AASCU Millennium Leadership Initiative (MLI). He was inducted into the Baltimore County Chamber Business Hall of Fame in 2006 and was awarded the Towson University Hillel Gesher Award in 2010. He was also awarded the Metropolitan Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce Leadership Award in 1999.
President Caret currently serves on the Massachusetts Economic Development Planning Council, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Board, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Board and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center Board.
President Caret received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of New Hampshire in 1974 and his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and mathematics from Suffolk University in 1969. His honorary degrees include a Doctor of Humane Letters from San Jose State University (2004) and National Hispanic University (1997) and a Doctor of Science degree from Suffolk University (1996). He and his wife Elizabeth have four children and reside in Boston.
The University of Massachusetts is the largest university in New England, with an enrollment of more than 68,000 students and graduating more than 13,000 students a year. UMass research expenditures exceed $500 million and the University has become a national leader in generating licensing income. UMass has spent $2 billion on campus construction and renovation over the past decade and its economic impact on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is estimated at nearly $5 billion a year.
Abbie Celniker, Ph.D.
CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics
Abbie Celniker, Ph.D is the CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on engineering and developing innovative protein-based therapies. Dr. Celniker has been in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry for over 25 years where she has worked in small and mid-sized biotechnology companies as well as mid-sized and large pharmaceutical companies. Prior to Eleven, Abbie was head of Translational Medicine at Alexion Pharmaceuticals by way of the acquisition of Taligen Therapeutics where she was the President and CEO. Prior to joining Taligen, Dr. Celniker was the Global Head of Novartis Biologics where she was responsible for the oversight of the discovery and development of the Novartis biologics pipeline. Dr. Celniker has also been the Global Head of the Program Office for the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) where she was responsible for the global integration and oversight of the Novartis Discovery Portfolio. In a previous role at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Celniker led the pipeline portfolio review committee and headed Development Project Management and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Prior to Millennium, Dr. Celniker was at Wyeth, where she was assistant vice president for predevelopment and biopharmaceutical core technologies. She has previously held positions at Genetics Institute, Genentech Inc. and the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Celniker has a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at San Diego and earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Arizona.
Lydia Villa-Komaroff, Ph.D.
Director and Chief Scientific Officer, Cytonome/ST
Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a Board Member and Chief Scientific Officer for Cytonome/ST, a company building the first optical cell sorter capable of supporting rapid, sterile sorting of human cells for therapeutic use. She began her research career under the tutelage of David Baltimore and Harvey Lodish at MIT, and received a Ph.D. in Cell Biology in 1975. Her professional life includes research positions at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Cold Spring Harbor, Children's Hospital in Boston, and Cytonome, Inc. During the discovery phase of her career, she published over 70 research articles and reviews. In 1996 she moved to full time administration; from 1998 to 2003 she was Vice President for Research at Northwestern University in Illinois and from 2003 to 2005 she served as Vice President for Research and Chief Operating Officer of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge. In 2003 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc (TKT), a biopharmaceutical company that developed products for the treatment of rare diseases. She became non-executive Chair of the Board in January 2005. She joined Cytonome, Inc as Chief Scientific Officer in 2005 and became CEO in 2006.
She is a member of the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Hall of Fame and a fellow of the Association for Women in Science. She has served on review committees for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Assessing the System for Protecting Human Research Subjects, the National Research Council Committee on the Structure of NIH, the congressionally mandated National Science Foundation Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering, as well as the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for the Biology Directorate, which she chaired from 1997 to 1998. She was a member of the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council from 2000 to 2004 and was elected to a four year term on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001. She is a founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and has been both a board member and vice president of the organization. She became Chair of the Board of Trustees for Pine Manor College in May 2007. She is currently serving on the National Academies of Science and National Academy of Engineering Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and the National Research Council Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline.