2017 Speaking Faculty

John Bardi is Vice President, Government Affairs, & Digital Medicines Business Development at Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc. (OAPI). John oversees strategic business development for Otsuka’s digital platform as well as the execution of government policy and advocacy.

Before joining Otsuka, John worked as Vice President, U.S. Managed Markets, and Senior Director, Marketing, for ABILIFY® (aripiprazole) at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Earlier, he worked at GlaxoSmithKline as Vice President, Long Term Care Channel Accounts, and Director of National Accounts, Institutional Sales. Prior to entering the pharmaceutical industry, John served as Vice President, Clinical and Professional Services, at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and assistant administrator at The George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC.

John received a B.A. degree from West Chester University and a Master of Health Services Administration degree from The George Washington University.

Mr. Brennan was appointed President and Executive Director of HCCI in June 2017. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing HCCI’s advancements in price transparency and public reporting, increasing both the comprehensiveness and access to HCCI’s expansive data set, as well as working with state policy and decision makers to improve their health care systems. He is a nationally recognized expert in health care policy, the use of health care data to enable and accelerate health system change, and data transparency. He has published widely in leading academic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs. Prior to joining HCCI, Mr. Brennan was Chief Data Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He has also worked at the Brookings Institution, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, the Urban Institute, and Price WaterhouseCoopers.

Mr. Brennan received his MPP from Georgetown University and his BA from University College Dublin, Ireland.

Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, J.D., M.D., serves as Director of CDER’s Office of Medical Policy (OMP). She leads the development, coordination, and implementation of medical policy programs and strategic initiatives. She works collaboratively with other CDER program areas, FDA centers, and stakeholders on enhancing policies to improve drug development and regulatory review processes.

OMP is comprised of the Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) and the Office of Medical Policy Initiatives (OMPI). OPDP oversees the regulation of prescription drug promotion and advertising. OMPI provides oversight and direction for new and ongoing policy initiatives in broad-based medical and clinical policy areas.

Prior to joining FDA, she served as supervisory medical officer with the Immediate Office of the Director, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), at National Institute of Health’s (NIH) where she focused on developing policies and procedures to enhance the clinical trial enterprise. She also served as the Director of the Office of Biotechnology Activities (OBA), Office of Science Policy at NIH, where she was executive secretary of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. She has held positions as an attending physician with the VA Medical Center, a policy analyst with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Corrigan-Curay earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, her medical degree from University of Maryland School of Medicine, and a bachelor’s degree in history of science from Harvard/Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA. She completed her training in internal medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, where she also served as a clinical assistant professor of medicine. She continues to practice internal medicine part-time at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Shahram Ebadollahi is the Vice President of Innovations (R&D;) and Chief Science Officer of IBM Watson Health. He is the technical founder of Watson Health, IBM's first vertical industry business unit in 2015, building on his previous role as the global head and founder of Health Informatics Research for IBM. He oversees all product engineering, innovation incubation, and intellectual property for Watson Health. In his capacity as the Chief Science and Technology Officer, he determines the overall technical and scientific strategy for Watson Health and IBM as a whole in the area of healthcare and life sciences.

Prior to his current role, Dr. Ebadollahi was the global head and founder of Health Informatics Research for IBM, which spanned IBM's global research labs in Asia, Europe, Africa and the US. He has pioneered novel technologies in the area of health analytics and computational health, has published many scientific publications, and has led scientific projects funded by national agencies.

Dr. Ebadollahi received his masters and doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, where he worked on the analysis of multi-modal medical documents. He also has a MBA degree from Columbia University. His interests span, healthcare, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at various healthcare and health analytics related events.

Usman Iqbal MD, MPH, MBA is a Senior Director, Medical Affairs & HEOR at Trevena, Inc. Usman has 12+ years of diverse experience spanning clinical medicine, R&D;/Med AFF, Health economics & outcomes research across academia and biopharmaceutical. His experience spans number of different therapeutic areas including Neuroscience, as Senior Medical Affairs Leader at AstraZeneca, and Oncology, as former Head of Sanofi Oncology, Global Evidence & Value Development (GEVD). As part of both R&D; and Med Affairs in different hybrid roles, Usman has had been responsible for Portfolio Prioritizations, Integrated Medical Affairs Planning, and end-to-end Evidence generation based on Stakeholder engagement (Patient, Provider, Payer), Market insights and Relative Medical Value Assessment Platforms. Prior to working in the industry that also includes Amgen and Boehringer Ingelheim, Usman was at the Boston University Health Outcomes Technology Group as a senior research fellow and served as a research consultant for Veterans Affairs Pharmacy Benefit Management (VA-PBM), the Centers for Medicare &, Medicaid Services’ Health Outcomes Survey Initiative (CMS-HOS), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Usman has authored more than 50 publications and his research experience encompasses patient & physician evaluations in BIG Data and large integrated health care systems with a specific focus on comparative effectiveness, disease management, physician profiling, and patient access solutions.

Dr. Koenen is currently heading anticoagulation development in BMS. Christoph joined BMS in 2011 and has worked in different medical and development functions in Europe as well as in the US. He joined BMS from Novo Nordisk were his last position was Vice President and Head of Medical Affairs.

During his 9 years with Novo Nordisk Christoph has worked on the development of several compounds for Novo Nordisk including three different insulin compounds. Before joining Novo Nordisk in 2002, Christoph worked for GlaxoSmithKline Inc. in London. While at GlaxoSmithKline, Christoph was responsible for the development of anti-diabetic compounds.

Christoph received his medical degree from Ruprecht-Karls University School of Medicine in Heidelberg, Germany in 1994. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from Schiller International University. In addition to attending Heidelberg Medical School, Christoph attended medical school in Johannesburg, South Africa, Basel Switzerland and Columbia, Missouri, USA. As a board certified internist and diabetologist, Christoph has researched the influence of ACE-Inhibitors on diabetic nephropathy, as well as the effect of insulin treatment on weight gain in obese type 2 diabetes patients.

Mr. Molinaro has specialized in transforming and building secure, quantitatively repeatable and compliant Information Technology and Enterprise Risk and Security Departments. Flexible information services can be delivered quickly and secure by developing and integrating proven mature methodologies in security, risk, project, software-development, quality and service management with Business Process Management (BPM) Software in business and technology. Mr. Molinaro has been assisting organizations in business and technology engineering and process improvement and low code deployments over a 33 year career. His experience spans multiple industry verticals that include military, manufacturing/engineering, software/ecommerce, retail, telecommunications/cloud, healthcare, education, insurance and medical diagnostics/Biotech. Mr. Molinaro has held technical and management positions at leading companies and organizations such as the United States Army, Cellular One, MCI Telecommunications Inc., Movado, Ground Travel Technology Team Inc., AEGIS Insurance Services Inc., Bright House Networks and BioReference Laboratories.

Mr. Molinaro holds a Bachelors of Science in Electronics Engineering Technology with a focus in robotics/software automation and a Master’s of Science in Information Technology and Cybersecurity, is currently completing an MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology with a goal to achieve a graduate degree in Physics afterwards. Mr. Molinaro is also a veteran of the United States Army Signal Corps and was nominated runner-up for the CISO of the year by the EC-Council security group (2014 and 2016) and CIO of the year by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum in 2014. He formerly held several “technical” certifications and currently maintains multiple IT, security and risk certifications; CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), CGEIT (Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT), C|CISO (Certified Chief Information Security Officer), CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Controls), CISM (Certified Information Security Manager), ITIL (Version 3 Foundations Certification).

Mr. Molinaro was the executive leader and architect of the overall Cyber Defense of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida (National Public Event and others like the RNC) as well as the head of the IT Dept. Mr. Molinaro’s team was the cyber eyes and ears of this and other National Public Events. His breadth of experience and use of standardized methodology in information systems, risk, security, project management, business process engineering, policy making, power & radio engineering and software development has provided solutions and strategies in design, operations, maintenance and repair that greatly contributed to increasing and improving the corporate bottom line, quality, customer service, security and compliance effectiveness of many businesses. His methods and practices are based on sound and proven scientific and discrete engineering techniques used by the most successful organizations worldwide and he has met and exceeded corporate and customer satisfaction challenges. These practices are those developed, successfully deployed and greatly promoted by Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, Florida Institute of Technology (University of the Astronaut Corp.) and other prestigious and well known engineering, scientific Universities and businesses worldwide.

Kitty Rajagopalan, B.S (Pharm), MS, PhD has over 25 years of experience in health economics and outcomes research across drugs, devices, and biologics. Her cross-therapeutic area HEOR leadership expertise spans a wide spectrum of diseases and conditions including but not limited to psychiatry, neurology, oncology, cardio-pulmonary, and autoimmune diseases. She also has proven expertise in building and leading global and US health outcomes, pricing and economics (GHOPE) functions that help differentiate pipeline assets and inline brands across company portfolios. Her experience also includes successful interactions and negotiations with FDA, EMA (Global Healthcare Regulatory) and payor (US and Ex-US) bodies in securing PRO label claims, and successful market access through positive reimbursement guidance, and formulary inclusion/preferred status. Kitty’s global geographic experience span includes US, Canada, Australia, Europe (including UK), Latin America and Asia, with specific emphasis on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) Nations. Some of her notable successes include: First in class QoL and PRO label claims; Medicare ‘New technology/pass-through reimbursement; Positive reimbursement guidance from NICE, PBAC, other HTA bodies and US Public/Private payors and enabling device-related reimbursement legislation changes in Brazil.

She owns multiple copyrights for patient reported outcomes instruments and has published over 80+ manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. She also has presented over 600 scientific papers at meetings and is an invited speaker at DIA, ISPOR and other forums on health care topics as diverse as global reimbursement, HEOR methodologies, Patient Reported Outcomes in Clinical trials, emergence of ACOs and role of HEOR.

Venus So has 15+ years’ experience supporting preclinical and clinical project teams using multidisciplinary skills including bioinformatics, cheminformatics and information sciences. She is currently leading a real world data network for exploring and harnessing values from real world evidence data to enable better decision making by drug project teams. She has led drug discovery projects and managed informatics projects. Prior to Roche, she received her B.A. in Biochemistry from Oxford University, UK, and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Brandeis University, US.

Elena Tkachev is a Vice President, ACO Analytics at Collaborative Health Systems, subsidiary of Wellcare Health Plans Inc. and supports 18 ACOs with over 4,200 physicians serving 222,000 Medicare beneficiaries. She focuses on transforming information into insight to improve managerial operations and prescribe clinical action that enhances beneficiary health outcomes. Previously, Elena worked at McKinsey Healthcare Analytics Group, where she concentrated on design and development of Innovative Population-Based Delivery and Payment Models. Elena also held leadership positions at Horizon BCBS of New Jersey, Anthem and Milliman. Elena earned an MBA from Fordham University and a BS in actuarial science from Maryville University.

Eric is Director, Health Economics and Outcomes Research for Metabolics at AstraZeneca in Wilmington, DE. Eric received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Michigan and subsequently completed residencies at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and a fellowship in critical care at the University of Minnesota. In 2013, he earned a Master’s in Public Health Leadership from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For 12 years Eric was faculty at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and achieved the rank of Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy; he was also a clinical pharmacist in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and then at Hahnemann University Hospital. During the subsequent 10 years, Eric was employed by TAP/Takeda and Daiichi Sankyo in various field roles in Medical Affairs, including MSL, Field Scientific Lead, and most recently Executive Health Outcomes Liaison before joining AstraZeneca in early 2016.