Our leadership

Vice Chancellor for Research, UIC

Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Director of the Stanford Innovative Medicines Accelerator

Chaitan Khosla received his PhD in 1990 at Caltech. After completing postdoctoral studies at the John Innes Centre in the UK, he joined Stanford University in 1992. His work on antibiotic biosynthetic mechanisms led to new methods for engineering enzyme assembly lines to make novel anti-infective agents. He and his collaborators have also studied the molecular basis of celiac disease, a widespread but overlooked autoimmune disorder. He has co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed publications and 75 issued U.S. patents. He is an elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences. Over the past three decades, he has founded four biotechnology companies.

Peter S. Kim is the Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine and an Institute Scholar of Stanford ChEM-H. He is also the Lead Investigator of the Infectious Disease Initiative at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. He was President of Merck Research Laboratories from 2003–2013 and oversaw development of more than 20 new medicines and vaccines, including JANUVIA, GARDASIL, ISENTRESS, ZOSTAVAX, and KEYTRUDA. Earlier, he was Professor of Biology at MIT, Member of the Whitehead Institute and an HHMI Investigator. He is known for discovering a salient component of how proteins cause viral membranes to fuse with cells and has pioneered efforts to create an AIDS vaccine based on inhibiting the HIV-1 membrane-fusion process. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering.

Sunita Rajdev joined the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing in December 2019 as its first Senior Associate Director of Strategic Alliances. The position was created to provide strategic direction, cross-functional coordination and oversight for high visibility, high value strategic industry and non-profit alliances. Her responsibilities include life cycle management of major strategic alliance programs and a large portfolio of life sciences IP assets, staff training and management, intra- and cross-until stakeholder coordination, and serving as the team lead during negotiation, drafting and implementation of strategic alliance agreements. Prior to joining Stanford, Sunita worked in the UCSF Office of Technology Management where she spearheaded the commercialization of numerous life science technologies and negotiated intellectual property terms for several key innovative translational alliance programs. Sunita holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco before transitioning to the technology transfer field.

William Slattery is a Partner on Deerfield’s Therapeutics team and joined the Firm in 2000. Prior to Deerfield, Mr. Slattery was a senior healthcare analyst for 10 years at Amerindo Investment Advisors, where he oversaw biotechnology investments. He has held various positions in research including those at National Medical Enterprises, Johnson & Johnson, and HMSS. Mr. Slattery is the Chairman of Gilda’s Club New York City, a non-profit organization supporting cancer patients and their families. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biology and Chemistry from State University of New York at Albany and completed coursework in Immunology at the Graduate School-New Brunswick, Rutgers University.