Board of Advisors
Dr. David Acheson
Board Advisor, Chairman of the Food Safety Committee
Dr. David Acheson will Chair the food safety committee that will inform the company’s development of rapid detection testing technologies for the food industry.
Dr. David Acheson has more than 35 years of medical and food safety research experience. He served as the Chief Medical Officer at both the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). Dr. Acheson was later appointed as the first Associate Commissioner for Foods at FDA. For the past decade, he has consulted with the world’s largest food brands at all levels of the food supply chain through his firm, The Acheson Group, published extensive research and has been a regular guest on national news programs.
Dr. Acheson studied internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of London Medical School. He then taught and studied at Tufts University in Boston where he researched the molecular pathogenesis of foodborne pathogens. Additionally, David was a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians in London and the Infectious Disease Society of America.
Dr. Jon Vaught
Board Advisor
Dr. Jonathan Vaught is CEO and Founder of Front Range Biosciences™. Previously, he was Director of Assay Development at Velocity Sciences, an IP development company that creates next generation assay technologies for diagnostic applications. He also served as a Senior Product Development Scientist at Beacon Biotechnology, where he led the development of a foodborne pathogen detection platform. Prior to Beacon, Dr. Vaught spent 5 years as a scientist at Somalogic where he helped build and optimize the SOMAscan assay, the world’s largest proteomic based biomarker discovery assay that measures 1000’s of proteins in a single sample.
He brings together a diverse background with expertise in organic synthesis, biochemistry, assay development, proteomics, and analytical chemistry. He is an inventor on two patents and an author on 7 publications in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Vaught received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his BS in chemistry from North Carolina State University.
Nick Hofmeister
Board Advisor
Nick Hofmeister is the Founder and COO of Front Range Biosciences™. Previously, he was the VP of Strategy for Divergent Technologies, which uses 3D metal printing to create light weight, environmentally friendly, flexible complex structures like car chassis. Mr. Hofmeister was a Founder and Director of Operations at Triton Algae Innovations, a biotechnology licensing company, and the Chief of Staff for Sapphire Energy. Prior to Sapphire, Mr. Hofmeister was a management consultant at Bain & Company focused on private equity and a program manager at Microsoft.
Mr. Hofmeister has founded 5 technology startups and raised more than $270 million from public and private sources. He has a BS from Northwestern University and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Michael Dovbish
Board Advisor
Mike Dovbish serves as Executive Director of Nutrition Capital Network (NCN) providing strategic guidance and preparing participating companies for NCN Investor Conferences. Since NCN’s inception in 2007, Mike has worked with presenting companies on their business plans, pitch presentations and overall strategy to best position them for growth and investment. He also identifies and introduces potential investors and strategic partners to companies before, during and after the investor meetings.
Mike also serves as a mentor, advisor and consultant to healthy lifestyle and sustainable businesses both in consumer packaged goods and related technology companies. He has worked with entrepreneurs on their business strategy, capital raising, market opportunity assessment, value proposition and partnership development. He received a BA degree in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine and an MBA from Boston University.
REGGIE GAUDINO, Ph.D.
Board Advisor
Dr. Reggie Gaudino oversees all scientific research and development for Steep Hill Labs and manages the YnsightTM genetics division. The research from Dr. Gaudino has been peer-reviewed and published, leading to important new discoveries. He is internationally recognized as a leader in genetics science. Dr. Gaudino is a Scientific Advisor for partner company, PathogenDx, where he helps identify and commercialize DNA based testing opportunities. Dr. Gaudino and Steep Hill act as the partner laboratory for PathogenDx product development and validation testing.
Dr. Gaudino received his B.S. in Molecular Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and he conducted four years of post-doctoral research at the Washington University in St. Louis, studying transcriptional regulation of rRNA. Reggie was one of the first African-American molecular biologists to enter a Ph.D. program in the United States in 1985.
Carl Yamashiro, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor
Dr. Carl Yamashiro has spent 25 years working with companies in biotechnology and biomedical diagnostics with a strong emphasis on molecular diagnostics. He worked at Applied Biosystems (now Thermo Fisher) on PCR-based food and environmental assay development. Additionally, Dr. Yamashiro has managed systems development for microarray-based diagnostic systems for both Roche Molecular Systems and Motorola.
Dr. Yamashiro received his B.S. in Biochemistry from UCLA and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Oregon. He was also an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Currently, Carl is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University.
NEAL PATEL
Principal Tendaji Ventures
Neal Patel is a healthcare and biotechnology entrepreneur in the Pharmaceutical marketplace. Patel founded his first clinical diagnostics company at the age of 23 years old. Armed with a passion for enhancing the accessibility to healthcare for disparate communities, Patel later launched a private R&D Laboratory, responsible for engineering disruptive, cost-effective diagnostic tests. In 2017, Patel began establishing a stronghold for himself in the Pharmaceutical industry when he founded a private research entity that focuses on taking non-FDA Approved medications to market.
