Danielle Bogdanowicz, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist at TARA. Dr. Bogdanowicz has extensive experience in the development of in vitro platforms for studying cellular interactions during fibrous tissue injury and repair. She previously served as a postdoctoral fellow for the Empire State Columbia University Stem Cell Training Program, and prior to that, was an Honorary Research Associate in the Biomedical Engineering Division at the University of Glasgow. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University.

Jay Clare is the Senior Manager of Corporate Operations at TARA. Jay has extensive experience in technology development and commercialization, intellectual property and early stage company operations. Prior to joining TARA , he has been responsible for managing technology transactions, venture capital financings and engineering projects across a number of different positions. Jay received his B.Sc. (Biology) from the State University of New York at Albany and his JD from Syracuse University where he served as a Senior Research Fellow in the Technology Commercialization Law Center.

Krista Durney, Ph.D. is the Product Marketing and Sales Manager at TARA, Inc. Dr. Durney was trained in the laboratories of Dr. Gerard Ateshian, Ph.D. and Dr. Clark Hung, Ph.D at Columbia University where her graduate research focused on musculoskeletal biomechanics and tissue engineering. Krista was trained in financial markets and business valuation at Goldman Sachs where she covered the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors as an equity research fellow.

During her graduate studies, Krista’s entrepreneurial spirit has led to her involvement in bringing two technologies out of the university through funding from Columbia’s Biomedical Technology Accelerator and Cisco’s Global Problem Solver Challenge. She obtained both her Bachelor and Master of Engineering degrees from The Cooper Union in NYC (Inter-Disciplinary and Mechanical Engineering), and her Ph.D. from Columbia University (Biomedical Engineering).

Dr. Nicole Feric is the Associate Director of Lab Operations at TARA, Inc. She trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Milica Radisic at the University of Toronto where she helped develop the BiowireTM cardiac tissue maturation protocol and platform technology.

She obtained her B.Sc. (Honours, Biochemistry) and Ph.D. (Biochemistry) from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. There she began her cardiovascular research career in the laboratory of Dr. Marlys Koschinsky investigating the prothrombotic effect of lipoprotein(a), a coronary heart disease risk factor, on the plasminogen activation system.

Meghan Garcia is a Senior Research Scientist at TARA, Inc focusing on product development. With over 10 years of experience in industry research, her career has centered around developing advanced human disease models from primary human cells and stem cells. She has developed models for neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental and liver diseases amongst others. Her work in the space of multiple sclerosis targeted a novel therapeutic approach to the disease. In her time at Vertex Pharmaceuticals she applied these disease platforms to drug discovery, and many of these models were successful in identifying molecules as clinical candidates for the treatment of life threatening diseases. Her work on establishing disease models and assay development has resulted in numerous patents, as well as an FDA approved clinical assay.

She obtained her B.S. in Biology and Biotechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she began academic research in the labs of Dr. Steven Grossman and Dr. Michael Francis (UMass Medical School). Her research has largely focused on the fields of neurobiology and stem cell biology while the underlying current of her career has been towards progressing the state of human disease models to increase clinical translation and in turn treat disease.

Marietta Gustilo is a Senior Research Associate at TARA Biosystems. She was raised in Charleston, SC and obtained her Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology from the College of Charleston. She has previously worked in bacterial vaccines at Pfizer and HIV vaccines at Duke Human Vaccine Institute. She has also contributed to breast cancer and leukemia research at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Isabella Pallotta, PhD, is a Research Scientist at TARA. Dr. Pallotta graduated from the University of Pavia, Italy (M.S., Biology, PhD, Biochemistry). As a visiting PhD student first, and later on as a Postdoctoral Scholar, she spent 5 years in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University (Prof. David Kaplan’s group), to gain fundamental insight into megakaryocyte cell biology and in vitro released platelet functions, within bioengineered systems and advanced 3D systems. This work led to 1 patent, together with several published papers.

At the New York Stem Cells Foundation, NY, in Prof. Donald Freytes’ group, she then started her research career in cardiac tissue engineering, by developing advanced cardiac constructs and investigating the interactions with the inflammatory environment found at the site of myocardial infarction.

Kacey Ronaldson-Bouchard, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist and co-founder of TARA. Dr. Ronaldson-Bouchard has spent the previous 6 years developing various microphysiological systems for organ-on-a-chip studies of human toxicity and disease modeling.

Dr. Ronaldson-Bouchard’s doctoral studies primarily focused on the development of cardiac microphysiological systems with mature functionality. This work led to four published papers and four pending patent applications.

She was graduated from the University of Florida (B.S., Biochemistry), and Columbia University (M.S., Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering). She was President of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers and continues to support initiatives that mentor young women to pursue STEM related fields.

Rishabh is an engineer at TARA. He joined the team in 2017 after graduating from Cornell University with a Bachelor’s degree in bioengineering. At Cornell, he worked on cardiovascular research in Dr. Jonathan Butcher’s lab, exploring the role of mechanical signaling in valve development. He also worked on a synthetic biology project team, Cornell iGEM, to design genetic engineering solutions to real-world problems.

Rooz Sobbi, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at TARA. Rooz has extensive experience in cardiac electrophysiology and has spent the last 10 years studying ion channels and structural changes in the heart as a result of arrhythmias.

Rooz holds a B.Sc. in Cellular and Molecular Microbiology from University of Calgary and a Ph.D. in Physiology from University of Calgary Medical School.

Boyang Zhang is a co-founder of TARA and a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto, Canada. At TARA, Dr. Zhang is developing the manufacturing process of BiowireTM plates. Dr. Zhang obtained his B.Eng. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry from University of Toronto in 2016.

In 2016 Dr. Zhang was named MedTech’s Rising Star by Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MD+DI). In 2013, University of Toronto named Dr. Zhang inventor of the year for his collaborative work on a skin bioprinter. Dr. Zhang’s research interests are tissue vascularization, tissue assembly and organ-on-a-chip engineering. He utilizes microfabrication techniques in combination with biomaterials to build complex tissue models in vitro for drug discovery and regenerative medicine. His research on AngioChip, published as a cover article in Nature Materials, was featured in the Toronto Star and on The National on CBC in 2016. He has published over 20 research papers with H-index of 10 and has 3 patents pending.

Yimu Zhao is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate in the laboratory of Dr. Milica Radisic at University of Toronto. Her Ph.D. thesis is to develop BiowireTM II drug testing platform (TC dish version and 96-well version) that is designed to 1) be minimally drug absorbable, 2) mature engineered cardiac tissues and 3) accurately evaluate inotropic and chronotropic responses of tissues with drugs. She is one of the inventors of TARA’s BiowireTM platform technology (Patent) and contributes significantly on tissue conditioning, maturation and drug screening optimization for platform development. She is one of the co-founders of TARA.

She obtained her B.A.Sc. (Chemical Engineering) from University of Western Ontario and M.A.Sc. (Chemical Engineering) from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. There she worked on stem cell technology in the laboratory of Dr. Lauren Flynn and Dr. Stephen Waldman for multi-lineage differentiation and application of adipose-derived stem cells.