Team Member
Kim joined the Vivli team in 2021 as Administrative Coordinator and currently works as Project Coordinator, where she is responsible for supporting members in their day-to-day operations.
Prior to joining Vivli, Kim worked with a commercial real estate firm as an Executive Assistant, supporting a team of brokers and developing standard operating procedures. Kim holds an Associate of Science degree in Public Health.
Michael Stebbins is the President of Science Advisors, a science and health consulting firm he founded in 2018 to provide science, technology, and public policy guidance to private companies, philanthropies, and non-profit organizations. He previously served as the Vice President of Science and Technology for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation where he was responsible for identifying and pursuing opportunities for philanthropic investment in Science and Technology. While at the Arnold Foundation he led initiatives that opened public access to data and publications created in the course of federally funded scientific research, and championed efforts in scientific reproducibility. His work at the Foundation addressed a broad set of critical issues including FDA policy on transparency, improving organ donation rates, leveraging the intellectual property sitting on shelves of universities and Federal agencies as well as opening access to scientific research publications and data.
Dr. Stebbins served as the Assistant Director for Biotechnology in the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. At the White House, he developed eight Executive Orders and other directives addressing issues ranging from the antibiotic resistance crisis to restoring pollinator health. His work led to broad changes in practice across the Federal government regarding the purchasing of bio-based products, improving veterans’ mental health, increasing access to federally funded scientific research publications and data, improving scientific reproducibility, evaluating and addressing the preferential purchasing of antibiotic free meats, reforming the regulatory system for biotechnology products, and improving the management of scientific collections.
Dr. Stebbins previously served as a science advisor to the Obama Presidential Campaign and on the Obama White House Transition Team. He is the former director of biology policy for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) where he led their biosecurity project. His work at FAS led to changes in how agents are trained to interact with scientists at the FBI Training Academy at Quantico. His team developed the first tools to train scientists on dual-use research of concern. He co-founded, and served on the board of directors for, Scientists and Engineers for America, and served as President of Scientists and Engineers for America Action Fund. In addition, Dr. Stebbins worked as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Harry Reid and a public policy fellow for the National Human Genome Research Institute. He is a former adjunct professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Washington, he was a senior editor at Nature Genetics.
Dr. Stebbins serves on the National Academies of Science Board of Research Data and Infrastructure. He received his B.S. in biology at SUNY Stony Brook and his Ph.D. in genetics while working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Dr. Barbara Bierer is the faculty co-chair of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (MRCT Center), a Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston and a hematologist/oncologist. She is the Director of the Regulatory Foundations, Ethics and the Law Program of the Harvard clinical and translational sciences center. Previously she served as senior vice president, research at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 11 years, and was the institutional official for human subjects and animal research, for biosafety and for research integrity. She initiated the Brigham Research Institute and the Innovation Hub (iHub), a focus for entrepreneurship and innovation.
In addition, she was the Founding Director of the Center for Faculty Development and Diversity at the BWH. In addition to her academic responsibilities, she serves on the Board of Directors of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), dedicated to promoting the ethical conduct of biomedical and behavioral research; Management Sciences for Health (MSH), an international organization working in partnership globally to strengthen health care, local capability, and access; and the Edward P Evans Foundation, a foundation supporting biomedical research. Previously she has served as the chair of the Board of Directors of the Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) and as chair of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections, HHS. She has authored or co-authored over 180 publications and is on the editorial boards of a number of journals including Current Protocols of Immunology.
Dr. Bierer received a B.S. from Yale University and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
Amrutha Baskaran serves as the Associate Director of Operations at Vivli. She received a MD from Tbilisi State Medical University, Republic of Georgia and a master’s degree in Clinical Research from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). In addition, she completed a Fellowship in Clinical Research Ethics from the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Institute at MUSC.
Prior to the current position Amrutha worked as a Clinical Trial Lead for a medical device company running clinical trials on aortic stent grafts. She has 6 years of clinical trials experience in both academia and industry setting. She has experience in various roles as the study lead, data manager and regulatory specialist which gave her the exposure of working on both national and global clinical trials. In the past, Amrutha served as an Institutional Review Board member at the University of California, San Diego and as an external reviewer for Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Services at MUSC.
Catherine D’Arcy is a Senior Program Manager for Vivli. Prior to joining Vivli, Catherine gained 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, most recently managing data sharing requests for GlaxoSmithKline, and prior to that within clinical trial operations. She has a bachelor degree in Medical Biochemistry from the University of London.
Steven E. Kern, PhD, is Executive Director of Global Health Labs (www.ghlabs.org) whose mission is to develop innovative technologies to address unmet healthcare needs, especially in low and middle income countries. Global Health Labs helps to advance the strategic priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with technology innovations focused on diagnostics, reproductive, maternal and child health, and tools and equipment for primary care. It is created and funded by Gates Ventures, the private office of Bill Gates.
Previously he served as for nearly 10 years as Deputy Director of Quantitative Sciences at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Quantitative Sciences group is focused on data analysis to support program strategies for therapeutic projects that the foundation funds. This effort extends across all therapeutic areas in which the foundation is involved including maternal & child health, family planning, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases, HIV, and pandemic preparedness. He and his team are strong advocates of making research data “always FAIR and sometimes OPEN” to improve the impact data can have towards the problem it was collected to address, and beyond.
Prior to this, he was Global Head of Pharmacology Modeling at Novartis Pharma AG based in Basel Switzerland where he led a team focused on providing model-based drug development support to therapeutics across all stages of drug development. He joined Novartis in 2010 from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah where he was Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics, Anesthesiology, and Bioengineering, and served as co-investigator for their NIH funded Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit. He has designed, conducted, and served as a principal investigator for clinical pharmacology studies that spanned the population from preterm infants to elderly adults.
Patricia A. Bradford is the owner of Antimicrobial Development Specialists LLC, a consulting company that focuses on the late-stage development of antibiotics. Prior to this she was at AstraZeneca and was responsible for the microbiology support contributing to the successful development and approval of ceftazidime-avibactam. Before joining AstraZeneca, Dr. Bradford worked in antibiotic research for Novartis, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Lederle Laboratories. During her tenure at Wyeth she worked on a number of antibiotic projects and was instrumental in the team that wrote the dossier for the registration and approval of tigecycline. She was also heavily involved in the studies for several sNDA applications for piperacillin-tazobactam.
Dr. Bradford is fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology, has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has written several review articles and book chapters. She served as an editor for Antimicrobial Agents Chemotherapy 2001-2011 and is currently a Senior Editor for ASM’s newest journal, mSphere. She is also an active participant with the subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute.
Prior to working industry, she worked as a clinical microbiologist at Nebraska Methodist Hospital in Omaha. Dr. Bradford received a B.S. in Medical Technology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from Creighton University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in β-lactamase research.
Dr. Hermsen is the Lead for Global Antimicrobial Resistance & Antimicrobial Stewardship Medical Affairs at Pfizer and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine, in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Hermsen received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center followed by a pharmacy practice residency at The Nebraska Medical Center, a fellowship in Infectious Diseases Research at the University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, and a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management. Following her fellowship, Dr. Hermsen developed and co-directed the antimicrobial stewardship program at The Nebraska Medical Center and then joined Cubist, where she held medical affairs and outcomes research roles and created and led the Antimicrobial Stewardship Outreach Group. Subsequently, Dr. Hermsen transitioned to Merck & Co., Inc. (known as MSD outside the US and Canada), where she was a Global Health Equity Director, responsible for integrating health equity across the enterprise and supporting efforts to improve equitable outcomes, primarily focused on vaccination equity, and the Head of Global Antimicrobial Stewardship, responsible for creating and executing a global strategy to advance antimicrobial stewardship through education, implementation, research, and advocacy, across human, animal, and environmental health. Now, in her role at Pfizer, she is responsible for leading the development and implementation of the antimicrobial stewardship medical strategy.
Dr. Hermsen is a Fellow of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). She currently serves on the SIDP Policy & Government Affairs Committee, the IDSA Leadership Development Committee, the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Antimicrobial Stewardship Project at the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, and the Forum on Microbial Threats through the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM); and she Co-Chairs the Appropriate Use Working Group of the AMR Industry Alliance. She has contributed to the profession with numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and by serving as a reviewer for several professional journals. Dr. Hermsen has given over 100 invited presentations at state, regional, national, and international meetings, and she gave a TED talk regarding antimicrobial resistance and stewardship at TEDx Omaha 2019.
Dr. Mendelson is chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), and a founding, chair of the South African Antibiotic Stewardship Programme. His involvement with international policy related to AMR includes work with the World Health Organization, Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership, World Economic Forum, AMR Benchmark, and the Global Health Security Agenda. He is past-president of the Federation of Infectious Diseases Societies of Southern Africa and the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Mendelson studied Medicine at St Mary’s Hospital, London, and specialized in infectious diseases at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, where he attained his PhD. He moved to The Rockefeller University, New York, in 2001 and subsequently to UCT, initially to work on tuberculosis and innate immunity.
Dr. Alisa Serio is Executive Director of Microbiology and Nonclinical Development at Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and has previously held positions in microbiology at Achaogen, Inc. Dr. Serio has over a decade of experience in antibacterial research and development, with a specific focus on combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR). She has contributed to the FDA approval and commercial launch of new antibiotics designed to evade AMR and lead research activities under several United States government partnerships including Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). She received her PhD in molecular biology and microbiology from Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and American Heart Association (AHA). Dr. Serio is a long-standing member of the American Society of Microbiology, Infectious Disease Society of America, and the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.