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.
Catherine D’Arcy is the Associate Director of Operations 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.
Rylie Garrison, MEd is the Grants and Finance Administrator of Vivli. She also serves as Senior Grants Administrator in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In this position, she oversees finance and compliance for approximately 150 research grants from a variety of federal and philanthropic sponsors. She received her MEd in Higher Education Administration in 2019.
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.
Seamus O’Brien is the R&D Director at the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), a non for profit organisation addressing the public health impact of antibiotic resistance by prioritizing the development of and access to treatments for bacterial infections in patients and populations for which there are limited or no options. Seamus leads an R&D team to develop and deliver a portfolio of treatments through an integrated development to access to model. In 2023 his team delivered the first pivotal phase 3 clinical trial to address a World Health Organisation priority pathogen sponsored and led by a non-profit organisation.
Previously, he was responsible, in AstraZeneca and then Pfizer, for building and leading public-private R&D collaborations to address the need to develop treatment options for drug resistant infections. He played a leading role in establishing and leading novel partnerships with the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and with the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) New Drugs 4 Bad Bugs programme in Europe. Seamus has a Ph.D. in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and host immunity from the University of Leicester and first degree in Microbiology from Trinity College Dublin.
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.
Katherine Perez is a pharmacist and infectious diseases expert who leads the antimicrobial surveillance efforts at Pfizer. She oversees the Antimicrobial Testing Leadership And Surveillance (ATLAS) program and dissemination of data on emerging AMR trends globally.
Dr. Perez developed and co-directed the antimicrobial stewardship program at Houston Methodist Hospital System and then joined Biomerieux as a Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship where she worked with clinical laboratories to integrate diagnostics into antimicrobial stewardship initiatives. Now, in her role at Pfizer, she is responsible for leading AMR surveillance and integrating the impact of vaccines with real-world evidence generation.
Katherine holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Texas in Austin, Texas and completed her postgraduate training in infectious diseases pharmacy at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas and Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas and pharmacoepidemiology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Dr. Perez is board certified in pharmacotherapy and infectious diseases pharmacy. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics such as antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial and diagnostic stewardship, and vaccine-preventable infections.
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.
Dr. Srinivasan is the Deputy Director for Program Improvement in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before coming to CDC he was as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Infectious Diseases Division at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where he was the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Antibiotic Management Program and the associate hospital epidemiologist. His primary responsibilities include oversight and coordination of efforts to eliminate healthcare associated infections and reduce antimicrobial resistance. His research and investigative areas of concentration include outbreak investigations, infection control, multi-drug resistant gram negative pathogens and antimicrobial use. Dr. Srinivasan has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals on his research in healthcare epidemiology, infection control and antimicrobial use and resistance. He continues to attend clinically on the infectious diseases consultation service at the Atlanta Veteran’s Affairs hospital.
William is currently the Technical Operations Engineer. He joined the Vivli team in 2021.
He Holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from UMass Lowell and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice from Plymouth State University. Before joining Vivli, William worked for the State of New Hampshire at the Department of Information Technology (DoIT), providing technical support to state employees.
