Dr. Stergachis’ research and teaching focuses primarily on the safety and use of medicines and vaccines in LMICs. He is Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in the School of Pharmacy, Director of the Global Medicines Program and Director of the Biomedical Regulatory Affairs Program, University of Washington. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, Epidemiology and Health Systems & Population Health. He directed a pregnancy registry study on the safety of antimalarials in sub-Saharan African countries. He has developed novel approaches for HIV pharmacovigilance and strengthening pharmacy services in LMICs. He is co-investigator for a study to estimate the global burden of AMR. He has conducted antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial use projects in Tanzania. A licensed pharmacist, his interests also include antimicrobial stewardship. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, having served on numerous committees. Previously, he was senior advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Safety Surveillance Working Group, a member of the US FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, and Chair of the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium Safety Working Group. He is a Fellow of the American Pharmacists Association and of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.
Archives: Team Members
Team Member
Rebecca Li, PhD
Rebecca Li, PhD, is the Executive Director of Vivli and on faculty at the Center for Bioethics at the Harvard Medical School. Previous to her current role she was the Executive Director of the MRCT Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard for over 5 years and remains a Senior Advisor at the Center. She has over 25 years of experience spanning the entire drug development process with experience in Biotech, Pharma and CRO environments. She completed a Fellowship in 2013 in the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School. She earned her PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Stan Neumann
Stan Neumann is the Senior Director of Technical Operations at Vivli, where he is responsible for the reliability, usability and functionality of Vivli’s technical platform and supporting members and researchers who use the system. He is also responsible for QA and information and security management.
Prior to joining Vivli, Stan was a project manager and business analyst for BlueMetal Architects, where he helped numerous clients, define a technical vision and then realize that vision through a rigorous application of modern engineering practices and outstanding development skills. Prior to BlueMetal, Stan was the Director of Engineering at Axceler, where he helped the company grow from a startup to one of the most respected creators of SharePoint tools in the industry
William Gourgiotis
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.
Catherine D’Arcy
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.
Sienna Dear
Sienna joined the Vivli team as an Executive Assistant and has since transitioned into the role of Project Coordinator.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus in psychology from Harvard College. She is an AmeriCorps alumni having served two years with City Year Boston. Prior to joining Vivli, Sienna worked with an education nonprofit supporting organization operations and executive leadership.
Michael Stebbins, PhD
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.
Eric Perakslis, PhD
Eric Perakslis, PhD, is a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University, where his work focuses on collaborative efforts in data science that span medicine, policy, engineering, computer science, information technology, and security, while also contributing to training and mentoring future leaders in the field. Immediately prior to his arrival at Duke, he served as Chief Scientific Advisor at Datavant, Lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, and Strategic Innovation Advisor to Médecins Sans Frontières.
Eric was Senior Vice President and Head of the Takeda R&D Data Science Institute, where he built an integrated institute of more than 165 multi-disciplinary data scientists serving all aspects of biopharmaceutical R&D and digital health. Prior to Takeda, Eric was the Executive Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and the Countway Library of Medicine, an Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and a faculty member of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program at Boston Children’ Hospital.
During his time at HMS, Eric focused on the approval of the Department of Biomedical Informatics as a full academic department, the development of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Network, industry collaborations, leading the technology efforts for multiple Ebola response programs, and building active research programs in medical product development, regulatory science, and cyber security.
Prior to HMS, Eric served as Chief Information Officer and Chief Scientist (Informatics) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In this role, Eric authored the first IT Strategic Plan for FDA and was responsible for modernizing and enhancing the IT capabilities as well as in silico scientific capabilities at FDA.
Prior to his time at FDA, Eric was Senior Vice President of R&D Information Technology at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals R&D and member of the Corporate Office of Science and Technology. While at J&J, Eric created and open-sourced the tranSMART clinical data system, which is now being freely used by hundreds of healthcare organizations. During his 13 years at J&J, Eric also held the posts of VP R&D Informatics, VP and Chief Information Officer, Director of Research Information Technology, and Director of Drug Discovery Research. Prior to working at J&J, Eric was the Group leader of Scientific Computing at ArQule Inc.
Eric has served on the editorial board of Cancer Today magazine and as the Associate Editor for Novel Communications for the Journal of Therapeutic Innovation and Regulatory Science. Eric has also served on Science and Technology Advisory Committees and in leadership roles for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, NuMedii, Precision for Medicine, the Survivor Advisory Board at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the Kidney Cancer Association, OneMind4Research, and the Scientist – Survivor program of the American Association for Cancer Research. Internationally, Eric has served as the Chief Information Officer of the King Hussein Institute for Biotechnology and Cancer in Amman, Jordan.
Eric has a PhD in chemical and biochemical engineering from Drexel University. He also holds BSChE and MS degrees in chemical engineering.
Liz Graham
Liz Graham serves as Senior Clinical Research Data Manager for Vivli. She received a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of New England and a Master of Data Science and Analytics (MS) from the University of Maryland. Additionally, she completed the Cross Cultural Health Immersion to Ghana, West Africa as part of a multidisciplinary team that evaluated integration of western health approaches with local medicine to improve cultural competence awareness.
Prior to this role, Liz coordinated multi-disease clinical trials at Johns Hopkins. She developed experience in oncological trial management, clinical EDCs, regulatory and protocol compliance standards. Liz is a member of the American Public Health Association and American Health Information Management Association.
Jessica Baker
Jessica Baker is a recent graduate of the Masters in Bioethics program at the Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School. Her studies include work in Research Ethics, Global Health Ethics, and the foundations of Bioethics. Prior to matriculating at Harvard, Jessica obtained a J.D. from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of law, as well as undergraduate degrees in English from Davidson College and Psychology from the University of Utah.
Jessica’s work at Vivli includes assisting in communications, policies and procedures, and governance issues, combining her interests in research ethics, public outreach, and the legal and regulatory frameworks of human subjects research.