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Bandit, Chief Morale Officer, Marin Bio

Bandit

Bandit Weiss is the Chief Morale Officer at Marin Biologic Laboratories. Bandit has successfully been with the company and the Weiss family for a couple of years. He is lively and always keeps the team focused on being present, having fun and smiling. Bandit is a regular member of the Executive team meetings and contributes positively. Bandit is proactive and works for rewards. He has trained the team to support his needs.

 

Tonny M. Johnson Ph.D., Director of Research

Tonny Johnson completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Kerala and his Ph. D in Molecular Biology & Protein Biochemistry at the Bose Institute, University of Calcutta, India. Tonny got training in monoclonal antibody production, and development of ELISA technologies for detection of infectious disease. Tonny did his post-doctoral work at Department of Biochemistry, University of Minnesota (St. Paul) and Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he focused on molecular biology, recombinant protein, and expression, protein purification, protein biochemistry, protein engineering.  Tonny worked at Promega Corporation for eleven years as a Senior R&D Scientist, where he launched multiple research products for manual and automated protein purification, cell-free protein expression, and drug discovery assay.

Tonny has patents and has published numerous scientific papers and presentations.

 

Tania Weiss, Ph.D., MarinBio Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer

Tania Weiss completed studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, with a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D., all in Chemistry or Biochemistry. She successfully worked in academia at the University of Chicago, Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; at Stanford University, Department of Biological Sciences; and at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), Department of Medicine. As adjunct faculty member at UCSF, Dr. Tania Weiss, built and staffed her own academic research laboratory and then subsequently founded and over the past 25 years systematically built and refined Marin Biologic Laboratories, Inc. CRO services and manufacturing businesses.

During her post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago with Eugene Goldwasser Ph.D., she was the first internationally to generate and characterize important new monoclonal antibodies specifically directed against erythropoietin and further trained with Drs Robert Shimke Ph.D. and Leonard Herzenberg Ph.D. in Stanford University’s flow cytometry and molecular biology laboratories. Dr. Len Herzenberg made major advances in research in clinical immunology and cell biology and is perhaps best known for developing advanced technology for fluorescence flow cytometry and hybridomas and made a very significant number of important and fundamental discoveries in lymphocyte biology.

Tania has published many significant papers, abstracts and patents. Also, she is often a speaker at national scientific conferences and chaired both the San Francisco Bioscience Forum and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. In 1995, Dr. Weiss became one of the few woman-founded and -owned private CRO’s, Marin Biologic Laboratories, Inc. Tania Weiss has a very solid reputation with the FDA and in providing successful creative and cost-effective solutions to client problems and generating world class results.

 

Peter Ralph, Ph.D., MarinBio Vice President of Scientific Affairs

Peter completed his B.A. and M.S. in Physics at Yale University and the University of California-Berkeley, respectively and his Ph.D. in Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Ralph has held academic positions at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA and Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research/Cornell Medical School, where he was an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor. Subsequently, Peter joined the biotechnology industry and was the Project Leader responsible for cloning the gene for M-CSF (Macrophage-Colony Stimulating Factor, a secreted cytokine which causes hematopoietic stem cells to differentiate into macrophages or other related cell types) at Cetus Corporation (which was later acquired by Novartis). Peter Ralph was subsequently employed at Genentech for nine years as Head, Research Immunology Department and in Genentech’s Bioassay Method Development.

Dr. Ralph has over 120 peer-reviewed publications and 24 issued patents. He is very well known for his development and patented methods to detect Herceptin and was the developer of the biometric GLP potency assay for Rituximab (anti-CD-20 human monoclonal antibody). During his 14-year tenure at Marin Biologic Laboratories he has expertly managed and successfully completed many hundreds of different projects for diverse clients, many of which were highly complex and intricate.

 

Benat Mallavia-Onaindia Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Mallavia performed his Ph.D. studies at the Autonoma University in Madrid (Spain) studying the effects of different inflammatory pathways over macrophage and muscle cells in the field of cardiovascular disease after obtaining his M.S. in Biology in the Complutense University also in Madrid. Following his research career, he moved to the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, where he continued his post-doctoral work studying different aspects of the innate and adaptive immune systems in the context of lung disease, especially after lung transplantation.

During his academic career Dr. Mallavia has published more than 25 peer reviewed papers and has developed different in vitro and in vivo assays from neutrophil extracellular DNA trap quantifications to different flavors of intra-vital life 2-photon microscopy methods.

In 2019, he joined Marin Biologic Laboratories to continue with the generation and development of different protocols and assays useful to many other companies.

But the most distinctive value of Dr. Mallavia is that he always wants to know WHY? Always willing to go the extra mile to answer the questions of HOW things work and WHERE can we improve things to make the experiment better, easier and simpler to understand.

 

Kirit Patel J.D., M.B.A., MarinBio Business Development Director

Kirit is a seasoned professional with a proven track record in operations, business development, alliance management, negotiating and closing deals, including investments, divestitures and acquisitions. He has strategic and operational expertise with companies at various stages of the business life cycle including inception to profitability. Kirit Patel is a highly experienced and solid team player with outstanding leadership, interpersonal and communication skills. He is an excellent operations and alliance management director, with very significant client and management skills and with successful national and international work experiences with fortune 500 companies in Europe, USA, Middle East, Russia, South Africa, India, Australia and Far East.