Amyris competitors

Nick Leschly has served as our chief bluebird since September 2010. Formerly, Nick was a partner and founding member of Third Rock Ventures in 2007. Nick played an integral role in the overall formation, development and business strategy of several of Third Rock’s portfolio companies, including Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Edimer Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to joining Third Rock, he worked at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, leading several early-stage drug development programs and served as the product leader for VELCADE. Nick also founded and served as chief executive officer of MedXtend Corporation. He received his B.S. in molecular biology from Princeton University and his MBA from Wharton Business School. He currently serves as a board member of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Synlogic Therapeutics.

Mr. Marucci is a Founder of Celldex and serves as the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to his appointment as President and CEO in 2008, Mr. Marucci served as Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Secretary of Celldex. Celldex, founded in 2004 as a subsidiary of Medarex (Medarex is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bristol Myers Squibb), was initially spun out as an independent private company in October 2005 with the asset acquisition of CDX-110 from Alteris Therapeutics, Inc. and the acquisition of Lorantis Limited (Cambridge, UK). In addition to these acquisitions, Mr. Marucci is also responsible for the AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc. and Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. merger completed during the first quarter of 2008 and the acquisition of CuraGen Corporation completed in the third quarter of 2009. He was Treasurer of Medarex from December 1998 to March 2004, where he held a series of senior financial positions since December 1998. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of BioNJ and also served as its Treasurer through 2010. Mr. Marucci received his B.S. in Accounting from Kean University and his M.B.A. from Columbia University.

John prides himself as a builder of growing international businesses and organizations, successfully deploying both organic and M&A strategies in doing so. As President & CEO since June 2012, John has lead the turnaround and growth of Codexis Inc, the Nasdaq-listed protein engineering company based in Silicon Valley, California. Prior to Codexis, John worked in various business leadership roles for more than 22 years at Albemarle Corporation, a maker of highly engineered specialty chemicals. Spanning three successive multi-year chapters there, John lead the growth of the company’s largest, billion dollar plus global catalyst business, turned around a struggling half billion dollar fine chemicals business, and expanded and globalized Albemarle’s flame retardants business. A native of New York city, John and his family have lived widely across the USA, and also enjoyed an exciting three year assignment in Tokyo, Japan in the late 1990’s. John received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (now NYU) and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Outside of work, John proudly boasts about his 30 year marriage, two fabulous children, and four delightful grandchildren. John also has passionately applied himself to help solve the plight of the millions of patients suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome, and is the Board Chair for the leading patient lead organization for the cause in the US, the Solve ME/CFS Initiative (www.solvecfs.org).

Chief Executive Officer and member of the board of XOMA (NASDAQ: XOMA). Joined XOMA in 2009 and was appointed to the CEO role in late 2016. In early 2017, Mr. Neal led XOMA through a dramatic strategic pivot taking the company from a traditional R&D heavy biotech company and transforming it to a successful royalty monetization and aggregation company. In the years prior to becoming CEO of XOMA, he was instrumental in leading the company’s licensing and business development activities focused on maximizing the value of XOMA’s foundational antibody IP and knowhow. In addition to his role at XOMA, Mr. Neal currently serves as a Director at Leading Biosciences, a clinical stage biotech company based in Carlsbad, CA. Mr. Neal has more than twenty years of experience in the biotechnology industry encompassing roles in R&D, business development, financing and general management. Prior to XOMA, Mr. Neal was Acting Chief Executive Officer of Entelos Inc., a leading bio-simulation company that acquired Iconix Biosciences, a privately held company where Mr. Neal was Chief Executive Officer. At Iconix, Mr. Neal established multi-year collaborations with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Labs (now AbbVie), Eli Lilly and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. From 1999-2002, he was Executive Vice President of Incyte Genomics, leading global commercial activities with pharmaceutical company collaborators and partners including Pfizer, Aventis, GSK and others. Earlier in his career, he was an executive with Monsanto Company in positions of increasing responsibility. Mr. Neal earned his B.S. in Biology and his M.S. in Genetics and Plant Breeding from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and holds an MBA degree from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

Skip Wagner is a President and Chief Executive Officer at BioReliance and is based in College Station, Texas.