Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute CEO and leadership

Penny Heaton is a Chief Executive Officer at Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has worked as Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at CDC, Senior Director Vaccines Clinical Research at Merck & Co. Inc., and Chief Medical Officer and VP of Development at Novavax Inc.. Penny attended University of Louisville School of Medicine between 1986 and 1997.

As Chief Medical Officer and head of development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Michael W. Dunne, M.D., oversees clinical trials in therapeutic areas aligned with the mission of the Gates Foundation.

Over the course of his career, Michael has played an integral role in global and local anti-infective drug development. Prior to joining the Institute, Michael was the founder and chief scientific officer at Iterum Therapeutics, where he led the development of the antibiotic sulopenem. From 2014 to 2015, he was vice president of research and development at Actavis. Michael earlier served as founder and chief medical officer at Durata Therapeutics beginning in 2009, where he was responsible for the development and successful global registration of dalbavancin. Prior to joining Durata, Michael worked at Pfizer for 17 years, leading the development and registration of several antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, and HIV therapeutics. Michael was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and a member of the Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for the Medicines for Malaria Venture.

Michael currently serves on the Board of Directors at Iterum Therapeutics and is on the Editorial Review Board of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He earned his M.D. from the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn and completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship training in pulmonary medicine and infectious diseases at Yale University.

Claire M. Wagner MD MBA is a Chief Of Staff at Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute and Associate Scientist in Medicine at Brigham and Women s Hospital and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has worked as US National Cancer Institute funded Fellow; Consultant at Union for International Cancer Control (UICC); Senior Consultant, Center for Global Cancer Medicine at Dana Farber Cancer Institute; and Co-Founder at Service Industry Startup. Claire attended Harvard Business School, Germantown Friends School, and Harvard Medical School.

As chief operating officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Debra Weiss, RN, MSN, provides strategic and operational support to achieve business objectives in compliance with Institute and industry standards for data integrity, safety, and quality. She has overseen operations since the Institute was founded in January 2018. Prior to her role as COO, Debra served as the Institute’s head of quality assurance & enterprise operations.

Debra’s diverse background ranges from conducting clinical trials in an academic environment to working in large and small pharmaceutical companies, where she traveled globally auditing clinical trial activities and leading global QA organizations. Prior to joining the Institute, Debra served as president of Compliance Driven Performance LLC, where she provided quality assurance and compliance consulting to facilitate companies in building and sustaining their Quality Management System. From 2004 to 2015, she served as group vice president of R&D quality assurance at Shire Pharmaceuticals and was named Shire’s Healthcare Business Women Association Rising Star in 2008. Before Shire, Debra was manager of worldwide clinical quality assurance at Merck & Co., Inc., where she led a team of quality assurance auditors and participated in a pilot program with the FDA on the use of electronic diaries. A registered nurse by training, Debra held various roles at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University Hospital from 1986 to 1996.

Debra is an adjunct professor at Temple University teaching a graduate course in GCPs. She earned her MSN from the University of Pennsylvania and BSN from Hahnemann University (Drexel).

As CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Emilio A. Emini, Ph.D. leads the Institute’s research and development of novel products and interventions for diseases disproportionately impacting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Before joining the Gates MRI, Emilio served as director of the HIV and Tuberculosis program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he led the foundation’s efforts focused on accelerating the reduction in the incidence of HIV and TB in high-burden geographies, with the goal of achieving sustained epidemic control. Over the course of his previous 30-year career in the biopharmaceutical industry, Emilio led teams involved in the research and development of novel anti-infectives and vaccines. From 1983 to 2004, he led research at the Merck Research Laboratories involved in the development of one of the first highly active antiretroviral therapies for HIV and, as senior vice president of vaccine research, the successful development of a number of vaccines including vaccines for human papillomavirus and rotavirus.

He later served as senior vice president of vaccine development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. From 2005 to 2015, he was senior vice president of vaccine R&D at Pfizer Inc., leading the development of Prevnar 13® for prevention of pneumococcal disease.

Emilio was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Weill Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2006. He is a former trustee of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a former member of the National Preparedness & Response Science Board, an advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, International Society for Vaccines, and The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology, Genetics, and Biochemistry from the Weill Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences.