Board and Advisors

Maurizio Fava, M.D.

Director of the Division of Clinical Research of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Research institute, Executive Vice Chair of the MGH Department Psychiatry, Executive Director of the MGH Clinical Trials Network & Institute (CTNI), a Harvard teaching hospital; associate member of the Broad Institute’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research; Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fava has received several awards, including the 2015 Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) Senior Investigator Gerald L. Klerman Award. He is the immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology and is on the editorial board of five international medical journals, including the Journal of Affective Disorders and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.


Aimee Danielson, Ph.D. 

Founder and Director of the Women’s Mental Health Program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, an outpatient treatment program in Washington, DC, devoted exclusively to treating perinatal psychiatric disorders. Dr. Danielson is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and actively involved in medical education. She teaches medical students, residents and fellows about women’s mental health, including the motherhood transition and perinatal psychiatric disorders. Dr. Danielson is co-founder of the DC Women’s Reproductive Mental Health Consortium and also an active member of the DC Collaborative for Mental Health in Pediatric Primary Care.


Harry Leider, M.D., MBA

Chief Medical Officer and Group Vice President of Walgreens. Before joining Walgreens, Dr. Leider was Chief Medical Officer of Ameritox, and prior to that he was Chief Medical Officer of XLHealth. Leider also served as the Chief Medical Officer for HealthNet and was a physician executive at Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan. Dr. Leider is on the editorial boards of Physician Executive and the Journal of Population Health Management. He is also a founding board member of the Disease Management Association of America (DMAA) and served on the board of the Institute of Aging at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lieder also served for six years as an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and more recently as a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.



Helen Christensen, Ph.D. 

Director and Chief Scientist of the Black Dog Institute; Professor of Mental Health at the University of New South Wales; National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) John Cade Research Fellow; member of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia; past President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research; immediate past President of the International Society for Research in Internet Interventions. Dr. Christensen is also the Chief Investigator for the NHMRC Clinical Research Centre for Excellence in Suicide Prevention.


Ian Gotlib, Ph.D. 

David Starr Jordan Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Mood and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory. Dr. Gotlib studies depression and risk for disorder in children, adolescents and adults. He has received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, the Joseph Zubin Award for lifetime research contributions to the understanding of psychopathology, the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution and the APS Distinguished Scientist Award.





Julien Epps, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor in Signal Processing with the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW Australia and Contributed Principal Researcher with Data61, CSIRO, Australia

 

Management

Eric Elenko, Ph.D. 

Dr. Elenko is co-founder of Sonde Health and the Executive Vice President of Science and Technology at PureTech where he has co‑founded a number of companies.  Prior to joining PureTech, Dr. Elenko was a consultant with McKinsey and Company where he advised senior executives of both Fortune 500 and specialty pharmaceutical companies on a range of issues such as product licensing, mergers and acquisitions, research and development strategy and marketing.  Dr. Elenko received his BA in Biology from Swarthmore College and his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from University of California, San Diego.

Geoff Horwitz, PhD   

 

Dr. Horwitz is a core member of Sonde Health and a Senior Analyst at PureTech, where he is involved in sourcing technologies for new companies. Prior to joining PureTech, Dr. Horwitz worked in business development in the Technology and Innovation Development Office at Boston Children’s Hospital, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital. He performed market analyses, network development, lead sourcing and managed the inter-institutional alliances between Children’s and its corporate biotech and pharma partners. He completed postdoctoral research at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, helping to identify key proteins involved in hearing and balance. During his research career, Dr. Horwitz published seven papers in peer reviewed journals, four as the lead author. Dr. Horwitz received a B.S. in Biology and Psychology from Trinity University, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Virginia after completing his research in the Neurobiology program at Children’s and Harvard.

Jim Harper, Ph.D. 

Dr. Harper is co-founder of Sonde Health and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PureTech, where he is involved in several new company formation initiatives. He was previously at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where he was a Senior Staff member and led a series of biotechnology prototype and system development teams that identified best-in-class technologies and transformed them from laboratory proofs-of-concept to prototypes and systems with real-world impact on applications in biodefense, human DNA identification and characterization, and human health and performance.

Dr. Harper completed his graduate work at MIT in the laboratory of Prof. Peter T. Lansbury Jr. where he helped redefine models for the molecular mechanisms of abnormal aggregate formation by proteins associated with Alzheirmer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. His work identified previously unrecognized intermediate aggregate species that appear transiently and have distinct physical and biological properties from the end-stage fibrillar deposits that are pathologic hallmarks of those diseases.

Dr. Harper received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Furman University, his Ph. D. in Biochemistry from the MIT Chemistry Department, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School in the Center for Neurologic Diseases.

Jon Lin, MA, JD  

 

Mr. Lin is a core member of Sonde Health, managing development and integration of technology for Sonde Health. He comes to Sonde from Royal Philips, where he applied his extensive background in IP creation and protection to shape R&D and acquisitions strategy. Jon also leads the aggressive development and expansion of the Sonde internal IP portfolio. 

Vincent Hennemand, MSc, MBA  

Mr. Hennemand is a core member of Sonde Health and Vice President of Company Development and Operations at PureTech. He was previously a Principal in Sanofi’s corporate R&D venture group (“Sunrise”) where he was responsible for developing and managing new investment opportunities including Myokardia, Voyager Therapeutics, WarpDrive Bio and Portal Instruments. Prior, Mr. Hennemand was the Chief of Staff to the President of Global R&D and the General Secretary for the Corporate Scientific Advisory Committee (SDSAC), which investigates scientific proposals and projects of potential interest to Sanofi. He has a Msc in Engineering from Ecole Normal Superieure Arts et Metiers in France and an MBA (2015) from MIT where he received a Martin Trust Center scholarship as Healthcare Sector Practice Leader for the Institute.

Michael C. Chen, PhD  

Dr. Chen is a core member of Sonde Health and an Entrepreneurial Fellow at PureTech. Prior to joining PureTech and Sonde Health, Dr. Chen was a postdoctoral fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Department of Neurology, where his research targeted sleep and neurological disorders. There, he led a research team that discovered a novel brain circuit implicated in motor control in Parkinson's disease. Dr. Chen completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University, funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and other award mechanisms, focusing on the neurobiological mechanisms of risk for depression and sleep disorders. He received his B.A. from Yale University, where he worked on the role of voltage-gated sodium channels in epilepsy.

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