Our Team

David Snead, Ph.D., is the Director of Research at Medicines for All. He uses his expertise in process development to address problems in the pharmaceutical and commodity chemical industries. He comes to VCU from Merck where he applied continuous flow technology to solve complex problems in API process development. David developed his skills in continuous synthesis as a postdoc at MIT in the early days of the Pharmacy on Demand project. Prior to joining Merck, he worked in front-end innovation to identify and develop new business opportunities for GP Chemicals resulting in executive level sponsorship for commercialization of two projects. He holds a B.S. in chemistry from UNC-CH and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Florida.

Mo Jiang, Ph.D., is a Co-Investigator with Medicines for All and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering at VCU. With M4ALL, Jiang focuses on process intensification for advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing, such as designing novel processes and platforms of continuous crystallization and/or evaporation. Jiang holds a B.S. in biology from Tsinghua University, an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Joshua Sieber, Ph.D., is a Co-Investigator with Medicines for All and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at VCU. He joined VCU in 2018 after a 7-year stint in industry in the process chemistry group at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he gained expertise in developing synthetic processes for the large-scale synthesis of new APIs and the application of catalysis to large-scale processes. He obtained a Ph.D. from Boston College in 2008 followed by an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University where he gained experience in catalysis development and the total synthesis of natural products. His research interests focus on applying his background in catalysis, total synthesis, and process chemistry to develop new catalysts and catalytic reactions that target industrial-scale applications.

Justina Burns, Ph.D. generates analytical chemistry methods to support process development at the Medicines for All Institute. Previously she worked in contract research supporting a variety of projects which included sample preparation/analysis, report writing and training. Additionally, Justina worked in the Mass Spectrometry Center at the University of South Carolina focusing on ICP-MS. She holds a B.S. in chemistry from University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown and a Ph.D. in analytical environmental chemistry from the University of South Carolina.

Flavio Cardoso, Ph.D., is a research scientist at Medicines for All Institute working on process development of APIs and/or key building blocks. Prior to joining M4ALL, he worked at Libbs Pharmaceuticals as R&D Coordinator where he gained experience in the development of synthetic processes for the manufacture of generic APIs. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Florida, where he designed and applied StackPhos, a new chiral biaryl heterocyclic ligand for enantioselective catalysis. Dr. Cardoso obtained his B.S. at UNICAMP (Brazil), where he applied palladium catalyzed cross-coupling reactions for the synthesis of biologically active compounds.

Daniel W. Cook, PhD is an analytical chemist within the Medicines for All Institute where he utilizes his expertise in separation sciences and chemometrics to develop and implement analytical methods to support the Institute’s various projects. He holds a B.S in chemistry from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA and a Ph.D. in chemistry from VCU. Prior to his current role at M4ALL, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at VCU in the Chemical and Life Science Engineering department working on both the Pharmacy on Demand project under Dr. Thomas Roper and M4ALL under Dr. Frank Gupton. He transitioned into his current role in early 2019.

Vijayagopal Gopalsamuthiram, Ph.D., is an active member of the process development team working on the 3TC project. He is also is responsible for performing reproducibility studies in demo batches for DTG and in preparing comprehensive paper studies for forthcoming projects. Previously, Vijay was a team leader in process research at Syngenta and contributed in early stage process scouting and process optimization towards various agrochemical candidates. He brings extensive chemical discovery experience through his stint at DuPont and was a researcher working in targeted drug delivery at the University of Minnesota-Twin cities recently. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Michigan State University.

Brenden T. Herrera, Ph.D. serves as a Medicines for All Fellow and project manager at Virginia Commonwealth University. His role involves the management and support of chemical process development to reduce the manufacturing cost of critical medicines, and drive pharmaceutical manufacturing innovation. He obtained his B.S. in chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014. Brenden completed his doctoral work in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Eric V. Anslyn at The University of Texas at Austin, where the bulk of his work utilized concepts rooted in physical organic chemistry to develop optical methodologies for the rapid characterization of asymmetric transformations.

Ryan Nelson, Ph.D., is a research scientist who joined the M4ALL team in the summer of 2019. His contributions to the group range from on-paper route development to benchtop route scouting and scale up. Previously, Ryan was a faculty member at Bowdoin and Bates Colleges in Maine, where he taught a variety of chemistry courses and contributed to several collaborative research projects. Ryan received his bachelor’s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also held post-doctoral research positions at Argonne National Laboratory and University of California, Santa Barbara.