LEADERSHIP TEAM

Leroy Chiao, Chief Executive Officer

Thomas Kindt, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer

Franco Ferrari, Ph.D., Vice President of Development & Operations
Deirdre Morhet, MBA, Chief Financial Officer

Leroy Chiao, Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Chiao is a former NASA Astronaut and International Space Station (ISS) Commander, and has served in leadership and management positions in both commercial industry and government. Prior to joining NASA, he worked as a materials process research engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at Hexcel Corporation. Dr. Chiao studied Chemical Engineering, earning a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He continued his studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, earning his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in 1985 and 1987. Dr. Chiao previously served as Special Advisor to Diomics.

Thomas Kindt, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Kindt was most recently Director of Intramural Research, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD and Chief of Laboratory of Immunogenetics, NIAID, NIH and spent a year as Visiting Scientist, Analytical Immunochemistry Laboratory at the Institute Pasteur, Paris. Prior this he was with the Rockefeller University in New York and the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, CA. Dr. Kindt has served on Advisory Boards and Committees of the Institute Pasteur, Tunis, Tunisia; Hematech LLC, Massachusetts; Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Tokyo; REDI Center, Singapore; NIH Facilities Working Group and Blue Ribbon Panel on Bioterrorism and implications for biomedical research. He has authored and co-authored 225 publications, two books and three patents; currently he is an active biomedical consultant, immunology textbook author and adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Biology.

Franco Ferrari, Ph.D., Vice President of Development & Operations
Prior to joining Diomics, Dr. Ferrari was Protein Polymer Technologies’ Vice President for Laboratory Operations and Polymer Production since 1997, and as the Company's Senior Research Director-Genetic Engineering since 1988. Dr. Ferrari was the Research Director, Polymer Expression at Syntro Corporation from 1983 to 1988, where he was responsible for demonstrating technical feasibility of the protein polymer project under a grant awarded by the Office of Naval Research and he is a co-inventor of the protein polymer technology. From 1980 to 1983, Dr. Ferrari was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, where he worked on the development of novel plasmid DNA vectors for the introduction and expression of foreign genes in Bacillus. Prior to that, Dr. Ferrari was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pavia, Italy. He received his Ph.D., cum laude, from the Institute of Genetics at the University of Pavia, Italy.

Deirdre Morhet, MBA, Chief Financial Officer
Prior to Diomics, Deirdre Morhet founded BASC Expertise, a specialty accounting and business consulting company. BASC Expertise specializes in working with startup and small business owners with traditional accounting needs such as bookkeeping and payroll services. Additionally, BASC consults with small business owners regarding increasing revenue streams, cash flow analysis, and tax planning.
Prior to starting BASC, Deirdre spent 15 years as an Engineer working for companies such as Intel and Loral Space Systems. She holds a Masters Degree in Engineering from the University of Houston and an MBA from Arizona State University.