Management

Gregory G. Mario, M.B.A – President and CEO

Mr. Mario joins TAXIS with more than 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry as a sales, marketing, business development, and licensing and acquisition professional. Prior to his role at TAXIS, he served as the Senior VP of Business Development with Talk America, a local-long distance telecommunications provider, and remains Partner at MFP, LP, a private equity investment entity focused on the life sciences sector. Mr. Mario co-founded the Brownstone Advisory Group, a real estate investment fund, and is a Director at Evogen, Inc., a development stage laboratory diagnostics company focused on central nervous system disease management.

Mr. Mario received a B.S. in Biochemistry from Trinity College. He earned an M.B.A. in Finance and Marketing at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University as a Fuqua Scholar.

Ajit K. Parhi, Ph.D. – Senior Director, Discovery Chemistry

Dr. Parhi joined TAXIS with 10 years of expertise, both academic and industry, in the synthetic field, which includes natural product synthesis, asymmetric synthesis and synthesis of vast numbers of drug candidates for various diseases. He has authored and co-authored 38 peer-reviewed publications and features as a co-inventor in 15 patent applications. As a key member of TAXIS, Dr. Parhi ‘s focus is on design and implementation of the synthetic schemes with assistance of the Chemistry team, managing the scale-up and supply of lead candidates to the bioassay team and coordinating efforts to maximize efficiencies and maintain accountability to the project. Prior to joining TAXIS, Dr. Parhi served as a Research associate for department of Medicinal Chemistry, Rutgers University and a post-doctoral fellow at department of Pharmacology and Radiology at University of Pennsylvania.

He received his M.S. in Organic Chemistry and his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from City University of New York.

Chris M. Cimarusti, Ph.D

Dr. Cimarusti has broad experience in pharmaceutical discovery, development and manufacturing. He served as Vice President of Process R&D at the Pharmaceutical Research Institute and as SVP of Pharmaceutical Development. Dr. Cimarusti held executive leadership
positions at Squibb Corporation and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in discovery and development, where he co-led the antibiotic effort and served as Director of Organic Chemistry for the Squibb Institute for Medical Research. He published more than 40 papers, and was inventor or co- inventor on more than 60 patents in the areas of cardiovascular, steroid, and b-lactam research, including both compound and process patents.

Dr. Cimarusti earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Purdue University and completed Postdoctoral Research at Columbia University.