Management Team

Dr. Stephan is an industry veteran having had a career in academia and in industry. Stephan served as Deputy Director for Discovery Research and chair of the neurogenomics division at TGen, and served as professor and chairman of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh/UPMC. He has had academic affiliations with Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University and Children's National Medical Center. Stephan has identified the molecular basis of dozens of rare and common diseases. Stephan has founded or co-founded 14 biotechnology companies to chaperone novel innovations to market with a focus on molecular diagnostics and first-in-class therapeutics. Stephan co-founded Navigenics, Inc. (a pioneer in direct-to consumer genomic testing), was founding Chairman of the Board of Pendulum, Inc. (microbiome modulating therapies), was an early advisor to Guardant Health, Inc. (liquid biopsy), is founding Chairman of the Board Peptilogics, Inc. (deep machine learning to develop peptide therapies), was part of the team that developed Genia Technology, Inc.'s single molecule electrical detection DNA sequencing platform acquired by Roche, and others. Stephan received his B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University, Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and did his fellowship at NHGRI/NIH.

Mr. Branning has more than 25 years of experience leading corporate finance and accounting, tax, financial planning and analysis, and investor relations for several publicly traded pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining NeuBase, Mr. Branning was CFO of Phathom Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. Before that, he was Senior Vice President, CFO of Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, where he helped to build, leverage, and optimize infrastructure following the completion of a transformational merger. Prior to joining Amneal, he was Senior Vice President, CFO of the global generic medicines division at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., a multinational generic pharmaceuticals company, where he led the finance function and served on the leadership team responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of Teva's largest multi-billion-dollar commercial unit. Mr. Branning has also held financial leadership roles at Allergan plc, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, PPG Industries, Inc., and Merck & Co., Inc. Mr. Branning received his BBA from the University of Miami and MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Branning is also a Certified Public Accountant and has completed a CFO certification program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

As Chief People Officer, Ms. McCarthy  is responsible for ensuring that our people, the foundation of the company, are given the framework and support within which to excel and be maximally effective. This includes building a thriving ecosystem of coaching and team development resources to create a healthy culture of authenticity, real-time unemotional team-based creative problem solving abilities, and effective communication skills. The result is an engaged and dynamic team fully aligned with our corporate objectives. The company believes caring for and investing in our people is critically necessary for ultra-peak performance and to ensure our team can outperform and maintain the growth trajectory of the business. Ms. McCarthy’s background is as a former corporate CEO, executive coach, strategic advisor, and leadership development consultant. She draws from her extensive studies in psychology, business strategies, systems thinking, and high-performance training to create a unique methodology which produces transformational results to enable leaders and teams to make vastly better decisions, faster. She has designed and facilitated programs on leadership, personal mastery, team learning, organizational effectiveness, and coaching for hundreds of executives and companies worldwide, including NASA, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Miraval, Wells Fargo, the Federal Reserve, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Levi’s, The Gap, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab, among others.

Prior to NeuBase, Mr. Scrivner was a consultant for more than five years, providing clients support for patent and litigation strategy. Previous to that, he was Senior Patent Counsel from 2007-2009 and then Vice President, Therapeutic Area Patents from 2009-2015 at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park. Prior to GSK, Mr. Scrivner held the following positions: Senior Director of Intellectual Property at Atherogenics; Patent Attorney at Bend Research; Associate General Counsel, Intellectual Property at Pharmacia Corporation (formerly Monsanto and Searle). Mr. Scrivner is registered to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).

Before joining NeuBase, Dr. Sarkar served as business development and corporate strategy consultant for biotech companies with platform technologies for novel therapeutics. Most recently, he was Senior Director at Assembly Biosciences, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company with therapeutic product candidates for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Prior to that, Dr. Sarkar held positions of increasing responsibility at Allergan, and then post-acquisition, at Teva. In addition to his business development experience, he has contributed to various stages of development and commercialization of seven marketed therapeutic products. Dr. Sarkar received his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in pharmaceutics and drug delivery at University of Georgia.