Executive Chairwoman Archives

William Donaldson, PhD

Dr. Bill Donaldson is the chief executive officer at Estrigenix Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Donaldson has more than 35 years of experience in organic synthesis and chemical methodology development in an academic setting, retiring from Marquette University in May 2021 to lead Estrigenix full time. Previous experience includes serving as chair of the NIH National Research Service Award Study Section (2014-2017), as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Marquette University (2010-2014), and as chairperson of the Milwaukee Section of the American Chemical Society (2006-2009). He currently serves on the editorial board of the Mediterranean Journal of Chemistry and Scientia Pharmaceutica. Dr. Donaldson received his B.A. in Chemistry with honors from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College.

Patricia Scheller, Executive Chair

Patricia Scheller has over 30 years of executive experience in various healthcare industries. In addition to her role as Executive Chair of Estrigenix, she is the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors at Intellectual Holdings, LLC, along with a member of the Board of Directors at the non-profit Cardiovascular Institute of Philadelphia. Before this, she was the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of Viveve, Inc. In this role, Ms. Scheller took the company from a shelved VC-backed shell to a Nasdaq-listed (VIVE) company over three years and oversaw a $100M market capitalization with nine consecutive quarters of growth. Ms. Scheller has served as a senior advisor to the Swiss government on the exportation of medical products to the United States and was the co-founder of and served as CEO and Director at Prescient Medical. Ms. Scheller received her B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and completed executive business education programs at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University and Northwestern University. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, the first female recipient of the award in the school’s history.

Alan Parr, PharmD, PhD, Formulations Consultant

Dr. Alan Parr has worked in Pharmaceutical Sciences for over 33 years, with most time being spent in the big pharma sector, specifically Glaxo, GlaxoWellcome and GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Parr’s roles in big pharma include being a formulation scientist, formulation manager and Director of Biopharmaceutics, and responsibilities have ranged from the development of formulations from the early development phase all the way through to the scale-up of commercial size batches for the marketplace. Specific activities include physical property characterization, formulation screening, formulation development, manufacturing clinical supplies, transferring a product to production and managing projects. He was intimately involved with the creation, review and submission of regulatory documents to the US Food and Drug Administration, including Investigational New Drug (IND) applications, New Drug Applications (NDA), as well as foreign filings (Marketing Authorization Applications (MAA)). Since June 2015, Dr. Parr has served as a consultant to numerous small pharmaceutical companies and as a principal investor for 2 NIH grants where his primary responsibility was to file an IND for an NCE that was being developed. Dr. Parr earned his Pharm.D. degree from the University of Nebraska College of Pharmacy and his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy.

Karyn Frick, PhD

As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Karyn Frick brings over 25 years of experience in estrogen neurobiology and behavioral testing in mouse models of menopause and Alzheimer’s disease. She has published >110 papers and book chapters, and her research on estrogens and aging has been supported by grants from the NIH, Alzheimer’s Association, and American Federation for Aging Research. She edited the book Estrogens and Memory: Basic Research and Clinical Implications, published by Oxford University Press (2020). She is currently a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, an adjunct professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a member of the Medical-Science Committee of the Alzheimer’s Association of Southeastern Wisconsin. Dr. Frick received her B.A. in Psychology/Biology from Franklin & Marshall College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in Psychology. Prior to being recruited to UW-Milwaukee, Dr. Frick was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University.

Daniel Sem, PhD, MBA, JD

Dr. Sem is Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Professor of Business and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Concordia University Wisconsin, and President of CU Ventures. He serves on various Boards (BBB and Ozaukee County Economic Development Corp). Dr. Sem has over 25 years of experience in drug discovery and development, with over 70 peer-reviewed papers and 10 issued patents. Previously, he co-founded three diagnostic or drug development companies (Triad, AviMed and Retham) and one healthcare social venture (Bridge to Cures). He co-founded Triad based on technology he developed and patented, and he assisted in securing two rounds of venture financing, totaling over $40 million. Triad was voted one of the top 10 biotech startups in the U.S. in 2001 by Drug Discovery Today, and licensed kinase drug leads to Novartis for up to $60 million. Dr. Sem received his B.S. in Chemistry from UW-Milwaukee, his Ph.D. from UW-Madison in Biochemistry and his MBA and JD degrees from Marquette University.

Michael Wood, PhD

Dr. Michael Wood spent over 17 years at AstraZeneca Neuroscience where he led project teams, oversaw their early psychiatry portfolio, led in-licensing efforts for psychiatric, neurologic, and analgesic opportunities and directed many collaborations with academic and commercial partners. His research led to over a dozen clinical drug candidates and more than 30 publications. Since leaving AstraZeneca in 2016, he has served as a drug discovery consultant and/or advisory board member for Circuit Therapeutics, Neupharm LLC, Neurovation Labs Inc., and MapLight Therapeutics.

Pauline Maki, PhD

Dr. Pauline Maki is a professor of psychiatry, psychology and obstetrics & gynecology and the senior director of the Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois Chicago. For the past 25 years, she has led a program of NIH-funded research on women, cognition, mood and dementia with a particular focus on menopause. She has been published in nearly 160 articles on the effects of menopause and hormone therapies, vasomotor function (hot flashes), sleep, cognition and depression. She has served as president of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) and as an expert on panels to draft position statements on national and international guidelines for clinical practice with menopausal women. Dr. Maki is the recipient of the 2018 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association and the Thomas B. Clarkson Outstanding Clinical and Basic Science Research Award from the NAMS.

Piero Antuono, MD

Dr. Piero Antuono is a professor of neurology and biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital. He is an internationally recognized leader in neurological diseases of the elderly, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and he has established comprehensive dementia care centers at Froedtert and the Milwaukee VA. His clinical and research efforts focus on the early identification of dementia risk, and he has authored more than 100 publications and book chapters. He is a past chair of The World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Dementia and serves on the Wisconsin Alzheimer Association and Alzheimer Disease International advisory scientific committees.