Officers

Ed Kuspiel
Chair, LRIG Mid Atlantic
Chapter Representative to Executive Board, LRIG Mid Atlantic

Bristol-Myers Squibb
Princeton, NJ

tel: (609) 252-4426
email: [email protected]

Edward Kuspiel received a B.A. and B.S. in Engineering from The College of New Jersey in 1981. Working as a Senior Engineer for Wallace and Tiernan, Ed designed electronics and control software used in new products for chemical process instrumentation. Since 1986, Ed has been with Bristol-Myers, Squibb where he is a Group Leader in Discovery Informatics and Automation. During his tenure at BMS, Ed has developed multiple novel robotics systems, laboratory instruments, and specialized controls used in pharmaceutical research.

Zhengming (Jimmy) Chen, Ph. D.
Treasurer, LRIG Mid Atlantic
Committee, Computational Methods

Dov Pharmaceutical, Inc.
150 Pierce Street
Somerset, NJ 08873-4185

tel: (732) 907-3684
fax: (732) 907-3792
email: [email protected]

Dr. Chen currently is the director of chemistry at Dov Pharmaceutical Inc.. Prior to joining Dov, he was a principal investigator at Purdue Pharma L.P., he has held key leadership positions in a number of discovery research programs at Purdue and has made key contributions to 2 development candidates which are in pre-clinical/clinical studies for pain. He is an inventor/co-inventor of 4 issued patents and 11 patent applications. In 2003, his research was highlighted by the rug Discovery Today?magazine. Dr. Chen earned his B.Sc at the Wuhan University and his Ph.D. from the University of New Orleans. He is an author or co-author of more than 50 papers, patents and abstracts.

David Pechter
Secretary, LRIG Mid Atlantic
Committee, Informatics
Schering Plough Research Institute
Kenilworth, NJ

tel: (908) 740-7281
fax: (908) 740-7115
email: [email protected]

Dave is a mechanical engineer in Schering-Plough's New Lead Discovery HTS group where he has been working on a range of mechanical and software projects from FLIPR support and Twister2 systems, to xml data formatting. He has been involved in lab automation since 1991, when he worked on the design and programming of a 15' gantry robot for HTS.

Prior to joining Schering's R&D Engineering group, Dave worked in the areas of pressure sensors, wirebonding, and fiber optics splicing. Dave received a BA in physics from Haverford College in 1977, and a MSME from UC Berkeley in 1980.

Kevin Olsen

Montclair State University
Montclair, NJ

email: [email protected]

Bill Neil William Neil

Webmaster, LRIG Mid Atlantic
Committee

Bristol-Myers Squibb
Princeton, NJ

tel: 609-252-5418
email: [email protected]

Bill received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and Biology from Trenton State College in 1981. For several years he worked with the Toxicology Division of Mobil Oil Corporation where he developed his interest in computer programming and laboratory automation. In 1987 he wrote his first application to automate data collection from a liquid scintillation counter and installed his first robotics system to automate a Packard biological oxidizer. He then took a two-year sabbatical to focus entirely on laboratory automation at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), where he automated fragrance sample compounding. It was at IFF where he learned how to ensure a 24/7 operation. William has been employed in the pharmaceutical industry since 1992, where he has written several applications in Visual Basic and VBA to automate the Drug Discovery process, particularly in the area of instrument integration.

Kapeel Krishana

Princeton University
Princeton, NJ

email: [email protected]

Andy Zaayenga
Executive Chair, LRIG Global
Chair Emeritus, LRIG Mid Atlantic
Committee, Automated Sample Storage & Retrieval

REMP Business Unit, Tecan US Inc.
1730 West Circle Drive
Martinsville, NJ 08836-2147

tel: (732) 302-1038
fax: (732) 875-0270
email:

Andy is the Director of the REMP Business Unit of Tecan US Inc., which develops and produces devices, consumables, software and fully automated sample processing and storage systems mainly used in Research and Development by the world's leading pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies.

From September 2004 - October 2006, he provided services to the laboratory automation community through his consulting company, SmarterLab.

Andy was Founder, Board Director, and Executive Vice President (September 2001 ?September 2004) at TekCel. TekCel provided automated compound management solutions to the drug discovery laboratory industry. He was previously Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of the Board at TekCel (September 1997 ? September 2001).

He was Senior Field Application Consultant at Zymark Corporation, Hopkinton, Massachusetts (1989 ?1997), and Field Technical Specialist at Sybron Medical Products, Rochester, New York (1981 ? 1989).

Andy is Executive Chair and Webmaster of the nonprofit Laboratory Robotics Interest Group. Since his involvement in April 1996 the group has grown from a regional membership of 200 to a global presence of over 9,000. He is a member of the Society for Biomolecular Screening, Mensa, International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He was a Board Director and is a member of the nonprofit Association for Laboratory Automation. He served on the Program Committee of the Microplate Technology and International Conference on Automation and Robotics (MipTec-ICAR). He was an Officer of the American Chemical Society Laboratory Automation National Division (LABA). Andy is an editor of the Dmoz Open Directory Project for the categories of Laboratory Automation and Robotics; Laboratory Refrigeration and Cold Storage; and Pipettors, Automatic and Manual. He has moderated scientific sessions at Miptec-ICAR, Laboratory Robotics Interest Group, and ScreenTech meetings. Andy holds three patents and has collaborated and assisted in several scientific papers.

In November 2002, we extended the LRIG Mid Atlantic Board by the addition of a steering committee. This committee works with the board to organize meetings, qualify presentations, set agendas for meetings, and guide the chapter in its direction. We will form sub-committees in meeting programming, finance, bylaws, event planning and other such activities. Sub-committees will also be formed in specific disciplines such as pharmaceutical dosage form, combinatorial chemistry, genomics, compound storage, and other areas the group identifies as meaningful to our membership.

In selecting the committee members, we considered prior involvement in the Mid Atlantic chapter, past meeting attendance, areas of expertise and their applicability to the group's needs, geography, willingness to share in the meeting and on-line discussions, as well as other factors. We also review the steering committee annually to insure active participation.

LRIG Mid Atlantic Steering Committee

	*Company*	Sub-Committees
John Babiak	PTC Therapeutics
Neil Bristol	Upstate
Yvonne Fitzgerald	Bristol-Myers Squibb
Neal Glicksman	Universal Imaging	Informatics
Bill Haller	VelQuest	Pharmaceutical Dosage Form
Scott Jennings	Bristol-Myers Squibb	Pharmaceutical Dosage Form
Tony Lozada	Sanofi-Aventis
Ronnie McDowell	R W Johnson PRD	Pharmaceutical Dosage Form
Ron Muenz	R W Johnson PRD	Pharmaceutical Dosage Form
Sharon Reed
Mel Reichman	Pharmacophore Discovery	ADMET, Computational Methods
Matt Smicker	Sanofi / Aventis
Irina Vertsman	Wyeth Research	Pharmaceutical Dosage Form

The LRIG Mid Atlantic Chapter Officers

LRIG Mid Atlantic Steering Committee