Management Team

Ian Massey DPhil

Chief Executive Officer & President

Ian Massey has experience in all phases of drug discovery and development. Until recently, he was the Senior Vice President and Head of Research and Preclinical Development at Roche Palo Alto.

From 1995 to 2002, Ian held positions of increasing responsibility at Roche Bioscience including Senior Vice President, Head of Neurobiology Business Unit and Central Research & Development and Vice President and Director of Preclinical Research and Development.

Before joining Roche, Ian was at Syntex Research for over 15 years where he held a number of senior positions, culminating in the position of Vice President and Director, Institute of Analytical Research. He has a D. Phil. degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Oxford, England, an M.A. in Organic/Natural Product Chemistry and a B.A. in Chemistry.

Mark Moran MD, MBA

Chief Medical Officer

Mark Moran is Chief Medical Officer, and Director of Synosis Therapeutics.

He was a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine for two years until he joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1986. Mark served in a number of roles in research and development, including Senior Director of Clinical Research at Searle/Monsanto until 1991 and Chief Medical Officer at Glycomed until 1995.

He subsequently founded and served as the first Chief Scientific Officer of Intarcia Therapeutics, which is actively developing products to treat cancer and viral diseases. In 1997, Mark became an advisor to Versant Ventures, where he continues to serve as Clinical Director and serial entrepreneur. He co-founded Amira Pharmaceuticals in 2005, which focuses on discovering and developing new treatments for asthma and other inflammatory conditions, and served as the acting head of development during the start-up phase of activities.

Mark received his M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Northwestern University in Evanston, and a B.S. degree in mathematics

Hervé Girsault MBA

Chief Business Officer

Hervé Girsault has extensive experience in business development and licensing in the pharmaceutical industry. Until July 2005, he held a number of senior positions at Novartis, including Senior Vice President and Global Head of Partnering and Out-Licensing at Novartis Pharma in Basel, Global Head of Business Development & Licensing for Novartis Consumer Health and General Manager of Novartis Consumer Health in Benelux.

Before joining Novartis, Hervé  was the General Manager of Gerber Products Company in France from 1990 to 1995. He started his professional career with Coopers & Lybrand Management Consultants, culminating in the position of Director of the Food & HealthCare practices, based in Paris. He earned an MBA with Honors from Columbia Business School in New York and has a Masters degree from a leading business school in Paris.

Tom Woiwode PhD

Vice President, Business Development & Strategy

Tom brings to Synosis an investment background, having joined Synosis from one of the founding investors, Versant Ventures.  While at Versant, Tom wrote the business plan and negotiated the license agreements that led to the formation of Synosis.  In collaboration with Brad Bolzon, a Managing Director at Versant, Tom enabled the formation of two additional early stage start-up companies: Amira Pharmaceuticals, where he served as the acting Chief Business Officer, and Sentient Therapeutics, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors.

Prior to Versant, Tom worked as a medicinal chemist at XenoPort on methods to improve the gastrointestinal absorption of drug candidates.  In this role, he led the development of a new high-throughput screening technology to enable the identification of pathways capable of transporting large molecule therapeutics across the gastrointestinal barrier.

Tom graduated from UC Berkeley summa cum laude with highest honors for his BA in English and earned the Departmental Citation for his BSc in Chemistry.  Tom went on to earn his PhD in Organic Chemistry as an NSF Fellow at Stanford University.

David Greenwood PhD

European Director, Clinical Operations

David Greenwood is a neuropsychopharmacologist, who specialises in both the discovery and clinical development of drugs, targeting the central nervous system (CNS).

He is a Director and co-founder of Marix Drug Development, a UK-based drug development consultancy and clinical research organisation, where we served as Chief Operations Officer between 2001-2004.

From 1995 to 1999, David was Director, CNS Projects, at Shire Pharmaceuticals and, during the previous 25 years, held various senior positions in Zeneca and the former ICI Pharmaceuticals, including Clinical Pharmacology Studies Manager and  in-house Phase I Unit Operations Manager, CNS Clinical Projects Manager and CNS Preclinical Project Leader.

David is an elected Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society, the Institute of Biology, the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum (CINP) and the Royal Society of Medicine. He was awarded a BSc (Hons) and PhD degrees in pharmacology from the University of St Andrew’s, Scotland.

Jay Shukert MBA

Chief Financial Officer

Jay Shukert has over 10 years of experience as a consultant CFO to biotechnology and medical device companies. In this role, he has managed equity and debt financings, raising more than $235 million, developed strategic plans and implemented financial strategies, developed product evaluation methods which considered financial resources, potential markets and FDA guidelines and reviewed and monitored FAR, SBIR and GPRA reporting issues.

Previously, Jay held senior finance positions at CV Therapeutics, Neurex Corporation, Genentech and Arthur Andersen. He received his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in Civil Engineering from University of Pennsylvania.