Pharma Conference Featured Speakers
“North Carolina has seen a substantial amount of growth in the life sciences sector in 2024. MarkPhillips, Vice President, Statewide Operations for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center will provide an overview regarding the growth, as well as the various workforce development initiatives across the state.”
Mark A. Phillips
Vice President, Statewide Operations Executive Director, Eastern Region
North Carolina Biotechnology Center
Mark has been employed with the NC Biotechnology Center since September 2009, and in his current role, as VP of Statewide Operations, he is responsible for the oversight and coordination of five regional statewide offices and their activities. He also performs the duties as the Executive Director in the Eastern Region in Greenville and is responsible for positioning biotechnology in the entire Eastern Region (27 counties) of North Carolina, with short and long-term economic development goals through projects and strategies stimulating the development of biotechnology, with a vision to make North Carolina a global life science leader.
The Accelerated Stability Assessment Program (ASAP) is now widely used by the pharmaceutical industry to quickly and accurately determine drug product shelf life for small molecules and biologics. A range of scientifically and statistically designed exposure conditions are used to force a product to fail (hit its stability specification limits). These failure times at a range of conditions are combined with a modified Arrhenius equation and statistical propagations to determine shelf life at the storage conditions.
Dr. Kenneth C. Waterman
President and Chairman of the Board, FreeThink Technologies
After receiving his B.S. (UCLA) and Ph.D. (UC Berkeley) in physical-organic chemistry, Ken completed post-doctoral studies (Columbia University) before spending 12 years at Polaroid (as a distinguished scientist), then 13 years at Pfizer (as a Research Fellow), and has successfully invented and commercialized many imaging and pharmaceutical products. He is an AAPS Fellow, the author of over 75 publications and patents, and a speaker at numerous international conferences. He helped found FreeThink Technologies in 2011 and serves as a technical expert and provides overall company leadership.