Leadership

Meet our leadership team

ISoP is a 501©3 non-profit organization led by a volunteer Board of Trustees and managed by a professional staff. Meet our leadership and staff below. 

Board of Trustees

Staff

Board of Trustees

back to top

Kevin Dykstra

President

Kevin Dykstra is Vice President, Clinical Pharmacology, Modeling and Simulation with Akebia Therapeutics. Before his current role, he spent over 20 years as a pharmacometric consultant. Most recently, he was VP of Consulting Services with Cognigen/Simulations Plus. He cofounded and led qPharmetra for over eight years as its CEO and President. Before that, he spent 10 years with Pharsight/Certara, starting as a Sr. Scientist and rising to Sr. Vice President of Strategic Consulting. He works with drug development teams to identify strategic questions in drug development and formulates quantitative modeling approaches to answer those questions. Particular interests include clinical utility, clinical trial simulation, and assessing probability of regulatory and market success in a variety of therapeutic areas. He received his PhD in Biochemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and completed post-doctoral training in Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health. His undergraduate training is in Chemical Engineering and German at the University of Colorado. He was elected to the ISoP Board of Trustees in 2020, serving as Treasurer 2022-2023, and continues as President Elect since January of 2024. He is a Fellow in Clinical Pharmacology with the American College of Clinical Pharmacology.

Wei Gao

President-Elect

Dr. Wei Gao is the Head of Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology at Moderna, where she leads clinical pharmacology and quantitative pharmacology strategies across multiple therapeutic areas to advance the mRNA platform and therapeutic pipeline.

Before joining Moderna, Dr. Gao was the Global Head of Pharmacometrics and Oncology Portfolio Section Head in Quantitative Pharmacology at EMD Serono. In this role, she was responsible for shaping pharmacometrics strategies across the portfolio and driving clinical pharmacology strategies in immuno-oncology and targeted therapeutics, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecifics.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Gao held key leadership roles, including serving as the Neuroscience Therapeutic Area Head and Pharmacometrics Group Director within the Department of Quantitative Pharmacology & Pharmacometrics at Merck Research Laboratories.

Dr. Gao’s dedication to advancing the field of quantitative clinical pharmacology is evident in her impactful contributions, both individually and collaboratively, as well as her leadership in scientific societies. She has published 33 peer-reviewed journal articles and presented over 80 conference abstracts. Notably, she served as the Chair for the ACoP 2024 conference and currently serves as a Board of Trustees member for the International Society of Pharmacometrics.

Dr. Gao earned her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she focused on disease progression modeling and mechanistic PK/PD modeling of Type 2 Diabetes under the mentorship of Dr. William Jusko.

Vijay Ivaturi

Immediate Past President

Vijay Ivaturi holds the positions of Co-Founder and CEO at Pumas-AI, Inc., as well as the Endowed Chair and Professor at the Centre for Pharmacometrics at Manipal University, India. Before assuming his current roles, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Center for Translational Medicine for a decade, subsequently transitioning to an Adjunct Faculty position.

With a steadfast commitment to the advancement of pharmacometrics, Vijay has been an active participant in the pharmacometrics community since the founding of the American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACoP) in 2008. He has undertaken various responsibilities within the International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP) since 2014 and played a pivotal role as the chair of the education committee for several years before being appointed to the ISoP Board in 2020. He will serve as the President of ISoP for a 2 year term starting January 2024.

Trained as a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacometrician, Vijay has been instrumental in leading Project Pumas from its inception, passionately developing it into a revolutionary modeling and simulation platform since 2017. His research primarily focuses on the creation of innovative tools and methodologies to enhance drug development and clinical therapeutics.

Vijay completed his doctoral studies in Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in Pharmacometrics at Uppsala University, Sweden. With over 15 years of experience in drug development, he has also contributed to key policy crafting projects as an ORISE research scholar at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Anna Kondic

Secretary

Dr. Anna Kondic currently serves as a VP of the Quantitative Pharmacology and Data Analytics at Bristol Myers Squibb, a group comprising of modelers along QSP, PBPK and PMx, as well as data and PK scientists. The group is serving as a quantitative backbone across the R&D continuum.  Anna has worked as a quantitative scientist in various therapeutic areas and companies over the last 22 years and has extensive experience in both mechanistic and empirical model across the whole spectrum of R&D, as well as reimbursement. She holds a PhD in mathematics from Duke University and MBA from Stern School of Business at New York University. Anna is particularly passionate about the use of quantitative methods to make personalized medicine a reality, especially for cancer patients.

Anna is a competitive master artistic swimmer, participating in both national and international meets. She is particularly proud of having been the captain for the Merck Rhode Island team for Swim Across America in 2018. The charity swim that year raised more than 700 000 for cancer research at the Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, RI.

Pavan Vaddady

Treasurer

Pavan Vaddady currently serves as an Executive Director, Quantitative Pharmacology & Pharmacometrics - Oncology at Merck & Co., Inc., where he leads a team of quantitative clinical pharmacologists advancing Merck’s oncology portfolio. During his career, he led several early and late-stage development programs across multiple therapeutic areas both as a clinical pharmacologist and a pharmacometrician and applied model informed approaches to impact key drug discovery and development decisions. Prior to his current role, he was the Head of Advanced Pharmacometrics, Quantitative Clinical Pharmacology at Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., where he led a global team of scientists working on advanced modeling projects involving multiple oncology assets. Pavan is passionate about teaching and mentoring colleagues and currently holds the position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He is also an elected Member of the Board of Trustees at the International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP).     

Lourdes Curcurull-Sanchez

Trustee

Dr. Lourdes Cucurull-Sanchez (She/Her) has 20+ years of experience in Pharma industry, 15+ in Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) and 8 in Machine Learning (ML). She has a passion for embedding innovative simulation methods into drug development decision-making, to optimise the delivery of new medicines for patients. She enjoys strategic challenges, working across boundaries with multidisciplinary teams, and communicating science.

As Platform Scientific Lead, she is responsible for developing and implementing the QSP strategy in Pharmetheus AB, tailored to its clients' portfolio needs. In her 13-year trajectory at GSK, she was Senior Fellow, Director in Clinical Pharmacology Modelling & Simulation, and Manager in Computational Biology, leading the implementation of QSP strategies across several therapeutic areas as part of the MIDD paradigm. Prior to this, she spent 8 years at Pfizer, initially as ML computational chemist and later as QSP modeler in the DMPK (Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics) department. Before that she held a Postdoctoral Research Associate position with Unilever at the University of Cambridge (QSAR and Machine Learning, 2004) for 3 years.

She was elected member of the ISoP Board of Trustees in 2024, and Vice-Chair of the ISoP QSP SIG in 2021, serving as Chair-Elect and as Chair in subsequent years. She is a founder and active board member of the UK QSP Network, and member of ASCPT.

Lourdes has a PhD in Chemistry (Quantum Chemistry, 2000) by the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, and an MPhil in Chemistry (X-ray Crystallography, 1995) by The University of Newcastle upon Tyne. She is a proud champion of the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) principles and a prolific scientific conference speaker and author (Google Scholar H-index = 19), with contributions to QSP best practices (UK QSP Network, PMID 30667172), QSP model assessment (IQ Consortium, PMID 35953664) and an industrial perspective on QSP (PMID 38443663).

Amparo de la Peña

Trustee

Amparo de la Peña is the VP of Pharmacometrics at Simulations Plus (SLP), Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics Business Unit. She earned her Bachelor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemist degrees from the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and a  Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Florida, under Dr. Hartmut Derendorf.

Over the following 21 years, she accrued experience in the pharmaceutical industry at Eli Lilly and Company, both as a PK/PD scientist and as an Asset Manager. Amparo also has more than 10 years of consulting experience, starting at Chorus (Lilly) and now at SLP. Through those years, she led cross-functional teams in diverse therapeutic areas (e.g. diabetes, neuroscience, oncology, rare diseases, and COVID-19) to design, optimize, and implement integrated development plans. As a scientist, she has guided strategic pharmacometrics approaches to support global drug development from the early stages to regulatory approval and post-marketing.

During her career, she has been a member of scientific organizations such as ISOP, ACCP, ASCPT, and AAPS, and has volunteered for them as an abstract reviewer (AAPS), coordinating student awards (AAPS), by volunteering in committees, providing ideas for highlighting members and developing presentations to educate about the organization (ACCP), by submitting abstracts (PAGE) and organizing workshop proposals, teaching a workshop (ACoP) or chairing a symposium (ACoP, AAPS), and by reviewing manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals. She has also held memberships and given scientific presentations for therapeutic area organizations (e.g. ADA, EASD, ICAAC, ECCMID, and ISSX). 

She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals in several languages, and presented at scientific conferences worldwide. One of her passions is to mentor and develop diverse people, and to foster inclusion. Besides work, her time is shared between my family and her involvement in scientific and community organizations as a volunteer, peer reviewer, or Board member.

 

Jeff Sachs

Trustee

Jeff (Jeffrey R.) Sachs, PhD is a Distinguished Scientist (Executive Director) in the Quantitative Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics Department (“QP2”) in Merck Research Laboratories, where he is responsible for modeling and simulation supporting vaccine program decisions from early discovery through late-stage clinical development.  His publication areas include methods for and applications of pharmacometrics, biotechnology, signal processing, and AI/ML.

Dr. Sachs received his Sc.B. and Sc.M in Applied Math from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Math at MIT where he worked with Alan Grodzinsky on the electromechanochemistry of articular cartilage, supporting design of a minimally-invasive arthroscopic diagnostic device. After postdoctoral appointments in Applied Physics (Tokyo Univ.), Biomedical Engineering (Northwestern Univ.), and Biotechnology (N.I.S.T.), he developed two successful biotechnology consulting businesses. He came to Merck in 1999 and initially worked on developing gene expression analysis, data mining, and SAR integration platforms.  He was lead inventor of Merck's proteomics and metabolomics technology platforms. He was then in charge of the therapeutic area-aligned modeling and simulation group, and led the design, implementation, and global deployment of a web-based tool providing a user-friendly, non-technical, modeling interface for internal and external decision makers. That tool, used in many therapeutic areas, helped gain recommendations for products in >40 countries. He was the department’s first lead for infectious diseases, oncology, and digital health/adherence strategy. He is QP2 Therapeutic Area Lead for vaccines.  He is on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP), active in editorial boards and committees for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and is a mentor for the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and for the ISoP.

Mark Lovern

Trustee

Dr. Mark Lovern is Executive Director of Medical Science Services at Fortrea, and has 25+ years of experience in the application of model-informed drug development (MIDD).  Throughout his career, Mark has led and contributed to numerous projects involving quantitative pharmacology. Prior to his present position, Mark spent over 10 years at Certara in a variety of capacities. His work history has been split between biopharmaceutical companies (GSK and UCB) and companies that support the biopharmaceutical industry (Quintiles and Certara).  In addition to modeling pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data across a wide variety of compounds and therapeutic areas, Mark has also taught over 50 technical training workshops on modeling tools and methodology.  His most recent therapeutic area experience has been with therapies for infectious disease, metabolic, and autoimmune disorders.

Saroja Ramanujan

Trustee

Saroja is a cross-disciplinary leader in quantitative medicine, mechanistic and systems modeling.  After completing her BSE and PhD degrees in chemical engineering at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin respectively, she studied tumor biology as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical school.  She has since spent 25 years in biotech and pharma companies supporting drug and diagnostic development, including 11 years initiating and leading the translational and systems modeling group at Genentech.  She currently serves as a matrixed leader in the In Silico Discovery organization at JnJ Innovative Medicines, driving translational strategy and integration of AI.  She has published extensively in the field and is a Fellow of the International Society of Pharmacometrics as well as a recipient of the ISoP Innovation Award for contributions to Quantitative Systems Pharmacology.

Nieves Velez de Mendizabal

Trustee

Dr. Nieves Velez de Mendizabal is Head of Pharmacometrics in Eli Lilly's Global PK/PD and Pharmacometrics Department, where she leads efforts to advance model-informed drug development (MIDD) across therapeutic areas. With over 15 years of experience spanning autoimmunity, inflammation, virology, oncology/immuno-oncology, and neuroscience, she brings expertise in population PK/PD modeling, quantitative systems pharmacology, and regulatory support.


Her career bridges academia and industry. She began at the University of Basque Country and University of Navarra in Spain, including a fellowship at Harvard Medical School's Center for Biomedical Informatics, before joining Indiana University as Assistant Research Professor in Clinical Pharmacology. Her academic work contributed to mathematical modeling of complex biological systems with publications on network theory and immune dynamics.


In industry, she has supported numerous regulatory submissions and strategic decisions through population pharmacometric approaches. Following her first tenure at Eli Lilly (2014-2020) and roles at Metrum Research Group and Gilead Sciences, she returned to Lilly in 2024 in her current leadership role. She has authored over 30 peer-reviewed.


Dr. Velez de Mendizabal envisions pharmacometrics evolving from a technical service to a strategic scientific partnership driving innovation throughout drug development. She believes the field's future lies in leveraging AI/ML to accelerate our field,  improving impact/visibility, efficiency, and productivity. 


As a leader, she is committed to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and mentoring the next generation of pharmacometricians. 


Dr. Velez de Mendizabal holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and has been an active ISoP member since 2011.

Staff

back to top

Jennifer Monroy, CAE

Executive Director

Jennifer Pastore Monroy, CAE joined ISoP in 2023 with 15+ years of non-profit experience. Jenn is a lover of education and is dedicated to continuing professional development. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Spanish Language from American University and a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University. In 2019, she earned the Certified Association Executive designation demonstrating her commitment to continuing professional development and excellence. Today, she continues to explore learning in areas of organizational leadership, data science, and futures studies.

Jennifer Redmond

Director of Operations

Jennifer Redmond joined the ISoP staff in January 2024. She has worked in the association industry since January 2017. Prior to joining ISoP, Jenn worked for an association management company as an executive director for a nursing association and a certification organization. She was responsible for board management, strategy, certification management, and operations. Jenn graduated from Penn West Edinboro University with a B.A. in Speech Communications with a focus in Public Relations.

Damien Salamacha

Associate

Damien Salamacha is the Technology & Marketing Associate for ISoP. Damien is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional through the Digital Marketing Institute and holds an AMA Professional Certified Marketer PCM in Digital Marketing certificate through the American Marketing Association.

Barbara Mock

Meeting Planner

Barbara Mock is the President and Founder of BJM Events, the company which oversees the planning and execution of the American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACoP). With over 25 years of experience, she has proven expertise in event planning by providing insights on meeting logistics and creative services for companies in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and consumer industries. During her career, Barbara has worked with marquee brands including: Kohler, Novartis Consumer Health, International Society of Pharmacometrics, inVentiv Health, Monster.com, Novo Nordisk, Biovail, Johnson Controls, Revlon, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Linotype, Molnlycke Health Care, Merck, and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Jill Senior, CMP

Senior Conference Coordinator

Jill Senior is a Certified Meeting Professional with over 20 years of experience in event planning across the hospitality and association sectors. She has led successful conferences for a variety of organizations, with a focus on strategic planning, stakeholder collaboration, and enhancing the attendee experience. Before joining ISoP, she served as Director of Meetings & Events at the Pennsylvania Homecare Association. Jill brings a strong commitment to excellence, creativity, and seamless event execution to her role with ISoP.

Professional Management Associates, Inc. 

ISoP is managed by Professional Management Associates, LLC, a full-service, AMC Institute accredited, association management company providing services to state, national and worldwide professional societies, membership organizations, trade associations, foundations and business networks. As an accredited association management company, we exceed the requirements by the Institute which include a strong commitment to quality, as well as professionalism and best practices through evaluating and improving internal operating procedures and service delivery methods to our clients.