CNS Advisory Board
The CNS Advisory Board is an independent body of volunteers that promotes the educational and research activities of the College. Board members advocate for CNS priorities with internal and external stakeholders, including campus administration, the Chancellor's office, the Board of Trustees, the Governor's office, the Legislature, the business community, and the public. The Board provides leadership and expert council in three key areas: fund-raising, advocacy, and advice.
CNS Advisory Board Members
Noel Anderson '74, '77 MS, '80 PhD
Dr. Noel E. Anderson is co-founder of Mosaic Food Advisors which helps start-up companies in the food and beverage arena succeed in the marketplace. Previously, Noel spent 19 years in Research & Development at PepsiCo and 18 years at General Foods/Kraft. After receiving his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts in Food Science and Nutrition, Noel stayed actively engaged with the Food Science Department. Noel served on its Industrial Advisory Board for more than 20 years, with 16 years as its Chairperson. During this time the department raised over $12 million and its Graduate Program achieved the #1 ranking in the U.S. and #3 globally. He received the UMass Amherst Alumni Association's Distinguished Service Award in 2011. Noel is also very active in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). He recently served as the 2020-2021 Past President of the 13,000 member association and was elected as an IFT Fellow in 2010, the organization’s highest honor. Previously Noel served as a trustee and then chair of the Board of Trustees for Feeding Tomorrow, IFT’s foundation, which focuses on attracting and supporting students to the field of food science. Anderson is married, has three daughters and three grandchildren, and a wonderful rescue dog, Kenya. He is an avid golfer, enjoys going on African safaris, and great food. He divides his time between Stamford, CT and Westerly, RI.
Ivette A. Bassa '86 MS
Ivette A. Bassa '86 MS is retired from her food industry career in Research, Development and Quality, where she spent 32+ years of leading and influencing product innovation, packaging development, quality policies, commercialization activities, and building organizational capabilities.
She started her career as Associate Food Scientist at the General Foods Corporation and worked in the Desserts and Beverages Divisions as well as the Central Research Function reaching the level of Associate Director of RD&Q. As the corporation evolved to Kraft foods, Inc, she progressed through multiple levels of leadership including Director of RD&Q Strategy for Kraft Foods North America based in Chicago, Director of RD&Q Kraft Foods Canada, based in Toronto, and Vice President of RD&Q Latin America based in Coral Gables, Florida, where she built organizational capabilities including technology centers in Brazil and in Mexico. When Kraft Foods Inc split, she joined Mondelez International as Vice President RD&Q North America, where she built the organization and consolidated technology centers while leading the team to deliver significant innovation, margin and quality programs. Her last role, prior to retirement, was Vice President of RD&Q Global Packaging, where she led the global team to deliver sustainable innovations as well as developed capabilities to deliver more effectively and efficiently the business objectives.
In addition to the Dean’s Advisory Board at CNS, UMass Amherst, she is actively engaged in the Food Science Advisory Board at the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at UMass, Amherst and at the Institute of Food Technology, where she has chaired the Employment Committee, the Food Science Certification Committee, and has been a member of multiple Award Selection Committees. She has been recognized by the Hispanic Engineering National Achievement Awards Conference with a Professional Achievement Award and The 50 Women who Make a Difference by Hispanic Engineer and Information Technology Magazine.
Ivette received her Licentiate degree in Industrial Chemistry at UNPHU in her native Dominican Republic and her MS in Food Science at UMass Amherst. She is also a Certified Food Scientist, holds one patent and has two publications.
Elizabeth (Liz) Brackett, CHP, '80 BS
Elizabeth Brackett ’80, BS Physics is a Senior Health Physicist with the MJW Corporation, a consulting firm specializing in radiation protection. She is currently serving as a senior internal dosimetrist on the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA) dose reconstruction project, providing technical direction and support for internal dosimetry issues.
Liz has an M.S. in Radiological Sciences and Protection from UMass Lowell and is a Certified Health Physicist. She is very active in radiation protection organizations and has been named a Fellow of the Health Physics Society. She has chaired several professional society committees, including the American Board of Health Physics Part II Panel of Examiners, responsible for one step in the certification process. She has served in a number of leadership positions, including Director and Secretary of both the Health Physics Society and the American Academy of Health Physics, and is currently President of the Health Physics Society. She has also participated in the development of multiple technical documents, including several American National Standards and a National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements publication. She’s currently a member of the UMass Lowell Health Physics Advisory Board. She and her husband live in Vernon, Connecticut.
Varkki P. Chacko, '82 PhD
Managing Principal, Credit Capital Investments
Varkki Chacko is the managing principal of Credit Capital Investments, an investment management firm that focuses on opportunities across the capital structure. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India, and his doctorate in polymer science and engineering from UMass Amherst. While working in the chemical industry, Chacko received an MBA in finance from New York University and subsequently concentrated his career in investment banking and investment management. His work at Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs primarily focused on leveraged finance markets. He and his wife, Madhura, who earned a master's degree in computer science at UMass Amherst, reside in Short Hills, NJ.
Peg Crowley-Nowick, '86 BS
Peg Crowley-Nowick ’86 BS, Microbiology is the President, Medical Affairs Consulting and Head of Medical Affairs at Lumanity. She is a well-respected expert in the pharmaceutical industry, bringing nearly 30 years of experience in medical affairs and clinical research. In 2008, Peg founded Zipher Medical Affairs, LLC., a leading provider of medical affairs strategic consulting and MSL services. Since inception, Peg has served as President. She has successfully led late-stage biotech and pharmaceutical companies through multiple product launches across several therapeutic areas, such as oncology, cardiovascular, and diabetes. Peg's patient-centric view and drive for improved patient care and outcomes have propelled her to shape the organization based on not only scientific integrity but also continual collaboration with emerging medical stakeholders. Earlier in her career, Peg held appointments as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (‘97–‘02) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (‘93–‘97), establishing her scientific credibility in the research and medical communities. Following a career in academia, Peg joined industry and gained valuable experience providing scientific support for physicians as a medical science liaison and a liaison manager for Berlex Laboratories, a US branch of the former German pharmaceutical giant Schering AG. She subsequently joined Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals where she was Medical Director and later appointed Head of Global Oncology Publications and Communications. Peg was responsible for strategic communications planning, execution, and global roll-out for Nexavar® during the renal cell and hepatocellular carcinoma launches. Peg received a Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the field of immunology and an M.B.A. in 2000 from Simmons School of Management.
Gerald Downes, PhD
Gerald Downes is a Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He earned a PhD in Neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis and performed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, before joining the UMass Amherst faculty in 2005. His laboratory research has two related goals, both using developing zebrafish as a model system. One goal is to better understand how neural networks in the brain and spinal cord are assembled to control locomotion. More recently, due to a convergence of personal and professional reasons, he established a second goal, which is provide new insights into epilepsies and develop new therapeutics to treat these disorders. Across his career, Dr. Downes has won several awards for his research, including a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship at Washington University, a Merck/United Negro College Fund (UNCF) postdoctoral fellowship, and research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition to his research activities, Dr. Downes is very involved in teaching and science outreach. He won the 2018 Excellence in Diversity and Outreach Award from the College of Natural Sciences and was named as one of 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America by Cell Press. He serves on National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health grant review panels, editorial boards for two different scientific journals, and multiple Scientific Advisory Boards. He is also one of the two directors of the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Summer Program In Neuroscience, Excellence, and Success (SPINES), a program for minoritized graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from across the country.
Marcy P. Driscoll, '76 MS, '78 PhD
Marcy P. Driscoll ’76 MS, ’78 PhD is Dean Emerita of the College of Education at Florida State University, where she served in that role for 13 years until her retirement in 2018. As a professor, Driscoll was co-principal investigator on projects that established at FSU the Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (FCR-STEM) and FSU-Teach, a program for preparing science and math teachers with deep content knowledge combined with deep pedagogical knowledge. Her research included a focus on learning and instruction in technology-rich learning environments, and her award-winning book Psychology of Learning for Instruction, now in its 5th edition, is considered one of the top books in its field. She recently came out of retirement to assist in the college’s merger to become FSU’s College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.
Driscoll received an A.B. Magna Cum Laude in Psychology from Mount Holyoke College and an MS and PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She lives in Tallahassee, FL, where she and her husband are enthusiasts of flying radio control planes.
James B. Francis, '86 BS
Head, Cannabis Securities Research, CRB Monitor
James B. Francis '86 BS has been active in financial services and financial technology for more than 30 years. He has held senior portfolio management positions and research at several asset management firms, including Deutsche Bank, Northern Trust, and State Street Global Advisors. Francis has also been involved in the fintech space, overseeing strategic accounts for Axioma and currently as the Head of Cannabis Securities Research for CRB Monitor, a leading provider of regulatory and compliance data in the legal cannabis industry. He resides in Westport, Connecticut.
Isaac Han, '15 BS
Staff Scientist, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School
Isaac Han '15 BS is a Staff Scientist working at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School. Han has a range of experience in biomedical research, with a focus on viral vectors and gene therapy. During his time at the Wyss he has been involved in a commercialization project for novel gene therapy technologies, co-authored several patents related to viral vector engineering, and most recently worked throughout the pandemic developing a COVID-19 neutralization assay. Prior to jumping into biotech Han spent two years in the Republic of Korea Marine Corps, where he served as an infantry sniper and received an official commendation from the commanding general of the USMC 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force for distinguished service during Key Resolve 2015 before an honorable discharge at the rank of Sergeant.
Han has also been busy outside of the lab. As one of the first graduates of the iCons Program at UMass Amherst, he co-founded the iCons Alumni Network, a 501(c)3 non-profit, with a group of friends in 2015. As founding president, he was involved with building the iCons community beyond UMass. He helped coordinate on-campus events connecting alumni with students, as well as off-campus STEM outreach and community development events. Most recently he has co-founded another non-profit called Scientists Against Misinformation, a Boston-based science communication effort centered around combating COVID-19 misinformation.
James F. Holden, PhD
Jim Holden is a professor and department head of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has been a faculty member at UMass Amherst since 2003. His research focuses on high-temperature anaerobic microbes that grow in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Specifically, he is interested in microbial life in the Earth’s crust that lives without sunlight or oxygen, the search for life beyond Earth, numerical modeling of microbial metabolism, microbe-mineral interactions, biomarkers, and the application of thermophiles in bioremediation and bioenergy. He has participated in over two dozen oceanographic expeditions and personally made 11 dives to the bottom of the ocean in the deep-sea submarine Alvin and 74 dives using various remotely operated vehicles. He earned his degrees in Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle (BS ’89, MS ’92, PhD ’96) and was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Anita Karcz, '71 BS
Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Institute for Health Metrics
Anita Karcz '71 BS is an entrepreneur and physician. She is Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of the Institute for Health Metrics, a not-for-profit organization providing data services, including social determinants of health data, to community and rural hospitals across the country to help further health equity.
She spent several years as a practicing emergency physician and was active in hospital and professional society leadership roles. She has performed research and product development in the areas of clinical outcomes and decision support. She was Vice President of Clinical Product Development at InterQual Inc., a company that developed utilization criteria for hospitals and managed care. Dr. Karcz has been on the founding team of three medical device companies and has served as a management team member or business advisor at several other early biotechnology, medical device, and health care IT companies. She was previously Senior Vice President at ZurickDavis, a health care executive search firm.
She served as a member of the AHRQ advisory panel on severity adjustment research. She was also an invited participant for the President’s Council for Science and Technology Advisory meeting in 2013. She has served as chair and board member of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, an organization helping entrepreneurs build successful companies.
Dr. Karcz has an MD from the UMass Medical School and an MBA from Northeastern University.
Jeffrey L. Kopacz, '95 BS
Jeffrey Kopacz serves as Senior Vice President of Intellectual Property & Agreements at SalioGen Therapeutics, Inc, a gene therapy company located in Lexington, MA. He oversees corporate legal matters, intellectual property, and agreement work, including building and defending the IP estate for SalioGen’s Gene Coding™ technology and therapeutic candidates.
Previously, he was Vice President of Intellectual Property Omega Therapeutics, Inc. He was responsible for most legal matters and all intellectual property and agreement work related to the company’s Precision Epigenomic Control™ platform and played a key role in guiding Omega to an IPO.
During a decade at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Jeff was responsible for intellectual property matters related to Alnylam’s clinical and pre-clinical therapeutics, including securing and defending world-wide patent protection for numerous approved RNA interference therapeutics.
Earlier, he worked at Edwards, Angell Palmer & Dodge (now Locke Lord) and Millennium Pharmaceuticals.
Jeff holds a J.D. from the Suffolk University Law School, a master of science in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from Johns Hopkins University, and his undergraduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Dan Mayer, ’93 AS, ’95 BS
Dan Mayer ’93 AS, ’95 BS Forestry is the founder and owner of Mayer Tree Service in Essex, Massachusetts. After completing his education from UMass Amherst, Dan started his business in 1994, growing it from one to over 60 employees and creating a proven leader in the field of arboriculture. Mayer Tree is a full-service tree care company specializing in removing hazardous and challenging trees for municipal, state, and federal agencies and private utility companies. Dan also owns ProBark Biomass and Debris Management, and is a leader in sustainable wood recycling, composting of food waste, and mulch innovation, using advanced technology to ensure environmental stewardship. Moreover, Dan's extensive leadership experience is a testament to his ability to manage and lead. He served as the Chairman of the Alumni Board of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst, a member of the Trustees of Reservations Advisory Board since 2005, presently chairperson for Crane Estate Landscape Committee for the Trustees, a member of the Essex County Trail Association, and a past president of the Massachusetts Arborist Association (“MAA”). Dan is a past president and current Alpha Tau Gamma agricultural fraternity alumni board treasurer. He serves on the advisory board of North Shore Bank. A resident of Essex, Dan, his wife Jennifer, and two daughters enjoy spending time on the water cruising along the New England coast. Additionally, Dan enjoys participating in local car shows and rallies. Before founding Mayer Tree, Dan served in the United States Coast Guard.
Steven G. Richter, '77 BS
Steven G. Richter has been a director of our Board since 2011. Dr. Richter is the founder, former owner, operator and President of Micro Test Laboratories, Inc., a contract testing and manufacturing organization for the medical device, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. During his 30 years at the helm of Micro Test, Dr. Richter was involved with financial responsibilities and strategic initiatives. Micro Test was acquired and then merged with Cambrex, Inc. in 2014. Computer knowledge was obtained from various sources, including formal training and classroom activities. Human Resource experience developed over 30 years at Micro Test is important to the Company’s Compensation Committee. Dr. Richter’s regulatory experience began at the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) with Federal and State regulatory authority. His experience with filing FDA-related documents and compliance to FDA laws gives the Board additional compliance optics. Dr. Richter is a founding managing partner of RichCo Laboratories, LLC, a life science consulting and testing operation established in 2017. His experience with risk management programs is important to the Company’s Finance and Risk Management Committee. His ability to review a business plan and financial statements is essential for participation on the Company’s Executive Committee. Dr. Richter continues to give back to his alma maters, both Holyoke Community College and the University of Massachusetts. At Holyoke Community College, Dr. Richter is involved with the life science community and was instrumental in obtaining a $4 million grant for their lab build out. At the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Richter served on the board of the IALS institute from its inception. Currently, RichCo Laboratories, LLC supports student undergraduate research work that helps identify PFOS/PFAS toxicology issues in zebrafish models. Dr. Richter is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelor’s of Science in Microbiology and went on to receive his Master of Sciences degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and his Ph.D. in Sterilization Sciences from Columbia Pacific University. Dr. Richter’s experience in small business administration and management, including financial and business operations matters, provides him with the qualifications and skills to serve as a director.
Chuck Sherwood, '72 MS, '77 PhD
Founder, Sherwood Ventures
Charles H. Sherwood '72 MS, '77 PhD is the Founder of Sherwood Ventures, a consulting and investment-oriented LLC. Prior to the formation of that entity, Sherwood was President, Chief Executive Officer, and Board member at Anika Therapeutics, Inc., and was with the company for over 19 years where he and his team achieved a 100 X increase in company market value over that period. Previously, he served as the senior director of medical device research and development for IOLAB, a Johnson and Johnson company, and was a part-time faculty member in the department of chemistry at California State Polytechnic University. During his career Dr. Sherwood has delivered numerous invited scientific and business lectures and holds more than 20 US and international patents. Sherwood received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and a Certificate in Management from Claremont Graduate School. He lives in Sudbury, MA and Encinitas, CA with his wife, having one child and their family in both Boston and Los Angeles.
Michael Tarselli, '03 BA
Specialist Leader - Healthcare & Life Sciences Data + AI at Amazon Web Services
Mike served as Chief Scientific Officer for TetraScience and as the Scientific Director for SLAS. Tarselli has held scientific and managerial roles at multiple biopharma companies, including Novartis, Millennium, ARIAD, Biomedisyn, and PharmAgra.
Mike's scientific interests include AI futurism, sustainability, natural products, and synthetic biology.
Mike’s volunteer service promotes scientific education and equality. Roles include two terms as a UMass Amherst Alumni Association Director, two terms on the Pistoia Alliance Board, environmental service for the City of Framingham, a captain for the Cambridge Science Festival, an evaluator for National Science Foundation awards, a Wikipedia Fellow, and a judge at multiple science fairs.
Tarselli received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completed a postdoc at Scripps Research, and completed his Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business & Technology. He currently lives in Framingham with his lovely wife and spirited daughter.