AKRON, Ohio — The founder and former executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center of Biomedical Innovation has joined the BioInnovation Institute in Akron as its first president and chief executive officer.
Dr. Frank L. Douglas has 24 years of experience in health care, pharmaceutical research and biotechnology. Douglas will serve as day-to-day chief strategist for the BioInnovation Institute, executing against its mission and vision, and supporting business development efforts, beginning Sept. 1.
“We are thrilled to have someone with Dr. Douglas’ experience and expertise join our organization,” said William H. Considine, chairman of the BioInnovation Institute, and president and CEO of Akron Children’s Hospital, in a written statement. “The breadth and depth of his knowledge will enable him to quickly evaluate and understand the needs of the BioInnovation Institute, and I am certain he will prove invaluable to its growth.”
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Five Akron-area institutions and a national foundation launched the research institute in October to pioneer next-generation medical innovations that could transform their city’s economic future.
The founders — Akron Children’s Hospital, Akron General Health System, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), Summa Health System and the University of Akron – put aside their competitive spirits to together collect $80 million in state, academic and philanthropic grant commitments (including their own) for the institute’s first five years. As of June, the institute also was being considered for a $2 million federal earmark to enhance its orthopedic research and development program.
The founders’ long-term goal is to build the institute into a full-fledged academic health center, the likes of one at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, to which Worcester Polytechnic Institute contributes its engineering know-how. The medical school alone attracts more than $176 million in research funding each year.
Its initial efforts are centered on developing a highly focused bioinnovation institute. One of its first tasks will be to find leaders for four of the five centers that make up the institute, Dr. Douglas said during a telephone interview from Zurich, Switzerland. The five centers are the Center for Biomaterials and Medicine, Medical Device Development Center, Center for Clinical Trials, Center for Health Care Training and Community Outreach to the Medically Underserved.
Holly Gerzina, who is executive director of the Wasson Center for Clinical Skills at NEOUCOM, has agreed to lead the health care training center, said Aram Nerpouni, the BioEnterprise vice president who has led the institute on an interim basis. The institute is trying to attract big-name researchers — and their multimillion-dollar research grants — to its centers. The plan is to draw researchers who could unify and build on biomaterial and orthopedic technology research already present in and around the city. Eventually, the researchers could bring national industry and global research institutions to Akron.
Douglas most recently served in three concurrent roles: Senior fellow at the Ewing M. Kauffman Foundation, senior partner at Puretech Ventures, and chief scientific adviser at Bayer Healthcare. He has received more than a dozen industry awards, including the Global Pharmaceutical Chief Scientific Officer of the Year Award, the Wolfgang von Goethe Medal of Honor, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.
A cum laude graduate of Lehigh University, Douglas attended Cornell University where he earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1972 and his M.D. in 1977. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution and a fellowship in neuroendocrinology at the National Institutes of Health.
