Board of Directors
Rick Stevens
Director

Rick Stevens is Associate Director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne’s National Laboratory. He is currently leader of Argonne’s Petascale Computing Initiative, Professor of Computer Science and Senior Fellow of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago, and Professor at the University’s Physical Sciences Collegiate Division.
From 2000-2004, Rick Stevens served as Director of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid Project and from 1997-2001 as Chief Architect for the National Computational Science Alliance
With nearly 200 publications and several broadly used bioinformatics systems, Rick Stevens is one of the world renown thought leaders in bioinformatics and supercomputing.
Michael Yomtov
Director

Michael Yomtov is an Investment Banker at Palladium Capital Advisors and an advisor to Eagle Advisers. Previously, Mr. Yomtov worked for MH Meyerson, a New York based investment banking firm from 1996 to 2002. In that capacity he managed assets for high net worth individuals, including pension assets and participated in a number of IPO deals, helping raise working capital for start-up companies. From 1994 to 1996 Mr. Yomtov worked for Smith Barney, where he managed retail accounts for high net worth individuals, helped clients structure portfolios and performed both fundamental and technical research. Mr. Yomtov has helped numerous companies in the Biotech and Telecom industries including Conkwest (now Nantkwest) and Siga Pharmaceuticals to raise capital.
Michael Fonstein, PhD
President & CEO

Dr. Fonstein has founded and served as CEO of several successful biotech companies including Integrated Genomics (currently Igenbio), Cleveland Biolabs (NASDAQ: CBLI), and Panacela Labs.
Through his management, the companies grew from concepts to established ventures, secured multiple rounds of financing (totaling about $200M), went public (CBLI), garnered contracts with Fortune 100 companies worth tens of millions of dollars, and procured major governmental grants and contract funding.
He is intimately familiar with drug development with experience in all of its stages, from proof-of-concept to Phase III clinical development.
During his years in academia, Dr. Fonstein founded a genomic center at the University of Chicago and became a recognized expert in this area. He published numerous papers in top peer-reviewed journals and in the early 2000s supervised sequencing and analysis of nearly 40 bacterial and fungal genomes.
Ekaterina Nikolaevskaya
Chief Operating Officer

Prior to joining Accelerated Pharma, Ms. Nikolaevskaya served as executive and operational director at Panacela Labs, where 5 innovative research projects were developed from hit to lead and the top asset has now Phase I. She has over 15 years’ experience in drug research and development. Through her executive roles at ClinStar , she oversaw clinical development of multicenter clinical Phases II - IV studies for different Bristol-Myers Squibb drug candidates. Her work contributed to several regulatory approvals including Glucophage, Avapro, Plavix, Abilify, Yervoy, and Baraclude. She was also the co-founder of Prudentas and FNP Clinical, CROs specialized in early clinical development, and served there as its Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining the industry she spent a decade in genetic research.
Dmitry Prudnikov, MD
Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Prudnikov has over 20 years of experience in drug research and development. He held top management positions at Janssen Pharmaceuticals and executive positions several clinical research organizations (CROs) where he led dozens of clinical trials for top drug candidates. His leadership included trials leading to the approval of Topiramate, Cladribine, and Raptiva, among others. Besides his leadership within the CRO field, Dr. Prudnikov held top management roles in two early- stage biotech companies guiding clinical research from hit-to lead and on to Phase II trials.