Leaders in innovation

Jinju Kim, MD, PhD, is a Medical Director of Oncology for Fortrea, based in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Kim has over 10 years of clinical development/clinical research experience in pharmaceutical industry and academia including a broad range of clinical drug development activities and cross functional collaboration. 

Dr. Kim earned her medical degree from Hanyang University and majored in Internal Medicine at Hanyang University Graduate School, Korea. In addition, she completed her internal medicine residency and fellowship training at Hanyang University Hospital and then worked as clinical physician and research professor. She has worked for various clinical and project-facing roles as a medical lead at both global pharmaceutical and innovative biotech companies since 2015. She joined our company in 2022.

Michiel has more than 21 years of drug development and clinical research experience in both pharma and CROs. He joined Fortrea (then Covance) in 2011 as a lead CRA on global trials and moved into project management and delivery leadership positions. He serves as an accountable executive responsible for Fortrea’s liver portfolio (MASH, PSC, PBC), as well as several other metabolic and cardiovascular indications. Michiel has provided oversight across a portfolio of five T2DM studies from start-up through regulatory filing and marketing approval.

Dr. Korchak has more than 23 years of drug development industry experience across broad indication of neuroscience, supporting studies for small molecules, biologics and cell and gene therapies. Her expertise extends from early phase development through late phase/post-marketing studies in capacity of investigator, operational leader and head of clinical development of autologous cell therapy at a biotech company. As an investigator, Dr. Korchak held various COA certifications, e.g., EDSS, ADAS-cog, MMSE and CDR. Her expertise encompasses neurodegenerative, acute and rare neurology and various psychiatry diseases.

Marcin Koziej, MD, is a medical director of oncology for Fortrea based in Warsaw, Poland. Dr. Koziej has more than 33 years of experience in medical onco-pulmonary research centers, CROs and the pharmaceutical environment. His roles have included physician and investigator, clinical operations professional and project management leader of pan-European and global teams, medical monitor and advisor, clinical strategist, business advisor and mentor. 

Dr. Koziej earned his medical degree from the Warsaw Medical School, Warsaw, Poland and completed his internal medicine fellowship at the National Research Institute for Tb and Lung Disease in Warsaw, Poland. In 2016 he joined Chiltern, which then became part of Labcorp in 2020 and is now Fortrea.

Carlo Lanza, MD, PhD, is Executive Medical Officer for Fortrea, based in Lugano, Switzerland. Dr. Lanza performs medical monitoring and safety assessments on Phase I-IV clinical trials for Fortrea clients. He leads early phase and translational research early development programs with targeted therapies, small molecules, biologics and gene therapy. Dr. Lanza also oversees development of late-stage development strategies, delivery and approval of registrational programs. He brings more than 20 years of experience in clinical research and development as a physician and medical director, specializing in pediatrics and oncology. 

Before joining Fortrea, he served as Medical Director for Medicines for Malaria Venture in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Lanza has also held leadership positions with Novartis Oncology, Pfizer Global R&D, and AstraZeneca UK. Carlo joined our company in 2012.

Chunyan Li, MD, is an associate medical director of oncology for Fortrea, based in China, Shanghai. Dr. Li has solid background and experience in Oncology, she is a board certified oncologist and has 7 years of clinical experience in Shanghai's top hospitals and has served as medical monitor in CROs since 2018 for studies that include solid tumors (non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumor, colon cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma) as well as lymphomas (classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). 

Dr. Li received her bachelor degree of clinical medicine from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and master degree in oncology from Tongji University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. She completed the standardized training for residents and standardized training for oncology specialist in Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center and Shanghai 10th People’s Hospital. She joined our company in May 2021.

Xiaoling Li, MD, is the senior medical manager, oncology for Fortrea, based in Wuhan, China. Xiaoling has more than 15 years of experiences in industry, including hospital, pharmaceutical companies and CRO, focused on providing drug development expertise to the medical strategy and execution of the programs, performing medical and safety monitoring on the projects. Xiaoling earned her master degree of Hematology from Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science & Technology in 2008. She joined our company in Jan 2021.

Dr. Naidan Luo M.D Ph.D is based in Beijing, China with 25 years as a trained ophthalmologist and 21 years of clinical trial research experience in Phase I, II, III, IV in a wide variety of therapeutic areas, focusing on medical monitoring in ophthalmology indications including Glaucoma, ocular hypertension, wet/dry AMD, Dry eye disease, Conjunctivitis, Blepharitis, refractive error, Corneal Transplantation, NAION, LHON gene therapy, Stargardt disease, ataxia, Parkinson Disease, AD,woman health, COPD etc. 

Education 

Ph. D in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The Ohio State University, OH, USA, 1999-2002 

7-years Elite Program in Clinical Medicine, Trained Ophthalmologist, Shandong Medical University, Jinan, China. 1990-1997 

Key Publications: 

• Luo，Naidan as 1st Author, PNAS 2005 Jan 18；102（3）：541-6.
• Luo，Naidan as 2nd Author, Appl Environ Microbiol. 2003 Sep;69(9):5372-9.
• Luo，Naidan as 1st Author, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 2003 Jan; 47(1):390-4.
• Luo，Naidan as 1st Author, Plasmid 45, 127-13
   

Julie Maher is a Senior Director of Fortrea’s Rare Diseases, Advanced Therapies and Pediatrics Team (RAPT). She has more than 27 years of clinical research experience, which includes 26 years of industry experience at Labcorp (now Fortrea). She has extensive project management expertise in late phase oncology as well as operational, strategy and planning expertise across complex Phase I-IV oncology, rare disease and pediatric trials. 

Julie started her career in pediatrics at Sheffield Children's Hospital as a respiratory laboratory technician, where her duties included the study coordinator role for all pediatric asthma trials before she joined the industry side as a CRA for pediatric asthma trials. Her treatment experience includes immunotherapy, cell and gene therapy, vaccines and radiopharmaceuticals.

Dr. Martinez-Torres has more than 25 years of professional experience and significant medical and pharmaceutical expertise in both academia and industry spanning basic, translational and clinical research in neuroscience, immunology and HIV. His pharmaceutical development expertise encompasses clinical programs spanning Phases I through IV, across diverse therapeutic platforms (e.g., small molecules, biologics, gene therapies) across numerous neurology areas, including rare disease with strong focus on acute brain injuries, neuro-infection and neuro-vascular diseases.

Patrick McLeroth, MD, is the Vice President and Global Therapeutic Area Head for Infectious Diseases and Critical Care and is based in Pennsylvania, U.S. Dr. McLeroth has more than 23 years of clinical trial experience including as a principal investigator and roles of increasing responsibility at Fortrea focused on planning and execution of infectious disease and critical care clinical development from first-in-human (FIH) to registration and post marketing trials. Dr. McLeroth has provided significant contribution to several approved antibiotics and has co-authored more than 20 papers in infectious disease. Since 2008, he has worked as the lead medical monitor on multiple protocols covering all aspects of infectious disease, including HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, bacterial infections, fungal infections, tuberculosis and vaccines. 

Prior to joining Fortrea, he worked at Chase Brexton Health Services, Inc. in Baltimore, MD, as Director of HIV Medicine and Research, and was Principal Investigator on more than 30 protocols between 2002 and 2008. Dr. McLeroth completed his MBBCh degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and his internship at the Baragwanath-Chris Hani Memorial Hospital in Johannesburg. Dr. McLeroth completed his fellowship in infectious disease and his residency in internal medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, one of Columbia University’s hospitals. Dr. McLeroth has been with Fortrea, formerly Labcorp, since July 2008.

Rosemary Molinari, Executive Director, provides overall leadership to all functions, cohesively addressing risk management and strategic planning to support core teams throughout the study. Rosemary has 25 years of Fortrea experience with expertise in managing Phase I through IV studies from protocol development through to submissions to regulatory authorities. She has experience in both global and North American studies in the areas of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, CV and cardiovascular outcome studies.

Dobrica Neric, MD, is a Medical Director for Oncology, based in Belgrade, Serbia. Dr. Neric is a specialist of Internal Medicine and sub-specialist of Medical Oncology and has more than 20 years of clinical experience as a physician. He has worked in several medical departments in primary, secondary and tertiary medical care institutions, including the General Hospital of Uzice to Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia in Belgrade. His main focus are several areas within Medical Oncology with strong clinical background in all Internal Medicine departments (especially Cardiology). 

Dr. Neric graduated and completed further education of Internal Medicine specialization and Medical Oncology sub-specialization, on Medicine Faculty of University of Belgrade, Serbia. 

Dr. Neric started his CRO career as a Medical Officer and Medical Monitor and he has joined our company in February 2023. Currently, he is involved in Fortrea clinical trials as a Project Physician, for the Phases I, II and III of clinical trials and also cooperates with other Fortrea departments on different projects.

Paulo Nunes, MD, is an Oncology Medical Director based in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Dr. Nunes is a medical oncologist and epidemiologist with more than 10 years of experience in oncology clinical and epidemiological research both as an investigator and medical monitor and has worked both in the academic setting as well as in cooperative oncology groups. His main areas of scientific interest are early-phase clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and gynecological cancers. 

Dr. Nunes earned his medical degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande and completed his internal medicine residency at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, medical oncology residency at Hospital São Lucas da PUCRS, and a fellowship in gynecological cancer and phase I clinical research at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He holds a master's degree in Epidemiology from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He joined our company in March 2022.

Maksym Novikov, MD, is a Senior Medical Director for Fortrea, based in Maidenhead, United Kingdom. He serves as global lead project physician on assigned projects, providing medical expertise and support in the development and conduct of clinical trials. This includes reviewing feasibility of investigator sites and recruitment of trial subjects and performing feasibility risk assessment and data safety monitoring, develops and reviews protocols, case report forms and other data and materials on assigned projects. 

Dr. Novikov has more than 20 years of experience as a physician (surgeon), clinical researcher and medical director. Before Fortrea, he was Senior Medical Officer for Chiltern International in the UK. He also has held clinical research and medical monitoring positions with Novartis, AstraZeneca and other drug development and health care organizations. He joined Fortrea in April 2019.

Dr Jovan Obradovic is ophthalmologist, with more than 10 years of clinical and research experience in Ophthalmology and CRO industry. He spent 5 years in Clinical Center of Serbia as Ophthalmologist and 7 years as Medical Monitor in Clinical Research. He started his pharmaceutical career with Parexel before moving to Chiltern and later Covance (LabCorp) and Fortrea. His Ophthalmology Medical experience spans a variety of phase I ‑ IV clinical trials in retina, glaucoma, keratitis, rare diseases. 

At Fortrea, Jovan serves as Medical Director, providing clinical and medical expertise and medical monitoring on assigned projects. In addition, he assesses the feasibility of the study and participate in bids and bid defenses, reviews the study protocol from a medical and scientific point of view, liaises with investigators, sponsor and other company’s functions on relevant aspects of the study, provides out of hours medical coverage for the Medical Monitoring of the project, Medical Support for Clinical Project Teams and Business Development, discusses issues arising from adverse events reported to Pharmacovigilance, Involved in the preparation of variety documents as required, provides consulting advice within company and to Sponsor, provides project specific and therapeutic area training to Company staff and Sponsor as well. 

Jovan is based in Belgrade, Serbia.

Ines Pagel-Langenickel, MD, is an Executive Medical Director of CVMER (cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine and renal) at Fortrea. As a cardiologist, she has over 18 years of clinical research experience and has served as a principal investigator and co-investigator in several Phase II and III CV trials. Dr. Pagel-Langenickel’s areas of expertise include heart failure, myocardial infarction, CV outcomes, atrial fibrillation, cardiac amyloidosis, stem cell therapy as well as extensive experience with CV outcomes trials and endpoint adjudication. 

Dr. Pagel-Langenickel has an MD from Humboldt University of Berlin, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at NHLBI/NIH and earned an MBA from Mannheim Business School.

Zehra Nurgul Pamuklar, MD, PhD, is a Senior Medical Director of Oncology for Fortrea, based in Cary, North Carolina. Dr. Pamuklar has more than 20 years of experience in oncology clinical drug development in biotechnology companies and CROs. She has supported planning and execution of global oncology clinical development projects from early phase to post approval, within medical affairs and clinical development organizations, and management of pharmaceutical, academic and regulatory interactions. 

Dr. Pamuklar graduated in medicine from the Ankara University School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey; she has a PhD in Physiology/Immunophysiology and a Master of Science Degree in Clinical Research Management from Duke University, Durham, NC. 

Before joining our company in 2019, Dr. Pamuklar provided medical management of Phase I to Phase III immuno-oncology/oncology clinical trials in non-small cell lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, bladder cancer, esophageal carcinoma, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, urothelial cancer, colorectal cancer and head and neck cancer.