Archives: Speakers

Katherine Ilkhani is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and advocate for climate action, human rights, and public health innovation, evidenced by her previous leadership as Deputy Executive Director at Climate Cardinals, the world’s largest youth-led climate nonprofit, and as a member of the National Solidarity Group of Iran, a leading organization within the Iranian diaspora. Her experience also includes contributions to the launch of a digital fashion platform and her role as a youth advisor to Revolve. Currently, she is actively tackling the critical public health and environmental challenge of smoking-related deaths and illicit nicotine products by spearheading the U.S. entry of a revolutionary sustainable nicotine alternative, forging a strategic alliance with a leading Swedish harm reduction company and assembling a world-class regulatory powerhouse to ensure its swift and impactful entry.

Ajesh Raju, Senior Project Manager, has worked in the biopharmaceutical and medical device industry for over 15 years. He brings extensive experience leading cross functional teams, managing complex timelines, and delivering studies from start up through close out. His background includes hands on project management of tobacco harm reduction studies, with a strong focus on THR operations, study planning, vendor coordination, and day to day execution. Ajesh is skilled in stakeholder management, risk assessment, and practical problem solving, and is responsible for overseeing all project management activities to ensure studies are delivered efficiently and in line with regulatory and scientific expectations.

Collin Gerringer is the Manager of THR Operations and a Senior Study Manager at DVCR, where he oversees clinical research study site operations from startup through closeout and supports THR client operations. He has over 12 years of clinical research experience in rare diseases, human abuse potential studies, and tobacco and nicotine harm reduction.

Chemical engineer with a Master’s degree from Cambridge and 13+ years of experience in healthcare and life sciences strategy consulting. My background spans commercial growth strategy, market analysis, and due diligence support, developed through roles at LEK, Evaluate, and BDO.

Over the course of my consulting career, I advised senior executives and investors on market entry, portfolio strategy, product positioning, and commercial opportunities across the life sciences ecosystem.

In recent years, I have transitioned from advisory to take over as the CEO of Zanoprima Lifesciences. Zanoprima is a UK-based pharmaceutical company and has developed and patented a cost-effective and environmentally friendly process to create innovative synthetic S-nicotine (SyNic™) with unprecedented purity for use in next generation nicotine products. Zanoprima currently works with, and supplies a number of players in the nicotine space, ranging from start-ups to Big Tobacco. Our team has also been involved with developing and manufacturing Nicorette gums/lozenges in the past, working with J&J and GSK.

Benjamin Apelberg, Ph.D. is currently the Deputy Director for Regulatory Science in the Office of Science of CTP.  Dr. Apelberg has held numerous roles since joining CTP in 2010, including as the Director of the Division of Population Health Science and Chief of the Epidemiology Branch. Prior to joining FDA, Dr. Apelberg was a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also received his Ph.D. in Epidemiology.

Ron Ramos is a Senior Director of Business Development at EmVenio Clinical Research. He joined EmVenio in 2022, bringing more than six years of direct experience in the mobile visit space and over two decades in the biopharma industry. Ron began his career at the bench as a molecular biologist at Thomas Jefferson University, where he earned a Master’s degree in Biomedical Chemistry in 2003.

With his combined scientific foundation and operational expertise, Ron acts as a subject matter expert for clients, offering both analytical and practical perspectives on deploying mobile visits for complex, global clinical studies.

Aadil Bundeally is a seasoned transformation professional with over 20 years’ international experience across Banking, Wealth & Asset Management, Insurance, and Impact Investing. He brings deep industry knowledge spanning regulatory landscapes, operating models, organisational design, integrated systems and governance-risk-compliance frameworks. With relentless focus on customer advocacy, operational efficiency and results-driven innovation, underpinned by Data Analytics, RPA, AI-ML and Gen AI, he has deployed numerous platforms and solutions delivering significant cost reduction and quality-of-life improvements for customers, suppliers and staff. A firm believer in the three lines of defence, he maintains rigorous governance whilst managing complex multi-level stakeholder relationships and generating robust C-suite analysis. Experienced in product management, vendor selection, procurement oversight and dispute resolution, he has held senior roles at Lloyd’s of London, Virgin Money, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group, leading diverse teams across consulting, interim and in-house engagements. He holds four postgraduate qualifications, including an MBA from Melbourne Business School and UCLA Anderson.

I have worked in clinical research since 2011 holding different roles across various departments. Most recently working as clinical research manager at UCSF Cancer Center, Clinical Research Network Office (CRNO), since 2021.