Meet Our Team

Dr. Ekins graduated from the University of Aberdeen; receiving his M.Sc., Ph.D. in Clinical Pharmacology and D.Sc in Science. Sean was a postdoctoral fellow at Lilly Research Laboratories. He has worked previously as a senior scientist at Pfizer and Lilly Research Laboratories, Associate Director of Computational Drug Discovery at Concurrent Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Vice President of Computational Biology at GeneGo, CSO at Collaborative Drug Discovery and CEO and Co-Founder at Phoenix Nest. Sean has co-authored >375 peer reviewed scientific papers, over 40 book chapters and numerous patents as well as edited/ co-edited six books. He has recently published his first book titled Winning Grants. His latest edited book is “An Introduction to Generative Drug Discovery”. He has received extensive support from NIH, DOD and DTRA for machine learning, drug discovery, rare and neglected disease and computational toxicology projects, raising > $23.5M.

Dr. Hupcey graduated from Cornell University with a PhD in Chemistry and has since had positions in strategy and project management at companies across medical devices, drug discovery, and vaccines. She was most recently Senior Manager, Exploratory Development at GSK where she was accountable for the technical development of three Phase 1 programs. Dr. Hupcey brings nearly 20 years of strategic and operational experience to the company, has several publications and patents as well as contributed to editing a book on collaborations.

Dr. Lane graduated with a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biophysics at UNC Chapel Hill after studying the function and structure of microtubule-actin cross-linking proteins, spectraplakins. His research focused on using many different biophysical techniques, with a central focus on X-ray crystallography, to develop a structural model of a module of the spectraplakin ACF7. He obtained a M.S. in biochemistry from UNCG, where he characterized a recently deorphanized GPCR, GPR35, in silico. Tom joined the company in 2017 and has been a senior scientist since 2018.

Aaron graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Biology. He went on to receive his MBA, with a concentration in Marketing, from The University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Aaron worked as a scientist at BASF Plant Science for 9 years, where he designed, developed, and carried out high-throughput agricultural research experiments with a wide range of objectives. Aaron is big Tar Heels and tennis fan.

Amber graduated from North Carolina State University with a B.S. in Biological Sciences with minors in Botany and French. She has worked in regulated laboratories for 11 years processing clinical samples before transitioning to the project management side of clinical testing. For the past 6 years she has been managing multiple Phase I-II clinical trials.

Scott graduated with a B.E. in Electrical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude from The Cooper Union, attended Cornell University and most recently received an M.S. in Statistics and Operations Research from UNC-Chapel Hill. He brings decades of experience in data analysis, machine learning and software development. He has previously worked in various technical positions for Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, NIEHS and Texas Instruments. He was at IBM Corporation for 16 years rising to the position of Chief Performance Architect / Technical Manager and most recently he was responsible for Metrics and Measurement COE at Fidelity Investments. Scott has multiple publications and patents on software.

Dr. Raman graduated from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research with a PhD in Biological Sciences where she studied the mechanism of formation of actin-based structures called ‘Microridges’ in epithelial tissues using the zebrafish model. She went on to do her postdoctoral fellowship in cancer biology and precision medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York where she identified the mechanism of resistance to targeted therapies in RET rearranged thyroid cancers and identified combination therapies to overcome drug resistance. Dr. Raman has co-authored more than 20 scientific publications. Prior to joining Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, she worked at Xilis, where she used her expertise to advance precision oncology for various cancer types using patient derived models.

Dr. Harris is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where he received a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering as well as a B.A. in English. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in Materials Science from NCSU, with most of his graduate research work focused on modeling defects in wide bandgap III-N semiconductors using atomistic simulations based on Density Functional Theory. Before joining Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Jacob Jones group at NCSU, where he used convolutional neural networks and other computational models to analyze transmission electron micrographs of material interfaces.

Chris graduated with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Franklin & Marshall College in 2016. After completing his Bachelor's he worked as a computational researcher in biomedical labs at the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of California in San Francisco, and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Chris has since left academia and worked professionally as Data Scientist in the Ad-Tech and Biotech/Pharma industries for the last four years.

Dr. Vignaux graduated from The University of Texas at Arlington in 2013 with a B.S in Biology, and in 2019 completed her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her graduate work included using CRISPR-based genome engineering to create a cellular assay to examine the dependence of DNA methylation sites on long-term HP1α-induced epigenetic gene silencing. In the summer of 2019, Patricia completed an ImPACT internship followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship with Collaborations Pharmaceuticals investigating Alzheimer's Disease targets for drug-repurposing.

Dr. Jones earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Roanoke College in 2017. He then went on to North Carolina State University, receiving his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2022. His graduate work focused on the total synthesis of the marine natural product, abyssomicin C. He has been focused on the design of small organic molecules as potential drug leads.

Cameron graduated with his B.S. in Computer Criminology from Florida State University in 2018 with a focus on Cybersecurity & Software Development. Before joining Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Cameron worked at University of Florida's Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research where he lead and managed the development of a custom-built Laboratory Information Management System. Cameron hopes to bring his experience as a Systems Administrator and Software Developer to work alongside brilliant minds and enable scientific breakthroughs.

Jason is an undergraduate student at North Carolina State University majoring in computer science with a focus in machine learning and software engineering. He is also part of the computer science Accelerated Bachelor's/Master's program. Previously, he worked at the Real-Time and Intelligent Systems Laboratory at NCSU, where he worked with reinforcement learning and control algorithms for autonomous racing. As an intern, Jason works on developing machine learning models for various applications.

Melanie graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Chemistry. During this time, she worked in a research lab which focused on studying the molecular genetics and evolution of T. californicus copepods. She also spent her time teaching and mentoring students in human anatomy and organic chemistry. Before transitioning to software development, she worked as a medical assistant for an orthopedic practice in North Florida. By leveraging her past educational and professional experiences in science, teaching and healthcare, she hopes to build useful and accessible tools that will positively impact these industries.

Alex received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and minor in Computer Science at North Carolina State University and his Master's of Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked previously as a software engineer at Optum and Intuitive Surgical, product development engineer at Asensus Surgical, UX engineer at Bloomberg, and as a researcher part of CMU's SmaSH Lab. As a software engineer, Alex hopes to design scalable and user-friendly software that supports the variety of tools and AI models developed at Collaborations.

Dr. Barnes received her B.S. in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Nutrition from the University at Buffalo in 2019. During her undergraduate education, she worked in a research lab focusing on post translational modifications of a G-coupled protein receptor called Urotensin II. She then briefly worked as a neuroscience research technician assessing the effects of neuropeptide S (NPS) and RTI-263 exposure intracerebroventricularly in Sprague-Dawley rats. In 2024, she completed her PhD in Toxicology at North Carolina State University. Her graduate work focused on modulation of the vitamin D system in the context of both neurodevelopment and toxicology.