Scientific Advisory Board

Gyan (John) Prakash, Ph.D., MBA

Dr. Gyan (John) Prakash has just returned from serving the U.S. Government as the Nation’s first Director of Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI), a pioneer national biodefense scientific research and technology development program at Department of Defense (DoD-DTRA). TMTI is the largest biomedical product development program in the country. He served the Government for four years as Senior Drug Development Expert at Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS - NIH/NIAID) and then as Director, TMTI at DoD. Dr. Prakash launched and led the $1.5 Billion joint biodefense program that is responsible for developing medical countermeasures. He led a team of medical, scientific and business team members that are specialized in product development. Dr. Prakash’s responsibilities included providing executive leadership and guidance on matters related to research, development, including development of pharmaceutical products, acquisition of health emergency medical countermeasures related to current and emerging infections diseases. Dr. Prakash represented DoD in matters related to achieving the TMTI goals including, acceleration and streamlining of research and development for drugs and biologics, working with many private pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Before joining the government, Dr. Prakash was the President and CEO of Metastatin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The development stage biopharmaceutical company was involved in therapeutic product development. The entrepreneurial company was sold to a publicly traded pharmaceutical company. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture, Dr. Prakash earned his drug development experience working at Pfizer world headquarters in New York in several successive leadership jobs in developing blockbuster drugs such as Diflucan. He has worked in the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry for about 20 years in senior scientific and executive management positions. Dr. Prakash has been involved as a founder, board member and in leadership roles in three start-up companies: biopharmaceutical management (AMAR International), biotechnology (Metastatin Pharmaceuticals), and medical diagnostics (Mesa Diagnostics).

Dr. Prakash is currently serving as the Chief Scientific Officer at AMAR International, Inc., Fairfax, Virginia. AMAR is certified by the US Government-SBA as an 8(a), SDB and women owned business enterprise. The company is a prime contractor of the United States Government for biomedical services business providing biomedical program management services. Dr. Prakash leads the Biomedical Division at AMAR that provides a range of clinical and regulatory affairs services to private sector and the US Government. Dr. Prakash currently serves on advisory boards of several companies including GeneGo, 360 degree media, and Innovative Biotherapeutics.

Dr. Prakash earned his graduate degrees, MS and Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and an MBA in Pharmaceutical Management/Marketing (St. Joseph’s University). He received professional training at the UCLA School of Management and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Prior to immigrating to the US in 1978, Dr. Prakash earned a BS (Biology and Chemistry) and a MS (Biochemistry) at University of Allahabad in India. He received the University Gold Medal in the University for securing the highest rank in the undergraduate program. Dr. Prakash has experience in strategic/executive leadership, scientific advisory and management, product development and clinical trials, regulatory affairs, new product planning, risk management and decision analyses, strategic planning, medical-marketing research and business development, contract research/consulting and biotechnology/pharmaceutical senior management. Dr. Prakash created and established over a dozen innovative and fully operational product development programs in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He served as the Chief Project Scientist for Pfizer’s first therapeutic biologic (first therapeutic monoclonal Antibody - E5), and then for fluconazole, the number one selling antifungal drug in the world.

Dr. Prakash has served in the capacity of senior scientific advisor for several public and private pharmaceutical/ biotech companies, as Director for the programs of American Society for Microbiology and a member on national committee for a major medical association. Dr. Prakash held an Adjunct Professorship at Robert H. Smith School of Management, University of Maryland and served on the advisory board of New Market Growth Fund of Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. In 2001, he was appointed an Adjunct Professor at School of Management at George Mason University in Virginia where he established the first graduate program on bioscience management in the US. Dr. Prakash has published several original papers in peer-reviewed journals and has a major biotechnology book to his credit that he published with Marcel Decker of New York. He has also coauthored a manual of business of biotechnology and has presented numerous invited lectures in the US, France, Germany, Spain, India, Denmark, Hungary and the UK. Dr. Prakash recently delivered key note lectures at two world conferences, Copenhagen and Budapest. In 2006, he organized a workshop/conference on development of broad spectrum antibiotics, bringing together the key leaders in government agencies and NGO, including the FDA and NIH. In addition to his professional volunteer activities, Dr. Prakash is active in the community. He currently guides several graduate student at George Mason University and has helped many students at high school and junior high school levels in choosing career paths in biological sciences. Dr. Prakash is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, schools in school/college partnership programs. He serves as a judge in many VA area science fair programs and venture competitions. He was the founder of a nationally recognized program, “Science for the Future” that won the Blue Ribbon Award from The White House. The program provides guidance in developing hands-on science as part of the early learning and was featured on “The Frontline” at the PBS.

An article about Dr. Prakash has recently been published in The Scientist. Click here to see the article.