Subha is a dynamic and results-driven leader with a strong track record of excellence in organizations that operate at the nexus of science, technology and business. She has initiated and successfully directed several productive clinical research and development programs at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, MedStar hospital network, FDA, NIH and BioPharma industry. She was co-leader of the FDA’s Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and worked with the Oncology and Vaccine teams. She was an advisory member to the Biden Foundation’s Cancer Moonshot Program and advised on pre-competitive data sharing initiatives across Pharma, Health Tech companies and research organizations to drive innovation. She has been recognized for her work through several awards including the Service to America award in the Science and Environment category (2005), Research Acceleration Award by AACR and Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (2015), and Women in Tech Global award (2021). She is currently the Head of Clinical AI/ML & Digital Sciences at Pfizer worldwide R&D where she leads a team focused on advancing precision therapies across multiple treatment areas including Anti-Infectives, Oncology, Immunology & Inflammation among others.
Archives: Team Members
Team Member
Justin McCarthy, JD
Justin McCarthy has over 27 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with expertise in pricing, market access, global health policy, legal and compliance. In his most recent role, he led the Patient & Health Impact (PHI) team at Pfizer, one of the world’s premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies whose global portfolio includes medicines and vaccines. He led a team of experts in health economics and outcomes research, real-world data and analytics, patient-centered outcomes assessment, market access, pricing, strategy and contracting, to generate evidence of the value of Pfizer medicines and vaccines and negotiate with governments and payers around the world to ensure access for patients. He also formed a team to explore novel approaches to bring medicines to the market through innovative partnerships and payment models.
Previously, Justin led Pfizer’s Global Policy & International Public Affairs efforts, responsible for defining Pfizer’s public policy positions and advancing government and public affairs strategies internationally. Additionally, Justin was Chief Counsel for Pfizer’s Worldwide Research and Development division, advising on regulatory, licensing and clinical trial issues, and overseeing global intellectual property activities.
Justin serves as a health policy and market access advisor, and has previously served on the Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Subject Protection, Subcommittee on Harmonization
Brian McCourt
Brian McCourt currently serves as Senior Director, Data and Knowledge Management at Duke Clinical Research Institute. He began his career as a study coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital and has since held a variety of senior leadership roles spanning Clinical Data Management, Research Informatics and Technology areas at DCRI. His personal interests include the informatics methods and tools needed to operationalize complex industry and government research programs.
With over 25 years at Duke, he has been at the forefront of many strategic efforts to develop the infrastructure and capabilities needed to run demonstration projects and then scale-up capabilities for broader adoption of new best practices. Brian was central to launching DCRI’s Supporting Open Access for Researchers (SOAR) initiative – the set of data preparation, hosting, approval and provisioning practices for sharing of research datasets. Today, in addition to overseeing data operations for many research programs, he is helping drive the development and transition to a new cloud platform for research tools that includes data integration, hosting and visualization services.
Ida Sim, MD, PhD
Ida Sim, MD, PhD is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is UCSF’s inaugural Chief Research Informatics Officer and she co-directs the UCSF UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health. Dr. Sim earned her MD and her PhD in Medical Informatics from Stanford University, where her dissertation was on computational methods for data sharing of clinical trial results. She was trained in Primary Care Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and completed fellowships in General Medicine and Medical Informatics at Stanford.
In 2005-6, Dr. Sim led the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform which established the first global policy on clinical trial registration and defined the common 20-item Trial Registration Data Set. She has led multiple NIH and other grants on “trial bank publishing,” ontology-based data sharing of human studies, and clinical trial visualization. Dr. Sim was a member of the 2015 Institute of Medicine committee on “Sharing Clinical Trial Data: Maximizing Benefits, Minimizing Risk.” She joined the MRCT Clinical Trials Data Sharing project in 2015 and is a co-founder of Vivli.
In other work, Dr. Sim is a national leader in mobile health and co-founder of the JupyterHealth project, an open software platform for secure personal health data ingestion and analytics. She has served on multiple national advisory committees on health information infrastructure for clinical care and research. She is a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She is a practicing clinician.
Murray Stewart, MD
Murray Stewart, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer at Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Previously, he was Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, at Novelion Therapeutics Inc. From April 2014-September 2017, he was the Chief Medical Officer at GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Stewart joined GSK in 2000 as Associate Director for Clinical Research & Development in the UK and since then has held a variety of positions in GSK he worked in Biopharm, was Therapy Area Head for the Cardiovascular and Metabolic therapy area. He has had extensive clinical development experience and worldwide regulatory interactions. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Stewart worked as a diabetes consultant and senior lecturer and was Consultant Physician/Honorary Senior Lecturer and Head of Clinical Services at the Diabetes Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. His research was in lipid metabolism in type-2 diabetes, and he completed his medical training at Southampton Medical School in the UK and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Julie Wood
Julie Wood is the Chief Operating Officer at Vivli. She is responsible for Operations, including supporting members and researchers with data archiving, access and analysis on the Vivli platform. She is also a Co-Chair of the NIH Generalist Repositories Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) Coopetition Working Group and serves on the Steering Committee of CRDSA. Prior to joining Vivli, Julie served as the Head of Communications and External Affairs at the Cochrane Collaboration. She has also worked for a Microsoft partner.
Azusa Tsukida
Azusa joined the Vivli team in 2022 as a Senior Advisor. Azusa will be focusing on clinical data sharing and outreach in Japan. Before joining Vivli, she has nearly 15 years’ experience as leader for the Biostatistics & Programming Department at Sanofi in Tokyo. She holds a degree in algebraic geometry from Tokyo Woman’s Christian University.
Robert Conklin
As Chief Technology Officer at Vivli, Robert Conklin is at the forefront of utilizing technological innovation to advance the state of clinical research. With over 25 years of experience in technology, Robert blends a deep understanding of scientific research with a approach to technological advancement.
In his role as CTO at Vivli, Robert leads the strategic direction for technology adoption and integration. His expertise spans a broad spectrum of areas, including data management, clinical trial automation, communication, and data security. He uses this expertise to further advance the Vivli platform, helping the world’s researchers to create new knowledge from the data that our members have shared.
Robert is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies to solve pressing challenges in clinical research to further the advancement of human knowledge. He has been instrumental in driving innovations that improve patient recruitment, streamline regulatory compliance, and ensure data integrity. His contributions have increased the speed, efficacy and safety of clinical trials at scale, and helped to create new knowledge.
Stan Neumann
Stan Neumann is the Senior Director of Technical Operations at Vivli, where he is responsible for the reliability, usability and functionality of Vivli’s technical platform and supporting members and researchers who use the system. He is also responsible for QA and information and security management.
Prior to joining Vivli, Stan was a project manager and business analyst for BlueMetal Architects, where he helped numerous clients, define a technical vision and then realize that vision through a rigorous application of modern engineering practices and outstanding development skills. Prior to BlueMetal, Stan was the Director of Engineering at Axceler, where he helped the company grow from a startup to one of the most respected creators of SharePoint tools in the industry
Philippa Counter Hogstadius
Philippa serves as the Project Coordinator for Vivli. She holds Master’s Degree in Public Health from Tulane University and a Bachelor’s Degree from Loyola University New Orleans. She studied Political Science for one year at Umeå University in Sweden. Prior to joining Vivli, she worked at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, DC., Planned Parenthood, and The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. She served as a teaching assistant at Tulane University and focused her Public Health Analysis on women’s health disparities in the United States.