Fletcher is the executive vice president of business at READDI. He is responsible for creating and implementing READDI’s business development strategy in coordination with the CEO and other members of the leadership team.
Fletcher is an attorney with more than 20 years of experience working in the area of technology development and commercialization at global research universities and at large and small technology companies. His primary focus has been on strategic partnerships, intellectual property and early-stage investments. He was general counsel and vice president of operations at Julz Co., a venture capital firm funding early-stage life science companies. Most recently, Fletcher served as general counsel at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
Fletcher earned a Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C. He has a Master of Arts in Spanish American Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from Davidson College.
Logan Ward is READDI’s director of communications. Prior to READDI, he was editor of UNC-Chapel Hill’s daily news and information site, The Well, where he wrote and edited scores of stories about university research.
Logan has spent more than two decades as a magazine journalist and brand storyteller specializing in science, innovation and design communications. He was senior science correspondent for Popular Mechanics and has published articles in The Atlantic, Consumer Reports, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times and many other leading periodicals. His corporate and institutional clients include the Field Museum of Chicago; Massachusetts General Hospital; the National Trust for Historic Preservation; the architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and UNICEF.
Logan earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Vanderbilt University.
READDI co-founder and scientific adviser Nat Moorman is an associate professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s microbiology and immunology department. His research includes studying how viruses hijack cellular machinery to facilitate their replication.
Nat uses a combination of new technologies and traditional molecular virology techniques to investigate host-pathogen interactions, especially the ways viruses alter cell signaling pathways to drive viral protein synthesis. In addition, he is leading multiple efforts to discover and develop novel direct-acting and host-targeted antiviral drugs for viruses of pandemic concern.
Nat was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton for six years. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in molecular biology and microbial pathogenesis from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a Bachelor of Science in microbiology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
READDI co-founder and scientific adviser Mark Heise is a professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s genetics department. His research program is focused on understanding how viral and host genetic factors interact to influence virus-induced disease.
Mark is currently studying alphaviruses — mosquito-borne RNA viruses that cause encephalitis and infectious arthritis in humans — as well the respiratory viruses influenza A and SARS-CoV-2. He uses a combination of molecular virology, viral immunology and systems genetics approaches in his research. Among other things, he seeks to define the mechanisms by which certain determinants promote virus-induced disease and to understand how host genetic variation affects the ways individuals respond to infection or vaccination.
Mark’s lab is also part of a large interdisciplinary antiviral drug development program at UNC. In addition to gaining new insights into the way viruses induce disease, the program’s goal is to leverage this research to develop new therapies for the prevention or treatment of human disease. These include broad-spectrum antivirals aimed at SARS-CoV-2 and also emerging alphaviruses, for which there are no approved therapeutic antivirals.
Mark earned a Doctor of Philosophy in immunology from Washington University in St. Louis and a Bachelor of Arts in biology from St. Olaf College.
READDI co-founder and scientific adviser Ralph Baric is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s epidemiology department and professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s microbiology and immunology department. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities in the study of coronaviruses, noroviruses and dengue viruses, and is responsible for UNC-Chapel Hill’s leading role in coronavirus research.
For the past three decades, Ralph has warned that the emerging coronaviruses represent a significant and ongoing global health threat, particularly because they can jump, without warning, from animals into the human population, and they tend to spread rapidly. Ralph has led the world in recognizing the importance of zoonotic viruses, with detailed studies of the molecular, genetic and evolutionary mechanisms that regulate the establishment and dissemination of these viruses within newly adopted hosts. Specifically, he works to decipher the complex interactions between a virus and cell surface molecules that enable entry and cross-species transmission of RNA viruses.
A member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ralph earned a Doctor of Philosophy in microbiology and a Bachelor of Science in zoology from North Carolina State University.
Jimmy Rosen serves as READDI’s chief executive officer and a member of the Board of Directors. He has 35 years of research, finance and operational experience across the healthcare and life sciences sectors. Jimmy is focused on developing medicines and products that are affordable and accessible to everyone who needs them, including underserved communities and those living in remote geographies.
Prior to READDI, Jimmy served as CEO of Artizan Biosciences, a biotech spinout from Yale University whose mission is creating new classes of precision therapeutics that target and block the root causes of chronic inflammatory disease. In previous roles, he was deputy director of venture investing at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a partner with Intersouth Partners, investing in early-stage life science companies. Earlier in his career he worked in health care research at Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill and the National Cancer Institute and managed clinical trials for a private clinical research organization.
Jimmy has a Master of Business Administration from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Master of Science in Public Health from UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in public policy from Duke University.
