Our leadership

Scientific Collaboration Director

Irena Ivanovska, PhD

Irena joined as Scientific Collaboration Director in May 2022. She works closely with investigators at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to identify and lead projects for Riverway Discoveries, a Translator opportunity to advance academic discoveries into the clinic.

Previously, Irena was a Senior Scientific Director at the Mark Foundation, where she led grant programs that funded basic and translational cancer research. She has extensive experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. At Celdara Medical, she worked with academics to secure funding and lead preclinical drug discovery programs toward the clinic, and at Merch and Co., she led preclinical drug discovery programs in oncology and inflammation. Irena holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute.

Joint Steering Committee

  • William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD

    William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD, is the 2019 Nobel Prize recipient in medicine or physiology. Dr. Kaelin received his MD from Duke University in 1982 and was a house officer and chief resident in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a medical oncology clinical fellow at Dana-Farber and a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. David Livingston, where he began his studies of tumor suppressor proteins. He became an independent investigator at Dana-Farber in 1992, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2002.

    The 2019 Nobel was awarded jointly to Kaelin, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

  • Kimberly Stegmaier, MD

    Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, a Principal Investigator in Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), and an Attending Physician at the Boston Children’s Hospital Boston (BCH) and DFCI. She is the Co-director of the Pediatric Hematologic Malignancies Program at DFCI and BCH and is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She received her B.S. from Duke University and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She completed her residency at BCH and a post-doctoral pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at DFCI/BCH. In 2006, she launched her own laboratory effort at DFCI.

    Dr. Stegmaier’s laboratory integrates chemical biology, genomic, and proteomic approaches to discover new lead compounds and protein targets for cancer therapy. She has focused her efforts on the acute leukemias and two pediatric solid tumors of childhood: Ewing sarcoma and neuroblastoma.

  • Kai W. Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD

    Dr. Wucherpfennig received his MD in 1986 and PhD in 1987 from the University of Goettingen, Germany. He completed research fellowships at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. In 1995, he joined DFCI, where he is principally involved in basic laboratory research that focuses on T cell immunology and the role of T cells in cancer immunology.

  • William Slattery

    William Slattery is a Partner on the Therapeutics team and joined the Firm in 2000. Prior to Deerfield, Mr. Slattery was a senior healthcare analyst for 10 years at Amerindo Investment Advisors, where he oversaw biotechnology investments. He has held various positions in research including those at National Medical Enterprises, Johnson & Johnson, and HMSS. Mr. Slattery is the Chairman of Gilda’s Club New York City, a non-profit organization supporting cancer patients and their families. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biology and Chemistry from State University of New York at Albany and completed coursework in Immunology at the Graduate School-New Brunswick, Rutgers University.