Dr. Usakiewicz has over 20 years of industrial experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D. He is an accomplished leader and research manager with broad scientific expertise in drug design, assay development, protein and natural products chemistry acquired from years of cutting edge biotechnology research. The last few years of his career have been spent developing numerous mass spectrometry-based methods and applications. Dr. Usakiewicz holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from University of Wroclaw, Poland. His Ph.D. thesis “Immunomodulatory activity of tuftsin-like sequences of viral coat proteins” takes a multidisciplinary (protein chemistry, organic synthesis, immunology and virology) approach to determining viral defense mechanisms employed against a host. He also worked in developing diagnostics for prion related diseases. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Biotechnology Research Institute at the National Research Council of Canada, Montreal. Prior to joining IPI, Dr. Usakiewicz worked for several Canadian and US companies including MDS Protana, Perkin Elmer and Neurocrine Bioscience. He is an author of over 40 peer-review publications and 14 international patent applications.