Douglas Stafford, PhD, MS

President and Chief Executive Officer

Douglas C. Stafford has been employed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 2011 as Director of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery and later Executive Director of the Shimadzu Laboratory for Advanced and Applied Analytical Chemistry. Previously, he worked for 25 years in the private sector in translational biomedical research (medical device and therapeutics) and the formation of business organizations for new product development. He held senior management positions at Baxter Healthcare Corporation in manufacturing operations, product development, and quality systems. He led product development, regulated operations, general management, and financing of several entrepreneurial ventures, including positions of Chief Operating Officer and later President of Ophidian Pharmaceuticals, founder and President of Life Sciences Development Corp., and Executive Vice President of GenExel-Sein, Inc. He has formed biomedical product development partnerships and technology licenses (including; Lilly, Pfizer (Wyeth), Allergan, DoD, more than 80 universities).

He has coauthored numerous scientific publications, is inventor on more than a dozen patents, and has received entrepreneurial achievement awards from Baxter and the US Department of Commerce. Dr. Stafford received BS (biology) and MS (microbiology) degrees from the University of Detroit, a PhD (immunology) from Tufts University School of Medicine, and a MS (management) from Lesley College.

He is an Adjunct Professor at the Medical College of WI and program reviewer for NIH/NCATS. He co-founded Bridge-to-Cures, Inc., a non-profit organization working to advance entrepreneurial healthcare ventures in Wisconsin.