Executive Committee Bios

Richard McFarland, Ph.D., MD is the Chief Regulatory Officer of ARMI/BioFabUSA. Prior to ARMI/BioFabUSA, he was Associate Director of Policy for FDA/CBER’s Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies and its predecessor office, the Office of Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies. In this position, he was heavily involved in policy development for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and alternatives to animal use in regulatory decision making. He received his B.S., Ph.D., and M.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his anatomic/clinical pathology residency and immunopathology fellowship training at UT Southwestern in Dallas.

Jessica Carmen, Ph.D., is a consultant with Pullan Consulting, where she works with clients and helps them with partnering, licensing, and/or manufacturing strategy. Dr. Carmen has extensive experience identifying opportunities and growing businesses in the cell and gene therapy industry and has been involved in the biomedical field since attaining her doctorate. Previously, she served as Director of Business Development for MaxCyte, developer of enabling technologies for non-viral gene delivery. She has also served as Associate Director of Sales and Business Development for Lonza, a contract manufacturer for cell and gene therapies. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from The Johns Hopkins University.

April Lynch is Vice President of Market Development at CSafe Global. Ms. Lynch is an engaged proponent of regenerative medicine standards for supply chain, digital infrastructure, transportation and labeling who brings more than a decade of experience in personalized medicine. Ms. Lynch is an award-winning communicator, journalist, and author who excels at product strategy, end-to-end marketing strategy and tactics, market category creation, and commercial operations implementation. In addition to defining product strategy, her previous role at Vineti included identifying outreach and educational opportunities and conducting interactions with industry associations and standards-setting groups. She has an M.A. in journalism from the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Michael Orrico is currently working as a consultant in various executive positions for biotech start-up companies. He has led R&D and Manufacturing at  tissue engineering and regenerative medicine companies for over 25 years including  the Cryobiology Lab at MIT, AxoGen, and  Aastrom Biosciences (now Vericel). His diverse experience in regenerative medicine product and business development and commercialization of early-stage technologies gives him a combination of hands-on engineering skills, business acumen, and clinical understanding of many surgical technologies. He received an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School in New York and has an M.S. in biomedical and mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.