Aragen Bioscience Executive Team

The Aragen management team offers a wide range of biotech R&D expertise, enabling us to provide a timely, high quality, cost effective service that is adaptable to the client's program needs.

Rick Srigley

President & CEO

Mr. Srigley has over 30 years of experience in biological and biotechnology operations and product development. Prior to forming Aragen Bioscience, he was the Vice President, Contract Services the Celliance Division of Serologicals. Mr. Srigley has also held the following positions: CEO of Genitope Corporation, Vice President of Biotechnology Production and Engineering at Bayer Corporation, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Invitron Corporation, and Director of Regulatory Affairs and Responsible Head for the Hyland Therapeutic Division of Baxter Healthcare. Mr. Srigley has a BS in Physiology from Michigan State University.

Christian Simonsen, Ph.D.

Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Simonsen has been involved in the research, development, and manufacture of biotherapeutic proteins for over 25 years. He received his Ph.D from the University of Utah where he studied Virology and Molecular Biology. During his postdoctoral studies in the lab of Dr. Robert Schimke at Stanford University, he studied gene amplification using dihydrofolate reductase (dhfr). After joining Genentech, Inc. in 1982, he worked in Dr. Art Levinson's lab where he was responsible for the development of mammalian expression systems for several key products, including recombinant factor VIII, TPA, and Hepatitis B antigen. Subsequently, Dr. Simonsen established mammalian expression and drug development programs for Invitron Corp. and for Genelabs Technologies. Dr. Simonsen founded Sierra BioSource in 1993. Sierra was a biotechnology service company with expertise in molecular biology, protein chemistry, mammalian cell culture, hybridoma production, antibody purification, and pre-clinical studies. After Sierra BioSource was acquired by Serologicals Corp. in 2004, Dr. Simonsen served as Vice President of Cell Culture R&D for the Celliance division of Serologicals and, following the acquisition of Serologicals by Millipore in 2006, Vice-President of Millipore Corp. In 2006, Dr. Simonsen co-founded Aragen BioScience.

Oren Beske, Ph.D.

Vice President, Laboratory Services

Dr. Beske has greater than 15 years of cell biology research experience. He has a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of California, San Francisco. Following a stint as a professor at San Francisco State University he joined Vitra Bioscience and led a team of scientists developing novel cell based assay technologies with applications in drug discovery and basic science research. Subsequently, he founded Rilato Bioscience (recently acquired) and COREX Scientific where he continues to serve in an advisory role. Dr. Beske has multiple patents and publications pertaining to cell biology, multiplexed assays, and small molecule drug discovery.

Malavika Ghosh, Ph.D.

Director, Preclinical Research

Dr. Ghosh has extensive expertise in molecular and cell biology in studies ranging from discovery of novel disease related genes, gene expression profiling, functional studies on therapeutic targets to translation studies on animal models. Prior to joining Aragen, she was a staff scientist at Celliance Corporation where she worked on autoimmune disease models and in vivo oncology models.

Dr. Ghosh has several years of experience in the biotech industry including diaDexus, Inc. where she led the Gene Discovery Group in colon cancer in work which resulted in several patents in the field of oncology. Dr. Ghosh received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wyoming. Her postdoctoral research was in the field of hormone responsive breast cancer in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University where she was awarded several grants and was selected as a New Investigator by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program.

Steve Sherwood, Ph.D.

Director, Cell Biology

Dr. Sherwood has more than 20 years of academic and biotechnology research and development experience in positions encompassing preclinical and clinical cell biology research and product and technology development. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at The University of Michigan and Stanford University. Following Senior Staff Scientist positions in the Departments of Biology and Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford, he became Section Leader in Tissue Culture at Geron Inc., Head of Research Cytometry at Genentech, Section Leader in Cytometry at Molecular Probes, Staff Scientist at Genencor International and Sr. Staff Scientist at Applied Biosystems. He has a wide range of research interests in Cell Biology. Specific interests include mammalian cell cycle controls in cancer and immune cells and optical methods for cellular analysis.

Kenneth Meek

Director of Sales & Marketing

Mr. Meek has 20 years of technical sales and marketing experience. His industry exposure includes Biotechnology, Bio-Processing, Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverage, and Pulp & Paper. Prior to his position at Aragen, Mr. Meek was a Business Development Manager at Celliance Corporation (Division of Serologicals Corp.) where his sales focus was contract services and raw materials to the Bio-Processing and Diagnostics industry. He has also held technical sales and marketing positions at Sandoz, Spectrum Chemicals and Calgon Corporation. Mr. Meek has a B.S. in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University.