Ed Cannon, Ph.D

President and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Cannon joined Unigen in July 2008 as President and CEO. His prior experience includes, CEO of AerovectRx, and aerosol therapeutics company based in Atlanta, Georgia, where he continues to serve as Executive Chairman. He also acted as President, CEO and a director of AdipoGenix; the founding CEO of Elixir Pharmaceuticals; a founder, director, and President Therapeutics Division of Dyax Corp.; and a founder, director and CSO of Hygeia Sciences, the leading developer worldwide of monoclonal antibody-based home diagnostic products.

He continues to be a director of AdipoGenix, a Boston-based biopharmaceutical company developing small molecule drugs to treat metabolic diseases, and is also a director of Smart Cells Inc. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Georgia, trained in molecular immunology at Harvard Medical School and has held faculty positions at Brandeis University and University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Pat Schneider 

Chief Business Officer

Pat K. Schneider joined Unigen in December 2008 as Chief Business Officer.   In this new role, Pat is responsible for global sales and marketing, new business development, new product development and IP management.   

Pat has over 30 years of experience in domestic and global sales, marketing, product development and operations. She has a proven track record leading business units, launching new products and opening new markets for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Gillete, Jacuzzi, Kodak and Herbalife.   Over the course of her career, Pat has worked on a number of leading consumer health care products including Bayer Aspirin, Oral-B, Boost, Nutrament and Theragran.

Pat comes to Unigen from Herbalife International, a $3B network marketing organization focused on nutritional products, where she was VP of Global Marketing and General Manager of Central American operations. At Herbalife she was responsible for developing and launching new nutritional and cosmetic products across Herbalife’s 70 markets and opening up 6 new countries in the Central American region.

Pat holds multiple degrees in Microbiology and Chemistry, as well as a MBA in Marketing and Finance

Qi Jia, Ph.D.

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Qi Jia received his B.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from Beijing Medical University in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Texas Christian University in 1995.  Dr. Jia has studied ethnomedicinal plants for over twenty years. His research projects at Beijing Medical University focused on Traditional Chinese Medicine with anti-tumor, anti-inflammation & immune stimulation activities; and his postgraduate works at TCU focused on discovery of drug leads from Bolivian plants for the treatment of HIV infection, cancer, tuberculosis and fungal infections.

Since joining Unigen in 1995, Dr. Jia has established collaborations with six organizations around the world to collect indigenous medicinal plants and has built up a proprietary natural product library with thousands of collections. He has been instrumental in drug discovery technology platform development especially in the area of high throughput fractionation & purification, online data collection, structure dereplication, lead discovery, chemo-informatic and product development.Dr. Jia holds 11 issued patents and has 21 presentations at professional conferences and over 20 peer-reviewed publications in the field of natural product chemistry.

Abeysinghe A. Padmapriya, Ph.D.

Vice President of Organic Synthesis and Manufacturing of New Chemical Entities and Operations

Abeysinghe joined Unigen Pharmaceuticals in 1996 as the Director of Organic Synthesis where he developed short novel synthesis for natural products. His experience and knowledge in the fields of natural products and pharmaceutical development are quite extensive and directly replicated in his work.

Padmapriya earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Sri Lanka. He further studied at Ceylon Institute of Industrial Research and earned his Ph.D. at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, in Organic Synthesis of Natural Products. Abeysignhe did his post-doctoral research at McGill University in Montreal and further went on to study the synthesis of novel anti-cancer natural product based compounds at the University of Virginia.

Prior to joining Unigen, Padmapriya worked in various research avenues including positions with Hybridon Inc., in Worchester, MA, and Nexagen, Inc, in Boulder, CO, in the area of pharmaceutical development. Padmapriya has co-authored multiple publications and many patents.

Wenwen Ma, Ph.D.

Vice President of Quality

Dr. Ma has extensive experience in quality control and quality assurance management developed in multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. She has a strong background in the areas of analytical and natural product chemistry.

Her proven experience involving Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) regulations and compliance and will support Unigen in establishing and maintaining an even higher level of quality standards and systems in the dietary supplement industry.

Dr. Ma has a Ph.D. in Natural Product Chemistry from the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy Pharmacy School at Purdue University, Indiana . She received her Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the School of Pharmacy , Shanghai First Medical College , China. Her work has been published in more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, and she has received a number of awards and honors for her contributions in the areas of natural product chemistry, pharmacognosy and new drug discovery.