The Allegro Diagnostics team has extensive experience in life sciences, pulmonary medicine, genomics, and bioinformatics.
Dan Rippy, MS, MBA
President & CEO
Dan Rippy has fifteen years of experience in general management and the life sciences, including business development, finance, and marketing for publicly traded companies as well as medium-sized and early stage firms. He previously worked for Johnson & Johnson and Bristol-Myers Squibb in medical devices and pharmaceuticals, as well as for DFB Pharmaceuticals, where he headed the corporate development department. Additionally, Mr. Rippy previously served as CEO of Macrocyclics, an early stage radiopharmaceuticals and radiodiagnostics company, and headed the mergers & acquisitions and business planning department for CellStar, a publicly traded wireless logistics and distribution company. Mr. Rippy holds an MBA in Finance and Marketing from Columbia Business School and a Master's degree in Health Science & Technology from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science & Technology.
Jerome Brody, MD
Chief Scientific Officer
Jerry Brody has extensive experience in pulmonary and gene expression research as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Pulmonary Center at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Brody has an academic and research career spanning more than 40 years and is widely regarded as a thought leader in pulmonary medicine. His publications cover a wide range of topics in pulmonary medicine, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), inflammation, and lung cancer, gene expression in smokers and non-smokers, and the effects of smoking on the airway epithelial cell transcriptome, among others. Dr. Brody received his medical degree from the University of Illinois, did his internship at Michael Reese Hospital, and his residency at Michael Reese Hospital and the University of Oklahoma. Additionally, he did a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brody joined Boston University in 1973 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on faculty.
David Centauro, MBA
Chief Financial Officer
David Centauro has over twenty years of experience in financial operations of life science, software, and telecommunications companies. Mr. Centauro has served as Vice President of Finance at Stargus (acquired by C-Core) and CFO at Altaworks. Mr. Centauro also held senior financial positions at Breakaway Solutions, Pegasystems, High Voltage Engineering, Xyplex (acquired by Raytheon) and BGS Systems. Over the course of his career, Mr. Centauro has been instrumental in building financial operations, both domestically and internationally, to support the rapid growth of these companies. He has been involved in more than 20 major financial transactions including venture-backed equity funding transactions, public offerings, private placements, mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Centauro earned his MBA from Southern New Hampshire University, and his bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Bentley College.
Stephanie Hallam, Ph.D. FACMG, MBA
Vice President, Operations & Quality Systems
Stephanie Hallam has over twenty years of experience in molecular genetics and fifteen years of experience in clinical laboratories. She is board certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics, is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and is licensed by the New York State Department of Health as a Laboratory Director. Prior to joining Allegro, Dr. Hallam worked for Genzyme Genetics, where she served as molecular laboratory director, and also worked in the areas of molecular information systems, clinical operations, and quality control. Previously, Dr. Hallam worked for Athena Diagnostics in laboratory operations and quality systems, and Kimball Genetics, where she served as Laboratory Director. Dr. Hallam holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of East Anglia (UK), completed her Clinical Molecular Genetics fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and holds an MBA from Clark University.
Duncan Whitney, PhD
Vice President, Research & Development
Duncan Whitney has over 20 years of experience developing and commercializing technologies in emerging and mid-sized Life Sciences companies, with an emphasis on diagnostics test development in the last 10 years. Dr. Whitney’s experience and leadership further Allegro Diagnostics’ goals in lung-cancer biomarker development and optimization, commercial product development and launch, and development of a strong product pipeline. Prior to joining Allegro, Dr. Whitney served as Chief Scientific Officer of Progenika Inc., a microarray-based clinical diagnostics company. Previous roles include, VP of R&D at U.S. Genomics Inc., developing single-molecule detection strategies and assays for both protein and microRNA targets; VP of Technology Development at Exact sciences Corp, a company focused on colon cancer diagnostics and several years in R&D leadership roles at PerSeptive Biosystems (now part of Life Technologies). Dr. Whitney received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.A. from Colby College.
Avrum Spira, MD, MSc
Scientific and Clinical Advisor
Dr. Avrum Spira is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Laboratory Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at the Boston University School of Medicine. Additionally, he serves as Director of the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program at the Boston University School of Medicine's Pulmonary Center. He is an attending physician at the Medical Intensive Care Unit and with the Pulmonary/Critical Care Interventional service at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Spira's laboratory research interests focus on applying high-throughput genomic and bioinformatic tools to the translational study of lung cancer and emphysema. He is funded as a Principal Investigator through the NIH and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Dr. Spira received his medical degree from McGill University and did his internship and residency at the University of Toronto. He did his fellowship with Boston University. Dr. Spira received a Master's degree in Bioinformatics from the College of Engineering at Boston University.