Meet the Bluegrass Advanced Materials (BAM) team — where experience and knowledge create innovative new products.
Joe Wyse, Ph.D.,
President and CEO, Bluegrass Advanced Materials
Dr. Wyse is President, CEO and partner at BAM and brings over 20 years of business experience in the life science to the BAM team. Dr. Wyse’s business background includes intellectual property management, patent landscape analysis, technology valuation and strategic options assessments. Dr. Wyse’s scientific background in chemistry gives him a unique perspective to craft targeted business strategies.
Formerly, Dr. Wyse founded Wyse Innovations in 2010, a consultancy focused on assisting clients in maximizing the value of their intellectual assets. Dr. Wyse served as CEO of Coldstream Laboratories, Inc, a contract pharmaceutical development and licensing company, in 2007 as a spin- off of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. Under his leadership Coldstream Laboratories achieved FDA approval for commercial manufacture of a generic injectable drug product.
Dr. Wyse served five years at PriceWaterhouseCoopers where he was Director and founding member of PwC’s Intellectual Asset Management practice. During that time led the effort to develop and apply proprietary data-mining tools that provide strategic insights into a client’s and competitor’s intellectual property portfolios.
Dr. Wyse received his bachelor degree in Chemistry from Asbury College. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry from the University of Kentucky.
Nihar M. Shah Ph.D.
Director of Research, Bluegrass Advanced Materials
http://www.linkedin.com/in/niharshahengineer
Dr. Shah is the Director of Research at BAM. Dr. Shah has a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Clemson University. Dr. Shah has over 9 years of experience in polymeric biomaterials, drug delivery and surface modification. Prior to joining Bluegrass Advanced Materials, he was a Post Doctorate Scholar in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky, where his work focused on commercialization of novel biodegradable antioxidant polymers for biomedical, automotive and cosmetics applications. His accomplishments at the University of Kentucky laid the foundation for translating this technology to Bluegrass Advanced Materials. He now leads research and development efforts at Bluegrass Advanced Materials.
Dr. Shah has focused his career on translation-driven inter-disciplinary projects employing biomaterials-based approaches to target human diseases and industrial problems. At Clemson University, Dr. Shah co-invented surface-grafted polymer films containing norepinephrine that prevent biofouling on marine vessels and submerged structures. He worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Davis, where led a team of scientists to develop a novel growth factor delivery method to accelerate healing of chronic diabetic ulcers. This work has set the stage for initiating testing in animal models, a critical step prior to initiating human clinical trials.
He has published 7 peer-reviewed research articles, serves as a peer reviewer for 4 scientific research journals, and has made 16 presentations at international conferences in the field of biomaterials. Dr. Shah is an active member of the Society for Biomaterials, and was recently elected a Full Member of the Sigma Xi scientific research honor society.
Dr. Thomas Dziubla, Ph.D.,
Co-Founder Bluegrass Advanced Materials
www.linkedin.com/pub/thomas-dziubla/4/99b/645
Dr. Dziubla is a founding partner in BAM where he showcases his research in oxidative stress as a tuning mechanism for the control of biomaterial compatibility. Materials developed by BAM will utilize technology invented by Dziubla.
Dr. Thomas Dziubla is a Gill Professor and Director of graduate studies in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky.
He received his Honors B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in 1998 and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University in 2002. He was an NRSA postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Environmental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine at the Institute for Environmental Medicine, where he worked on the design of degradable polymeric nanocarriers for the delivery of antioxidants.
J. Zach Hilt, Ph.D.,
Co-Founder Bluegrass Advanced Materials
www.linkedin.com/pub/j-zach-hilt/23/533/b94
Dr. Hilt is a founding partner in BAM ground by developing state of the art biomaterials. Materials developed by BAM will utilize technology invented by Dr. Hilt.
Dr. Hilt is the William T. Bryan Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Hilt’s research laboratory focuses on the design of novel hydrogel biomaterials, the development of novel methods to synthesize and characterize the hydrogels at the micro- or nanoscale, and the application of these materials as biomedical devices or functional components of biomedical devices.
Dr. Hilt received his bachelor degrees in Chemistry and Physics from Miami University (Ohio). He completed his Masters degree in Chemical Engineering from PurdueUniversity and his Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.