Dr. Alan Moss earned his medical degree from RCSI School of Medicine in Ireland and completed his internal medicine and gastroenterology training in Dublin and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston (BIDMC). His prior leadership roles include Director of Translational Research at BIDMC, Director of the Crohn's & Colitis Program, and Interim Chief of Gastroenterology, at Boston Medical Center (BMC). His academic roles included Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Medicine at BU School of Medicine.

Before joining the Foundation as Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Moss worked with the Foundation in various roles - from being an active member of the Professional Education Committee and the New England Chapter Advocacy Committee to contributing his expertise to Grant Review Panels. Dr. Moss has extensive experience collaborating with industry, from biotechnology start-ups to sponsors of phase II and III clinical trials. He has also led Principal Investigator-initiated trials, held investigational new drug applications from the FDA, and spoken globally at IBD meetings as a key opinion leader. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals, and his research has been funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the American Gastroenterological Association, and the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Dr. Moss brings his perspective from clinical and academic practice to support the Foundation's strong legacy in IBD education, support, research, and advocacy. He has worked with many underserved groups with IBD, including unhoused and incarcerated patient populations. His passion for patient empowerment, and appreciation of the diverse mix of patients with IBD, informs his strategy for driving the Foundation’s mission forward.

Angela Dobes, MPH, Senior Vice President, IBD Plexus, is responsible for the overall success and growth of the IBD Plexus program, including delivering against its core goal of accelerating R&D timelines and advancing precision medicine strategies.

Angela devotes much of her time to advancing high-impact, patient-centered research and is passionate about ensuring research, care interventions and treatments are meaningful to patients. Her work has been funded through organizations such as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. She also strives to elevate the important role patient registries and biorepositories play in the pursuit of high-value research through her roles on external committees and initiatives, including The National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine project titled, Data Capacity for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: An Agenda for 2021 to 2030.

Prior to her experience at the Foundation, Angela worked for clinical technology and pharmaceutical organizations, where she has led implementation of various technology solutions focused on business optimization and accelerating the delivery of new therapies to patients safely.

Ben Kostiuk, PhD, Director, Life Science Partnerships, leads relationships between the IBD Plexus and industry members and ecosystem partners with the goal of increasing the usage and improving the utility of the dataset and biosamples. He has a strong background in both academia and industry. As a PhD student, he studied the role of the microbiome in infectious disease. Ben has also worked with a biotechnology company, where he helped lead efforts to use machine learning to extract biological relationships from scientific literature.

Carol Chapman, MPH, Associate Director, Research Engagement, uses her background in clinical research coordination and public health to develop and implement new ways to engage patients in all research activities. She works to include diverse patient voices as experienced leaders that can help research teams provide more value to their participants. By engaging patients early and often throughout the research process, she aims to build trust, improve recruitment practices, and increase adherence to study activities.

Before joining the Foundation, Carol worked in the hospital, community, and digital health technology sectors where her work focused on patient recruitment, diversity in research, and building trust in groups historically harmed by medical research.

Justine Young Hillman, MBS, Associate Director, Business and Research Operations, strives to maximize the value of IBD Plexus by collaborating with study teams to optimize biosample collection processes and overseeing biobank and laboratory vendors to ensure conversion of the finite biosamples into reusable high-quality data. In addition, she manages the IBD Plexus project selection process through which the IBD scientific community can gain access to and leverage IBD Plexus resources to advance patient-centered research. Prior to joining the Foundation, Justine worked in laboratory operations management for contract research organizations supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Rachael Poplau, Associate Director, Product Management, Digital Health and Research, is responsible for product strategy and execution. She aligns software tools and features to support the IBD Plexus platform’s vision and provide value to study networks, patients and researchers. 

Rachael has over 15 years of experience working in non-profit healthcare, including numerous projects supporting research, patient data repositories, and improving the user experience for patients, clinicians, and researchers. 

Sirimon O’Charoen, PhD, Senior Director, Data Science, oversees the IBD Plexus data science team and leads data integration from a scientific perspective and manages the analytical team to provide data science services to researchers across academia and industry. Sirimon is highly experienced in data quality assessment, transformation, curation, wrangling, profiling, standards and ontologies in biomedical and molecular data.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Sirimon worked in life science professional services with over 10 years of experience in delivering data solutions in clinical and translational research including development of data standards, data quality assessment, data curation, data management process, and system biology.

Tara Fehlmann, Manager, Data Science and Analytics, facilitates patient-centered research by helping investigators navigate the multi-modal data available through IBD Plexus. To jump start data analysis, Tara creates data products that help clean, wrangle, and synthesize the data into a collection of ready for research data tables. Along with curating data for research, she is instrumental in essential data monitoring and reporting which ensures the data accurately reflects a patient’s disease and treatment journey.

Tara has a background in epidemiology and data management, with strong academic research experience in genetic epidemiology.

Cass Condray is a graduate with a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Oklahoma with a passion for health equity research in gastroenterology. His research has been focused on clinical and translational sciences, and he is currently working on projects focused on sexual and gender minority populations with IBD as well as Indigenous communities with IBD. He is very honored to conduct research with Mayo Clinic Gastroenterology and University of Michigan Gastroenterology, have created patient resources such as prideandpoop.com aimed at decreasing the barriers to SGM health equity and health information in IBD! While research is a passion of his, he is also a staunch advocate and aims to decrease barriers to information, and volunteer with the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation often through patient education and advocacy (from a patient perspective)!

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c6sO7noAAAAJ&hl=en

Michelle Harvey is a mom, business owner, and podcast co-host. When her son was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2020, she became involved in every aspect of his new healthcare journey and could see the help the IBD community needed. Part of helping her son cope with the disease was empowering him to find ways to have hope and to become a voice in the IBD world. Being by his side showed Michelle the need for caregivers to advocate for and become patient champions. Learning the importance of research and awareness needed for IBD patients drove her to join PAC to take a more hands-on approach to research and helping the IBD community. As a caregiver, Michelle can offer another perspective that can be valuable to PAC.

Wendy Johnson has had Crohn's disease for 42 years including an ostomy. In addition to the PAC, Wendy is a board member for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation - Arizona Chapter. Her passion for finding better treatment options and a cure for Crohn's and Colitis is immeasurable. Wendy holds a Master's degree in Public Administration and specializes in corporate risk management. She is an avid NBA and WNBA fan and can be found in the stands cheering on her Suns and Mercury at home games or watching their road games on TV with her two dogs, Cubbie and Nova! Wendy is the proud mother to her amazing daughter, Naysa, who attends college in New York.

Lindsay Monaco is a full-time public health professional who happens to have Crohn's disease. She manages the complexities of IBD symptoms, work and motherhood with caffeine, yoga and sarcasm. She joined the PAC to inform IBD research and improve the lives of fellow patients and caregivers. She lives on Long Island with my husband, son and rescue dog.

Megumi Kirby earned her B.A. in Integrative Biology from Harvard College in 2023. She has research experience in marine biology and behavioral ecology and currently works as a Data Manager at Harvard. Megumi was diagnosed with IBD in 2019. Her interest in joining the IBD Plexus PAC stems from her passions for science and sharing her journey with IBD. She is especially motivated to advocate for women’s health and for the experiences of people living with ostomies. In her free time Megumi loves to run and bake for her friends and family.

Peggy Minard was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis ten years ago at the age of 57. Once medication brought her initial flare under control, she was symptom-free for a short window of time, but slowly, her active lifestyle slipped away, and she didn’t leave her house for months at a time because of flares. A year ago, she started on a biologic, and she’s gotten her life back. Since she was diagnosed, she’s had a niece and nephew diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, and her sons have a genetic risk factor for IBD. IBD is horrendous to deal with as an adult; her heart aches for children who have to endure the pain, isolation, and embarrassment of learning about and living with Crohn’s or Colitis. She is passionate about the research being done through the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation and IBD Plexus. She is honored to be on the Patient Advisory Committee because she believes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s will be cured within her lifetime.

Courtney Walls is an IBD patient of 20 years who has been involved with the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation in various volunteer capacities. In sharing her patient perspective through IBD Plexus, Courtney hopes to help inform research priorities and the creation of impactful education programs. Outside the Foundation, Courtney works full-time in higher education.