Our Team

Marco A. Biamonte, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Marco holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and performed post-doctoral studies at the Swiss Institute for Technology (ETH-Z). Marco worked as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry for 14 years, mostly in oncology. He co-led up to 3 projects simultaneously in 3 different therapeutic areas and managed up to 12 chemists. He and his colleagues have had success in advancing 2 new drugs into clinical trials (BIIB-021 and BIIB-028, respectively in Phase II and Phase I). In 2011, motivated by a long-standing desire to help underserved populations, Marco created DDTD.

Melissa Chalmers, Controller.  Melissa holds a double Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Economics from the University of Oklahoma, and a Masters in Business Administration from Colorado State University. She started her career in investment banking and then later moved to the field of monetization. She has managed budgets and finances for companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. At DDTD, Melissa is in charge of overseeing the organization’s daily accounting functions.

KathyJean Farnam, Research Associate. KathyJean received her B.S. in Biochemistry/Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 2023. During her undergraduate studies, she worked at the Institute for Genomic Medicine at UCSD as a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Bridges Intern. She worked with iPSCs and iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes to study the effects of certain drugs on Long-QT Syndrome. Her work centered on the ability to show gene-expression similarities between atrial and ventricle cardiomyocytes and those expressed by iPSC-cardiomyocytes derived from deep tissue epithelial cells. Her work volunteering with several non-profits over many years coupled with her passion for science led her to DDTD.

Jean Saunders, Associate Director. Jean earned her B.S. in Chemistry from San Diego State University, where her research was focused on synthesizing novel quantum dot precursors for biomedical imaging. She co-founded nanoComposix's lateral flow division, pioneering new surface chemistries for attaching biomolecules to plasmonic nanoparticles. Transitioning to DCN Dx in 2018, Jean developed a low-cost, visually-read rapid test to diagnose a specific viral infection reaching sensitivity in the low fM range. Now at DDTD, she leverages over a decade of experience in point-of-care diagnostics to lead R&D efforts focused on affordable, sensitive assays for tropical disease eradication.

Matthias Schwarz, Grants & Project Manager. Matthias holds a Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and performed postdoctoral studies at Affymax in Palo Alto, CA/USA. He joined Serono in Geneva, Switzerland, where he built a medicinal chemistry department and a small molecule drug discovery franchise from scratch. After the takeover by Merck KGaA, Matthias was put in charge of global NCE-research managing 350 scientists in Chemistry, HT-Screening and Bio-/Chemoinformatics. Matthias is an author on more than 30 publications and speaks five languages. At DDTD, he contributes to fundraising efforts, as well as to the development of new drugs and diagnostics.