General Manager
WCG Velos
Ron Thornton serves as the General Manager of WCG Velos and also serves on the Senior Executive Team of WCG Clinical. Prior to Velos, he most recently served as Chief Executive Officer of TOPAZ Technologies. Mr. Thornton has 30 years of software sales and management experience and served for several years at a Big Four firm. His expertise includes global business development and strategic business operations. His personal center of influence boasts a network of accomplished leaders and innovators across diverse corporate cultures. Mr. Thornton graduated from Washington and Lee University with a degree in Accounting and Business Administration.
CEO & Co-Founder
Devana Solutions
During his tenure leading a clinical research site, Barry Lake became frustrated with the manual methods and inefficiencies of clinical trial startup management and the capture, analysis and reporting of key trial performance metrics. He looked for a better solution, but couldn’t find one, so along with two key managers they developed Devana Solutions.
Today, Barry is the CEO of Devana Solutions, guiding the growth and expansion of the leading and most innovative software platforms for the clinical trials industry. Barry is a successful entrepreneur who has started and successfully grown a number of businesses over his career and been actively involved in the healthcare space for well over 12 years
CEO
Florence Healthcare
Ryan is CEO of Florence Healthcare. Florence advances clinical research through software—its electronic Investigator Site File (eISF) helps over 10,000 research teams around the world take their day back from paper.
Before joining Florence, Ryan was president of Pubget (acquired by the Copyright Clearance Center), a research platform serving clinicians at over 600 hospitals and research institutions worldwide. Ryan joined Pubget from Microsoft’s SharePoint team, where he helped the web’s largest sites make information understandable and accessible with document management technology.
Ryan has an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from UC Berkeley, where he was a Price Fellow. In his free time he is a pretty good pilot and a terrible golfer.
SVP, Product and Strategy
WCG
Sonia Abrol drives product strategy, sales, and marketing for WCG Velos, an industry-leading suite of products and services in the clinical research domain. She has more than 25 years of experience in the design, development, management, and growth of enterprise products in the healthcare space. As a founding engineering team member of the Velos eResearch suite, she has been instrumental in defining the product engineering strategy, architecture, and innovative technology stack.
In her current role as Senior Vice President, Product and Strategy at WCG Velos, Ms. Abrol is responsible for contributing to the development, implementation, and marketing of the WCG Velos product offerings. She has worked with more than 30 Academic Medical Centers and 35 Cancer Centers to refine product strategy for the WCG Velos eResearch product line. More than 35,000 clinical studies and over 2.5 million subjects have been run through the software platform designed under her leadership.
As a seasoned executive, she has in-depth knowledge of the healthcare industry with a primary focus on clinical research management, interoperability solutions, EDC and bio-specimen management systems, and FDA and HIPAA compliance procedures.
Director-Research Information Technology
University of Kansas Medical Center
Dinesh Pal Mudaranthakam is the Director of Research Information Technology/Co-Director of Investigator Initiated Trials (I.I.T) as well as a Teaching Associate at KUMC within the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science. Dinesh has been in the directorial role since 2013. Prior to that Dinesh worked for CERNER as a Senior Software Developer in the pharmacy department. He has a background in Business Administration (MBA) with a specialization in leadership and administration; along with a Masters degree in Computer Science. He has over a decade of experience in building and implementing innovative software solutions.
Systems Analyst
Versiti
Adam Pape is a Systems Analyst at Versiti. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. He began working with Versiti/BloodCenter of Wisconsin in 2015 where he was immediately involved in the implementation of Velos. After the successful launch of the software, he currently provides support for the current users while also continuing the growth of Velos across the entire organization. In his spare time, Adam is an adventurous person who recently traveled to Apostle Islands in Wisconsin as well as Pictured Rocks in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
Director - Office of Clinical Trials
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Research Information Manager
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Sandra Powe is the Research Information Manager at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Health Information Management from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
She began working in research as a student worker in the Cancer Research & Registry Department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She was later hired as Clinical Trials Coordinator in 2001.
During her 18 years in the department, she served as Interim Clinical Trials Manager for three years. She joined the Office of Clinical Trials in July 2021, as a project manager and later advanced to Research Information Manager.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family, shopping, and relaxing on the patio in the evenings.
Associate Project Manager
WCG
Andrea Barker specializes in new-project implementations and account management. She utilizes her previous research experience of over 24 years to assist clients with research management, research workflow processes and setup, customizations, financial management, Medicare coverage analysis and biobanking. Andrea joined WCG Velos in October 2020 after spending 13 years with the University of California utilizing the Velos eResearch application. She was also directly involved in the design and testing of the eResearch SPA module.
Sr. Director
WCG- Velos
Harry Chahal has over 20 years of experience in leadership and management of multi-disciplinary teams in healthcare software technology development, sales, delivery, and after-sales service. A founding team member of Velos and Velos eResearch suite, Harry has played a key role in the current penetration and standing of the company and its solutions in the marketplace. He has delivered on key strategic implementations of enterprise-class products. He is functional as well as a technical expert whose expertise spans across regulatory software, clinical trials, information technology, and electronic medical records. Prior to Harry's current role, he managed the business operations of the Velos eCardo business unit and IT operations at Velos. Harry holds a Masters in Business Administration, Bachelors in Business Accounting, Diploma in Computer Applications, and is a PMP certified professional as well as a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE).
Director – Project Delivery
WCG Velos
Rehan Anwar has more than 20 years of experience in quality, customer management and project delivery in technology solutions for clinical research and healthcare. His key strengths are a tremendous can-do attitude, diligence, attention to detail, a commitment to customer happiness, and a deep determination to deliver. He has overseen many versions of the products at Velos, across many technologies and developed by multiple teams of software engineers. A key aspect of his work with customers has been creating an environment where difficult problems can be reexamined with a fresh perspective, and solutions can be tailored uniquely for a customer within the bounds of process, time, resources, and technology. Rehan is a certified Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI – ACP), certified ScrumMaster (CSM), and a certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Director
WCG Velos
Suresh Kumar is a PMP certified Project Manager and currently the Client Relationship Executive and Head of AsiaPac at WCG Velos. Having an engineering background and a remarkable talent to understand business challenges, he leads project teams to successfully deliver Velos solutions at multiple client sites. He has over 25 years of IS/IT and project management experience in many verticals and has spent the last 15 years in the healthcare domain. Committed to helping people and processes, Suresh also works with many charitable and non-profit organisations such as ALS New England, Y (YMCA) Board of Directors.
Director of Informatics
University of Chicago
Rajan Gopalakrishnan is the Director of Informatics for the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center for over 11 years. His team manages the CMTS and Clinical Research Operations workflow applications as well as the administrative informatics systems.
Prior to this, Rajan has been a healthcare and public health informatics consultant for over 7 years and has been designing and delivering software solutions since 1996.
Rajan also serves as a Cancer Informatics Advisory Group member for the North American Association of Cancer Registries (NAACR) and participates in a few open data standards initiatives. In his spare time, you will find Rajan either stargazing or rail watching.
Director of Institutional Research
Yuma
Sarah Medina Rodriguez, MD, CCRP serves as the Director of Institutional Research at Yuma Regional Medical Center since 2016. She is a certified clinical research professional with a strong medical background and 15 years of clinical research experience in contract and budget negotiations, grant writing, internal auditing, regulatory compliance, developing policy and training procedures all exemplifying career progression and successful action plans of management in industry funded (drug and device) and federally funded trials in cardiology, oncology, hepatology, COVID-19 and population health. She and her research team put Yuma on the map for several device trials that led to FDA approval, continues to maintain a favorable industry presence on a global level and has been published.
She began her clinical research career in 2006 as a clinical research coordinator at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City working alongside key opinion leaders in Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. Having found her true calling and passion she continued on this career path when she moved to Phoenix, Arizona and demonstrated increasing levels of leadership roles where she was the Research Operations Director for 2 Centers of Excellence at Banner Research – Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center.
She obtained her Doctor of Medicine degree at St. Luke’s Medical Center in the Philippines and earned a BA in Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In her spare time she enjoys gardening, creating art with her children and globe-trotting adventures with her family.
Research Compliance
Yuma Regional Medical Center