About Us
Our Leadership
Christopher Bartley
Managing Director
Christopher Bartley is the Managing Director for Waisman Biomanufacturing. He has a B.S. in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has over 20 years of experience in research and product development, including over 15 at WB developing and manufacturing a variety of products including recombinant proteins in CHO, plasmid DNA vaccines in E. coli fermentation systems, viral vectors such as AAV, and live microbial therapies (e.g. live attenuated Listeria monocytogenes).
He is a subject matter expert in fermentation and bioreactor controls as well as all aspects of downstream processing (chromatography, TFF, filtration). Prior to becoming Managing Director, Mr. Bartley served as Director of Operations, and supervised the full manufacturing staff involved in development of platform processes and executing contract manufacturing services as well as the facility team.
Diana Drier
Director of Operations
Diana Drier is the Director of Operations for Waisman Biomanufacturing. She has a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Carnegie Mellon University and has over 40 years of combined experience in academic laboratories, small biotech and large pharmaceutical industry doing research, development and product manufacture. This experience includes over 17 years at WB developing and manufacturing a wide variety of cell therapies products.
Prior to becoming Director of Operations, Ms. Drier served as Manager of the Cell Therapies Manufacturing Team at WB with specific expertise in large format cell culture strategies and stem cell culture and differentiation. She supervised manufacturing staff involved in tech transfer, process development and scale up culture related to cGMP manufacture of client contract projects. As Director of Operations, Ms. Drier supervises both the Cell Therapies and Downstream Bioprocessing Manufacturing Teams and the Facilities Team.
John Vedo
Director of Quality Assurance
John Vedo is the Director of Quality Assurance at Waisman Biomanufacturing. Mr. Vedo has a B.S. in Biology from Indiana University and a M.B.A. from DePaul University. Mr. Vedo has 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical and biotech cGMP environments. Prior to assuming his current role, Mr. Vedo served as the Manager of Quality Assurance at Stratatech Corporation (Madison, WI) and before that as Manager of Quality and Finance at Networked Robotics Corporation (Evanston, IL).
Mr. Vedo began his career at Searle Pharmaceuticals (Skokie, IL) where he managed a storage and distribution facility for active pharmaceutical ingredients, as well as the site’s reference standard collection, discovery chemistry collection, and the site controlled substance file. As Director of Quality Assurance at WB, Mr. Vedo leads a team of quality professionals to ensure operational regulatory compliance with federal guidances as well as internal standard operating procedures.
Rita Stiemke
Director of Quality Control
Rita Stiemke, Ph.D. is the Director of Quality Control at Waisman Biomanufacturing. Ms. Stiemke has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Ms. Stiemke has experience in leading quality control teams performing biopharmaceutical method development and method validation for product release and stability testing. Prior to her current role, Ms. Stiemke was a Research Scientist and Associate Group Leader at PPD (Madison, WI), as well as Scientist and Team Leader for DuPont (Madison, WI).
The emphasis of Rita’s experience is in leading cGMP compliant quality testing including cell-based bioassay potency, host cell protein, and viral replication competence method development. As Director of Quality Control at WB, Ms. Stiemke leads a team of QC specialists that develop and validate methods, as well as perform QC testing for product release and storage in collaboration with clients, the WB manufacturing team, the WB Quality Assurance team.
Brian Dattilo
Director of Business Development and Administration
Brian Dattilo, Ph.D. is the Director of Business Development and Administration at Waisman Biomanufacturing. Dr. Dattilo received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Vanderbilt University where he focused on recombinant protein production, purification, and analytical characterization. Prior to Waisman Dr. Dattilo was in public service serving as a Program Manager at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), where he was responsible for a multi-million dollar development budget supporting novel platform technologies and their application to vaccine, biological therapeutic, and diagnostic development for pandemic influenza and biodefense applications.
Since joining WB in 2012 he has led client interaction, technical product development plan development, project budgeting and cost estimation, and built business cases for new platform investment.