Rustam (Russ) Yukhananov, PhD, MBA

Founder & President. Russ is responsible for strategic direction and overall supervision of Mansfield Bio-Incubator’s operation. He is a scientist and successful biotech entrepreneur.  Russ is CEO and co-founder of Precision Biosystems, a manufacturing company developing small-scale automation. He is a member of advisory board at several bioinformatics companies and scientific journals. Prior to starting his entrepreneurial carrier he was a faculty at Harvard Medical School and director of Laboratory of Neurogenomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Before that he was a director of Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at University Wisconsin-Madison. He has multiple US and international patents for device design and pharmaceuticals. Russ is an author and co-author of more than 50 peer review publications.  He earned his medical degree at the Second Pirogov’s Institute in Moscow and his PhD at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (Moscow, Russia) and and his MBA at UMass Boston.

Alexander Margulis, PhD

Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Margulis has more than 20 years of science, operations, and business development experience in the Life Science industry. Trained as a cellular and molecular biologist, his accomplishments include a dozen authored scientific papers and numerous abstracts. In business development, Dr. Margulis increased sales by 200% within two years in the US and Canada, placing the Capital Equipment instruments into world-class academic and biotech/pharma accounts in the Boston area. He has overseen the growth of the incubator. Notably, he was critical in securing the money for Mansfield Bio-Incubator's 15,000 square feet expansion, which was completed in Q1, 2022. Recently, he successfully led efforts in receiving a $1.2M award from EDA towards making Mansfield Bio-Incubator as a hub for for Southeastern MA life science ecosystem. Alex holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Stony Brook University.

Richard Sousa

Treasurer. Richard is a successful entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience. He began his career by starting a local transportation business, which is now a multi-million dollar business serving thousands of customers. He is a founder and investor in more than dozen companies in the transportation, real estate, software, and medical device industries. His businesses have generated over 350 jobs in Massachusetts. One of the ventures he founded, Vam Realty Trust, owns a 63 acre facility with a 323,000 sq. ft. building; part of this building will be converted into lab space for the life science industry that will be operated and managed by Mansfield Bio-Incubator.

JULIA RASHBA-STEP, PHD

Mentorship Coordinator Dr. Julia Rashba-Step is a senior pharmaceutical professional with an extensive background in nanotechnology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.  Julia has experience working at both small companies (Epic Therapeutics) and global pharmaceutical companies including Baxter, Wyeth and Pfizer, where she held positions of growing responsibilities, leading formulation, packaging and delivery groups.

Julia's most recent position was a Vice President of Research & Development and Alliance Management at Phosphorex where she worked closely with Pharma and Biotech partners to help advance cutting edge innovative technologies into the critical pre-clinical and clinical stage programs.

Dr Rashba-Step has multiple scientific publications in the field, as well as patents and and serves on multiple Advisory Boards.

Julia is passionate about mentoring and coaching as the way of giving back to the community. Julia was a Co-chair of Women’s leadership Network at Pfizer, served as a Mentor for HBA (Healthcare Business Women’s association. Julia received a Life coach certification with the focus on career development coaching. Julia served as a mentor for MassBio Connect program, helping biotech startups to develop their business cases.

AleX ShLYANKEVICH, PHD

Investor Relations Director Alex Shlyankevich has over 25 years of technical and leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including at Moderna Therapeutics, where he contributed to multiple drug development and commercialization programs. Complementing his industry expertise, Alex has 8 years of ongoing partner experience in life science venture capital, resulting in a number of exits via acquisitions and IPO. He currently serves on the board of directors for four companies and advises his portfolio startups on business development strategy. Alex holds an MS and PhD from the First Moscow State Medical University.