Leadership team

Marcella Flores received her Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology specializing in viral immune responses. She pursued postdoctoral training at the Institute Curie in Paris, before returning to Columbia University to publish her studies on viral immune control. In 2015, she founded The Reagent Project after experiencing first hand the disparity between well funded and under funded labs. Her mission is to level the playing field for scientists so that more scientists participate in cutting edge discoveries.   

Ken Cadwell received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of California, Berkeley, and performed his postdoctoral research at Washington University School of Medicine, where he investigated the intersection between viral infections and inflammatory disease. He joined the Skirball Institute and the Department of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine in 2010 where he is currently an associate professor. His laboratory strives to understand how immune responses are regulated during an infection.

Jeanne Kagle received her PhD from Cornell University from the Department of Microbiology. Dr. Kagle has taught biology and mentored undergraduate student research at a Mansfield University since 2004.   In this position, she has cringed at needing to buy many-fold excesses of reagent and seen students’ research forestalled due to lack of reagents.  In 2016, Jeanne became involved in The Reagent Project to help decrease the waste involved in research and help provide reagents for educational experiences that might not otherwise be possible.

Thomas Asher is director of several programs related to international education at the Social Science Research Council. These include a fellowship program to support the next generation of African social scientists working on peace, security, and development issues. Dr. Asher has served on an advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He also has written on participatory politics, the effects of economic liberalization on political life in South Asia, and implications of a transition from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy. Dr. Asher holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago and previously served as a research fellow at Human Rights Watch–Africa and acting executive director of Food Aid Management, a food security organization.