The Team
LTR is comprised of medical, regulatory, and financial experts. Team members share several core attributes, including: a passion for what we do, attention to detail, resourcefulness, business intelligence, and integrity.
Joel B. Braunstein, MD, MBA
Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Braunstein co-founded LifeTech Research (LTR) in 2003. In addition to guiding LTR’s vision and strategy, he provides strong analytics in the areas of clinical trial design and methods, biostatistics, outcomes research, and healthcare policy and economics. Dr. Braunstein is a board-certified cardiologist and internist who also holds an Adjunct Assistant Professorship position at the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.
Ilana Fogelman, MD, MPH
Founder, Chief Operating Officer
Dr. Fogelman co-founded LifeTech Research in 2003. She specializes in corporate and product pipeline valuation, drug development, clinical trial design and analysis, and FDA regulations. Her primary responsibility at LTR is to oversee operations, in addition to identifying and evaluating investment opportunities in companies with emerging life sciences technologies. She also evaluates regulatory strategies and risk, and helps clients interpret FDA actions, decisions and requirements.
Ellen Brady, MD, MPH
Vice-President, Clinical and Regulatory Research
Dr. Brady joined LTR in 2004. She is a board certified general internist with a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Her early career in academia focused on issues related to healthcare delivery, international health and public policy. Currently, an adjunct professorship within the University of Utah College of Pharmacy Pharmacotherapy Outcomes Research Center allows continued expression of those interests. Subsequently, and prior to LifeTech, Dr. Brady spent 20 years within the pharmaceutical industry, working for both major (Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Serono) and development-stage companies (NPS Pharmaceuticals and Esperion Therapeutics). Most recently, she was Senior Director, Clinical Research at Esperion prior to its acquisition by Pfizer.
Senai Asefaw, MD, MBA
Vice-President, Medical Technology Adoption
Dr. Asefaw is a board-certified internist who has great expertise in economic and financial modeling, and drug pipeline valuation. In addition to his role at LifeTech Research, he is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the major teaching hospital of the Yale School of Medicine.
Drew Applefield, PhD
Analyst
Dr. Applefield joined LTR in 2006, as a biotechnology, drug, and devices analyst. In addition to having a strong quantitative background, and deep understanding of fundamental value drivers, he brings a wealth of pre-clinical and basic science knowledge to assist in the identification and valuation of assets originating from platform technologies and tools.
Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH
Senior Advisor, Clinical Trial Design and Analysis
Dr. Shah's expertise includes meta-analysis, medical informatics, and understanding bias in randomized trials and observational studies. His professional experience includes designing and managing projects within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in a consulting capacity as well as four years with Harvard's Technology Assessment Group. He has served on three national advisory committees for the American College of Physicians and is an adjunct lecturer to students at two medical schools in New York. He is widely published in journals including JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Annals of Internal Medicine, and is the Principal Investigator of two NIH grants.