Robert F. Johnston, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D., Senior Director of Technology Development

Dawne M. Miller, Head of Business Development
Sam Milstein, Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Development Consultant


Robert F. Johnston, President & Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Johnston is currently the head of Robert Johnston Associates. Mr. Johnston was President of Johnston Associates, a venture capital firm which he founded in 1968 to provide seed capital for start-ups emerging in the biotechnology and healthcare fields. Mr. Johnston is the executive chairman of Pharmos Corporation, which acquired Vela Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He was acting CEO at ExSAR from July 2001 until the appointment of Dr. Almassian as CEO and President in August 2005. He has founded numerous public companies including Sepracor, Cytogen (sold to EUSA Pharma), I-STAT (sold to Abbott), Genex and Envirogen (sold to Shaw Environmental), and was instrumental in the early formation of many private companies such as Sonomed, Immunicon (since sold to J&J), PharmaStem (formerly Biocyte), Praelux (since sold to Amersham/GE) and Targent (since sold to Spectrum Pharmaceuticals). Mr. Johnston served as CEO of Cytogen from July 1988 to April 1989 and as CEO of Praelux (formerly SEQ) from November 1997 to January 1999. Additionally, he is a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, and the Executive Committee of the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. Johnston received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from New York University.  

Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D., Senior Director of Technology Development
Dr. Hamuro joined ExSAR in 2002 and has led the development of hydrogen/ deuterium exchange (H/D-Exchange) analysis of protein dynamics, protein-ligand interactions and protein-protein interactions using mass spectrometry.

Prior to joining ExSAR, he was instrumental in the development of modern H/D-Exchange technology at the University of California, San Diego, in the laboratory of Professor Virgil Woods, scientific co-founder of ExSAR.

Dr. Hamuro previously conducted postdoctoral research on combinatorial chemistry and solid-phase chemistry at DuPont Central Research and Development and later on antibacterial β-peptides at the University of Pennsylvania in the laboratories of Professor William DeGrado. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Pittsburgh under Professor Andrew Hamilton on protein structure mimetics.
Dawne M. Miller, Head of Business Development
Dawne Miller joined ExSAR in 2002 and has held various roles of increasing responsibility within the company since then. As of June 2009, Dawne oversees Business Development for ExSAR. Dawne has extensive experience in client relations and draws on her solid knowledge of customer service to manage ExSAR’s client base. Before joining ExSAR, Dawne worked at Synthon Chiragenics, a biotechnology company focused on providing carbohydrate-based chiral technology for drug discovery.

Company Profile (History) | Senior Management Team | Board of Directors | Scientific Advisory Board
Robert F. Johnston | Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D. | Dawne M. Miller | Sam Milstein, Ph.D