Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute Announces New Board Directors, Officers

Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) announced that at its recent annual members meeting five directors were elected or re-elected to three year terms on the organization’s Board of Directors.

Elected to a first term were:

• Steve Bell, Managing Partner, Steve Bell Communications; and
• Renita DiStefano, Vice President of Information Technology/Chief Information Officer, Seneca Gaming Corporation.

Re-elected to an additional three-year term were:

• E.J. Burke, Co-President, Key Community Bank;
• Venu Govindaraju, PhD, Vice President for Research & Economic Development, University at Buffalo; and
• Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD, Deputy Director Cancer Care, Chair OB/GYN Department, Executive Director Center for Immunotherapy, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Institute.

In addition, the Board elected its officers for 2019-20:

• Chair: John G. Horn, Esq., Partner, Harter Secrest & Emery LLP;
• Vice Chair: E.J. Burke, Co-President, Key Community Bank;
• Secretary: Jill K. Bond, Esq., Senior Vice President, Rich Products Corporation;
• Chair of the Finance Committee: Richard C., Hamister, Senior Vice President, New York Region President, Northwest Bank

“A key to any non-profit’s success is a diverse, skilled, and engaged board,” Horn said.  “The team we have assembled, as typified by our new and renewing members, checks every one of those boxes.  I am humbled and delighted to serve with them.”

“HWI is a remarkable research center where scientists work on therapies and cures from which our children and grandchildren will benefit,” Bell added.  “It is also a premier independent medical innovator you would expect to locate in other major American cities ten times our size, but it’s in Buffalo; and the best is yet to come: Building on Nobel Prize winner Herbert Hauptman’s work, HWI aspires to become the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus’ ideas and solutions generator.”

Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute’s work improves human health by studying the causes of diseases, as well as potential therapies, at their basic molecular level.  HWI is a founding member of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and resides in a state-of-the-art research facility at 700 Ellicott Street.  For more information, visit hwi.buffalo.edu.