Management Team

Dr. Weidanz brings over twenty years of experience in biotechnology with an emphasis in immunology, immunotherapy and immunodiagnostic product development. In addition to Receptor Logic, Inc., he co-founded two other biotech companies and serves as a scientific board member for one company. He has a breadth of experience in research management, technology commercialization and product development. Dr. Weidanz formed Receptor Logic in 2003 and has since served as its principal scientist. He also is the founding active Director for the Center for Immunotherapeutic Research and is a tenured associate professor at Texas Tech University Health Science Center. As Center Director he is responsible for building an interactive group of researchers to develop novel immunotherapeutics. Prior to his academic appointment and Receptor Logic, Dr. Weidanz was co-founder and Principal Scientist at Sunol Molecular Corporation, where he created and managed the T cell receptor (TCR) technology. Before starting Sunol Molecular, Dr. Weidanz worked for Baxter Diagnostics as a research scientist having as his primary responsibility the establishment of several protein expression systems that included bacteria, insect cells and mammalian cells. In addition, he was involved in assay development and contributed to the development of immunodiagnostic assays for cardiac markers and infectious diseases.

Dr. Weidanz has been honored with six awards from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center since 2003, has been an invited speaker to over 50 national and international technical conferences, has 13 pending or issued patents, has numerous journal publications, and a book chapter. Further, Dr. Weidanz has received $19M in awards for a variety of research pursuits including the NIH and NIST.

He earned his B.S. (Biology) from West Virginia University, and both his M.P.H. (Epidemiology) and Ph.D. (Molecular and Cellular Biology) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Thomas A. Harlan is the founder and CEO of ETI. He has participated as a principal or consultant in virtually every phase of early-stage ventures and since 1999 while at ETI has managed 14 life sciences companies from technologies licensed from The University of Oklahoma, Texas Tech University, Texas Tech School of Pharmacy, and The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to ETI, he founded Handle Technologies, Inc., a computer software engineering firm. While at Handle, as CEO, he raised over $12,000,000 in venture capital to develop an integrated office automation system to run under the Unix operating system. In addition to being the chief architect of this system, he negotiated multi-million dollar distribution agreements with several major computer companies. Prior to Handle, he founded and later sold Mandata, Inc., a data processing company serving independent insurance agencies, for in excess of three million dollars in cash and stock. Prior to Mandata, he participated as a partner in Harlan Lasater, a transportation company. Mr. Harlan built the company to over two million in revenue and eventually sold his interest to a business partner. Prior to Harlan-Lasater, he served as a member of the technical staff with the computer systems division of Arthur Andersen & Company. A generalist, Mr. Harlan has a technical foundation and is co-inventor in nine patents. He holds a bachelors degree in economics from Southern Methodist University and an interdisciplinary masters degree in theory and research from the University of Pennsylvania.

Chris Carlson joined Receptor Logic, Inc. in 2011 as Vice President of Operations. As Vice President of Operations, he is responsible for managing contracts, projects, and technical development.

Prior to joining Receptor Logic, Chris worked at Life Technologies. There he worked in R&D, Product Management and Operations Management. Chris led operations for chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides and protein manufacturing. His responsibilities included; scaling up manufacturing, designing a new production facility, and managing day-to-day operations. As a Six Sigma Black Belt, Chris led numerous process improvement projects to improve productivity, reducing manufacturing costs and improving process performance. He successfully led new product introductions and a successful site consolidation project.

Chris has a B.S. and M.S. in Biochemical Nutrition from Michigan State University and a MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.