Dr. Robert Winn
Co-Founder/Executive Director
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Winn received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Idaho State University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include understanding the interface between the immune system and cancer and how this interface can be modulated to provide better cancer outcomes.
Dr. Richard Rovin
Co-Founder
Rovin trained at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and is a board certified Neurosurgeon with over 30 years of clinical experience in treating patients and families with brain tumors. Along with Dr. Robert Winn, Dr. Rovin co-founded the UMBTC in 2005, forming a partnership between NMU and UP Health Systems that has endured nearly two decades. He relocated to Milwaukee in 2015 and currently is leading an effort to bring an oncolytic virus to treat glioblastoma to clinical trial.
Dr. Sonia Geschwindt
Research Associate/Clinical Director
Geschwindt received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Bridgeport and her Doctor of Medicine degree from Saint Louis University School of Medicine. She was a neurosurgery resident and skull base oncology fellow at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and is currently a practicing neurosurgeon at Upper Peninsula Health System - Marquette.
Matt Jennings
Laboratory Director
My name is Matt Jennings and I have a non-traditional, circuitous route to the positions that I currently hold. I spent approximately eleven years in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, basic research and clinical laboratory industries prior to returning to school to attain my Ph.D. I am a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, where I obtained a PhD in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology (BMMB) in 2015. My prior degrees include a Master of Science degree in Biology from Bloomsburg Universtiy of Pennsylvania in 1997. I currently teach undergraduate and graduate students at Northern Michigan University, where I am the program director for the Clinical Molecular Diagnostics graduate programs and serve as the laboratory director for the Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center (UMBTC).
While at PSU, my thesis work was conducted in the Center for Eukaryotic Gene Regulation in the laboratory of Dr. Song Tan, where I investigated nucleosome recognition by chromatin complexes using crystallographic and biochemical methods. Since graduation, I have had adjunct faculty positions at Lock Haven University and Juniata College. Prior to receiving my Ph.D., I was an adjunct professor of Biology at Camden County Community College in New Jersey, while working full-time as a supervisor in a clinical laboratory.
I began my career in biology by joining a 6-week research expedition to Mongolia shortly after graduation from Bloomsburg University in 1997, where I traveled with a team focused on ecological research intended to support a conservation interest. Upon my return, I began work with Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals, where I worked in the testing laboratory evaluating the quality of the influenza vaccine at various stages of production. I then joined a basic research facility at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research performing diabetes and HIV research. Two years later, the lab dissolved and I relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where I began work with a privately funded biotechnology start-up, Osiris Therapeutics. At Osiris, I performed research on human Mesenchymal Stem Cells, investigating stem cell plasticity. After three years in the biotechnology arena, I joined Advanced Biomedical Laboratories (ABML) clinical laboratory in New Jersey, where I served as a clinical supervisor for six years at a high complexity laboratory performing HIV genotyping in support of NIH-funded clinical trials, during which time I received my Master's degree and served as an adjunct professor. After working at ABML, I started the BMMB program at PSU in 2008.
