Christopher Locher, PhD is a co-founder and CEO of Versatope Therapeutics, a Lowell-based company focused on the development of a universal influenza vaccine. He has led drug discovery and development projects by coordinating the internal activities of R&D teams with external development support, key opinion leaders and biotechnology alliances. He was previously a Senior Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where he was responsible for establishing infectious disease external R&D programs. Prior to that, he was the VP of Preclinical Development at Opsona Therapeutics in Dublin, Ireland and helped build the team and pipeline with new products (biologics and new chemical entities). At Maxygen in California, he the project leader for government funded vaccine development programs for malaria and alphaviruses. He completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, was a Fulbright Hayes Research Fellow at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium and received his PhD in Tropical Medicine and BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Hawaii.