Our Start
RockStep's team is driven by a passion to save lives by helping get drugs to market faster.
The team recognized that preclinical drug discovery and in-vivo research operations were in a state of data chaos and the problem was increasing rapidly. Until the release of Climb(tm), academia and industry had no good tools for managing data and operations for in-vivo research. A typical research organization used email, share-folders, spreadsheets, binders, and legacy point solutions to manage crucial data and complex lab operations.
Backed the National Institutes of Health, RockStep spent several years working with a tier-1 pharmaceutical company, a large public biotech, and the lab of a Nobel Laureate (Dr. Prusiner at UCSF), to design and create a platform that is now widely adopted by world-leading biomedical research and drug discovery organizations.
With vast industry experience and a passion for innovation, RockStep's founders built an elegant, modern, comprehensive, but easy to use, informatics platform for pre and non-clinical research called Climb(tm). At its inception, RockStep won several highly competitive innovation awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The awards (GM112206) were based on transformative ideas for building a pure cloud lab informatics system that is now revolutionizing the way preclinical laboratory workflows are managed.
RockStep has also won awards from Microsoft to conduct co-development projects and to access advanced technologies in the Azure cloud. In spite of the fact that Climb runs on all platforms, RockStep has recently be been awarded the coveted Microsoft ISV designation.
RockStep continues to work with frontier scientists and engineers on some of the world's most advanced technologies to ensure Climb leads the industry with a platform for the lab of the now and the lab of the future.
Chuck Donnelly
CEO/President/BOD
Co-founder of RockStep, Chuck has a degree in Computer Science. Prior to RockStep, Chuck was Director of Computational Sciences at the Jackson Laboratory (JAX), where he led work on intractable computational problems for numerous disease areas including cancer, and diabetes.. Chuck's work at JAX was funded by the NIH, HHMI, and JAX. Prior to JAX, Chuck was in the Space Astrophysics Group at UC Berkeley where he directed development of software systems for NASA orbiting platforms, worked on the Space Shuttle ground control, and led development of software for imbedded systems, and, algorithms for radio astronomy. Chuck has published articles and papers in peer reviewed journals, and presented at conferences around the world. As CEO, Chuck brings a wealth of business experience, leadership, and management experience to the RockStep team.
Julie Morrison
EVP/BOD
Co-founder of RockStep, Julie has a degree in Microbiology. Prior to joining RockStep, she worked at IDEXX labs developing assays for detecting contamination in public water supplies and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developing assays for detecting biological surface contamination for deep space missions. With RockStep, Julie works closely with researchers in industry and academia to understand their pain points. She uses this knowledge to manage the product roadmap and position Climb within drug discovery research. As EVP of RockStep, Julie manages company operations and works closely with the CEO to develop the company's strategy, financial models, and investment portfolio. Julie has published articles on information systems for research and lectured at industry conferences.
Ray Pawlicki
Board Director
In his former role as Chief Information Officer (CIO) at BiogenIdec and a member of the Executive Committee, Ray Pawlicki was instrumental in restructuring the IT organization, and transforming IT into a strategic asset pivotal to the $8 billion biotech company's success. Prior to BiogenIdec he worked for eight years at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, A.G., serving as both CIO of the U.S. affiliate and Global CIO of the Switzerland-based, $27 billion enterprise. For RockStep, Ray works closely with the RockStep team providing deep strategic guidance.
Ben Walton
Ben has a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Maine. Before joining RockStep Solutions, Ben worked at the Jackson Laboratory in the Computational Sciences Group developing algorithms for bioinformatics analysis. While at Jackson, Ben developed a strong interest in software engineering. He joined RockStep with a passion to work on emerging technologies in a company with a mission to help bring cures to market faster.
Catherine Chipman
Software Quality Assurance and Release Manager
Catherine earned her B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Maine at Machias and her A.S. in Applied Marine Biology and Oceanography from Southern Maine Community College. Catherine spent time building ocean surface drifters and researching genetic drift in local populations of Osmerus mordax. Catherine has over 7 years of user support experience and over 4 years of software training and documentation experience. When Catherine is not working in the Portland office, she is testing the elevation boundaries of Climb by checking in from the summits of the New England 4,000 foot mountain peaks.
Gennae Lynch
Customer Engagement Manager
Gennae obtained her Master's degree in Technology Management specializing in Project Management from the University of Maryland Global Campus.
For the past 10 years, Gennae has been working in the capacity of as Business Analyst and Project Manager for enterprise migrations, enterprise implementations and IT infrastructure development for both corporate, academic, healthcare systems and government initiatives. Gennae joined the RockStep team with enthusiasm of contributing to the customer experience from on-boarding to the implementation and go-live of Climb in their environment.