C-Path Names Karen Bernstein Board Chair and Welcomes Yalonda Howze and Milad Alucozai as Board Directors

C-Path strengthens its board with senior industry, legal and scientific expertise as it broadens the collaborations that advance drug development

TUCSON, Ariz., July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Critical Path Institute® (C-Path) today announced new leadership on its Board of Directors. Karen Bernstein, Ph.D., co-founder and chair of BioCentury Inc., has been elected as chair, effective July 1, 2026. She succeeds M. Wainwright Fishburn, Jr., J.D. The board has also appointed Yalonda Howze, J.D., and Milad Alucozai, DrPH, MPH, M.Sc., as members.

The institute has helped transform care in disease areas ranging from type 1 diabetes to polycystic kidney disease to Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and its new European headquarters in Amsterdam has extended that work internationally. Recent initiatives reflect the same ambition: One to Millions is scaling individualized therapeutic breakthroughs into solutions for broader patient populations; the New Approach Methodologies Developer Coalition is advancing methods that reduce animal testing; the Global Evidence in Medicine initiative is studying how Parkinson's disease progression varies by sex-specific biological factors; and the Critical Path Disease Modeling Coalition is building regulatory-grade disease progression and care models, beginning with pediatric inflammatory bowel disease.

As C-Path works to build a new paradigm for evaluating efficacy and safety, Bernstein, Howze and Alucozai join the board to help guide this phase.

Karen Bernstein, Incoming Board Chair

Bernstein has served on the C-Path board since March 2023 and has worked in the biopharmaceutical industry since 1987. She co-founded BioCentury in 1992, serving as editor-in-chief until 2015. She has been a director at Ovid Therapeutics, a trustee of the Keck Graduate Institute and a member of the Board of Overseers of Scripps Research and the Board of Mind What Matters, among other positions. Her honors include induction into the Biotechnology Hall of Fame, recognition by Scientific American as one of the 100 most influential people in biotech, and selection as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal's 100 Women of Influence.

Yalonda Howze, Board Member

Howze brings nearly two decades of executive leadership and legal experience across the biotechnology and life-science sectors, with credentials in genetic medicine and autoimmune therapeutic development. She was named interim chief executive officer and president of Generation Bio in October 2025, after joining the company as chief legal officer in April 2023. She previously served as executive vice president and chief legal officer at Codiak BioSciences and spent more than a decade as a partner at the law firm Mintz. She has structured the legal and regulatory groundwork that lets new classes of medicine advance toward patients.

Milad Alucozai, Board Member

Alucozai is a longtime leader in the U.S. biotechnology and startup community as a founder, investor, operator and community builder, bridging computational biology and AI-driven drug development. He is co-founder and general partner of Pamir Ventures, which he launched with Roger Ferguson, former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and co-founder and board member of Revalia Bio, a human-biology data infrastructure company. Recognized in 2025 as one of the top 100 early-stage investors, he serves as an external advisor to Amgen and as a member of the Advisory Committee at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

"Karen, Yalonda, and Milad's board appointments come at a moment when our work reaches more diseases and more partners than at any point in our history," said C-Path Chief Executive Officer Klaus Romero, M.D., M.S., FCP. "Karen knows where the field has succeeded, where it has failed, and why. Yalonda has brought new classes of medicine to patients. Milad builds and funds companies working at the frontier of biology and computation. The questions ahead of us are tough. These are the people I want helping us find the answers."

Consistent with C-Path's role as a neutral, trusted third party in drug development, the Board of Directors includes sector leaders, former senior officials of the FDA and the European Medicines Agency, as well as patient advocates.

About Critical Path Institute
Critical Path Institute® (C-Path) is an independent, nonprofit established in 2005 as a public-private partnership in response to the FDA's Critical Path Initiative. C-Path's mission is to lead collaborations that advance better treatments for people worldwide. Globally recognized as a pioneer in accelerating drug development, C-Path has established numerous international consortia, programs and initiatives that currently include more than 1,600 scientists and representatives from government and regulatory agencies, academia, patient organizations, disease foundations and pharmaceutical and biotech companies. With dedicated team members located throughout the world, C-Path's global headquarters is located in Tucson, Arizona, and C-Path's Europe subsidiary is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. For more information, visit c-path.org.

Critical Path Institute is supported by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is 56% funded by the FDA/HHS, totaling $23,740,424, and 44% funded by non-government source(s), totaling $18,881,611. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, FDA/HHS or the U.S. Government.

Media Contacts:
Roxan Triolo Olivas
C-Path
520.954.1634
[email protected]

Kissy Black
C-Path
615.310.1894
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SOURCE Critical Path Institute