Management Team

Robert Shovlin
President & Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Shovlin is CEO of Aureon Biosciences.  Mr. Shovlin joined Aureon in June of 2005 as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Prior to joining Aureon, he was the Executive Director of anatomic pathology for Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX), a $5 billion clinical laboratory. In this role he had national responsibility for Quest Diagnostics’ $500 million anatomic pathology business. Mr. Shovlin also previously held a regional sales director position managing $1 billion of health plan customer business for Quest Diagnostics. Before working at Quest Diagnostics, he held several sales and sales management roles at DIANON Systems, Inc. a $200 million specialty anatomic pathology laboratory. Robert is a former Captain in the United States Marine Corps who holds a B.S. from Penn State University and an M.B.A. from Rutgers University.

Dr. Donovan is board certified in anatomic and clinical pathology. He received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and his Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Donovan completed his residency at the New York Hospital where he also served as Chief Resident of Autopsy Pathology. Dr. Donovan completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and a one-year Pediatric Pathology Fellowship at Children’s Hospital, Boston. Prior to joining Aureon, Dr. Donovan held positions as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Senior Director of Molecular Pathology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Senior Vice President at Incyte Genomics. 

Ricardo Mesa-Tejada, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Mesa-Tejada joined Aureon Biosciences in 2006 as VP of Pathology and Medical Director. Prior to joining Aureon, Dr. Mesa-Tejada trained in anatomic pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University where he served as full-time faculty for ten years and presently holds a part-time appointment as Associate Clinical Professor. While primarily engaged in breast cancer research at Columbia, his emphasis on the use immunologic and molecular tissue localization techniques led to his recruitment by MetPath Laboratories, presently Quest Diagnostics, where he founded and directed the Molecular Tissue Pathology Laboratory at its Teterboro, NJ headquarters for ten years. Dr. Mesa-Tejada has been a member of several NIH/NCI scientific review panels and presently serves on the Medical Advisory Board of the Norma F. Phriem Breast Care Center, Fairfield/Bridgeport, CT, and the Boards of the Society for Applied Immunohistochemistry and American Fertility Services, New York, NY. Prior to joining Aureon, he was a consultant to several specialty pathology laboratories and biotechnology companies, and was Senior VP - Health Sciences at Thieme Consulting, Inc., the consulting branch of Thieme Associates, a New York-based global financial services group.

Charles J. DiComo, Ph.D.
Vice President of Operations & Corporate Compliance Officer

Dr. DiComo has been with Aureon since its inception in 2001 as its Senior Scientist, Head of Operations and recently Director of Laboratories. He was instrumental in the site search, the original design and build-out of the corporate offices and CLIA-certified / CAP-accredited clinical laboratories, including the company’s Prognostic/Diagnostic Services and R&D facilities. Dr. DiComo is currently Aureon's VP of Operations overseeing day-to-day commercial operations, sales and customer support, corporate compliance and the intellectual property portfolio.

Prior to joining Aureon, Dr. DiComo was Laboratory Head/Research Associate in the Division of Molecular Pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Research Special Fellow. In this capacity, Dr. DiComo managed and coordinated day-to-day operations of the molecular and histopathology laboratories, assisted in the scientific direction of post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and technicians, conducted independent research as part of the New York p53 Consortium, and developed state-of-the-art molecular pathology methodologies in conjunction with Dr. Carlos Cordon-Cardo. Prior to MSKCC, Dr. DiComo was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Fellow at Columbia University in the Department of Biological Sciences with Dr. Carol Prives. Dr. DiComo completed his graduate studies at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories through a joint program with the University of New York at Stony Brook. His work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, such as Clinical Cancer Research, Oncogene and Cell. Charles holds a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology and an M.S. in molecular and cellular genetics from Long Island University – C.W. Post Campus, as well as a Ph.D. in Genetics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Dr. Alter joined Aureon Biosciences in January 2006 as Director of Marketing. Prior to joining Aureon, he worked in a number of life science-focused marketing roles at the Pall Corporation, Packard BioSciences and TurboWorx. In 2001, Dr. Alter joined IBM’s newly-formed Life Sciences Division as a Marketing Manager and was responsible for many of the initial outbound marketing activities of the business unit. Subsequently, as Manager of Program Marketing, he and his team were responsible for all outbound marketing for the IBM Life Sciences team. Dr. Alter holds a B.A. in Biology and History from Alfred University, an M.S. degree in Microbiology from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Binghamton University. Dr. Alter did a postdoctoral fellowship at Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals. 

Mr. Brown joined Aureon Biosciences in October 2009. Mr. Brown held senior sales and marketing leadership positions with Covidien as Vice President of Sales and Marketing and VP of Global Market Development, Smith and Nephew; VP of Strategic Sales, and most recently Salient Surgical Technologies as the VP of Sales and Marketing. During his 20+ years in healthcare Mr. Brown has successfully developed and executed strategies to work with leading surgeons and hospitals to implement minimally invasive technologies and surgical techniques across a number of surgical specialties and procedures. Mr. Brown holds a B.S. from Penn State University.

Michael Facendola, CPA
Vice President, Finance & Controller

Mr. Facendola joined Aureon Biosciences in November 2008 as the Financial Controller. Prior to joining Aureon, he held various accounting and finance roles of increasing responsibility in the healthcare marketing division of Cardinal Health, most recently as Senior Director and Controller. Mr. Facendola began his career at Arthur Andersen in the Assurance practice, specializing in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector.

Mr. Facendola holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the state of New Jersey and is a member of both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants.