Cold Spring Harbor, NY - March 10, 2015 - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announced today that Charles S. Ryan, former Senior Vice President & Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Forest Laboratories Inc., is the Laboratory’s new General Counsel. Forest was acquired by Actavis, Inc. in July 2014 for $28 billion.
“Charles Ryan’s expertise in the intellectual property and the pharmaceutical industry will help CSHL continue efforts to bring the benefits of biological discoveries to society,” said CSHL Chief Operating Officer W. Dillaway Ayres.
Ryan’s addition to the Laboratory’s senior leadership adds strength to recent hires in CSHL’s Office of Technology Transfer and Business Development, led by Teri Willey. A driver of the region’s biomedical economy, CSHL has generated more than 25 spin-off companies, including OSI Pharmaceuticals (bought for $4 billion by Astella Pharma Inc., in 2010). CSHL is a partner with Farmingdale State College and the Research Foundation of the State University of New York in the Broad Hollow Bioscience Park which supports the growth of biotech companies like OSI in their early-stages.
During his more than 10-year career at Forest Laboratories, Ryan served as Site Head for the company’s seven Long Island sites and 750 employees. He led due diligence investigations teams to pursue merger and acquisition opportunities and managed all aspects of patent and trademark litigation. Prior to Forest, he was the Chief Operating Officer at LAB 21, Inc. in Stony Brook.
Ryan earned a B.A. in Chemistry from The College of Wooster. With a Ph.D. in Oral Biology and Pathology from Stony Brook University and a J.D. from Western New England University, his law career began as an Associate with Scully, Scott, Murphy & Presser in Garden City.
He has been a member of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Association since 2012 and the Advisory Board of the Center for Biotechnology since 2012. Ryan is a resident of Laurel Hollow.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2015, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory is more than 600 researchers and technicians strong. The Meetings & Courses Program hosts more than 12,000 scientists from around the world each year on its campuses in Long Island and in Suzhou, China. The Laboratory’s education arm also includes an academic publishing house, a graduate school and programs for middle and high school students and teachers. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.