Leadership Team

John Bucksath joined KCAS Bioanalytical and Biomarker Services in May of 2016 where he serves as Chief Executive Officer and Board Member. He is responsible for the overall strategic direction and future success of the organization.

Previous to joining KCAS, Mr. Bucksath worked at Analytical Bio-Chemistry (ABC) Laboratories where he served in a variety of roles from starting as a chemist and working his way to leading the organization’s technical operations starting in 2003 and eventually succeeding as President and CEO/Board member starting in 2012.    Under his leadership, ABC Laboratories and Morse Laboratories were transformed into a growing and award-winning organization as evidenced by 3 years running CRO Leadership Awards recognition by industry and double-digit growth over the period. ABC Laboratories was sold to the Evans Analytical Group (EAG) in 2015.

John serves on the Missouri Biotechnology Association’s and BioKansas’ Board of Directors. He is a member of the University of Missouri’s Research and Development Advisory Board. John is also a member of the Mizzou Venture Mentoring Program, focused on mentoring startup companies in life sciences industry. John has served as an observing Board member for two early-mid stage biotechnology companies John’s undergraduate education in Biology and Chemistry was obtained from Central Methodist University and a Masters of Business Administration from the Olin Business School – Washington University in St. Louis.

Lawrence Goodwin is the Vice President of Operations at KCAS Bioanalytical & Biomarker Services in Shawnee, Kansas. Business development, strategic planning, portfolio expansion, client-based solutions, and driving key scientific objectives for bioanalytical R&D and LC-MS/MS Services are among his primary responsibilities. Mr. Goodwin brings with him the breadth of knowledge to provide scientific and technical leadership across the drug development spectrum including Discovery, Safety Assessment, and Biologics Testing Solutions areas. Lawrence Goodwin has significant drug development aptitude within pharmaceutical and CRO industries. He has lead teams responsible for bioanalytical programs from Discovery through New Drug Application filings. He has more than 25 years’ experience in the Life Sciences industry which includes most recently Eli Lilly and Company and Charles River Laboratories. Leveraging tandem mass spectrometry, Lawrence has made significant contributions in the fields of Bioanalytical, Analytical, Safety Assessment, Biotherapeutics, and Integrated Drug Discovery. He has authored or co-authored more than 35 papers and presentations and provided over 150 internal documents.

Lawrence received his BS in Biological Chemistry from Fontbonne University, St. Louis, Missouri in 1986 and graduated Cum Laude. His continuing education includes the following areas: executive leadership, people and resource management, advanced instrumentation, and GLP training. He has been the recipient of numerous awards both as an individual contributor and as a leader, especially in the areas of tandem mass spectrometry, data management, and process/work-flow efficiency. He is the former chair of the Eli Lilly Mass Spectrometry group and is an active member of American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a current member of executive leadership team at KCAS.

Amy Mize is Vice President of Business Development at KCAS and joined the team in 2018. Dr. Mize brings experience in capacity planning, operational management, and a track record of building superior sales and marketing teams capable of serving the needs of the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry. She has implemented several tools at KCAS to support an ongoing 12 month rolling forecast, to better understand client needs and position the organization to have the right capacity and expertise to meet those needs. She is also responsible for creating and implementing a program management function as well as improved business processes to create a customer focused experience, to help customers  meet their drug development needs.   Dr. Mize also supports and aligns the marketing effort to increase brand awareness and perception of KCAS in the marketplace.

Dr. Mize began her career at Analytical Bio-Chemistry (ABC) Laboratories in 2002.  She started as a bioanalytical chemist in the large molecule laboratory.  In 2005 Amy was responsible for laboratory operations, as the Director of the preclinical service offering (DMPK, Bioanalysis and Synthesis services).  During this time, the operation made significant progress in process improvement and client satisfaction.  Amy transitioned to Business Development in 2010. During this time, Amy helped build systems in sales and operations planning, to help forecast the business and improve planning.  In 2012, Amy was promoted to Vice President, Business Development at which time she took on responsibility for the Sales pipeline for the pharmaceutical and Agri-Chemical businesses. Amy was instrumental in helping the company grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of >15% annually.  In 2015, ABC laboratories was successfully sold to Evans Analytical Group (EAG), and Amy was a member of the Senior Leadership team during this transition. In 2015, Amy was promoted to Vice President, Business Development and Commercial Operations for EAG Laboratories.  In this role, Amy was responsible for the Sales and Operations Planning function and overall Sales for the Pharmaceutical and Agri-Chemical Service offerings.  In addition, integration and process improvement were key functions Amy helped to support, bringing multiple sites and brands together as one.  In 2017, EAG was successfully sold to Eurofins.

Amy’s undergraduate education in Chemistry was obtained from Baker University (Baldwin City, KS), and Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Kansas (Medical Center Campus).

Maria Nelson is the Senior Director of Finance and Administration at KCAS. Maria joined KCAS in 2015 and leads the teams that provide the finance, accounting, and human resource functions within the organization.  Maria brought with her a diverse background of experience in managing multiple aspects of early-stage high-growth companies.  Functioning in a highly operational capacity, her strengths lie in bringing together people and information across departments, and organizing teams in a way that allows data to best be utilized for quality decision making.  Prior to joining KCAS, Maria served as an Executive in multiple industries within the technology and professional services sectors.

Maria holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Accounting and Business Administration from the University of Kansas, and is currently pursuing her Executive MBA from Washington University in St Louis.

Mr. John P. Pirro received his B.S. in cell biology from the University of Iowa in 1981. John has 12 years of large Pharmaceutical experience where his cell biology background permitted him to be co-inventor of 8 patents using his blood brain barrier model for BMS and drug by design at Bayer, which permitted him to follow a drug for osteoarthritis from early discovery to the clinic. This background, and knowledge helped him make the decision to move into the CRO industry to help and guide drugs – specifically large molecule therapeutics – to the clinic. As John moved into the CRO industry, he recognize that large molecule therapeutics were to become a major part of the future drug industry. As such, the assays and meeting the regulations of GLP were an integral part of moving these types of drugs through the development process and into the clinic. This process started at CRL in the proteomic group, where John was General Manager. From there, John joined MDS in Montreal to help solve some issues they had with bioanalysis and the FDA. John spent 8 years in the Naval Reserve as a Seabee (CBMU 202) out of Groton CT. He was honored to be part of the “4 Square” leadership training the Navy provides. At KCAS, John is responsible for all Ligand Binding Assays, PK, ADA and Neutralizing Antibody assays. Additionally, he assists clients in directing assays for submission to FDA and EMEA and working with clients and internal KCAS teams to meet client timelines.

Dawn R. Dufield is the Director of Biopharmaceuticals (LC-MS/MS) Services at KCAS.  Previously she had been with Pfizer and legacy companies for over 20 years working in the quantitative LC-MS/MS field.  She was one of the early pioneers of using immunoaffinity combined with LC-MS/MS to offer additional selectivity which is now commonly referred to as Hybrid LCMS. She currently is a member of the AAPS Mass Spec Protein Bioanalysis Committee (MSPBC) and an active member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS). She has numerous publications and presentations in her field and recently contributed to a white paper on recommendations for validation of LCMS based bioanalytical methods for protein biotherapeutics.

Dawn received her Ph.D. in BioAnalytical Chemistry (Honors) from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, K.  She earned her bachelors degree in Chemistry, (Computer minor)  from Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, MO.

Dr. Sohrab Habibi Goudarzi joined KCAS in May of 2018 as the Director of Discovery, Bioanalytical Research.  He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University and engaged in post-doctoral research at Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Cornell University.  This followed by 22 years of experience in mass spectrometry-based research and development that included instrumentation, automation, fundamentals of MS/MS, and analytical and bioanalytical applications.  His experience includes 13 years of experience in three major corporations and 9 years of experience in academia.  He has 24 peer reviewed publications in addition to authoring funded internal and external research proposals.   He was a major contributor to a NSF proposal and the principal investigator of a NIH grant.

Marsha Luna is the Director of Pharma Regulated GxP Services at KCAS.  She received her B.S. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.  She has over 31 years of experience working in a laboratory environment involving studies focused on environmental analysis, bioanalysis, pharmaceutical finished product analysis, and toxicology study analytical support. For the last 20 years, her focus has been on bioanalytical regulatory studies at KCAS, and previously at Quintiles.  Marsha joined KCAS in 2006 as a Principal Bioanalytical Investigator and has managed numerous studies and a group consisting of analysts and scientists. She has recently been promoted to her new role as a Director and member of the Senior Leadership Team.

For most of her career, Joyce Slusser, PhD has focused her passion on biomarker discovery for drug action and immune monitoring in disease/treatment through Flow Cytometry. A 20 year veteran, she joined KCAS’ flow cytometry operations in 2016. Dr. Slusser is an active member of multiple Cytometry associations and is the founder of Great Plains Analytical Cytometry Association. Before coming to KCAS she was a global senior application analyst for Beckman Coulter, and a research assistant professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center., KCAS’ flow cytometry workflow optimization at Washington University.

Ms. Pamela Burnett received her B.S, from McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1980.  She has over 20 years of experience managing laboratories and studies focused on bioanalyis, pharmaceutical finished product analysis and toxicology study analytical support.  She played a key role in the startup of a bioanalytical CRO, authoring the SOPs, instituting the GLP program, and overseeing IQ/OQ/PQ as well as software validation activities.  In her 12 years since joining KCAS she directed the alkaline hematin program for determination of menstrual blood loss in support of clinical trails, implemented project tracking and training systems and has been instrumental in improving quality and compliance in the laboratory.

Dominic Warrino, PhD, is a Senior Scientific Advisor. His role is to serve as scientific and technical advisor for both clients and internal teams for development, validation, and application of bioanalytical, immunogenicity, and biomarker methods for large molecule therapeutics. Dominic joined the company in 2013 and brought with him expertise in a full range of bioanalytical techniques including ECL, ELISA, RIA, Flow Cytometry, ELISpot, cell-based assays and Luminex. He has 20 years of experience developing and validating immunological assays for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He most recently spent several years in the Biopharma Services department at Viracor-IBT (formally IBT), and previously also worked for Cytogen (formally Cellcor), Eligix, and Streck Laboratories developing novel compounds for treatment of various cancers. Dominic has worked on over 100 large molecule compounds developing and validating PK, PD, ADA, and Biomarker assays in support of pre-clinical to phase IV testing.

John R. Perkins is the Senior Scientific Advisor with a focus on LC/MS technologies at KCAS. Previously, he was at Q²Solutions and legacy companies for over 24 years working in quantitative LC/MS, principally with small molecules. His primary focus was on validation and sample analysis processes as well as managing customer relationships in Ithaca NY. More recently he was responsible for the bioanalytical lab in Oss, The Netherlands. John received his Ph.D. in Supercritical Fluid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry from University of Wales, College of Cardiff, UK.  He did postdoctoral research on nanoscale separation techniques with mass spectrometry at NIEHS in Research Triangle Park. He earned his Bachelors degree in Chemistry from University of Reading, UK and a Masters degree in Advanced Analytical Chemistry from University of Bristol, UK.

Tracy is KCAS’ Director of Quality Assurance. She joins KCAS with decades of professional Laboratory, Product Safety, Quality Systems and Quality Assurance experience, with over 25 years of proven leadership and organizational effectiveness. She believes the key to successful Product Safety and Quality Assurance programs is building a culture that exists at all levels of the organization.