Leadership Team

Dr. Edward Mills is the Chief Executive Officer at Purpose Life Sciences and the Principal Investigator of multiple adaptive platform trials. He previously co-founded MTEK Sciences (acquired by Cytel) and Redwood Outcomes (acquired by Precision for Medicine Working Group).  

He is a Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Health Research Methods, Impact, and Evaluation as well as the University of Rwanda, School of Public Health. Prof Mills has published more than 550 peer-reviewed papers, including in high-impact medical journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA, and BMJ. He has been the principal investigator of several large-scale clinical trials and cohort studies, particularly in HIV. He has also authored several clinical guidelines supporting national and global HIV guidelines. 

Syed Irfan is a seasoned healthcare educator and management professional with a distinct specialization in clinical research project management. Based in Toronto, Canada, he combines his extensive background in healthcare and business to serve as a linchpin in both, educational and industry settings. A medical graduate with an MBA, Syed has notably contributed to clinical research initiatives that span the planning, execution, and monitoring phases. His clinical research competencies include the design of study protocols, ethical considerations, data collection, and statistical analysis, alongside adeptly managing interdisciplinary teams of clinicians, statisticians, and researchers. At present, he is a faculty member, director of strategic resource management and global team lead with Purpose Life Sciences.  

His prior roles include serving as a consultant at the Canadian College for Healthcare & Pharmaceutics and as a consultant with many North American Organizations like American Telephysicians, Martin Dow, and OBS Pharmaceuticals, just to mention a few. In these capacities, he managed strategic resource planning functions, key performance indicators, and compliance procedures, and marketing campaigns. 

His superior communication skills, both written and oral, make him a capable conveyer of detailed information and a builder of strong relationships. With a rich blend of experience and specialized skills in clinical research project management, Syed Irfan stands as an invaluable asset in any academic or industry setting. 

Prof. Leon Mutesa is the Center for Human Genetics Director at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences-University of Rwanda. He served as the Director of the Department of Clinical Laboratory at the Kigali University Teaching Hospital and has been Director General of Medical Research Center in Rwanda Biomedical Centre under the Ministry of Health, coordinating health-related research activities in all national medical institutions. Being a research enthusiast, Dr. Mutesa along with Purpose Life Sciences will be working on capacity building in Rwanda. He has also pioneered new developments and implementation of a reference center for medical genetics along with mentoring scores of MSc, MMed, PhD and Post-Doc fellows. Dr. Mutesa obtained his MD from the University of Rwanda in 2003 and his PhD in 2009 from the University of Liege-Belgium, where he also completed his post-doc in 2011. 

Dr. Karita is the vice chairperson on the board of directors of the Rwanda Biomedical Center and the country director of Project San Francisco in Rwanda. His life’s work has been focused on HIV including being the principal investigator for HIV vaccinations in Rwanda in addition to being a recipient of SANTHE (the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence). With his rich expertise of research of epidemiological diseases, he is helping Purpose Life Sciences with capacity building in Sub-Saharan Africa.  

Dr. Karita earned his MD from the National University of Rwanda. In 1995, he completed his master’s degree in molecular biology at the University of Brussels in Belgium and then a Master of Public Health in epidemiology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. 

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe is currently the General Director of INRB of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is fondly known as the ‘Ebola hunter. He is a Congolese microbiologist who leads the public health emergency responses in DRC and has been awarded for his seminal work on viral haemorrhagic fevers which made the foundations of our understanding of the epidemiology, clinical manifestations and control outbreaks of viral infections. His love for advancement in global health matches the mission of Purpose Life Sciences and will contribute to expanding research capacity building for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. 

Francois Venter is the Head of Ezintsha at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa. His work involves health systems research that directly translates into national programmes, most recently involving the antiretrovirals, dolutegravir, tenofovir alafenamide, cabotegravir, and doravirine. He leads multiple antiretroviral treatment optimisation studies and is currently working on new access programmes through private pharmacies within South Africa, as well as patient linkage-to-care interventions and self-testing projects. He has led large PEPFAR-funded HIV programmes in South Africa, focusing on men, women, children, young people, truckers, sex workers, and LGBTI communities.  

For over 20 years he has been an advisor to bodies such as the South African government, UNAIDS, and WHO, contributing to international, regional, and national HIV guidelines. He recently served as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee for COVID-19, and the Department of Science and Technology’s Research and Innovation Committee, advising on COVID-19 research and innovation needs. He has an active interest in medical ethics and has been involved in several HIV-related human rights cases within the southern African region. He supervises many master’s and PhD projects. Recent work has included publications in Lancet HIV, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, AIDS, and PLOS Medicine.  

Francois shares a common commitment with Purpose Life Sciences of promoting the life and well-being of people, and he specializes in helping those living with HIV, TB, Hepatitis, and other infectious diseases. He is leading the PLS expansion of patient-centric research and treatment optimization in South Africa. 

Gilmar is the founder and executive director of CARDRESEARCH in Minas Gerais, Brazil, an organization with more than 20 years of experience implementing clinical trials in Brazil, with more than 50 trials involving cardiovascular health. Gilmar is a practicing cardiologist and has extensively published clinical findings in the field of medicine, with more than 150 publications. He is also an associate professor of medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais since 2003. He specializes in coronary disease, population-based research, and adaptive clinical trial methodology. His expertise and network, along with Dr. Mills’ experience, created the TOGETHER Trial during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to generate key findings for possible therapeutics. As Platform Life Sciences evolves, Gilmar continues to support Platform Life Sciences’ patient recruitment by expanding CARDRESEARCH’s Brazilian network of sites for future research. Gilmar holds an MD from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and a PhD in cardiology from the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine. 

Zulfiqar Bhutta leads large research groups based in Toronto, Karachi and Nairobi with a special interest in research synthesis, scaling up evidence-based interventions in community settings and implementation research in health systems. In particular, his work with community health workers and outreach services has influenced integrated maternal and newborn outreach programs for marginalized populations around the world. 

In addition to his long-standing research interests in newborn and child survival, maternal and child undernutrition, early childhood development and micronutrient deficiencies, Professor Bhutta’s current research on adolescent and reproductive health has led to several major contributions to the evidence base, including publications in the Journal of Adolescent Health and The Lancet. 

As well, Dr. Bhutta’s research has expanded to include trauma and injuries, studies of neglected tropical diseases such as typhoid fever and soil-transmitted helminths, and reviews on health in humanitarian crisis settings given the increase in refugee and displaced populations globally. 

His experience is vital to the expansion of Purpose Life Sciences’ clinical trial networks in Pakistan. The implementation of adaptive clinical trial infrastructure in Pakistan will be hugely instrumental in accelerating local and global evidence toward effective therapeutics for child and maternal health. 

Conville is the founder and president of the Medical Pavilion in the Bahamas which has been providing state-of-the-art private health care for over 20 years. His goal is to provide the best health care for all and has created a multispecialty medical center with Heart, Chest, Cancer, Imaging and Dialysis centers, and more recently, The Partners Clinical Research and Stem Cell Centres. By partnering with Purpose Life Sciences, he is better able to achieve his mission, and build capacity for clinical research in The Bahamas.

Conville received his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in General Medicine from the University of The West Indies Medical School and his MD from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.