Management Team

The Accelrys management team includes:

Max Carnecchia
President & Chief Executive Officer

Max Carnecchia is President and CEO of Accelrys and also serves on the board of directors. Mr. Carnecchia brings more than two decades of high technology experience to his position. Most recently, he served as President of Interwoven, a global leader in content management solutions. At Interwoven, he ran the day to day operations of the business and led the company through 21 consecutive quarters of year over year revenue growth and operating margin expansion. Interwoven was acquired by Autonomy Corporation, PLC, in a transaction valued at approximately $800 million in Q1 2009. Mr. Carnecchia joined Interwoven in 2001 as Vice President of Alliances, and was then promoted to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales, overseeing the company’s global field organization prior to being promoted to President. Before Interwoven, he was Vice President of Global Sales for Xoriant, Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations for Smart DB Corporation sales, and has also held management positions at Intel and Group 1 Software. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from The Stevens Institute of Technology.

Michael A. Piraino
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Michael A. Piraino is Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of Accelrys. Prior to joining Accelrys, he served as Co-founder and Chief Financial Officer of M2 Technology Partners, LLC, a private investment company focused on domestic and international acquisitions of software and services businesses. Before M2, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Epicor Software Corporation, a leading global provider of enterprise business software solutions for midmarket-sized companies. He was instrumental in Epicor’s merger, acquisition, and capital markets activities and led the negotiations, acquisition, and integration of ten companies during his tenure. Piraino received his B.S. in Accounting from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. and is also a Certified Public Accountant.

Todd Johnson
Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Services

Todd Johnson is Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Services at Accelrys.  Most recently he served as the interim President and CEO of Accelrys.  Prior to Accelrys, Mr. Johnson served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for VeriSign where he was instrumental in its restructuring. He joined VeriSign through the acquisition of Kontiki, Inc. where he served as CEO, delivering 300% year-on-year bookings growth and successfully positioning the company for sale at six times the pre-money valuation. Mr. Johnson joined Jamcracker in 2001 and served first as Vice President of Marketing and later as President. He was the key driver of the restructuring of the company in 2003 and helped to build an offshore development center in Bangalore, India. Mr. Johnson has extensive management and leadership experience which includes long tenures at both HP and Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). At SGI, he was responsible for a number of very successful product introductions and go-to-market campaigns including: Personal Iris, Indigo and O2. He also successfully ran one of the company’s most successful sales geographies from 1993 to 1997 where he grew the area from $33M to $165M+ in three years. Mr. Johnson holds a B.Sc. degree in Marketing from the University of Santa Clara.

Dr. Frank Brown
Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer

Frank K. Brown, Ph.D., has served as Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Accelrys since October 2006. He has extensive experience in the areas of Computational Chemistry and Chemoinformatics, and is responsible for both the informatics and scientific direction of the company and all collaborative research with academic, government and industrial partners. Prior to joining Accelrys, Dr. Brown held positions of increasing responsibility at Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, most recently serving as Senior Research Fellow within the Office of the CIO. In this position, he oversaw the informatics and information management architectural plan for all R&D in the organization’s Pharma sector. Before Johnson & Johnson, he started the first Chemoinformatics group in the industry at Glaxo Research Institute, and launched software products targeted to the pharmaceutical industry as Vice President for Product and Business Development at Oxford Molecular Group. Dr. Brown has also served as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as a Chair for the American Chemical Society (ACS) Computers in Chemistry section, and as an editor and advisor to publications. He also served six years on an NIH Special Study. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, and did post-doctoral studies in Biophysics at UCSF. His research has been published in more than 50 peer reviewed journals and trade magazines and he has given more than 70 national and international invited lectures.

Dr. Matt Hahn
Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

As Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Matt Hahn, Ph.D., oversees product development at Accelrys, including the implementation of the scientific informatics platform underpinning the company's broad software solutions. He has been designing and creating software solutions for the research community for over 25 years. He co-founded SciTegic in 1999, and as CEO, led the company through significant growth to become the market leader in scientific workflow solutions, serving most of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. In 2004, SciTegic was acquired by Accelrys, where subsequently Dr. Hahn served first as General Manager of the company’s SciTegic division and later as Chief Science and Technology Officer. Prior to founding SciTegic, Dr. Hahn was Director of Development at Molecular Simulations Inc., where for ten years he oversaw the development and market introduction of a wide range of successful chemistry and informatics software products. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Santa Cruz, under Professor W.T. Wipke, co-founder of MDL.

Dr. Trevor Heritage
Executive Vice President, Software Products

Trevor Heritage, Ph.D., is Accelrys’ Executive Vice President, Software Products, having joined Accelrys upon the merger of Accelrys and Symyx Technologies in July 2010.  Prior to the merger, Dr. Heritage was the president of Symyx’ software division having joined Symyx in 2007 when Symyx acquired MDL information Systems where he served as senior vice president of software product management and strategy. Previously, he was senior vice president and general manager of Tripos Inc.'s discovery informatics and software consulting services business.  He brings over 18 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, chemical and agrochemical research fields and in informatics and enterprise software. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Reading in Reading, England and began his career with Shell Research Ltd in the United Kingdom.

David Mersten
Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

As Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, David Mersten is responsible for leading the legal and corporate governance functions within Accelrys. In this role, he and his staff oversee legal issues related to commercial licensing, contract negotiations and administration, mergers, acquisitions, finance, intellectual property/patents, labor and litigation, and stock administration. He also acts as Secretary to the company’s Board of Directors. Throughout his career, Mr. Mersten has gained considerable experience managing the legal offices of publicly-held technology firms. Prior to joining Accelrys, he was Vice President, General Counsel, Assistant Secretary and Compliance Officer at Applied Micro Circuits Corporation. Before that, he was Corporate Counsel for Integrated Device Technology, Inc. Admitted to the California Bar in 1990, he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and received his JD Cum Laude from the Hastings College of Law at the University of California, San Francisco.

Judith Ohrn Hicks
Vice President, Human Resources

Judith Ohrn Hicks and her team are responsible for the recruiting, retention, training, and development of Accelrys’ worldwide staff. She has more than 20 years of experience in the field of human resource management and has spent a significant amount of her career staffing and developing organizations for emerging high technology companies. Prior to joining Accelrys, Mrs. Hicks was Vice President, Human Resources at Pharmacopeia, a biotechnology company (acquired by Ligand Pharmaceuticals in 2008.) She began her career in the specialty retail division at General Mills and has also held management positions with Ward Management Group, a prominent human resource consulting firm, and Software Developers Corporation, a publicly-traded software company. She holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.