Meet the Team

Dr. Gottschalk is a principal scientist and founder of Sotira Scientific. Dr. Gottschalk is a co-inventor of KEPTIDE, an intranasal peptide for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. At present,  Gunnar is the executive director of Research and a member of the Board of Directors at Simmaron Research, a non-profit organization based in Incline Village, Nevada, which works to advance translational science in treating neuroimmune diseases like CFS/ME. Since 2012, Gunnar is a core member of Simmaron's clinical research. In 2012, Gottschalk became the Clinical Coordinator for years I and II of the CDC Multi-site Clinical Assessment of CFS. The project's aim was to characterize patients with CFS or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in the clinical practices of clinicians with expertise in CFS/ME.  Carl Gunnar Gottschalk completed his BS in biology at Sierra Nevada College and MS in Biotechnology at Rush University Medical Center. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Rush University Medical Center. 

Avik Roy received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. His primary research interest is identifying molecular targets and designing small molecular drugs against neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. He has demonstrated that the loss of function in the bpoz2 gene plays a crucial role in the development of Lewy body pathology causing the death of DA neurons. His pioneering work in deciphering the role of an ankyrin repeat-rich protein BPOZ2 in the amelioration of alpha-synuclein pathology was awarded Rapid Response Innovation Award by the Michael J Fox Foundation of Parkinson's disease. His quest to decode the biological role of the bpoz2 gene eventually achieved a new dimension when a 9-year-old boy with a homozygous point mutation in the bpoz2 gene was reported to have abnormal gait with severe movement deficit.  He is working on this clinical case with multiple funding from different sources. As an assistant professor at Rush Medical College, Dr. Roy published more than 65 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Nature Chemical Biology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Reports, PNAS, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Science Signaling, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Immunology, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards including the JE Trufant Excellence in Research Award conferred by Rush Graduate College, the Young Investigator Educational Enhancement Award presented by American Society for Neurochemistry, RRIA award by MJF Foundation, Certificate of Merit by Indian Institute of Chemical Biology and many more.  In order to pursue his long-term research interest to develop cutting-edge molecular therapies against various metabolic disorders, he left Rush 2020 to form Sotira Scientific, a BioTech company with three other partners. His discovery of KeptideTM, an intranasal therapeutic for COVID-19, received a fast-track non-provisional patent (#11,078,242)in 2021. He has also secured a patent ( # 10,617,664) for three memory-inducing drugs that can improve the hippocampal function of memory and learning.   Since 2021, he is serving as chief scientific officer at Simmaron Research INC, where he is continuing his scientific journey to decode the molecular mechanism of chronic neuroinflammatory diseases. He is also an associate editor in the Journal of Alzheimer's disease for the year 2022.