Daisy Rivera-Muzzio
President & Founder
With more than 30 years of global experience developing business in the pharmaceutical industry, Daisy Rivera-Muzzio serves as president and co-founder of Acumen Biopharma. Rivera-Muzzio is an expert in positioning scientific arguments regarding intellectual property involving innovator and generic companies in the healthcare industry. In addition to leading Acumen Biopharma, she serves as Chief Operating Officer of Integra Continuous Manufacturing Systems, a consulting firm dedicated to advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies integrating services of equipment manufacturers, PAT controls, and formulation expertise in the development and implementation of continuous manufacturing technologies in the life science industries.
As former Director of Product Development at Schein Pharmaceuticals, and an active participant in numerous industry and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) forums, Rivera-Muzzio has developed a life-long interest in new technologies and partnerships in emerging markets — especially generics.
Rivera-Muzzio is particularly adept at managing interactions with academia in areas of novel technology for drug delivery. Scientific arguments are her forte — especially when applied to generic products and addressing fundamental scientific questions. As former Senior Director of Product Licensing for the Established Products Business Unit at Pfizer, Inc., she completed licensing and supply agreements in the generic business with combined projected net revenue of $700M.
An expert in the evaluation and risk assessment of licensing generic formulations having conducted cross-functional analyses for licensing and acquisition of several major platform technologies, Rivera-Muzzio also understands the power of effective business development. She has created and developed partnership opportunities in pharmaceuticals (branded and unbranded generics), animal health, and consumer healthcare products, and has a strong background with pharmaceutical product manufacturing operations, quality assurance, regulatory requirements, process development, and third-party supply operations management.
In addition to connecting clients to the right expert and identifying the best technology to address their needs, Rivera-Muzzio is an industry thought leader on the market impact of the loss of intellectual property on pharmaceutical products.
Rivera-Muzzio holds an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy and an MS in Industrial Pharmacy from the University of Puerto Rico. She has served as the co-Chair of the NJ Chapter of Licensing Executive Society (LES) and VP of Programs for the MIT Alumni NNJ Chapter and is an active member of the MIT Educational Council of Princeton, NJ and of the Healthcare Businesswomen Association (HBA). She was selected and served as a member of the 2020 MIT Alumni Association’s Strategic Change Implementation Committee (SCIC).
Fernando Muzzio
Principal Consultant
For nearly 27 years, Professor Fernando Muzzio has focused on pharmaceutical product and process design. A Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, he has developed sought-after expertise in both academia and business, which uniquely positions him as a source of unparalleled research information and testimony supporting the resolution of scientific questions involving pharmaceutical foundations and intellectual property.
Dr. Muzzio directs the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems (C-SOPS) with a special emphasis on pharmaceutical product and process design. In this capacity, Muzzio directs research involving the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and more than 50 global companies including world-class technology suppliers in equipment, instrumentation, software, and control industries. As center director, Dr. Muzzio is a recognized thought leader regarding the design and implementation of continuous manufacturing systems, which has been characterized by the FDA as one of the most important manufacturing megatrends of the 21st century.
Focused on maintaining consulting relationships with numerous firms, including 15 of the top 25 pharmaceutical manufacturing companies (branded and generic sectors) in the use of statistical and modeling methodologies to support product and process optimization and regulatory compliance. He heads a network that provides unmatched academic resources in pharmaceutical particle technology.
Dr. Muzzio is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles, patents, and book chapters, and was appointed a voting member of the FDA Committee on Pharmaceutical Sciences and Clinical Pharmacology in 2010, where he currently serves as a consulting member. He has provided expert testimony in many aspects of pharmaceutical product and process development and is a recognized expert in innovative materials and product testing, has developed and implemented numerous methodologies for the testing and statistical analysis of powder blending, sampling, content uniformity, powder wettability, electrostatics, tablet microstructure, tablet dissolution and coating, and process characterization. He is also recognized as a global leader in pharmaceutical nanotechnology, having led the NIH/NSF doctoral training program in Nanopharmaceutical Engineering.
In addition to work at Acumen Biopharma, Dr. Muzzio is the President of Integra Continuous Manufacturing Systems where he leads a team of engineers, formulation scientists, and industry-leading consultants in the design, implementation, and optimization of continuous manufacturing processes for the biopharmaceutical industry. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Universidad de Mar del Plata in Argentina.
