Joe Romano

Dr. Joseph Romano is President of NWJ Group, LLC, a biotechnology and pharmaceutical consulting firm that focuses primarily on non-profit and academic support for drug, device and diagnostic development. He consults to multiple organizations involved in HIV prevention product development. As Scientific Advisor, Dr. Romano supports CAMI Health’s capacity to provide central leadership as the IMPT Secretariat, including the planning and implementation of activities related to funder collaboration; refining the IMPT strategic plan to ensure scientific coordination across the MPT field; and support of other scientific, technological and development issues related to the MPT field. Prior to his role at NWJ Group, LLC, Dr. Romano was Chief of Product Development at IPM, and was responsible for the product research and development activity there for microbicides. Before joining IPM, Dr. Romano served as vice president of research at Biosyn, Inc., a private corporation that develops microbicides against HIV and other STI’s. Dr. Romano’s research at Biosyn focused on HIV-specific and broad spectrum anti-infectives and combination microbicides. Prior to focusing on microbicide research, he spent 10 years in the HIV field at ABL Inc., a subsidiary of AKZO-Nobel. There, he was involved in research related to Kaposi’s sarcoma, cytokine expression and vaccine development. He was also responsible for developing novel diagnostic technologies targeting HIV infection, viral load quantitation and immune response monitoring. He spent three years at the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. National Institutes of Health where his research involved molecular characterization of tumor suppressor genes. Dr. Romano’s training is primarily in molecular virology and immunology, and he received a BS in biology from Lehigh University, and MS and PhD degrees in microbiology from Rutgers University. Dr. Romano has published widely and he regularly presents at international scientific conferences. He is listed as the inventor on multiple patents.