Black Mesa is a Boston-based company developing a novel technology providing provable assurance for advanced manufacturing workflows. Its first product focuses on biological manufacturing workflows, including of critical vaccines, drugs, novel materials, fuels, and food. This $1.3 Trillion[1] industry is critical to the world's economy, safety, and health and requires new approaches to guarantee that its products are safe and efficacious. The company is working to bring renewed simplicity in dealing with paper and electronic records, retaining the advantages of both while enabling new levels of assurance, traceability, faster batch release, and lower-burden for regulatory inspections and approval.

The company operates a one-of-a-kind Test Range facility in the greater Boston area allowing for live – and safe testing of complex bioeconomy workflows. This environment includes full modern instrumentation that allows scenario emulation, including the safe testing of catastrophic attacks on critical bioeconomy infrastructure.

Black Mesa is actively working with select private sector partners in the bioeconomy to provide assurance of key workflows, assess current posture against cyberbiosecurity threats, and help them defend critical systems. The company has active contracts with several U.S. Government departments, including a sole source contract the department of Health and Human Services to help identify, prepare, and respond against threats to the bioeconomy and the health and public health sectors.

The Team

Black Mesa has assembled a unique team that blends biomanufacturing, computer science, and cyber expertise. All members of the team have been cross-trained through a mix of in-house curriculum, cyberbio activities and hands-on training.

Charles Fracchia and Edward Chung co-founded Black Mesa following years of work together at the previous company: BioBright (acquired by Dotmatics, Jun 2020). The company was founded following formative experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic that showed the fragility of biomanufacturing workflows.

Executive Team

Charles Fracchia – Co-Founder & CEO

Prior to Black Mesa, Charles was the founder and CEO of BioBright, the company that created the first -and still only- end-to-end encrypted data collection and analysis from laboratory and biomanufacturing environments. BioBright was acquired by Dotmatics in June 2020[2], and Dotmatics was acquired by Insightful Science in May 2021 for $690M[3] – creating the largest life science software company globally. Mr. Fracchia is also the Co-Founder of BIO-ISAC, an international non-profit organization that addresses threats unique to the bioeconomy and enables coordination among stakeholders to facilitate a robust and secure industry. The BIO-ISAC is the organization of record for the bioeconomy for the US Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS CISA). Charles received his graduate education between the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Medical School and obtained his bachelor’s degree from Imperial College London. He has received a number of awards including MIT Technology Review’s 35 under 35, IBM PhD fellowships and the Extraordinary Minds fellowship. In 2021, DARPA named Charles to its Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group. In that capacity, he leads studies that focus on anticipating and generating strategic surprise for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Edward Chung, MD – Co-Founder & COO

Dr Edward Chung is Chief Operating Officer of Black Mesa. He has degrees in biology and chemical engineering from MIT and an MD from the Duke University School of Medicine. His career path has taken him through roles in clinical leadership, the healthcare C- suite, and the startup space, working to build new product and service lines, fight worker burnout, and bring data to bear in both medicine and biology. At BioBright, Dr Chung led digital biosecurity collaborations with the US Government and national laboratories where he led many pioneering programs highlighting critical threats to bioeconomy infrastructure.

Peter Dohm – CTO

Peter Dohm is the Chief Technology Officer at Black Mesa. He is a seasoned software engineer and research computer scientist that has extensive experience in mathematics, electrical engineering, embedded software development, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, exploit weaponization, and implant design, construction, and operations. Prior to Black Mesa, Peter was the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Insider Threat Program Senior Official, and HIPAA Privacy Officer for Battelle Memorial Institute – a $9B non-profit government contractor organization that operates the largest number of national laboratories for the US government. There, he managed large budgets in both research programs and in operations and led diverse teams of personnel across the skills and experience spectra and remains an accomplished mentor especially for highly technical personnel with passion for their area of focus outside his own. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Engineering from Ohio State University.

Keith Wells – Chief Manufacturing Officer

Dr Keith Wells has 34 years of experience in the vaccines and biopharmaceutical industry. He has been involved in the development of over 40 licensed and 150 clinical stage vaccines and biopharmaceutical products including vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, rotavirus, vaccinia, encephalitis viruses, Zika virus, seasonal and pandemic influenza, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Keith has worked with government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multinational biopharmas, and biotech companies to advance the development of vaccines and biologic products. Prior to joining Black Mesa, Keith has served as the Chief Manufacturing Officer for Meissa Vaccines, a development stage company focused on live, attenuated vaccines for prevention of infection by RSV, human metapneumovirus (hMPV), and SARS-CoV-2. Prior to Meissa, Keith served as a scientific and technical advisor to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for development, licensure, and acquisition, manufacturing scale-up, and regulatory pathways of medical countermeasures and vaccines.

[1] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ams/NIST.AMS.100-52.pdf
[2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200625005037/en/Dotmatics-Acquires-BioBright-to-Accelerate-Laboratory-Data-Automation-for-the-Lab-of-the-Future
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-22/insightful-science-to-buy-u-k-s-dotmatics-in-690-million-deal