Dr. Locher has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience developing new vaccines and therapeutics. Prior to Versatope, he was a Senior Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston where he held leadership and management roles in large infectious disease R&D programs and international collaborations.  Prior to Vertex, he was head of preclinical development at Opsona Therapeutics in Dublin, Ireland and project leader of malaria and alpha virus vaccine development programs at Maxygen in the San Francisco Bay Area. He completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Department of Medicine and Cancer Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco for HIV-1 vaccine development and was a Fulbright-Hays and Father Damien Foundation fellow at the University of Antwerp and the Prince Leopold II Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. He received his PhD in Tropical Medicine and Bachelor's Degree in Biological Sciences with High Honors at the University of Hawai`i.