Liquidia Names New Board Chairman

Research Triangle Park, N.C. — Liquidia Technologies, which recently named a new chief executive officer, will soon have a new chairman of the board.

Seth Rudnick, a partner at venture capital firm Canaan Partners, will replace Lowry Caudill, an investor in the firm and an entrepreneur. Caudill will remain a board member.

Neal Fowler, a veteran executive with a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, is the new CEO. He replaced Steve Nelson, a venture partner at the Wakefield venture group, which is a Liquidia investor.

Rudnick, an MD, is an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has ties to Johnson & Johnson, having once worked for Ortho Biotech, a J&J subsidiary. Before joining the Canaan firm, he was chairman and CEO at CytoTherapeutics. He will replace Caudill at Liquidia’s next board meeting.

Liquidia has raised some $22 million in venture capital, including a $16 million round closed a year ago.

Liquidia's technology is based on materials known as fluoropolymers that are liquids at room temperature but cure to transparent solids when exposed to lights. Liquidia has developed a material platform technology called Fluorocur, which enables the mass production of precise and uniform micro-sized and nano-sized particles. Fluorocur is based on research done at UNC Chapel Hill and NCSU by Joe DeSimone. DeSimone has been involved in entrepreneurial ventures in the past, including the launching of a chain of dry cleaners that did not rely on chemicals. In 1996, he launched Micell Technologies, which focused on using carbon dioxide as a solvent.