Michael May is President and CEO of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), a Canadian non-profit public-private partnership that develops foundational technologies and launches new companies in the field of regenerative medicine, including cell and gene therapy, by catalyzing seed investment, enabling end-to-end manufacturing, and cultivating sector-focused talent development. Prior to his 13 years at CCRM, Michael was the President, and co-founder, of Rimon Therapeutics Ltd., a company that he co-founded in 1995 in Toronto to develop novel therapeutic polymers (or “Theramers”) that possessed drug-like activity for tissue engineering applications.

Michael is the CEO of CCRM’s investment arm, CCRM Enterprises, and sits on a number of boards, including: the Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) Inc., the Foundation for Cell & Gene Medicine, the Canadian Advanced Therapy Training Institute, ExCellThera Ltd., and CCRM affiliate hubs in Australia and Sweden. He is Chair of CCRM spin-offs LineaBio Inc., Apiary Therapeutics Ltd, and OmniaBio Inc., a unique cell and gene therapy CDMO differentiated by its ties to CCRM’s capability-building.

Dr. May completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1998 as an NSERC Scholar and was awarded the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technological Entrepreneurship to launch Rimon Therapeutics. He is the recipient of the 2024 Don Panoz Distinguished Lecture, Trinity College Dublin and the 2023 Le Prix Luc Sensebe Leadership and Innovation Award from the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy.