Volunteer of the Year 2009
Mark Vilicich
Technology Expert at Work and Home

Mark Vilicich enjoys technology at work and at play. In fact, this dedicated LSIT volunteer believes in quality outcomes whether he’s overseeing the rigors of FDA GxP compliance or coaching his 11-year-old son in robotics. Mark’s high standards and commitment to public service make him an outstanding LSIT volunteer.

He learned about LSIT when a meeting was held at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, his former employer. “With firsthand experience, I knew the pain LSIT was addressing when ramping up R&D systems and culture to a Commercial Ready Compliance Environment.

I just knew I had to get involved,” he explains. Since his layoff from Amylin, Mark is now consulting in IT Services, Compliance and Systems Analysis while seeking a fulltime position.

LSIT’s mission is to develop trusted information technology guidance for the global life sciences and health care communities. Its charter is to facilitate collaborations to develop open publicly available Good Information Practices (GIP) using a risk-based approach. Risk-based approaches happen to be one of Mark’s specialties.

A member of the Technical Advisory Board (TAB), Mark plays a key role as the LSIT Program Director for Content. He ensures that the technical content is structured appropriately, not overlapping across the various domains covered in the GIPs, such as Risk Management, Validation and Security. He enjoys these technical challenges as well as the interaction with other volunteers. “The people are just great,” he says enthusiastically.

In addition to volunteering for LSIT, Mark also donates his time and expertise to Boys to Men, a non-profit group that assists troubled teenagers with lifestyle choices and challenges.

Mark relates well to children of all ages because he and his wife have three of their own: Kyle, 6, Veronica, 8, and Lucas, 11. Mark coaches Lucas’ robotics team in the FLL, which Legoland in Carlsbad generously sponsors for kids to build and race robots. “What these kids are doing is truly amazing,” he says with a grin. “We’re using the same software made by LabView to program the robots as I’ve used in companies for control of lab instrumentation.”

It seems that Mark is inspiring a new generation of future scientists to embrace technology just as he has throughout his career. Of course, he loves every minute of his mentoring and his time at LSIT!