C Randal Mills PhD

C. Randal Mills, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Since taking the helm at CIRM in April 2014, Mills has radically changed the way the agency does business by implementing CIRM 2.0 - an aggressive plan that significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to approve funding for promising stem cell research and potential stem cell therapies. Under the guidance of Mills, what used to take almost two years to go from an initial application to approval for funding for a clinical trial now takes just 120 days. In addition to being faster the application windows for different stage research projects are also more frequent.

Mills – who served five years as a member of CIRM’s Grants Working Group, the expert panel that reviews applications for funding - has been described as a “visionary and highly regarded scientific and business leader.” In December 2015 Mills released CIRM’s new Strategic Plan, a bold vision for what the agency hopes to achieve in the next five years. The plan outlines a new approach to funding stem cell research, one that supports and accelerates research projects to the next stage and ultimately accelerates the development of stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.