Alexis Melendez
Director, Facilities Engineering, Kite Pharma, Inc.
Alexis Melendez is Director of Engineering and Facilities for Kite Pharma where he is responsible for the design, construction and start-up of a greenfield high volume cell therapy manufacturing facility. Alexis was the second employee hired for the Frederick, MD facility with plans to grow the site to 300+ staff over the coming years.
Prior to joining Kite, Alexis spent 7 years at the AztraZeneca Biologics Frederick, MD site where he led the Site portfolio, Site Master Planning and Capital Management teams. During this time, he led major infrastructure, utility and process equipment projects as well as Enterprise software deployments with global network impact. Preceding AstraZeneca, Alexis spent 15 years at Johnson & Johnson where he held numerous positions of increasing responsibility including Maintenance Engineer, Process Engineer and Capital Portfolio Manager with an average annual budget of $35MM. Alexis was also part of the leadership team for a $220MM greenfield facility expansion.
Alexis hold a bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering from University of Puerto Rico. In his 20+ years in the industry, he has gained experience in small molecule, large molecule and now cell therapy manufacturing.