On Monday, Pennsylvania Bio, the voice of advancement for Pennsylvania’s Bioscience Industry, announced the winners of two of its major awards that are named after visionary leaders in the field writes the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The first award is the Frank Baldino Bioscience CEO of the Year which will be presented this year to Dr. Neal Walker, the President and CEO of Malvern based Aclaris Therapeutics, while the second award, the Hubert J.P. Shoemaker Leadership Award, will go to Vin Milano, President and CEO of Idera Pharmaceuticals which has offices in Exton.

Walker is receiving the honor for his role in leading Aclaris through the country’s top performing IPO in October last year, when it successfully launched at $11 per share and by the end of the year was already up 144 percent at $26.94.

Milano is receiving the Shoemaker leadership award for his role as an “unwavering supporter of the life sciences industry and of Pennsylvania throughout his career, including in his current role as CEO of Idera, where Vin is leading an innovative business experiment of running a co-located management team between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in order to take advantage of life sciences expertise in both commonwealths.”

Both of these awards follow on from last week’s award announcements by Pennsylvania Bio of Rep. Tim Briggs as the “2015 State Official of the Year“ for his contributions to the state’s life science industry and U.S. Senator Pat Toomey as the “2015 Federal Official of the Year“ for helping repeal the medical device tax and helping to protect the intellectual property rights of patent holders.

The association also released the names of the finalists for its 2015 “Deal of the Year” award which are the Aclaris Therapeutics IPO, the Spark Therapeutics IPO and the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“Each winner and finalist is part of the reason Pennsylvania is a leader in the life sciences industry on the national and global levels,” said Christopher Molineaux, President and CEO of Pennsylvania Bio. The awards will be presented at the annual Penn Bio dinner on March 10th at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.