Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top San Francisco based Founder operating in the Biotechnology space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Anne Wojcicki
Co-Founder and CEO of 23andMe
Anne co-founded 23andMe in 2006 after a decade spent in healthcare investing, focused primarily on biotechnology companies. Her hope was to empower consumers with access to their own genetic information and to create a way to generate more personalized information so that commercial and academic researchers could better understand and develop new drugs and diagnostics. Presently, 23andMe has built one of the world’s largest databases of individual genetic information. Its novel, web-based research approach allows for the rapid recruitment of participants to many genome-wide association studies at once, reducing the time and money needed to make new discoveries, and the company has created a proven and standardized resource for finding new genetic association and confirming genetic loci discovered by others. Under Anne’s leadership 23andMe has made significant advances in bringing personalized medicine directly to the public. Anne graduated from Yale University with a BS in Biology. Getting access to and understanding her own genetic information had always been one of her ambitions.
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About 23andMe, The Brin Wojcicki Foundation: 23andMe is a DNA testing technology company that enables its users to access their ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits.
Jennifer Doudna
Co-Founder of Mammoth Biosciences
As an internationally renowned professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C. Berkeley, Dr. Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues rocked the research world in 2012 by describing a simple way of editing the DNA of any organism using an RNA-guided protein found in bacteria. This technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, has opened the floodgates of possibility for human and non-human applications of gene editing, including assisting researchers in the fight against HIV, sickle cell disease and muscular dystrophy. Doudna is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, and the Executive Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Doudna is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and has received numerous other honors including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Japan Prize, and the Kavli Prize. Doudna’s work led TIME to recognize her as one of the “100 Most Influential People” in 2015, and she is the co-author of “A Crack in Creation,” a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing. She is a vocal proponent of its responsible use, first calling for a moratorium on using CRISPR technology to make permanent changes to the human germline in 2015.
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About Caribou Biosciences, Editas Medicine, Intellia Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, Scribe Therapeutics, University of California Berkeley: Mammoth Biosciences develops novel CRISPR applications for disease detection, research, agriculture, biodefense, and more.
Trevor Martin
Co-Founder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences
As co-founder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, Trevor Martin is focused on creating the world’s first CRISPR-based platform for disease detection, taking impactful CRISPR technology out of the lab and into the hands of doctors and consumers. Prior to co-founding Mammoth, Trevor completed his PhD in Biology at Stanford University, where he worked at the intersection of statistics and genetics. In addition to having taught a course in Statistics at Stanford, Trevor has penned educational guides for university courses across the globe. His work has been featured in outlets like FiveThirtyEight and The Atlantic.
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About Mammoth Biosciences: Mammoth Biosciences develops novel CRISPR applications for disease detection, research, agriculture, biodefense, and more.
Joshua Nixon
CTO and Co-Founder of Prime Roots
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About Prime Roots: Prime Roots is celebrating the culture of meat by reimagining protein itself.
Kimberlie Le
CEO and Co-Founder of Prime Roots
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About Prime Roots: Prime Roots is celebrating the culture of meat by reimagining protein itself.
Mickey Kertesz
President, CPO & Co-Founder of Karius
Kertesz co-founded Karius in 2014 to bring the pathogen detection technology he and colleagues developed at Stanford closer to the bedside. Prior to that, he was the CEO and co-founder of Moleculo, a long-reads DNA sequencing company, which was acquired by Illumina in late 2012. Dr. Kertesz earned an MS in computer science from Tel Aviv University and a PhD in computational biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He went on to complete his postdoctoral work in bioengineering at Stanford University, where he developed novel methods for investigating the genetic diversity of human viruses.
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About Karius: Karius provides genomic insights for infectious diseases to enable clinicians to make life-saving treatment decisions.
Tim Blauwkamp
Chief Scientific Officer, Co-Founder of Karius
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About Karius: Karius provides genomic insights for infectious diseases to enable clinicians to make life-saving treatment decisions.
Charles Roberts
Co-Founder, Chief Growth Officer of Freenome
A clinician by training, Charlie is Freenome’s Chief Partnership Officer, focusing on mid- and longer-term relationships that will help define the company’s future directions and revenues and works closely with the business development team in managing corporate client accounts and institutional collaborations. Prior to co-founding Freenome, Charlie co-founded a company that uses circulating cell-free (cf)DNA from maternal blood samples to diagnose chromosomal abnormalities during pregnancy. The resulting in-vitro diagnostic, IONA, has been marketed successfully across Europe and the Middle East. Charlie studied medicine and neuropsychology in the UK, earning a Masters degree from Oxford with a focus on immunotherapy. He has worked in some of the UK’s leading oncology centers, including the Royal Marsden.
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About Freenome, Relation Therapeutics: Freenome is a biotechnology company with a comprehensive multiomics platform for cancer detection using a routine blood draw.
Riley Ennis
Co-Founder and COO of Freenome
Riley is a Thiel Fellow who created a cancer vaccine with his previous company Immudicon as Co-Founder & Chair. Co-Founder, COO at Freenome.
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About Freenome, Immudicon, Oncolinx, The Thiel Foundation: Freenome is a biotechnology company with a comprehensive multiomics platform for cancer detection using a routine blood draw.
Cheng Liu
Founder, CEO of Eureka Therapeutics
Cheng Liu is the founder and CEO of Eureka Therapeutics, a California biotech company dedicated to antibody research and discovery for cancer immunotherapy. Prior to founding Eureka, Dr. Liu was a Principal Scientist in antibody drug discovery at Chiron (now Novartis), where he championed anti-CSF1 antibody program for treatment of bone metastasis to human clinical trials. He is the inventor of multiple issued US patents in drug discovery. In 2007, he was awarded Special US Congressional Recognition for his contributions to improving human health. Dr. Liu received his B.S. in Cell Biology and Genetics from Beijing University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Eureka Therapeutics: Eureka Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focusing on immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer.
Hesaam Esfandyarpour
Founder and CEO of Genapsys
Hesaam is the Founder and CEO of GenapSys Inc. He is an inventor of electronic DNA sequencing, a technology he developed during his PhD work at Stanford. Hesaam has dedicated the past decade of his life to the development of this novel DNA sequencing technology, which has at its core the convergence of multiple fields of science – engineering, chemistry, biology, and computing. Hesaam incubated the technology at the Stanford Genome Technology Center for a period of six years before securing licenses to the IP and incorporating GenapSys in January of 2010. He has grown GenapSys from just a handful of employees working out of Menlo Labs incubator space, to over 50 employees across seven functional teams. In 2012, Hesaam partnered GenapSys with StartX, an accelerator for the development of Stanford’s top entrepreneurs. He has raised approximately $50M for GenapSys in Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds of financing. Hesaam holds a PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering, and MSc Management degree, all from Stanford University. He earned his BS in Electrical Engineering with Honors from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. When he is not at GenapSys HQ (which is rare!) you can find Hesaam spending time outdoors, hiking or spending time with family and friends. He is also a great lover of poetry, his favorite of which are poems by the Persian poet Saa’di.
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About Genapsys: Transform the human condition by building a scalable, affordable genomic sequencing ecosystem that will support research and diagnostics
Oguzhan Atay
Co-Founder of BillionToOne
Oguzhan is responsible for implementing BillionToOne’s vision and for all day-to-day management decisions. During his PhD at Stanford, he has combined machine learning and genetics to solve problems in cell biology. His PhD research has been featured as Cover Article in Cell Systems, and his work has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, including Cell and Journal of Cell Biology.
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About BillionToOne: BillionToOne is a precision diagnostics company that makes molecular diagnostics accurate, efficient, and accessible for all.
Deepak Thomas
Co-Founder & CEO of Phil
Mr. Deepak Thomas Founded Phil, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. After a particularly frustrating experience at a chain drug store, Mr. Thomas sat down and did the math on the number of hours he had spent standing in line for his prescriptions. When he realized that he had spent over 500 hours standing in line at drug stores, he decided to spend at least 500 hours trying to build a better experience before founding Phil, Inc. Prior to this, he held product and general management roles at eBay, Shutterfly, Match.com and Oracle.
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About Phil: Phil is a software therapy deployment platform, offering pharmaceutical manufacturers a modern alternative to patient access solutions
Puran Singh
Co-Founder/Head of Engineering of Phil
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About Phil: Phil is a software therapy deployment platform, offering pharmaceutical manufacturers a modern alternative to patient access solutions
Sasan Amini
Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Labs
Sasan combined his academic expertise and passion for healthy living when he co-founded Clear Labs with a mission to set a new paradigm for food safety and quality. Prior to serving as the CEO of Clear Labs, he worked in the Advanced Research department at Illumina. Sasan earned his PhD in Genomics from Princeton and holds multiple patents and publications in the field.
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About Clear Labs: Clear Labs is a provider of a fully-automated sequencing platform for turnkey diagnostics.
Bill Cherman
Co-Founder and Chairman of Repair Biotechnologies
Bill is co-founder and Chairman of Repair Biotechnologies. He is a Partner at Front Seat Capital, where he leads investments in biotech and blockchain. Previously, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Bill is a student of the Master of Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins University, and has a B.A. in Economics from PUC-Rio.
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About Repair Biotechnologies: Repair Biotechnologies is a biotechnology company with the mission to develop and bring to the clinic therapies.
Jenny Rooke
Founder & Managing Director of Genoa Ventures
Dr. Jenny Rooke has been deploying capital at the frontiers of life sciences innovation, with a penchant for technology-fueled solutions and category-defying opportunities. Jenny got her start in venture at Fidelity Biosciences, a Cambridge-based healthcare VC, during their Fund I formation. Jenny then brought her unique toolkit of genetics domain expertise, strategic business acumen, and venture investing to the Gates Foundation, where she deployed and managed over $250M in funding in genetic engineering, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. She also played a key role in establishing the foundation’s investing function. In 2014, Dr. Rooke began independently investing under the brand 5 Prime Ventures, financing her investments using what has become the largest life sciences syndicate on AngelList, and one of the highest-performing AngelList syndicates of any sector. Jenny founded Genoa Ventures in 2018, building on the 5 Prime Ventures track record, in order to scale a proven, differentiated investing strategy, to ensure continued access to the very best deals, and to maximize portfolio returns.
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About Genoa Ventures: Genoa Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage life sciences technology companies.
Joe Bondy-Denomy
Co-Founder of Acrigen Biosciences
Joe Bondy-Denomy is a Co-Founder of Acrigen Biosciences.
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About Acrigen Biosciences: Acrigen Biosciences is dedicated to making gene editing safe.
Bárbara Kunde Minuzzi
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Babel Ventures
Bárbara is a financial advisor to ultra high net worth families and has singlehandedly raised over $250 million for real estate and high tech companies in both Brazil and the US. Starting her career as an entrepreneur in fashion in Brazil, Bárbara moved towards investment management early in her career by co-founding INVESTHAUS with Daniela and moving to Miami. She soon became an advisor and angel investor to several high-profile startups, such as Spinn Coffee, CALA, OccamzRazor, Cue and Singu. In 2016, Bárbara moved to San Francisco to start her own venture firm, BABEL Ventures. With extensive experience in diversifying investments and building strategic portfolios, Bárbara is the chief networker with founders and VC firms in Silicon Valley.
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About Babel Ventures: Babel Ventures is an early stage VC fund backing driven, impact-oriented entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Peter Gassner
Founder and CEO of Veeva
Peter is responsible for the overall direction and management of Veeva Systems. In 2010, Peter was named to the PharmaVOICE 100, which recognizes the 100 most influential people in the life sciences industry. Peter is a twenty year veteran of the software industry. Prior to founding Veeva, Peter was Senior Vice President of Technology at salesforce.com where he had responsibility for building the salesforce.com platform including product, marketing and developer relations. During Peter’s tenure, salesforce.com completed its public offering and grew the technology into the most successful SaaS platform in the industry. Before salesforce.com, Peter was with PeopleSoft for 9 years as both Chief Architect and General Manager of PeopleTools. Peter led a team of over 450 professionals who provided the development, strategy, marketing and customer support for PeopleSoft’s technology platform. PeopleTools was widely regarded in the industry as the best application platform of its day. Peter began his career with IBM in relational database development and research at IBM Silicon Valley Lab and then at IBM Almaden Research Center where he had the privilege of working closely with some of the inventors of relational database technology. Peter holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University.
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About Veeva: Veeva Systems is a provider of cloud-based business solutions for the global life sciences industry.
Noga Leviner
Co-Founder & CEO of PicnicHealth
Noga was inspired to create Picnic after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and struggling to keep track of her own health data. She had previously co-founded Lumni USA, where she raised and deployed the first US investment fund to help underserved students access low-risk, equity-style student loan products. She has been a regular speaker and consultant on financial innovation for the underbanked and, more recently, an advocate for patient data access in the healthcare system. Noga has a BA from Stanford where she studied Human Biology and Economics. She can regularly be found spacing out while trying to meditate.
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About PicnicHealth: PicnicHealth helps patients easily access their medical records and gives them the opportunity to contribute data to medical research.
Troy Astorino
Co-Founder & CTO of PicnicHealth
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About PicnicHealth: PicnicHealth helps patients easily access their medical records and gives them the opportunity to contribute data to medical research.
Fabian Gerlinghaus
Co-Founder & CEO of Cellares
Fabian Gerlinghaus is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cellares.
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About Cellares: Cellares is a life sciences technology company that develops the Cell Shuttle to automate cell therapy manufacturing.
Wenbin Jiang
Co-Founder and CEO of Cytek Biosciences
Wenbin Jiang is a co-founder of Cytek Biosciences, Inc. and a seasoned entrepreneur and inventor. E2O communications was the first company he cofounded in late 1990s, which was acquired by JDS Uniphase in 2004. He is an inventor of more than 90 US patents and an author of 4 book chapters and more than 50 peer reviewed technical papers.
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About Cytek Biosciences: Cytek Biosciences is a manufacturer and supplier of flow cytometry products and services.
Ming Yan
Co-Founder and CTO of Cytek Biosciences
Ming Yan is a co-founder of Cytek Biosciences, Inc. with over 20 years of R&D experience in leadership and innovation. Prior to Cytek, Ming Yan held research and development positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Labs and BD Biosciences. He is one of the thought-leaders in flow cytometry instrumentation and standardization. Ming Yan has published several research papers relating to laser spectroscopy and cell analysis in top peer-reviewed journals. He has over a dozen patents and patent pending applications for his innovations.
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About Cytek Biosciences: Cytek Biosciences is a manufacturer and supplier of flow cytometry products and services.
Jed Dean
Co-Founder of Zymergen
At Zymergen, Jed is responsible for building and operating the robotic workflows for genome engineering and high throughput screening. Prior to his work at Zymergen, he developed technology and automation for life sciences at Amyris and at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Purdue University and has a PhD in biochemistry from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
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About Zymergen: Zymergen is a biotechnology company that specializes in machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
Zach Serber
Co-Founder of Zymergen
Zach Serber is a founder at Zymergen. He was previously the Director of Biology at Amyris and the Principal Investigator on a DARPA contract to develop advanced tools for synthetic biology. Dr. Serber has 15 peer-reviewed publications, 5 filed patents, and worked as a research fellow at Stanford University Medical School. He has a PhD in Biophysics from UCSF, an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA from Columbia University. He lives on a sailboat in Sausalito with his wife and daughter.
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About Zymergen: Zymergen is a biotechnology company that specializes in machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
James H. Bullard
Co-Founder and CTO of Pendulum Therapeutics
James Bullard is a Computational Biologist and Biostatistician with extensive experience in analyzing complex genomic systems. Prior to co-founding Whole Biome, Jim served as a Senior Staff Scientist at Pacific Biosciences. Jim, completed his Ph.D. in Biostatistics with a focus in Computational and Genomic Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. in Computing and Information Systems at Northwestern University.
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About Pendulum Therapeutics: Pendulum Therapeutics is a biotechnology company improving health through products targeting the microbiome.
Colleen Cutcliffe
Co-Founder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics
Colleen Cutcliffe is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics.
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About American Diabetes Association, California Life Sciences Association, Pendulum Therapeutics: Pendulum Therapeutics is a biotechnology company improving health through products targeting the microbiome.
John S. Eid
Co-Founder and CSO of Pendulum Therapeutics
John Eid is a Biophysicist who has led fundamental technology development for over a decade. His research areas include advanced microscopy, single molecule detection and analyses, automated data acquisition system development, biophysical system modeling, genome sequencing applications and bioinformatics. Prior to co-founding Whole Biome, John served as a Principle Scientist at Pacific Biosciences. He joined the company shortly after it was founded and created, developed and applied its core sequencing technology from its incipient stages through commercialization. John completed his postdoctoral research at the Roland Institute at Harvard University, his Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computation Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and his B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University.
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About Pendulum Therapeutics: Pendulum Therapeutics is a biotechnology company improving health through products targeting the microbiome.
Nancy Yu
Co-Founder & CEO of AllStripes
Nancy previously led Corporate Development at 23andMe, the largest consumer genetics company. She worked on 23andMe’s next generation sequencing platform, drug discovery strategy, and business development programs. Before that, she worked on Wall Street as a biopharma investment banker. Nancy began her career doing genetics research at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s passionate about bridging the gap between patients and industry to make drug R&D cheaper, faster, and better.
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About AllStripes: AllStripes is a healthcare technology company that accelerates drug development and research for the treatment of rare diseases.
Sophia Wang
Co-Founder & Chief of Staff and Culture of MycoWorks
Sophia Wang leads MycoWorks with expertise in strategic fundraising, communications, and project management. As a former Program Director, she was responsible for materials procurement, resource allocation, and oversight of vendor relations and physical infrastructure. She has produced large-scale arts and science events at San Francisco cultural institutions that include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Exploratorium, and California College of the Arts. As a Development Director, she has led successful capital campaigns for New York and Bay Area-based educational initiatives. Sophia earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley and is active in the Bay Area performing arts community as a dancer and choreographer. Her deep interest in mycelium materials and biomimetic design stems from a lifelong immersion in her family’s ongoing professional research in molecular cell biology and mycology.
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About MycoWorks: MycoWorks is a biotech company that delivers commercially viable non-plastic and non-animal materials to the market.
Maneesh Jain
CEO and Co-Founder of Mirvie
Maneesh Jain currently works as Chief Executive Officer and the Founder of Mirvie. He previously worked at Cirina (Grail) as CEO and President.
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About Mirvie: Mirvie is a biotech company that creates precise, actionable, and non-invasive tests for maternal-fetal health.
Vivian Qu
CEO & Founder of ViaeX
Vivian Qu is a dedicated professional operating within the material science and biotech venture space in Silicon Valley. She is the CPO at ORA Nano Mask, and she founded ViaeX Technologies, Inc. in 2016 to contribute to the advancement of our society through sustainable technological developments. For her work across her career, Vivian Qu has earned recognition as the recipient of the Dow Chemical SISCA Award, the Clinton Global Initiative Award, and the Fung Fellowship. Additionally, she received the NSF Innovation Corp Grant and the Big Ideas Berkeley – Energy and Alternative Resources Prize. Vivian was also recognized in the Pulse by Business Insider for her work as a graduate from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Tidal Vision, ViaeX: ViaeX creates biological nanofiltration systems for water and air which are 400% more efficient than current solutions.
Moran Shochat Snir
Co-Founder & CEO of Clear Genetics
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About Clear Genetics, Invitae: Clear Genetics is a digital health company dedicated to the thoughtful integration of genetics into routine patient care.
Guy Snir
Co-Founder & COO of Clear Genetics
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About Clear Genetics, Invitae: Clear Genetics is a digital health company dedicated to the thoughtful integration of genetics into routine patient care.
Patrick Enright
Founder and Managing Director of Longitude Capital
Patrick Enright is the Board Member at Esperion Therapeutics.He has served as a Member Of Board Of Directors since April 2013.He is also the Managing Director, Longitude Capital Management Co., LLC. Patrick is a founder of Longitude Capital Management Co., LLC, a venture capital firm focused on investments in biotechnology, and has served as its Managing Director since 2007. From 2002 through 2006, Patrick was a Managing Director of Pequot Ventures where he co-led the life sciences investment practice. Prior to Pequot, Patrick was a Managing Member responsible for the Delta Opportunity Fund, where he invested in privately held and publicly traded biotechnology companies. Patrick is a director of a number of companies including,Corcept Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CORT),Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ: JAZZ).Patrick earned an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University.
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About Longitude Capital: Longitude Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in biotechnology and medical technology companies.
Shan X Wang
Co-Founder of Flux Bioscience
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About Flux Bioscience: Flux Biosciences is a company spun out of Stanford University, where the technology used to read and write computer hard drives .
Alice Zhang
Co-Founder & CEO of Verge Genomics
CEO and Co-founder at Verge Genomics; Angel Investor in Tech-Enabled Bio
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About Verge Genomics: Verge Genomics uses machine learning and human genomics to accelerate drug discovery.
Josh Tetrick
Co-Founder & CEO of Eat Just
Josh is the CEO & Co-Founder of Eat Just, Inc., a San Francisco-based company on a mission to bring delicious, accessible, healthier and more sustainable food to everyone, everywhere. Prior to founding the company, Tetrick led a United Nations business initiative in Kenya and worked for both former President Clinton and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. As Fulbright Scholar, Tetrick taught schoolchildren in Nigeria and South Africa and is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Michigan Law School. Tetrick has been named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” Inc.’s “35 Under 35” and Fortune’s “40 Under 40.”
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About 33needs, Eat Just: Eat Just offers a plant-based egg substitute intended to provide healthy and nutritional food alternatives.
Alex Furman
Co-Founder & Head of Organizational Development of Invitae
Alex co-founded Locus Development after leading the software engineering effort at Navigenics. Prior to that, he spent many years developing automated trading systems and financial planning software. A born-and-bred programmer, Alex grew up playing with computers that took up entire rooms and were orders of magnitude less powerful than the smartphone he now carries in his pocket.
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About Invitae: Invitae is a medical genetics company that bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare.
John Kuriyan
Co-Founder of Nurix Therapeutics
John Kuriyan, Ph.D., is an expert in the structural dynamics of ubiquitin ligases and other signaling complexes. Dr. Kuriyan is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Professor and then Professor at Rockefeller University for 14 years. Dr. Kuriyan serves as a member of the Advisory Board at Carmot Therapeutics Inc. and is a Senior Editor at eLife, a new enterprise in high profile and open access scientific publishing. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the 2005 Richard Lounsbery Award. He holds a B.S. in chemistry from Juniata College, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About Nurix Therapeutics: Nurix develops small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of proliferative and degenerative diseases.
Arthur Weiss
Co-Founder of Nurix Therapeutics
Arthur Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer in cell biology and signal transduction. Dr. Weiss is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Ephraim P. Engleman Distinguished Professor, University of California San Francisco. He has previously served as the President of the American Association of Immunologists. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Weiss received his B.A. at the Johns Hopkins University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago School of Medicine. He did postdoctoral training at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research and his clinical training in internal medicine and rheumatology at UCSF.
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About Nurix Therapeutics, University of California, San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco: Nurix develops small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of proliferative and degenerative diseases.
Michael Rape
Co-Founder of Nurix Therapeutics
Michael Rapé, Ph.D., is a leader in the biology of ubiquitin-dependent cell cycle progression and carcinogenesis. He is a Howard Hughes Investigator and a Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He started his own lab at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 2006, where he has developed novel screening tools to identify the ubiquitylation enzymes that are important for cell division and differentiation and pair them with the proteins they target. Prior to that, he completed his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School in the lab of Marc Kirschner. In recognition of his creativity and productivity, Dr. Rapé was named a Pew Scholar and received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2007. He has also won prestigious fellowships from the Human Frontier Science Program and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Dr. Rapé studied Biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and received his Ph.D. at the MPI in Martinsried, Germany in the lab of Stefan Jentsch.
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About Nurix Therapeutics: Nurix develops small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of proliferative and degenerative diseases.
Ryan Pawell
Founder & CEO of Indee Labs
Ryan Pawell (Founder, Director & Chief Executive Officer) is a Y Combinator alumni, published author and subject matter expert in the areas of fluid dynamics, advanced manufacturing, and biomicrofluidics. Ryan has been invited to present his work by the Australian National Fabrication Facility, White House Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute among others.
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About Axial, Indee Labs, Pioneer Fund: Indee Labs is unlocking gene-modified cell therapy for the masses with scalable hardware for gene delivery.
Ryan Pawell
Founder & CEO of Indee Labs
Ryan Pawell (Founder, Director & Chief Executive Officer) is a Y Combinator alumni, published author and subject matter expert in the areas of fluid dynamics, advanced manufacturing, and biomicrofluidics. Ryan has been invited to present his work by the Australian National Fabrication Facility, White House Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute among others.
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About Axial, Indee Labs, Pioneer Fund: Indee Labs is unlocking gene-modified cell therapy for the masses with scalable hardware for gene delivery.
Charles A. Taylor
Founder and Chief Technology Officer of HeartFlow
Charles Taylor is a co-founder, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and member of the Board of Directors of HeartFlow Inc. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Surgery at Stanford University with courtesy faculty appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Radiology. He is internationally recognized for the development of computer modeling and imaging techniques for cardiovascular disease research, device design and treatment planning. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. degree in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
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About HeartFlow: HeartFlow is a medical technology company that provides new methods of diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease.
Juan Jaen
President & Co-Founder of Arcus Biosciences
Juan has been engaged in all aspects of drug discovery and development for more than 30 years. In 2015, he co-founded Arcus Biosciences together with Terry Rosen. Prior to that, he was co-founder and President/Head of R&D at Flexus Biosciences, until its acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $1.25 billion. Previously, he was Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at ChemoCentryx. During his tenure there of just under 7 years, Juan led the discovery and progression into the clinic of 8 novel drug candidates in the immunology space. At ChemoCentryx, Juan led the discovery efforts for the multi-year collaboration with GSK, which generated over $100M in non-dilutive milestones and fees. From 1996 to 2006, Juan held various scientific management positions at Tularik (responsible for about 100 scientists in Medicinal and Computational Chemistry, as well as Structural Biology) and then Amgen Inc. (after its acquisition of Tularik in 2004), most recently as Vice President of Chemistry. From 1983 to 1996, Juan held various scientific leadership positions at Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert. Juan holds a Visiting Scholar appointment (ChEM-H) at Stanford University and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Cleave Biosciences. Juan obtained a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Universidad Complutense in Madrid (Spain) and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Michigan. He has co-authored over 100 scientific papers and is an inventor on 50 issued U.S. patents. Juan has been responsible for the advancement of over 20 novel molecules into clinical development for diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s, RA, diabetes and diabetic nephropathy, psoriasis, asthma, and vasculitis, among others.
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About Arcus Biosciences: Arcus Biosciences is a biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, and commercializes novel therapies for the treatment of cancer.
Jin-Long Chen
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of NGM Biopharmaceuticals
Jin-Long Chen was most recently Vice President of Research at Amgen and head of the Metabolic Disorders therapeutic area. In this role he assumed global responsibility for the company’s research efforts in the areas of metabolism, bone, mineral balance, and muscle. He successfully guided programs from the earliest stages of drug discovery through advanced clinical trials and made key contributions to business development and product commercialization. Jin-Long Chen further bolstered Amgen’s drug portfolio by successfully in-licensing promising clinical candidates and out-licensing suitable clinical-stage molecules. Previously, Jin-Long Chen served as Vice President of Biology at Tularik and was responsible for drug discovery research in oncology, inflammation and metabolic disease. He personally initiated and directed Tularik’s orphan receptor programs, advancing a number of candidates, targeting selected GPCRs and nuclear hormone receptors, to the clinic. Several of these compounds remain in clinical development, including T131, a novel modulator of PPARy activity for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. While at Tularik, Jin-Long Chen was also active in business development, successfully establishing and managing pharma partnerships in support of the company’s metabolic and genomic research programs.
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About NGM Biopharmaceuticals: NGM Biopharmaceuticals is a drug discovery company developing biotherapeutics for the gastrointestinal endocrine system.
Daphne Koller
Founder & CEO of Insitro
Daphne Koller is CEO and Founder of insitro, a company using machine learning and high-throughput biology to transform drug discovery. Daphne was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. She was the co-founder, co-CEO and President of Coursera for 5 years, and Chief Computing Officer of Calico, an Alphabet company in the healthcare space. She is the author of over 200 refereed publications appearing in venues such as Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics. Daphne was recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2012. She received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004 and the ACM Prize in Computing in 2008. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2011 and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014 and of the International Society of Computational Biology in 2017.
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About Engageli, Insitro: Insitro is a drug discovery and development startup that utilizes machine learning and biology to transform drug discovery.
Chun Wu
Co-Founder and COO of iCarbonX
Chung Wu is Co-founder and COO of iCarbonX. Dr. Wu joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2003. As the global Partner and Managing Director, Dr. Wu led her team to assist tens of multinational and domestic companies to formulate corporate strategy and improve business management. Early 2015, Dr. Wu joined the Beijing Genomics Institute as the Chief Operating Officer, overseeing manufacturing, marketing, and sales globally. Dr. Wu received B.S. degree in biology from Peking University and Ph.D. in genetics from Yale University.
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About iCarbonX: iCarbonX is a China-based artificial intelligence platform for health data company.
Hyunjun Park
Co-Founder & CEO of Catalog
Hyunjun Park is the Co-Founder & CEO at CATALOG.
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About Catalog, Forbes Technology Council, GIST: Catalog is a developer of a data conversion and storage platform used to offer the next generation of digital data archives.
Jack Taunton
Founder of Cedilla Therapeutics
Associate Professor at UCSF.
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About Cedilla Therapeutics, Global Blood Therapeutics, Kezar Life Sciences, Principia Biopharma, The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco: Cedilla Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that develops targeted small molecules for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Sajith Wickramasekara
Co-Founder & CEO of Benchling
Sajith Wickramasekara is the Co-Founder and CEO at Benchling since June 2012. He was a Research Assistant at Liquidia Technologies and Duke University Medical Center. Ms. Wickramasekara received a bachelor of science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About Benchling: Benchling is a cloud-based software platform for biology researchers and research and development organizations.
Ashutosh Singhal
Co-Founder and President of Benchling
Ashutosh Singhal previously worked on Twitter Ads and founded hotspots.io. Singhal studied Computer Science and Math at MIT and did research in optogenetics and functional genomics. He loves distance running and IPAs.
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About Benchling: Benchling is a cloud-based software platform for biology researchers and research and development organizations.
Stephen Cary
Founder of Omniox
Stephen Cary is the co-founder and CEO of Omniox, and co-inventor of the H-NOX technology. Stephen identified H-NOX as a potential therapeutic platform while working at the University of California, Berkeley. He secured the first financial support for Omniox by winning the inaugural Rogers Family Foundation “Bridging the Gap” Award at QB3. Subsequently, Stephen and his team obtained multiple NIH SBIR awards and a Wellcome Trust Translation Award to build Omniox’ operations and enable development of the H-NOX platform. Prior to launching Omniox, Stephen worked at Genentech in Market Strategy, and before that in Immunology Research. He participated extensively in early stage development projects, concentrating on strategic processes of transitioning therapeutic candidates from late-stage research to early development, and provided market and endpoint inputs into design of clinical trials. Stephen obtained his PhD in Biological Chemistry with Michael Marletta at the University of Michigan, and his Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University.
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About Omniox: Omniox, a biotechnology company, commercializes technologies used in identifying and treating cancer, cardiovascular disease and trauma.
James Spudich
Founder of MyoKardia
James Spudich, Ph.D., serves as the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Disease in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University. His laboratory studies how enzymes use specific structural elements to carry out their exquisite roles. Specifically, his research has focused on the myosin family of enzymes. Over the last 35 years, Dr. Spudich and scientists in his lab have used an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to elucidate the molecular basis of energy transduction by the myosin family of molecular motors. Dr. Spudich also serves as a visiting faculty member at the National Center for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore, India. Dr. Spudich is a co-founder and former director of Cytokinetics and the Stanford University Bio-X program. He currently serves as the chair of the International Affairs Committee for the American Society for Cell Biology, and has previously served as president of the organization. Dr. Spudich has been recognized with numerous honors for his achievements in the field, including the American Heart Association Basic Research Prize and the 2012 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has authored more than 190 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Spudich holds a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University. He completed his postdoctoral work in genetics and structural biology at Stanford University and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
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About MyoKardia: MyoKardia is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops targeted therapies for the treatment of rare cardiovascular diseases.
Christine Seidman
Founder of MyoKardia
Christine (Kricket) Seidman, M.D., is a Professor of Genetics and the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She joined the staff at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1987 and is currently the director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center. Along with her husband Jonathan Seidman, Ph.D., Dr. Seidman has elucidated multiple genetic causes of human disorders affecting the heart and vasculature. The Seidmans’ discoveries include the identification and demonstration of genetic mutations causing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and dilated cardiomyopathy, as well as the first genetic cause of congenital heart malformations. In addition to recognition received jointly with her husband, Dr. Seidman’s recent honors include Distinguished Scientist, American Heart Association; Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, The George Washington University; The 21st Annual Glorney-Raisbeck Award; and the Jay and Jean Schottenstein Prize in Cardiovascular Science. She is a member of the Association of University Cardiologists and an elected member to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Seidman holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and an M.D. from George Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Seidman served as an intern and resident in internal medicine at John Hopkins Hospital and received subspecialty training in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
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About MyoKardia: MyoKardia is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops targeted therapies for the treatment of rare cardiovascular diseases.
Jonathan Seidman
Founder of MyoKardia
Professor at Harvard Medical School.
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About Harvard Medical School, MyoKardia: MyoKardia is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops targeted therapies for the treatment of rare cardiovascular diseases.
Sofia Elizondo
Co-Founder and COO of Brightseed
Sofia Elizondo is the Co-founder and COO at Brightseed.
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About Brightseed: Brightseed features artificial intelligence that reveals powerful compounds hidden in nature.
Lee Chae
Co-Founder and CTO of Brightseed
Lee Chae is the Co-founder and CTO at Brightseed.
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About Brightseed: Brightseed features artificial intelligence that reveals powerful compounds hidden in nature.
Brian Spears
Founder & CEO of New Age Meats
Brian Spears is the co-founder and CEO of New Age Meats.
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About New Age Meats: New Age Meats is a biotechnology company that develops healthy cultivated meat grown from animal cells instead of animal slaughter.
Marshall Fordyce
Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vera Therapeutics
Marshall Fordyce, MD is Co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Trucode. He brings more than 10 years of experience leading teams in drug discovery, development, clinical translation, and commercialization. Prior to founding Trucode, he was an entrepreneur in residence at Kleiner Perkins. Previously, Dr. Fordyce served as Senior Director of Clinical Research at Gilead Sciences, where he contributed to seven new drug approvals and served as Project Lead for Gilead’s highly successful TAF/GENVOYA development program. With subspecialty training in infectious disease from Columbia P&S, Dr. Fordyce was previously Chief Resident at NYU Bellevue and spent two years as translational research fellow at Rockefeller University. Dr. Fordyce has been an advisor to Google X and to several private biotech companies. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. He received his BA from Harvard University and his MD from Harvard Medical School.
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About Vera Therapeutics: Vera Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing innovative biologic therapeutics with transformative clinical potential.
Joshua Kazam
Co-Founder and Director of Kronos Bio
Joshua is the Co-Founder and Director of Kronos Bio. Mr. Kazam is a co-founder and Partner of Two River. He also serves as an Officer and Director of Riverbank Capital Securities, Inc., a FINRA member broker-dealer (“Riverbank”). Prior to co-founding Two River, he was employed by a venture capital firm specializing in biotechnology investments, where he most recently served as Managing Director and was responsible for ongoing operations of venture investments. In addition, Mr. Kazam served as the Director of Investment Management for the Orion Biomedical Fund, a New York-based private equity fund focused on biotechnology investments. Mr. Kazam is a co-founder and director of Kite Pharma (KITE) and serves on the Board Capricor Therapeutics (CAPR). In addition, Mr. Kazam also currently serves as a director of several privately held companies including Vetprime, Inc. Mr. Kazam received his degree in entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and resides in New York City.
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About Allogene Therapeutics, Kite Pharma, Kronos Bio, Two River: Kronos Bio focuses on the research and development of first-in-class therapies that modulate historically recalcitrant cancer.
Aldo Carrascoso
Co-Founder and CEO of InterVenn
Aldo is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InterVenn Biosciences. InterVenn combines next-generation glycomics (carbohydrates), instrumentation (LC/MS), and deep machine learning to augment cancer diagnosis, biomarker, and target discovery for the development of more efficacious molecular diagnostics. Venn was founded by a team of serial entrepreneurs with repeated and proven track record of success (value creation of half a billion dollars) and execution in the fields of Machine Learning, Analytical Chemistry through Liquid Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry and in Oncological Glycoproteomics. Prior to Venn, Aldo was the Founder and COO / CTO of San Francisco based Veem (formerly Align Commerce), a next generation replacement for outdated wire and telegraphic transfer systems. Align uses the blockchain and its proprietary multi-rail systems to change the way global cross border payments are done – making the process simpler, faster and more transparent to over 60 countries. Some of the company’s investors include Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, Byers (the same venture capital responsible for Google, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, Waze, Slack, and Snapchat among others), Google Ventures, Softbank Ventures, National Australian Bank, Silicon Valley Bank Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners, and NYCA Investment Partnership LP (led by Hans Morris, former President of Visa and Max Levchin, founding CTO of PayPal). Prior to founding Veem, Aldo was the Founder and CTO of Jukin Technologies / Jukin Media – one of the world’s largest User Generated Content (UGC) payments and licensing platforms with over 60 billion global views, 50 million platform shares and over 10 million active contributors and subscribers in 221 markets. Jukin is currently being used by some of the world’s largest television networks and production companies including ABC, BBC, CBS, Comedy Central, CNN, Discovery, ESPN, FOX, HBO, MTV, NBC, TruTV, Vh1, and hundreds of other websites, and platforms throughout the world. Jukin’s main properties include FailArmy, JukinVideo, People Are Awesome, The Pet Collective, World’s Funniest on FOX and That are Funny! on UK’s Channel 5. Samsung Investments, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments Inc., Launchpad LA, and Maker Studios are some of Jukin’s lead investors. Aldo is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and technology disruptor. Prior to Jukin, he founded a number of ventures in global B2B matchmaking, international trading/finance, and business process outsourcing. Aldo has an MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson and a degree in Psychology from Ateneo De Manila University.
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About InterVenn, Jukin Media, Jukinvideo, Veem: InterVenn Biosciences identifies, quantifies, and classifies Glycoproteomic and other PTM signals found in human blood and tissue.
Rolf Ehrhardt
Co-Founder , President and Chief Executive Officer of BioCision
Dr. Rolf Ehrhardt co-founded BioCision in 2007, after more than 25 years of experience in leadership and innovation in medical research and product development. Prior to growing BioCision into the leading provider of temperature-sensitive sample and drug handling solutions, he was responsible for the early (phase 1a) clinical development of a novel HCV protease inhibitor at Intermune. Before that, Dr. Ehrhardt was the vice president of preclinical development at Corgentech. He was the founding president of BioSeek, where he raised close to $20 million in private financing. Prior to founding BioSeek, Dr. Ehrhardt led a scientific group focused on new target discovery and immuno-therapeutics development at Protein Design Labs (now PDL BioPharma Inc.). Dr. Ehrhardt was a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG: German Research Foundation) and Fogarty Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where his focus was on mucosal immunology and inflammatory bowel disease. He has authored more than 40 peer reviewed publications and holds multiple patents. Dr. Ehrhardt earned his M.D. and Ph.D. with distinction from the Technical University of Munich, Germany.
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About BioCision: BioCision develops laboratory tools to standardize pre-analytical sample handling, cryopreservation, and storage.
David de Vries
Co-Founder and COO of Arine
David oversees overall company strategy, operations, sales, marketing and business development for Arine. Prior to Arine, David was the Director of Commercial Strategy and Development at Proteus Digital Health, where he oversaw partnerships, key elements of new product development and other strategic growth initiatives including the design and execution of the first value-based contracts for digital medicines. Before that, he worked at the RAND Corporation on the analysis and evaluation of several elements of the Affordable Care Act. When he’s not focusing on transforming healthcare through technology, he is most likely to be spotted at your local photography exhibit, neighborhood pickup basketball court, or by a large body of water attempting and failing some kind of watersport. David holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Neurobiology from Harvard and a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge.
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About Arine: Arine optimizes medications and improves human health through data-driven clinical services.
Andre Watson
Founder, CEO & Chairman of Ligandal
Founder at Ligandal
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About Ligandal: Ligandal is creating cell-specific delivery systems for gene editing tools such as CRISPR using automation and peptide-based nanoparticles.
Christian Foster
Co-Founder & CTO of Ligandal
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About Ligandal: Ligandal is creating cell-specific delivery systems for gene editing tools such as CRISPR using automation and peptide-based nanoparticles.
Amy DuRoss
Co-Founder & CEO of Vineti
Amy focuses on healthcare new business creation for GE Ventures/healthymagination. In addition to venture investments, Amy is driving growth strategy for new business creation portfolio companies as well as scoping and seeding independent business opportunities. Amy was Chief Business Officer at Navigenics, a genomics company sold to Life Technologies in 2012. She was the co-founder and Executive Director of Proposition 71,California’s $3B stem cell research initiative passed in 2004, as well as Chief of Staff at the resulting state grant oversight agency. Earlier in her career, Amy was an early employee at E-Loan, Inc., the first online consumer mortgage company, with that company through its IPO. She also worked for the World Bank Group to scale and deliver leapfrog technologies to developing economies. Amy holds an MBA and MA/BA in English from Stanford University. She was also a Coro Fellow and an Aspen Institute Socrates Fellow.
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About Vineti: Vineti is a commercial cloud-based platform that expands patient access to life-saving cells and gene therapies.
Ayin Vala
Co-Founder of VastBiome
Ayin Vala is the Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer of VastBiome.
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About Admissions AI, Foundation for Precision Medicine, NaN Data Science, Stanford University, VastBiome: Mapping the gut microbiome for better medicines
Kareem Barghouti
Co-Founder of VastBiome
Kareem Barghouti is the Co-Founder and CEO of VastBiome.
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About VastBiome: Mapping the gut microbiome for better medicines
Mark Chao
Co-Founder & CEO of TenSixteen Bio
Dr. Chao is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and a trained hematologist with a strong clinical network at Stanford University Hospitals. Dr. Chao has clinical development experience in bringing cancer therapeutics through to successful IND filing and has contributed to successful early stage clinical trial execution within the academic university setting. Dr. Chao has over 15 years of experience in stem cell biology, immunology, and cancer biology research, including the discovery of a novel target for cancer immunotherapy that is now in clinical development. He is a co-founder of Forty Seven, Inc., a clinical stage immuno-oncology company. He earned his MD and PhD in cancer biology from Stanford University and completed his internal medicine residency and hematology fellowship at Stanford. He is currently a visiting scholar in the Division of Hematology at Stanford University.
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About Gilead Sciences, HepaTx, Stanford Health Care, TenSixteen Bio: TenSixteen Bio is a biotechnology company focused on developing novel therapeutics for a variety of diseases.
Willam Rutter
CEO and Founder of Boston Biomedical
Dr. Rutter is Chairman and Founder of Synergenics, LLC, which owns and controls a portfolio of biotechnology companies at various stages of development. In his academic career, Dr. Rutter joined the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF) as head of the newly formed department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1968, and played a key role in developing UCSF into a major scientific institution. In research, he is particularly known for the discovery of the enzymes involved in the expression of DNA (RNA polymerases), the first cloning of the insulin gene, the cloning of hepatitis B virus (HBV), and formation of an HBV-like particle that provided the basis for a safe and protective vaccine. With 2 colleagues, Dr. Rutter founded Chiron in 1981, a pioneering biotech firm that developed the first recombinant vaccine (against HBV) with Merck and a process for manufacturing insulin from yeast with Novo-Nordisk. Chiron was the first to clone the AIDS (HIV) virus and to discover, clone, and sequence the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Chiron developed quantitative diagnostic tests for HIV, HBV, and HCV, thus providing the means for eliminating blood contaminated with these viruses, a major contribution to public health worldwide. Chiron developed and promulgated the concept of “viral load” as the basis for determining disease status, as well as the basis for developing and evaluating antivirals and other treatment protocols for these and other diseases. Prior to Chiron, Dr. Rutter was a consultant to Abbott Laboratories for about 20 years, and a member of the Amgen Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Rutter’s past board memberships include Novartis, Sangamo Biosciences, Cytokinetics, Nugen, Oscient Pharmaceuticals, and Epitomics. Dr. Rutter also currently serves on the boards of Eureka Genomics, Apexigen, One Globe, and Cellworks. He is Chairman of the Synergenics companies: Synco Biopartners, ReLIA Diagnostic Systems, Numera Health, Ventria Bioscience, Humabs Biomed, Pathologica, and BioEnergenix. Dr. Rutter is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and the biotechnology industry.
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About Boston Biomedical: Boston Biomedical focuses on the research and development of novel therapeutics to treat cancer.
Ajoy Khandheria
Founder of Gramin Health Care
Ajoy is an Engineer, technology evangelist and a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in building Telecommunications, Telematics, Taxi aggregation and Healthcare businesses. As Managing Partner in GAP Investments Pte Ltd, Ajoy has made strategic investments in a number of successful companies like Paridyam Healthcare & Medical Second Opinion (India), Doc on Call (Myanmar), Avenger (USA), ,Belgium Satellite Services (Belgium), Six Dee Technologies (India), Hello Cabs (Myanmar), Intersat FZE (Dubai), Mobifusion (USA), Infotrack (Bangalore) andCERT Telematics (Abu Dhabi) Under Ajoy’s leadership, companies have witnessed geographical expansion in international markets . Ajoy has also been an advisor to several large corporations such as Harris Corporation, Ital Cable, Tech Mahindra, Tellabs Maxis, UT Starcom, Hughes Software Systems, & IPUnity.
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About Gramin Health Care: Gramin Health Care with a vision to transform healthcare delivery in the under-served markets.
Osh. Agabi
Founder & CEO of Koniku
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About : Koniku merges synthetic biology with silicon to build machines that detect smells. We cyborgs capable of detecting smell.
Will Patrick
Co-Founder & CEO of Culture Biosciences
Will Patrick is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Culture Robotics.
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About Culture Biosciences: Culture Biosciences develops automated bio-reactors that help companies optimize their manufacturing processes.
Hugo Mercier
Founder of Dreem
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About Dreem: Dreem is a neurotechnology company composed of sleep pioneers, a team of experts fascinated by science, technology and design.
Matt De Silva
Founder & CEO of Notable Labs
Founder at Notable Labs
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About Notable Labs: Notable Labs provides personalized drug combination testing service for cancer patients.
Matthew De Silva
Founder & Executive Chairman of Notable Labs
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About Bank of America, Notable Labs: Notable Labs provides personalized drug combination testing service for cancer patients.
Sundeep Dugar
Founder & Director of Sphaera Pharma
Sundeep Dugar is the Director at Epirium Bio. He is also the Founder of Sphaera Pharma.
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About Epirium, Sphaera Pharma: Sphaera Pharma is engaged in the discovery and development of pharmaceutical drugs.
Pep Gubau
Executive Chairman, CTO & Co-Founder of Aizon
Pep is an IT entrepreneur and has been working in IT for the last 25 years, being pioneer in Linux adoption in the 90s, cloud in the 2000s and big data in the last years. Although having a theoretical economics and maths profile, his early career was as a software developer for the chemical industry. He later was CTO & COO of an IT consulting firm, leading a team of more than 200 engineers until 2003 when Pep created his first IT company with a clear core principle: customer centric focus. Two more followed. In 2013 Pep started thinking on the next thing to work on. bigfinite is the result of this initial spark that immediately caught fire in Pere and Toni. Pep is Economist (University of Barcelona) with an engineering background.
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About Aizon: Aizon is a cloud-based SaaS platform that helps optimize industrial processes in biotech and pharma.
Atul Butte
Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor of NuMedii
Atul Butte, MD, PhD is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor and inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (bchsi.ucsf.edu) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Butte is also the Chief Data Scientist for the entire University of California Health System, the tenth largest by revenue in the United States, with 20 health professional schools, 6 medical schools, 6 academic health centers, 10 hospitals, and over 1000 care delivery sites. Dr. Butte has been continually funded by NIH for 20 years, is an inventor on 24 patents, and has authored over 200 publications, with research repeatedly featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wired Magazine. Dr. Butte was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, and in 2013, he was recognized by the Obama Administration as a White House Champion of Change in Open Science for promoting science through publicly available data. Dr. Butte is also a founder of three investor-backed data-driven companies: Personalis (IPO, 2019), providing medical genome sequencing services, Carmenta (acquired by Progenity, 2015), discovering diagnostics for pregnancy complications, and NuMedii, finding new uses for drugs through open molecular data. Dr. Butte trained in Computer Science at Brown University, worked as a software engineer at Apple and Microsoft, received his MD at Brown University, trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Children’s Hospital Boston, then received his PhD from Harvard Medical School and MIT.
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About NuMedii, Personalis, University of California, San Francisco: NuMedii is a biotechnology company that discovers and de-risks effective drugs by translating life sciences big data into therapies.
Sanjeev Redkar
Co-Founder and President of Apollomics
Sanjeev Redkar is a co-founder of Apollomics, Inc. that was started as a spin-off in early 2016. In his previous role, Sanjeev Redkar was the Senior Vice President of Product Development at Astex Pharmaceuticals, a member of the Otsuka Group, where he was responsible for pharmaceutical development, technical operations and manufacturing. Sanjeev Redkar has been closely involved in preclinical and clinical development as well as global launches of several drugs including decitabine (Dacogen) and pentostatin (Nipent). Sanjeev Redkar has over 24 years of oncology drug development experience with over 25 peer-reviewed publications and 150 patents. Sanjeev Redkar earned his doctorate from the University of Colorado, Boulder, his Master of Business Administration from St. Mary’s College of California, and his undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a member of the Industrial Advisory Board at the University of the Pacific School of Pharmacy in Stockton, California, and a member of the EPPIC Board of Directors, a pharmaceutical professional’s network.
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About Apollomics: Apollomics is a biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing mono- and combination- oncology therapies to harness the immune system.
Gonzalo Fuenzalida
Co-Founder and CEO of Andes
Gonzalo Fuenzalida is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Andes.
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About Andes: Andes empowers biology to enable positive action against climate change.
Stelios Tzannis
Founder and COO of Aeovian Pharmaceuticals
Stelios Tzannis is the Founder and COO of Aeovian Pharmaceuticals.
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About Aeovian Pharmaceuticals, Delos Pharmaceuticals: Aeovian Pharmaceuticals aims to discover, develop, and commercialize therapeutics for the treatment of rare and age-related diseases.
Ray Chiu
Founder & CEO of Calyx
Founder of BioInspira.
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About Calyx: Calyx harnesses biology to provide low cost and highly accurate sensors for real-time detection and analysis of air chemicals.
Suma Krishnan
Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Krystal Biotech
Suma Krishnan is the Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Krystal Biotech. She earned a degree of Master of Science in Organic Chemistry from Villanova University.
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About Krystal Biotech, Light Matters Foundation: Krystal Biotech provide significant clinical benefit for patients suffering from rare debilitating disorders..
Victor McCray
Founder & CEO of Tangible Science
Vic McCray, MD is a Co-Founder of Tangible Science and serves as its President and Chief Executive Officer, where he leads commercialization of technology to improve contact lens comfort for patients suffering from dry eye disease. Involved at the inception, Vic has seen the company through several important milestones including initial proof of concept, venture funding, and the ongoing business development and licensing negotiations.
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About Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, Tangible Science: Tangible Science is a developer of contact lenses designed to reduce lens discomfort in dry eye diseases.
Orestis Vardoulis
Co-Founder & CEO of Zeit Medical
Orestis Vardoulis currently works as the Co-Founder and CEO for ZeitMedical.
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About Zeit Medical: Zeit Medical provides peace of mind to neurology injury patients through powered AI and cutting edge Bioelectronics.
H. Lee Mosbacker
Founder & CTO of Traycer Diagnostic Systems
H. Lee Mosbacker joined CAPRICA AI as CEO in 2018. Dr. Mosbacker received his B.S. in physics from Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College in 1999. From 2000 – 2002 he worked as a programmer analyst at Nationwide Financial developing market timing applications for mutual fund managers. In 2008, Lee received his PhD in Physics from The Ohio State University. Since 2007, Lee has been the Chief Technology Officer of Traycer Diagnostic Systems, where he has been involved in the scientific and technical aspects of growing an early-stage technology company, including grant and fund raising and the conceptualization and development of microwave and terahertz frequency detection arrays. In 2005, Lee co-founded Techriculture, a non-profit that helps inventors and scientists in early stage product ideation and prototype development through educational, networking, technical, and financial consulting.
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About CAPRICA AI, HackCancerSF, OcuDoc, Syndicate app, Traycer Diagnostic Systems: Traycer Diagnostic Systems develops terahertz radiation cameras that are integrated into imaging systems.
Akash Bakshi
CEO and Co-Founder of ANA Therapeutics
Akash Bakshi is the Co-Founder and CEO of ANA Therapeutics.
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About ANA Therapeutics, NeuroBo Pharmaceuticals, YourChoice Therapeutics: ANA Therapeutics is a biotech company that is developing a novel coronavirus vaccine intended to save human lives.
Andrew Bartynski
Co-Founder and COO of ANA Therapeutics
Andrew Bartynski is the Co-Founder and COO of ANA Therapeutics.
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About AesculaTech, ANA Therapeutics: ANA Therapeutics is a biotech company that is developing a novel coronavirus vaccine intended to save human lives.
Kristen Fortney
CEO & Co-Founder of BIOAGE LABS
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About BIOAGE LABS: BIOAGE targets aging to develop drugs that treat severe diseases
Scott J. Wolf
Founder & CMO of Aerin Medical
Dr. Scott Wolf is a prolific medical device entrepreneur. Over the past 20 years,Scott founded numerous successful medical device companies across a broad range of therapeutic areas. Scott founded Aerin Medical to create a non-surgical therapy to meet the enormous need of patients with nasal obstruction. Prior to founding Aerin Medical, Scott founded Zeltiq Aesthetics, the maker of CoolSculpting, the leading non-invasive method of fat reduction for bodyshaping. Zeltiq (NASDAQ: ZLTQ) acquired by Allergan for $2.5B. Scott’s other startups include Endogastric Solutions and Cardiac Dimensions. Scott was previously a partner at Prospect Venture Partners and a vice-president at Frazier Healthcare Ventures, both leading life science venture capital firms. Scott received his M.D. from George Washington University and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
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About Aerin Medical, Volt Health: Aerin Medical is a health technology company that develops therapeutic devices to improve nasal breathing.
Tomohiro Takano
Representative Director, CEO, and Founder of Genomelink
Tomo started his career as a member of the founding team of Impact Hub Tokyo. Through his involvement in establishing this social enterprise community center and business incubator, he honed his start-up business acumen and connected with domestic and international entrepreneurs. In his next role as the business development manager of G-TAC, a genomic corporate venture of M3, Inc., he leads major operations in building a genomic healthcare platform within the primary online network of physicians in Japan. His belief in the potential of the genome in widespread applications led to the founding of AWAKENS, Inc. in 2017.
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About Genomelink: Genomelink is a platform where people discover more with their DNA data and help businesses build, market, and do research with it.
George Miljanich
Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of SiteOne Therapeutics
George Miljanich PhD, is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at SiteOne. SiteOne is George’s third start-up. He has been developing ion channel therapeutics and analgesics for over 25 years. In 2010, he co-founded and was founding President and CEO of SiteOne Therapeutics.He is also CEO at Airmid Inc., a clinical-stage company developing treatments for autoimmune disorders. Prior to Airmid, he was Senior Director and head of analgesia research at Elan Pharmaceuticals, playing a key role in clinical development, FDA approval, and commercialization of the analgesic, PRIALT®. Prior to Elan, he was a co-inventor and co-developer of PRIALT at the Neurex Corporation. George has a BS and PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and was a post-doctoral fellow at UC San Francisco, then was Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Southern California. George has authored over 50 scientific publications and is co-inventor on 23 U.S. patents. He is on the advisory boards of Naurex Pharmaceuticals, Adynxx Pharmaceuticals, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals, all developing and/or marketing treatments for pain. He is also Vice President of the Toxinomics Foundation, which fosters development of toxin-based therapeutics. George was the recipient of the 2012 Ménez Award for his contributions to toxinology.
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About Airmid, SiteOne Therapeutics, Toxinomics Foundation: SiteOne Therapeutics is a San Francisco-based company that develops novel therapeutics and diagnostics.
Nersi Nazari
Executive Chairman & Founder of VitalConnect
Nersi Nazari is the founder of Pacific General Ventures, an early stage fund, which invests in semiconductor and software companies. Before Pacific General, Nazari was vice president of Signal Processing Technology at Marvell Semiconductor Inc., where his responsibilities included the development of storage and communications products. At Marvell he was directly responsible for the architecture of advanced read channels, Giga bit Ethernet physical layer devices, as well as WLAN products. Additionally, he established the system-on-chip (SOC) family of products for the storage market, the highest revenue family of products at Marvell. From 1994 to 1997, Nazari was chief technologist at GEC Plessey Semiconductor. Before that, he was an engineer at Seagate Technology and Digital Equipment Corp. He holds eight patents. He has a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado.
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About Pacific General Ventures, VitalConnect: VitalConnect is a wearable biosensor technology for wireless hospital and remote patient monitoring.
Alexis Rovner
Co-Founder & CEO of 64x Bio
Alexis Rovner founded 64-x on August 22, 2017, with George Church, Jeffrey Way, and Pamela Silver, and she serves as its CEO.
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About 64x Bio: 64x Bio builds a platform that increases the speed and scale of mammalian cell line discovery.
Noor Siddiqui
Founder, CEO of Orchid
Noor Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of the reproductive technology company, Orchid, which measures genetic predisposition to disease.
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About Orchid: Orchid is a reproductive technology startup that is capable of detecting rare genetic disorders.
Mark Kay
Founder of LogicBio Therapeutics
Mark Kay, M.D., Ph.D. has served as a member of LogicBio’s board of directors since January 2016. Dr. Kay is the Dennis Farrey Family Professor in Pediatrics, and a professor of genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he heads the division of human gene therapy. A founder of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, Dr. Kay has served as the society’s president from 2005 to 2006. He holds a B.S. in physical science from Michigan State University and an M.D. and Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University.
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About American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy, LogicBio Therapeutics, Stanford University, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Voyager Therapeutics: LogicBio Therapeutics is a gene therapy startup
