Matt has significant combined academic and industry bioengineering experience in microfluidics, drug discovery, quantitative modeling and structured data analysis. He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and is licensed in California as a Professional Chemical Engineer (PE). Matthew co-founded two life science companies, Lucidant Polymers and Cytomag at the Panorama Research Institute. He served as co-chairman of the Life Science Angels BIO screening committee for two years and has reviewed hundreds of proposals for funding. He worked at Velocity Pharmaceutical Development for over 10 years searching for and developing pharmaceutical compounds for multiple disease indications.

He earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Davis and obtained a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from CSU Sacramento while working with the UC Davis Medical Center to create a mathematical model to quantitate diabetic severity in humans based on experimental tracer studies. He joined Point Biomedical Corp, a pre-IPO startup, to develop ultrasound contrast agent and formulate encapsulated drug delivery vehicles. These 5 micron-size particles were developed using optical test systems, lasers, microscopes and complex organic emulsions.

In 2000, he moved to Caliper Technologies to develop novel microfluidic tools for screening pharmaceutical inhibitors to human kinase enzymes. He worked with both the fundamental microfluidics group and systems integrations group to design complete assay platforms. He later founded his own consulting company and worked to engineer new fluidic products for cell transfection and pharmaceutical lyophilization.

He joined the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering laboratory of Dr. Anubhav Tripathi, an expert in fluid dynamics, at Brown University for Ph.D. studies. His thesis work integrated quantitative analysis of kinetics, microfluidics, molecular biology and viral diagnostics. The research increased the understanding of molecular conformation and structural influence on the mechanisms of transport, reaction kinetics and thermodynamic properties.

At Stanford University, he held a joint appointment in the departments of Engineering and Medicine as a Bioengineering Bio-X division postdoctoral scholar then staff. Matthew brought expert knowledge of device design and fabrication to enable several exciting collaborations on human stem cells, cancer cell resistance to therapeutics, next generation DNA sequencing and the properties of innate immune response. He developed integrated fluidic systems for electronic field effect transistor (FET) based diagnostics and tissue encapsulation systems for bone regeneration using adult adipose stem cells. He has published and presented in the fields of microfluidics and biomolecular analysis.

Dr. Zhang received a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park, in the field of synthetic organic chemistry and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an inventor on >25 US patents and patent applications. Xiaoming has a track record of discovering and developing bona fide new molecular entities. He cofounded Theron Pharmaceuticals, a clinical stage company developing a best-in-class bronchodilator for the treatment of COPD and uncontrolled asthma. He was previously the Senior Director of Chemistry at CoMentis Inc. In this capacity, he spearheaded cognition research effort targeting Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive deficit associated with schizophrenia. Dr. Zhang served as Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Portola and ARYx, where he successfully led the discovery and preclinical development of a number of new molecular entities, notably elinogrel and tecarfarin. Earlier in his career, Dr. Zhang was a research scientist and later program leader at Roche, where he successfully led the alpha1a adrenergic agonist program, culminating in the discovery of R1484 which was evaluated in the clinic for stress incontinence.

Cyrus Becker has 25+ years of experience in medicinal chemistry and chemical development. He is an inventor on over 25 issued US patents. He served as chemistry lead for three projects which led to clinical-stage molecules: ATI-9242 (schizophrenia) – phase 1, tecarfarin (oral anticoagulant) – phase 3, and naronapride (gastroprokinetic) – phase 2. He has also played key roles in the lab and managing CDMO’s in the process development and manufacture of serlopitant, budiodarone, nitrosynapsin, and other molecules. Cyrus has worked at a diverse range of pharma and biotech companies including: Roche Bioscience; Associate Director of Chemistry at Aryx Therapeutics; Senior Scientist in Chemical Development at Menlo Therapeutics; and Managing Partner at Theratrophix. He is a co-founder of two venture capital backed companies: Eumentis Therapeutics and Corsair Pharma, as well as a PRI-founded company, Pyrogenyx.

Andy has had a notable career in drug development, most significantly at Genentech from 1988 to 1993, where he played a key role in the development, FDA approval, and marketing of human growth hormone (hGH, Nutropin) as Senior Director of Clinical Research. He was also responsible for the development of Genentech's entire portfolio of endocrine drugs and drug candidates. In addition, he maintained a research lab at Genentech and was a member of the team responsible for the evaluation and selection of new therapeutic drug candidates.

After Genentech, Andy was one of the first hires at Tularik, a new drug discovery company, where he served as Vice President and then Executive Vice President until 2004, except for nine months in 2002 when he served as CEO of Affymax. While at Tularik, Andy's responsibilities included participating in the selection of promising targets for new drugs and compounds for further development. In addition, he was responsible for clinical trial design and implementation, filing Tularik's first IND, and initiating the relevant clinical trials. Later he played an active role in Tularik's business development, investor relations, and financing activities, culminating with Tularik's acquisition by Amgen in 2004 for $1.3 billion.

Following the acquisition of Tularik, Andy was the founder and CEO of Innate Immune Inc., an early-stage biotech company focused on developing therapies for asthma and autoimmune diseases. He also worked with a team at The Palo Alto Research Center to determine the clinical value of a new technique for the identification and enumeration of rare tumor cells in the peripheral circulation. Andy is an advisor to 8VC and several biotechnology companies.

Andy earned a B.S. from MIT, an M.D. and a Ph.D. in physiology from New York University (NYU). He completed Ph.D. research in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Professor Eric Kandel. He received postgraduate clinical training at Stanford School of Medicine and NYU. He worked as a staff scientist at the Medical Research Council in London from 1983 to 1984, continuing his medical research on steroid hormone nuclear receptors. From 1984 to 1987, Dr. Perlman was an assistant professor at Stanford University where he conducted clinical work, teaching and research on hypertension.

Ed received his M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine. He completed a Hematology fellowship at New York University School of Medicine and an Oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Schnipper began his career in the pharmaceutical industry at Hoffman-La Roche as an Assistant Medical Director and rose to the level of Vice President. He served as Vice President, Clinical Development, at ALZA Corporation from 1997 to 2001, where he played a leading role in the development and FDA approval of four of ALZA’s drug candidates as well as numerous other clinical programs. After the acquisition of ALZA, Ed served as President and CEO of Cellgate, a company developing novel anti-proliferative drugs to combat disease, where he raised over $50 million in venture capital. He also served as Executive Vice President & Chief Medical Officer of Novacea, a biopharmaceutical company focused on in-licensing, developing and commercializing novel therapies for the treatment of cancer.

Howard received his B.S. in chemistry from UCLA and his Ph.D. in biological chemistry at Harvard University, studying phospholipid metabolism with Eugene P. Kennedy. Subsequently he undertook postdoctoral research in signal transduction in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard. Dr. Schulman was a faculty member at Stanford University for 20 years, in the Departments of Pharmacology and of Neurobiology. He was most recently the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and co-founder and co-director of the Stanford Brain Research Center. Dr. Schulman spent the past 15 years in industry focusing on therapeutic targeting of protein kinases based on structural and mechanistic insights and use of biomarkers in drug development. He joined SurroMed as Vice President, a biomarker discovery company whose biomarker assets were acquired by PPD, where he was Vice President of PPD Biomarker Discovery Sciences. In this capacity, he worked with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic company leaders to develop biomarker discovery programs that facilitate their drug discovery and development or diagnostic programs. As a scientist he has been a major contributor to progress in the field of molecular pharmacology and signal transduction research for more than 25 years. Dr. Schulman co-discovered CaMKII, one of the key protein kinases responsible for transmitting information from calcium-linked hormones, cytokines and neurotransmitters in diverse tissues. Recently, Dr. Schulman was President and CSO of Allosteros Therapeutics, Inc. a company he co-founded to develop kinase-based therapeutic drugs for cardiovascular and oncology indications. Dr. Schulman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Keren Ziv received a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science Israel, in the field of cancer angiogenesis and MRI reporter genes. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, where she conducted research in the field of regenerative medicine and heart diseases in the Molecular Imaging Program (MIPS). Keren has experience in both drug and medical device development.

Among her former roles, she was a senior director at X37, a biotech company using AI for rapid drug discovery, the head of strategic innovation at LevitasBio, a company applying magnet ic levitation technology for cellular analysis, the CSO of CytoMag, developing microfluidic systems for rapid cell isolation, and served as a fellow of Life Science Angels (LSA), medical device and BIO screening committees.

Keren is a board member of the Coulter program at University of Virginia, a translational research program with a mission to support, develop and validate translational research projects that can be widely adopted.

Neurologist/neuroscientist Stuart Lipton, MD, PhD is a renowned expert in dementia. He received a B.A. in Neurobiology and immunology (Phi Beta Kappa) at Cornell University, an M.D. Ph.D. (Alpha Omega Alpha) at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Harvard University. In addition to running a basic-science laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute, he has an active clinical neurology practice at UC San Diego focusing on dementia and general neurology. Lipton completed his PhD thesis research with John Dowling at Harvard, followed by clinical residency and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard with Torsten Wiesel during the time that Wiesel won the Nobel prize. He was then on the Harvard faculty for over 20 years before moving to La Jolla as founding director of a new neuroscience center in 2000.

Dr. Lipton is best known for first describing the mechanism of action and contributing to the clinical development of the FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drug, memantine (Namenda®, NamendaXR®, Namzaric®), and for discovering the posttranslational redox modification known as protein S-nitrosylation. Recently, Lipton and colleagues combined memantine with S-nitrosylation chemistry to produce a new drug called NitroSynapsin, which displays disease-modifying activity in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, both protecting synapses and improving neurobehavioral deficits. Lipton’s group also characterized HIV-related pathways to neuronal damage, discovered the NR3 (now known at GluN3) family of modulatory NMDA-type glutamate receptor subunits in the brain, characterized the molecular pathways for protecting neurons with Erythropoietin, and discovered the transcription factor MEF2C. His group showed that MEF2C activity is regulated by S-nitrosylation and serves as a master switch for neurogenesis from human neural stem cells. Dysregulated MEF2C is involved in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Autism-Spectrum Disorder, and Vascular dementia.

Ongoing research in the lab is focused on 2D human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cultures and 3D cerebral organoid models of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disease and aberrant redox/S-nitrosylation pathways leading to synaptic damage. Using these approaches, the Lipton group is developing novel drugs to combat Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Vascular dementia (VaD), and other neurodegenerative disorders, as well as Autism-Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). Tissue culture models complement whole-animal approaches. A plethora of techniques is employed, including chemical biology, molecular biology, patch-clamp electrophysiology, calcium imaging, and neurobehavioral paradigms

Stuart is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association. Stuart received the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine (2004).

Dr. Cambier completed Masters and Ph.D. training in virology and immunology at the University of Iowa and postdoctoral training at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center before being appointed to the faculty at Duke University in 1978. In 1983 he was recruited to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, where he served as Head of the Division of Basic Sciences in the Department of Pediatrics. In 1999 Dr. Cambier became the first permanent chair of the Integrated Department of Immunology, which was a fusion of new academic departments at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and National Jewish Medical and Research Center. In 2014, he became Chairman of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he is currently an Emeritus Distinguished Professor. Dr. Cambier has published more than 300 original research papers and reviews. His research is focused on intracellular signaling in cells of the immune system with particular interest in the role of inhibitory receptors and feedback regulatory circuitry in regulation of adaptive and innate immune function. Dr. Cambier is probably best known for his original characterization of structure and function in transmembrane signal transduction of CD79a/b components of the B cell antigen receptors, and initial description of the role of phosphotyrosine (SHP-1) and phosphoinosotide (SHIP-1) phosphatases in feedback and active inhibitory FcR-mediated signaling. More recent studies focus in molecular signaling pathways that maintain B cell anergy, and how they are defeated in the development of autoimmunity. Dr. Cambier’s laboratory was the first to clone and characterize the function of STING, a molecule involved in transduction of intracellular innate immune signals.