Brian Atwood is CEO and chairman of CERo Therapeutics.

Managing director for nearly 25 years at Versant Ventures, which he co-founded, Atwood served as president, CEO, and board member at Cell Design Labs, acquired by Gilead Sciences in December 2017. He serves on the boards of many companies, including Clovis Oncology, Trius Therapeutics, OpGen, Immune Design, Cadence Pharmaceuticals, Vericyte, and Helicos Biosciences. His long career in life science innovation and development began with his BS in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine, followed by an MS in ecology at the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jamie Bacher is a a seasoned entrepreneur and startup founder with over 15 years of expertise in agricultural biotech, synthetic biology, and biofuels.

With over a decade of experience in independent consulting and as the Principal of Huxley Project, LLC, Bacher advised industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology startup companies.

Bacher’s entrepreneurial journey includes founding and serving as the CEO of two groundbreaking companies. As the co-founder and CEO of Boost Biomes, Jamie spearheaded the development of novel crop biological products, pioneering technologies to revolutionize crop protection and nutrition. Boost Biomes raised approximately $20 million in venture funding, secured key IP licenses, and established strategic partnerships with industry giants like DuPont/IFF, Yara, and CGIAR.

Prior to Boost Biomes, Bacher founded Pareto Biotechnologies, a synthetic biology startup dedicated to developing high-value products in microbial fermentation. During Bacher tenure, Pareto Biotechnologies secured funding from Breakout Labs and established partnerships leveraging platform technology from the Salk Institute.

Bacher industry experience also includes serving as the Total-Amyris Coordinator & Deputy Director, Biofene Program at Total, where he co-led a multimillion-dollar program focused on biofuels sector participation.

Bacher earned his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fay Christodoulou is co-founder & CSO of Miroculus, which was acquired by Integra Biosciences in 2023.

Since inception, Miroculus raised funds of over $30 million from notable venture capital firms (OSFund, Nazca), family offices, and companies on the Fortune 500 list, continuing its ongoing disruption of the way in which we approach biotech research. Miroculus developed a proprietary technology — Miro technology — based on digital microfluidics to automate and miniaturize genomic protocols such as NGS library preparation, synthetic biology, cell editing, and combinatorial chemistry, in a compact, user-friendly system.

Christodoulou is a molecular biologist specializing in RNA biology. In 2012, she was awarded an EU postdoctoral fellowship to investigate the role of microRNA in thyroid carcinogenesis in the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Greece. She was awarded the 1st prize of the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies Innovation Project for her scientific contribution. She earned her PhD in evolutionary and developmental biology from the European Molecular Biology laboratory.

Philippe brings 25 years of international experience in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries, with a strong focus on biologics manufacturing; proteins, plasmid DNA, mRNA, synthetic peptides, and oligonucleotides.

Currently, Philippe serves as General Manager of Wacker Biotech USA, a Biologics CDMO located in San Diego California. Formerly, while based in Germany, he led Global Bioprocess Development at Wacker Biotech.

Prior to joining Wacker, Philippe held leadership roles at Diagenode, where he headed the Epigenetic Business Unit.

Over the course of his time at Eurogenetec, he successively became the Head of the Biologics CDMO Business Unit, the Chief scientific Officer, and the Head of AnaSpec, a peptide manufacturer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the early stages of his career, Philippe supported drug discovery through protein manufacturing at AstraZeneca in Sweden.

He earned his PhD in Protein Engineering at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg-Germany.

My expertise is in developing and executing innovative life sciences strategies rooted in deep sector knowledge and advanced, insights-driven analytical approaches.

With a background encompassing consulting, industry, and academic experience at top-tier organizations (Accenture, Deloitte, Genentech, UC Berkeley), I work with executive clients on greenfield corporate strategy, opportunity assessment, channel strategy, customer strategy, portfolio/market planning, product commercialization, launch readiness, lifecycle management, commercial operational transformation, sales capability building, and corporate development/partnering/M&A.

All of my professional experience is in the life sciences: biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices/equipment, diagnostics, discovery tools, platform technologies, genomics, and consumer/patient products. I have particularly deep expertise in emerging/disruptive models in healthcare, such as digital health, population/precision health, companion diagnostics/devices, accountable/value-based care, patient-centricity, and alternative site care.

I bring strong core medical, solutioning, and relationship skills, leveraged to grasp the underlying science, master the market landscape, find the opportunities, clarify the road-blocks, tell the story, build partnerships, inspire the team, and propel wins. This is supported by exceptional business leadership, cross-functional, and program management abilities shaped by my past involvement in 200+ consulting engagements.

I occasionally speak at industry events and have authored several articles covering various life sciences topics. I have also been interviewed by the media, and my remarks about various healthcare trends have appeared in Time Magazine, USA Today, and PharmaVoice Magazine.

Ameena was previously a Partner at ARTIS Ventures and sat on the Boards of Range Biotechnologies and Activ Surgical and was an investor in Inceptive Nucleics, among other companies. She has received recognition by Fortune as one of 11 VCs behind the hottest health tech deals and by the San Francisco Business Times as a 40 Under 40 honoree.

Prior to joining ARTIS, she spent 5 years in early stage venture capital as a Partner at Rising Tide VC, where she built and led the firm’s health and bio investment practice and invested in companies including Precision NanoSystems (acquired by Danaher), Apama Medical (acquired by Boston Scientific), Evonetix, Exo Imaging, Loop Genomics (acquired by Element Biosciences), Aspect Biosystems, Atia Vision and others. Focusing on the intersection of science and technology, she has invested in and worked with companies spanning personalized medicine, synthetic biology, computational biology and more. She is passionate about bridging academia and industry to create lasting impact.

Ameena began her career in R&D, working at Novozymes, a world leader in bio innovation, developing synthetic biology approaches to increase yields through industrial scale up. She is a recipient of multiple competitive grants funded by the National Science Foundation for research done at the California Academy of Sciences and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, as well as an awardee of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

She has conducted research across DNA damage and repair in longevity, microbiome diversity, and stem cell engineering. Ameena holds a BS in Genetics from the University of California Davis.

Xue Snow Ge is senior vice president of clinical pharmacology at BridgeBio Pharma. Ge has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience in drug discovery and development with extensive knowledge of the overall drug development process and FDA/EMA regulations and guidance. She has contributed to successful IND submissions and NDA approvals in different therapeutic areas and experienced interactions with global regulatory agencies. Ge is a member of Life Science Angels. She is also an advisor to UC Berkeley SkyDeck, Bakar Labs, UCSF Catalyst program, and Stanford School of Medicine Spark Program. Prior to BridgeBio, Dr. Ge worked at Nektar Therapeutics, GSK, and Schering AG, and did her postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley. She earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of British Columbia and a BS in chemistry from Peking University.

Tim has over twenty years of business development experience across pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Until recently, he was Chief Business Officer at Santa Ana Bio, a precision immunology company developing antibodies and ADCs for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. During the pandemic, he headed the business development team for infectious diseases and vaccines at Johnson and Johnson. Prior to J&J, Tim was CBO at Caribou Biosciences, a CRISPR gene editing company developing a portfolio of allogeneic cell therapies for oncology. Tim spent seven years with AstraZeneca leading business development teams for the neuroscience and oncology disease areas, as well as leading a transaction team involved with large and complex deals. Tim started his BD career at Bristol-Myers Squibb covering search, evaluation and transaction in multiple disease areas. Before business development, Tim worked as a medicinal chemist at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Aventis and Pharmacopeia.

Tim grew up in Paris and is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in France. He also holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from University College London and an MBA in Finance from NYU Stern.

Dr. Mandana Manzari Honu is a scientist turned investor and company-builder. Her biotech client base consists of bioprocessing, antibody therapeutic, diagnostics, cell therapy, vaccine, and AI/ML companies. Mandana was formerly Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Business Development at Kaleidoscope Bio, leading development of their first enterprise-level software product, building out the science team, and establishing their initial customer base. Prior to Kaleidoscope, Mandana was Head of Scientific Assessments for corporate BD and investments at Resilience. She led evaluation of technologies and therapeutics spanning vaccines, cell, gene, nucleic acid therapies, and biologics, transacting on over $300M across more than a dozen deals. Her first start-up experience was on the molecular discovery team at MIT spinout Eleven Biotherapeutics.

John Hoekman is CSO and president of Junevity. Previously, he co-founded and served as CSO of Impel NeuroPharma. Hoekman co-founded Impel while attending graduate school at the University of Washington. He is the lead inventor of the POD technology and has made fundamental contributions to understanding intranasal drug delivery. John spent 10 years working across all functions to grow Impel from a pre-clinical device focused company to a late-clinical stage pharmaceutical company. He holds a BS in Physics from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Washington.

Melissa Kotterman, PhD, is an active QB3 mentor currently with roles at two companies. Formerly she was CSO of Iris Medicine. Prior to joining Iris, Kotterman co-founded 4D Molecular Therapeutics and served as VP of the Discovery & Engineering department. Through her leadership, 4DMT advanced five AAV gene therapy programs involving novel, engineered capsids from scientific concept to first-in-human clinical trials. She was also a co-founder and scientific advisor of Ignite Immunotherapy until its acquisition by Pfizer.

Kotterman’s research focus and expertise relate to early-stage discovery and nonclinical development of genetic medicines for the treatment of both rare and complex diseases. She received her B.S. in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her doctorate in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow.

Manfred Lee is COO of Mirvie, where he is responsible for product management, program management, clinical operations, and business development. Lee is an accomplished producteer with a 15-year history of successfully developing and launching innovative life science research, molecular diagnostic, and medical device technologies and matching those innovations with large, underserved markets. Following his PhD at UC Berkeley in infectious diseases and immunology, Manfred served as a management consultant for 6 years at L.E.K. Consulting where he advised clients in the areas of genomics, proteomics, and molecular diagnostics. After consulting, Manfred held several product management roles at Ion Torrent/ThermoFisher (next generation DNA sequencing), Butterfly (point of care ultrasound), Cirina (early cancer detection), and Mirvie (pregnancy health).

Jenn Leeds is executive director and head of NIBR BD&L search and evaluation for the West Coast and Canada at Novartis. She joined Novartis in 2003 where she co-invented and co-led the project team for the novel antibacterial LFF571 through Ph2, and became head of Antibacterial Discovery in 2010. In 2018, LEeds joined Novartis BD&L. She is responsible for identifying new technology from organizations in the western US and across Canada, across all therapeutic areas, for potential partnering with Novartis. She also supports NIBR Translational Medicine and Oncology, globally, and leads many NIBR out-licensing projects.

Leeds is on the BoD of 1910 Genetics and the Cornell University CALS Alumni Association. She is a board observer for Bluejay Therapeutics, and was a board observer for Caribou Bio. Leeds serves on the Novo Holdings REPAIR Impact Fund SSB, is an Expert Reviewer for Innosuisse, and a member of imYEG Council of Founders.

She received her BSc in microbiology from Cornell in 1991, her PhD in medical microbiology and immunology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and did her postdoc at Harvard Medical School.

Xiaole Shirley Liu co-founded GV20 Therapeutics in 2016 and became the CEO of GV20 in 2022. She was a Professor of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-director of the Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her computational biology work has refined our understanding of hormone receptor therapies, epigenetic inhibitors, gamma-secretase inhibitors, receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and immune checkpoint inhibitors in different cancers.

Liu is a highly cited researcher with a prodigious publication record that includes more than 200 papers published by her group, many in high-profile journals and highly cited. She received the Sloan Research Fellowship (2008), has been a Breast Cancer Research Foundation Investigator (2017) and became a Fellow of ISCB (2019). In addition, she was recognized with the Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences and the ISCB Innovator Award in 2020. Recently, she was selected by the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) to its 2022 College of Fellows.

Widya Mulyasasmita is a managing partner at BEVC. Prior to this, Mulyasasmita was a senior principal on the Healthcare team at B Capital Group, where she focused on investments in biotech, bio IT, and innovative medtech. She served on the board of directors at Triumvira Immunologics and OncoMyx Therapeutics, and was a board observer at HotSpot Therapeutics.

Mulyasasmita joined B Capital from Red Tree Venture Capital, where she was a VP and invested in and helped launch biotech and medical device companies. Prior to Red Tree, she was acting CBO at xCella Biosciences and founding CBO at InterVenn Biosciences. She was previously director of new vVentures at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. She came to J&J from McKinsey & Company.

She received her BS in materials science and bioengineering from UC Berkeley, where she was awarded the Bioengineering Departmental Citation, and her PhD in bioengineering from Stanford University where she was a Siebel Scholar.

George Rehm is Director of Artera.AI. Prior to Artera.AI, Rehm served as a director at Butterfly Networks, Hyperfine Research, PFS Genomics (Exact Sciences), Adamas Pharma (Supernus), Crescendo Biosciences (Myriad Genetics), and Decipher (Veracyte). In addition, he developed healthcare investment capability on behalf of one of Europe’s largest family offices, with stakes in venture, private equity, long-short hedge funds, and public stocks. After living and working in Europe for more than 25 years, Rehm is now putting his experience to work supporting young firms being incubated from the UC/UCSF ecosystem from his home base in Berkeley.

Ben Sun is an experienced investor active with angel-stage companies in Silicon Valley, Asia and other parts of the world. As a business executive, Sun is a market eco-system developer focused on technology and healthcare companies. He has 20+ years of cross-border business experience in the fields of research, consulting, government, NGOs and investment.

Earlier in his career, Sun was executive director of a China-based chapter of a global angel network. His extensive range of business connections brings value to clients wishing to form market presence, distribution and technology support partnerships in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US. He is expert in market entry planning, investment planning and funding solicitation.

As an advisor, Sun works with startups from UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator. He also advises private industry executives and teams in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has helped listed companies come into the US market. He has developed insights and access to innovators in up-and-coming global trends through his work with angel groups across Asia, US and Europe. He is a valued speaker at innovation conferences and judge at tech-pitch competitions.

Mickey Urdea is founder of and partner at Halteres Associates. He also founded and served as CEO of Tethys Bioscience, a proteomics-based diagnostics company that has been involved in the prevention of type-2 diabetes (assets acquired by HDL), and was CEO of Quantum Dots Corporation (assets acquired by Life Technologies).

Additionally, Urdea is a founder and the chairman of Catalysis Foundation for Health (CFH), a non-profit organization addressing gaps in global healthcare caused by inefficiencies in disease diagnosis and monitoring; CFH is developing potential biomarkers for tuberculosis bacterial load with a grant for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Urdea is a member of the UCSF Leadership Council for Global Health. He serves as a consultant to the life sciences industry and is on the scientific advisory boards and boards of directors of a number of biotechnology and diagnostics companies.

Prior to his current activities, Urdea founded the Nucleic Acid Diagnostics business at Chiron Corporation, where he pioneered viral load assays for the human hepatitis B, hepatitis C and immunodeficiency viruses; his team introduced the first commercial viral load assays for all three viruses. Urdea also headed the Oncology Diagnostics business unit at Chiron. He then became business head of the Molecular Diagnostics group and CSO at Bayer Diagnostics. He has served as an advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for over ten years.

Urdea is an author on over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has more than 125 issued and pending patents. He received his BS in biology and chemistry from Northern Arizona University, his PhD in biochemistry from Washington State University, and completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF.

Andrew Wong is Head of Partnering at Chugai Pharma USA.

Previously, Andrew was Chief Executive Officer of 1cBio, Inc., a San Francisco Bay Area-based biotechnology company focused on developing precision medicines for significant unmet needs. Before that, he was Global Head of Bayer Co.Lab, part of Bayer’s business development and licensing department focused on early stage external innovation. Prior to Bayer, Andrew was Vice-President of Early Innovation Partnering & Transactions at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Asia Pacific, managing early-stage business development transactions and collaboration management activities in the region across Johnson & Johnson’s three business sectors. Earlier, Andrew played roles at Auransa, SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Alexza Pharmaceuticals, ProQuest Investments, Lehman Brothers, and Dendreon Corporation with various responsibilities from SVP, Corporate Business Development to Senior Equity Research and Senior Business Development Analyst.

Andrew has over 30 years of life-science business development and finance experience. He was a Research Assistant at Stanford Medical School. Andrew holds an MBA from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and a BA in biology from Occidental College.

Gary Yeung is the founder and managing partner of YK Bioventures. He has built his career at the intersection of science, business, and investment as a life sciences investor, executive, co-founder, board member, and advisor. With deep experience in company formation and therapeutic development, he has helped launch and scale multiple biotech ventures.

Gary has raised over $1 billion in funding and co-founded a venture capital firm and two biotech startups. He played a key role in building companies such as Erasca, Annexon, and Guardant Health, all of which went public. He has also invested in more than 20 private life sciences companies. Previously at Genentech, he led organizations that contributed to filing 42 INDs and advancing multiple FDA-approved therapies. Earlier in his career, he worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and an operational leader at GE.

He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley and his MBA from UCLA, where he was a Fred Weston Scholar. He has been a CFA charterholder since 2002.

Jimmy Zhang has 20+ years of experience and expertise in large pharmas and start-up companies, in strategy, management, business development, and operations, as well as in venture investments.

Zhang is founder and former chairman and CEO of Vinta Bio. He was a venture partner at Lilly Asia Ventures; VP of transactions at Johnson & Johnson; managing director, MSD early investments – Greater China at Merck & Co.; and board director of BeiGene.

Zhang was previously SVP at Synergenics, a consultant at McKinsey, a registered patent agent in Morrison & Foerster, and a project manager at Chiron. He was a founding member and former Chairman of BayHelix Group. He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, a PhD in biomedical sciences from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and a BS in biochemistry from Nanjing University. Zhang has published in Cell, Nature, Neuron, and JBC, and holds multiple patents.

Carolyne Zimmermann is CBO of SonoThera.

Zimmermann was most recently CBO for 4D Molecular Therapeutics, an emerging clinical stage AAV gene therapy company. Prior to 4DMT, she served as VP of transactions & innovation partnering at the J&J Innovation Center in San Francisco, where she led early-stage partnering across all of J&J’s therapeutic areas for Western North America.

Zimmermann spent 14 years at Novartis Pharmaceuticals as a member of the Global Business Development Leadership Team, serving in numerous leadership roles in business development functions such as search & evaluation, negotiations, and alliance management across several of Novartis’ therapeutic areas. While at Novartis, she was also head of business development for the Novartis Global Cardiovascular and Metabolic Franchise, leading execution of franchise-wide partnering and growth strategies. She was also a general partner and founding member of dRx Capital, a digital health-focused venture fund between Novartis and Qualcomm, leading the firm’s initial investments in Omada Health and Cala Health.

Zimmermann holds a BS in engineering sciences from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.