Scientific Advisory Board

Karen Akinsanya is the Executive Vice President, Chief Biomedical Scientist, and Head of Discovery R&D at Schrödinger. Karen has more than 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical R&D, clinical pharmacology, partnerships and licensing, having held numerous leadership positions at Merck & Co. Inc and at Ferring Pharmaceuticals. She led the discovery of a family of dipeptidyl peptidases related to DPPIV and pre-clinical characterization of FIRMAGON®, now FDA-approved for prostate cancer, while at Ferring. Karen went on to lead a cardiovascular therapeutic area team and the pre-POC licensing team, which brought >30 pipeline and new technology opportunities, at Merck before coming to Schrödinger.

Thomas Conrads is a protein biochemist and serves as the Director of Women’s Health Research in the Inova Health System and the Chief Scientific Officer of the Department of Defense Gynecologic Cancer Center of Excellence. His career is focused on developing and applying cutting-edge applications and workflows in proteomics for cohort-scale analysis of clinically derived specimens, such as tissues, proximal fluids, and serum/plasma. The overarching goal of his efforts are toward identifying and validating protein biomarkers and surrogates for enhanced cancer patient management through improved early detection, patient stratification, and monitoring for therapeutic efficacy, outcome and recurrence.

Dr. Steve Gygi received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in the area of pharmacology and toxicology. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 2000. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology. Dr. Gygi is a technologist who uses mass spectrometry to answer fundamental questions in both normal and abnormal biology. He specializes in instrumentation advances for global cellular protein measurements.

Dr. William Hahn is a medical oncologist and Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Also at Dana-Faber, he co-directs the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery and serves as the Chief of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Oncology as well as Chair of the Executive Committee for Research. He is an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Hahn has made numerous seminal discoveries that have informed our current molecular understanding of cancer and which have defined new conceptual paradigms and formed the foundation of new translational studies.

Dr. Harris has been a director of the Company since March 2012. He is currently Associate Vice President of the Health Enterprise, Chief Business Officer of the Dell Medical School, Professor for the Department of Internal Medicine, and the Interim Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he was CIO and Chairman of the Information Technology Division, as well as a Staff Physician at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation Department of General Internal Medicine. He also served as a Staff Physician for the Cleveland Clinic Hospital. He was previously a director of HealthStream, Inc. and Invacare Corporation and is currently a director of Agiliti, Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Company, and Multiplan Corporation.

Dr. Jacks has been a director of the Company since May 2009. Since February 2021, he is President of Break Through Cancer, a foundation focused on a collaborative approach to cancer research. He is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was the founding director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He was an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a non-profit medical research organization until February 2021. Previously he was director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research. He currently serves as a director of Amgen Inc.

Kris Prather is the Arthur D. Little Professor in and Executive Officer of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received an S. B. degree from MIT in 1994 and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1999), and worked 4 years in BioProcess Research and Development at the Merck Research Labs prior to joining MIT. Her research interests are centered on the design and assembly of recombinant microorganisms for the production of small molecules, with additional efforts in novel bioprocess design approaches. Prather is the recipient of an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2005), a Technology Review "TR35" Young Innovator Award (2007), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2010), the Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award (2011), and the Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology (2017). Additional honors include selection as a Fellow if the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2014-2015), The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS: 2018) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE),2020).

Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino joined Vertex in 2017 as VP, Head Nucleic Acid Therapies. From 2014 to 2017, she was VP, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Alnylam, a leader in the development of RNAi Therapeutics. At Alnylam, she was responsible for the Hepatic Infectious Disease Strategic Therapeutic Area, championed Extra Hepatic siRNA Delivery internally, and via a number of collaborations, and was active in licensing and partnering. Before joining Alnylam, Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino spent 14 years at Merck & Co., having most recently served as Executive Director and Department Head, RNA Therapeutics Discovery Biology. In this role, she was responsible for identification and optimization of siRNAs and delivery vehicles, advancement of pre-clinical candidates, and development of an siRNA-conjugate platform to expand the repertoire of tissues accessible to in vivo siRNA delivery. Prior to RNAi, Laura worked in oncology drug discovery and development, having led the Cancer Research Department at Merck West Point, and having been an Assistant Lab Member and Assistant Attending Molecular Biologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Laura received her Professional Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from New York University.

Mark Stevenson is an investor and board member in early-stage life sciences companies. Mark has over 30 years' experience in the life sciences industry, with strategic and operational leadership skills setting strategic direction and growth aspirations of complex innovation focused life science businesses. Previously, Mark served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Thermo Fisher Scientific, President and Chief Operating Officer at Life Technologies, and President and Chief Operating Officer at Applied Biosystems. He serves on the board of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. Mark received his MBA from Henley Management School and his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Reading, both in the U.K.

Jonathan Weissman is the Landon T. Clay Professor of Biology and a member of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a Professor of Biology and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Jonathan studies how cells ensure that proteins fold into their correct shape, as well as the role of protein misfolding in disease and normal physiology. He is also widely recognized for building innovative tools for broadly exploring organizational principles of biological systems. These include ribosome profiling, which globally monitors protein translation, CRISPRi/a for controlling the expression of human genes and rewiring the epigenome, and lineage tracing tools, to record the history of cells. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, and serves on several scientific advisory board.

Dr. Wolberger is a structural biologist who is on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she is a Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry. Dr. Wolberger has done pioneering work on the mechanisms underlying combinatorial regulation of transcription and on ubiquitin signaling. Her current research is focused on the mechanisms by which ubiquitin plays a signaling role in transcription and in the DNA damage response.