Amy Liu is a GentiBio Board Director and a Managing Director at Avidity Partners, an investment management firm focused on public and multi-stage private investments in innovative companies within the healthcare industry. Prior to Avidity, she was a Principal at Mubadala Capital on the Ventures team and supported both the therapeutics investing strategy and the company creation efforts. Amy has previously held roles of increasing responsibility at BridgeBio across corporate and business development and also spent time as a sell side analyst at Evercore ISI covering small and mid cap biotech companies. Amy is a graduate of the Vagelos Life Science and Management Program and received her B.S. in Economics and B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jordan Summerside is a GentiBio Board Observer and is the Associate Vice President, Innovation & New Ventures at Seattle Children’s, leading the expansion of the research division’s innovation ecosystem and commercialization strategy. As the AVP, Jordan engages in leadership and oversight for industry partnerships and other Seattle Children’s spinouts promoting translation of novel technologies and scientific discoveries into opportunities that benefit patients. Prior to his role, he led business transactions and system partnerships, notably the restructuring of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance into the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and the creation of BrainChild Bio, a clinical-stage biotech company spinout of Seattle Children’s.
Sylvia is an experienced biotech industry professional with over 10-years of experience in the sector. Prior to joining the T1D fund, she was a Principal on the investment team at Omega Funds, where she focused on early stage investments and company creation across various therapeutic areas including neurology, immunology and rare diseases. She also served as a Board observer for Vanqua Bio, Aerium Therapeutics and Rectify Pharma.
Prior to Omega Funds, Sylvia spent almost seven years at Ra Pharmaceuticals, a peptide drug discovery company focused on rare diseases associated with complement dysregulation. At Ra, she was involved in the early development of the company’s discovery platform, as well as developing preclinical and translational models for first-in-human studies of its lead product, Zilucoplan, which was recently approved in various countries for generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG). She also provided scientific leadership for multiple discovery programs within the company’s internal pipeline and in collaboration with Merck. Sylvia earned her Ph.D in Biochemistry Summa Cum Laude from the University Pierre-and-Marie-Curie in Paris, France, while being a full-time visiting fellow in the Department of Genetics at Harvard University where she worked in synthetic biology. She holds an M.S. from Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University in Paris, France and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Joseph-Fourier University in Grenoble, France.
Jonathan Pritz is a GentiBio Board Observer and an Analyst at RA Capital. In addition to GentiBio, he is a Board Observer at Hyku Biosciences and Capstan Therapeutics. Jonathan holds a BS in Microbiology and Cell Science from the University of Florida and a PhD in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from Harvard University.
Aaron Deykin, MD, is a GentiBio Board Director and the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research and Development at Upstream Bio, a biotechnology company in Waltham MA. In that role, he leads the company’s development vision, providing clinical expertise, translational science direction, regulatory strategy to drive Upstream Bio’s programs to approval. Previously, Aaron held roles of increasing responsibility at Biogen including leadership positions in Clinical Development in which he led the approval of several drugs for multiple sclerosis and also served as SVP of Clinical Sciences overseeing Biostatistics, Statistical Programming, Biomarkers, Clinical Pharmacology, Epidemiology, and Clinical Operations for Biogen’s pipeline globally. Before moving to industry, Aaron was Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Pulmonary and Critical Care faculty at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In that capacity, Aaron led the medical activities of the Lung Transplantation Program, directed the Pulmonary Function Testing Laboratory, and serving as the Associate Director of the Asthma Research Center. Aaron has been awarded board certification in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, and Critical Care Medicine, and holds an MD from Harvard Medical School and an AB from Dartmouth College.
Adam Cotton is a GentiBio Board Observer and an Associate at the Novartis Venture Fund (NVF). In addition to GentiBio, he is a Board Observer at Mediar Therapeutics and three other stealth-mode companies. Prior to joining NVF, his PhD research in the labs of Jim Wells and Ian Seiple on antibody-engineering led to Epi Biologics where he is a scientific co-founder. Additionally, he worked on early strategy and program prioritization in one of RA Capital’s incubator companies and helped transition Rezo Therapeutics out of the Krogan/ Shokat labs. Adam holds a BA in Chemistry from Harvard University, an MBA from the University of New Mexico, and a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from the University of California, San Francisco.
Andy is a Co-founder of Genti serving first as CTO and later President and COO before being named CEO in 2024. Prior to joining GentiBio, Dr. Walker was Chief Executive Officer of Jewel Biotherapeutics and formerly Senior Vice President of Technical Operations at Juno Therapeutics, as well as serving in multiple senior leadership roles at AGC Biologics. He is an experienced senior leader with a background overseeing Process Development and GMP manufacturing of cellular therapeutics and protein biologics. Dr. Walker received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In his free time, Andy is an avid fly fisherman, loves all things about the University of Washington (Go Dawgs!), and prefers to spend as much time as possible on a boat or in the mountains. He also thinks he is funny, but his coworkers tend to disagree.
Roy Amariglio is an observer on GentiBio board of directors and Principal on the Israel team for OrbiMed Advisors LLC, a healthcare investment firm, covering venture capital investments in biotech, medical device, and diagnostics companies. Prior to joining OrbiMed, he was a Director of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Licensing at Bayer HealthCare where he was responsible for Healthcare transactions. While at Bayer, he held several positions of increasing responsibilities in Oncology Marketing and Business Development. Roy received his B.A. in Chemistry and Biology from Tel Aviv University and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, as well as an M.B.A. in Finance and Healthcare Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Nandita Shangari is a GentiBio Board Director and Managing Director at RA Capital. Prior to joining RA Capital, she was a Managing Director with Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), a life science investment firm, and held various positions at Novartis in Business Development and Licensing and as a key member of the Kymriah® Global Program Team, helping to bring this novel cell therapy to market. Nandita has also held strategic and group head roles in the Novartis Preclinical Investigative Toxicology organization. She received a BSc in Biochemistry and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Toronto, Canada.
Andy Tran is a GentiBio Board Director and a Vice President that leads and oversees key private biotechnology investments at Matrix Capital, a technology and life sciences investment firm. In addition to GentiBio, he has led investments in and served on the boards of multiple companies including Scribe Therapeutics, Insitro, EQRx, Dyno, and other startups in stealth-mode. Prior to Matrix, he was an Investment Partner at Andreesen Horowitz’s (a16z) Bio Fund investing in early-stage ventures in the life sciences. He has previously held roles at Genentech’s Discovery Oncology R&D department and Morgan Stanley’s investment banking group. Andy was trained as a Bioengineer and Computer scientist at Harvard University, where his research focused on gene therapy and CRISPR genome engineering technologies.
