Jeremy Graff, PhD, brings over 2o years of experience in preclinical, clinical research and translational analysis for novel immune-activating therapeutics in oncology. Most recently, Dr Graff served as Chief Development Officer and Senior Vice President, Research at HiberCell, a biotechnology company developing novel therapeutics for cancer relapse and metastasis. He led the scientific and clinical development teams for HiberCell. Prior to that he was employed at Biothera Pharmaceuticals serving as President since 2018 and Chief Scientific Officer since 2014. In these executive roles, Dr Graff implemented strategic translational studies along with clinical programs in immuno-oncology. He also managed corporate strategy for  investor engagement and oversaw the acquisition of Biotehra’s lead asset Imprime PGG by HiberCell, Inc in 2020 Dr Graff spent 16 years at Eli Lilly and Lilly Research Labs where he developed extensive experience in Cancer Drug Discovery andDevelopment, immuno-oncology, biomarker discovery and patient stratification. During his last position at Eli Lilly as Group Leader, Cancer Biology and Patient Tailoring, he established a Translational Oncology Unit to improve the technical success of clinical trials. At Lilly Research Labs, he was the recipient of the President's Recognition Award, the Company's highest annual award. Dr Graff received a PhD from the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University Oncology Center. He has authored 60 peer-reviewed publications and holds a number of patents for novel cancer therapies.

Albert Hwang, MD, MBA, joined Morgan Stanley in 2015. He has over 20 years of investment banking experience and is responsible for the Healthcare Group’s Life Sciences East Coast practice. Dr Hwang joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he worked for 13 years and was named managing director in 2009. Dr Hwang’s experience centers around strategic advisory work in mergers and acquisitions and in capital raising in the biotechnology and specialty pharmaceuticals sectors. He has advised clients on over $125bn in M&A transactions and raised over $50bn in financings for biopharma clients. Dr Hwang has a BS in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, an MD and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Rajiv Kaul is a portfolio manager in the Equity division at Fidelity Investments.

In this role, Mr Kaul manages Fidelity Select Biotechnology Portfolio. Additionally, he is responsible for covering biotechnology stocks.

Prior to assuming his current responsibilities, Mr Kaul managed Fidelity Advisor Biotechnology Fund, Fidelity Growth Strategies Fund, Fidelity Advisor Growth Strategies Fund and VIP Growth Strategies Portfolio. Previously, he followed emerging telecommunications equipment stocks and managed Select Communications Equipment Portfolio and Select Biotechnology Portfolio. He has been in the financial industry since joining Fidelity's Equity research department in 1996.

Mr Kaul earned his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard. He is also a member of the research advisory council at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the research hospital of Harvard Medical School.

Rich Klinghoffer, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer of Presage Biosciences, a translational oncology-focused biotech company based in Seattle, WA. Dr Klinghoffer is committed to innovation in early cancer drug development and has dedicated a 25-year career to addressing the challenges of translating laboratory discovery into patient benefit. Dr Klinghoffer’s team established the CIVO® platform, which, combined with spatial biology technologies such as Nanostring’s GeoMx DSP and CosMx DMP, enables detailed evaluation of multiple drugs and combinations simultaneously in intact patient tumors. Under his leadership, Presage derives deep mechanistic understanding of drug response via a novel approach to Phase 0 multiplexed microdosing trials. Before joining Presage, Dr Klinghoffer worked in both small biotech and large pharma settings and at Merck’s Rosetta Inpharmatics, he led a team of scientists focused on identifying and validating cancer targets and predictive biomarkers for novel chemotherapeutics. Dr. Klinghoffer is an author on over 30 peer-reviewed research publications and is a co-inventor on multiple patents related to cancer drug development technologies. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and was a Special Fellow of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Benjamin Larimer, PhD is an expert in T cell imaging and Assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Dr Larimer received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Missouri in May 2014. Following completion of his degree, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital with the Harvard School of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr Umar Mahmood. His research has focused on the discovery of novel cancer targeting peptides for molecular imaging using phage display technology. He is a co-founder of CytoSite and a co-inventor of the CytoSite technology.

Robert Mabry, PhD has contributed to the research and development of multiple biologic programs, including several currently under clinical evaluation and the approval of Sintilumab, a PD-1 mAb. He joins Orna from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where he led the discovery and optimization of biological candidates and provided strategic support in overseeing their scientific operations. Prior to Takeda, Dr Mabry served as Vice President, Protein Sciences for Cogen Therapeutics, now Repertoire Immune Medicines. During his time as head of department, he was responsible for protein engineering, antibody technology, protein production and analytics. Dr Mabry has also held positions at Jounce Therapeutics, Adimab, ZymoGenetics, and ImClone Systems. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Biology and Biochemistry from Baylor University.

Thomas McCauley, PhD joined Omega as chief scientific officer in August 2019. Prior to Omega, he served as CSO at Zikani Therapeutics (formerly Macrolide Pharmaceuticals) and before that at Translate Bio (formerly RaNA Therapeutics).

In these roles, Dr McCauley was responsible for overall scientific vision, strategic direction and leadership of research and development. He provided scientific, technical and operational oversight for advancement of the company’s oligo, mRNA and novel macrocyclic technology platforms and management of portfolio therapeutic programs in pulmonary, metabolic, genetic and infectious disease.

Previously, Dr McCauley served as vice president and head of Global Nonclinical Development at Shire Pharmaceuticals, where he made significant contributions to the development and global approvals of many of Shire's products, including Replagal® for Fabry disease, Vpriv® for Gaucher disease, Elaprase® for Hunter syndrome, Firazyr® for hereditary angioedema and Xiidra® for dry eye disease.

Dr McCauley has more than 19 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and has authored more than 40 scientific publications, book chapters and patents. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cornell University and received his PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Leanne Peiser, PhD, serves as the executive director of translational research at Bristol Myers Squibb’s Immuno-Oncology (I-O) and Cellular Therapy Thematic Research Center in Seattle. In her role, Leanne leads a group working on translational research evaluating cellular therapies and select I-O assets in clinical development in lymphoma, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and solid tumors.

Dr Peiser and her team aim to deliver translational insights to help accelerate program development in the I-O and cell therapy pipeline by studying pharmacodynamics, mechanisms of action, combination potential and causes of treatment resistance to identify the right therapy for the right patient. Dr Peiser and her team are also providing clinical- and lab-based translational research for clinical-stage next-generation cellular therapies and budding I-O programs, including natural killer cell engager therapeutics in AML and multiple myeloma, and molecules targeting macrophage phagocytosis in lymphoma and AML. 

Dr Peiser joined Bristol Myers Squibb by way of Celgene in 2019, where she served as the director of I-O and cell therapy translational development. Prior to this role, Dr Peiser was the director of discovery research at FLX Bio, where she focused on the discovery and development of novel small-molecule immunotherapies in oncology. Earlier in her career, she held roles at Gilead Sciences and Amgen discovery research.

Dr Peiser grew up in South Africa and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in microbiology, biochemistry and medical biochemistry at the University of Cape Town. She earned her PhD in immunology from the University of Oxford, UK.

David L. Rimm, MD, PhD, is a pathologist who specializes in biomarker assessment in lung and breast cancer and has dedicated much of his career to improving how cancers can be diagnosed through better diagnostic tests or through discovering new molecular biomarkers. As a medical student, Dr. Rimm so enjoyed puzzling over the origins and process of diagnosing a patient’s disease that a mentor suggested he consider specializing in pathology. “It always seemed like the most scientific area of medicine, where you have time to perform research to improve diagnostics for patients,” Dr. Rimm says.His natural inclination toward research pushed Dr. Rimm to sub-specialize in cytopathology, a branch of pathology where diagnoses are based on examining very small samples of patient’s tissue at a cellular level.

Naiyer Rizvi, MD, has served as Synthekine’s Chief Medical Officer since May of 2021. He is an internationally recognized leader in cancer immunotherapy drug development whose clinical research has helped deliver FDA approvals of several landmark immunotherapies, including nivolumab in squamous lung cancer and pembrolizumab in non-small cell lung cancer. As a medical oncologist and expert in clinical immuno-oncology, Dr Rizvi’s research into mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to immunotherapy has laid the foundation to the understanding of clinical responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors. He conducted clinical studies of novel immunotherapy drugs and immunotherapy combinations, including the landmark study to demonstrate a correlation between mutations and neoantigens with durable benefit to immune-checkpoint blockade. His work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr Rizvi most recently served as the Price Family Professor of Medicine, Director of Thoracic Oncology and Co-Director of Cancer Immunotherapy at Columbia University Medical Center. In addition, he was recently Research Director of the Price Family Comprehensive Center for Chest Care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr Rizvi received his MD from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine and completed his residency training at the University of Manitoba Affiliated Hospital and fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. He is a co-founder of Gritstone bio (previously known as Gritstone Oncology) and serves on its board of directors and scientific advisory board.