APS-Fauna Bio Opportunities in Life Science Entrepreneurship Roundtable

September 15, 2022
12 p.m. EDT

The life sciences industry is quickly becoming a popular career choice for physiologists, particularly the establishment of startup ventures. This roundtable provides a glimpse into the everyday of life science entrepreneurs and provides insight for those interested in exploring a career as a biotech founder. We are joined by Tony Kulesa, PhD, co-founder and principal of Pillar VC, a Boston-based venture capital firm, and Fauna Bio co-founders Ashley Zehnder, PhD, and APS member Katie Grabek, PhD. who will discuss their experiences building biotech ventures while clearing up common misconceptions about their lives as biotech entrepreneurs.

Speakers

Tony Kulesa, PhD, co-founder and principal of Pillar VC, a Boston-based venture capital firm. Previously, he was the founding director of the MIT BioMakerspace, a community biology laboratory and incubator space, and an Instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Techology’s (MIT) Department of Biological Engineering. He holds a PhD from MIT, where his inventions of new platforms for drug discovery and microbial therapeutics were highlighted in Science Magazine’s “Editor’s Choice” and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Kulesa was a founding officer of MIT Biotech Group and co-founded and directed three courses on biotech and entrepreneurship, including BiomedStartup, which provides coaching for research commercialization projects.

Ashley Zehnder, PhD, is a co-founder and chief executive officer of Fauna Bio. She has been recognized for her work by the San Francisco Business Times’ “Women Who Lead in Life Sciences,” has been named an “Emerging Woman Founder in Bio” by the Wave Summit, and represents Fauna Bio for Fortune’s  “A.I. Minute.” Zehnder promotes the use of artificial intelligence and novel genomics in drug discovery and mentors early-stage founders through her work with On Deck Longevity Biotech and Nucleate Bio. She earned a PhD in cancer biology from Stanford University in California and is a board certified avian veterinarian.

Katie Grabek, PhD, earned her PhD in human medical genetics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She trained as a postdoctoral scholar in computational biology in lab of Carlos Bustamante, PhD, at Stanford University in California. Grabek’s research has focused on utilizing proteomic, transcriptomic and genomic approaches to identify the molecular components underlying the highly dynamic phenotype of hibernation.