APS-Fauna Bio Essential Skills for Life Science Entrepreneurship Roundtable

September 22, 2022
12 p.m. EDT

Starting a business—especially in the life sciences—can be a daunting task. The goal of this program is to present entrepreneurial best practices in the context of the biotech industry and shed light on key nuances of bioentrepreneurship to help budding entrepreneurs take their first steps in bringing their business into reality. We are joined by Celine Halioua, PhD, founder and chief executive officer of Loyal, a San Francisco-based biotech company specializing in canine aging and health. Fauna Bio co-founders Ashley Zehnder, PhD, and Katie Grabek, PhD, will also discuss how they built successful ventures and offer advice for physiologists interested in transitioning from academia to industry.

Speakers

Celine Halioua, PhD, founded Loyal, a San Francisco-based biotech company specializing in canine aging and health, in 2019. Previously, she held various roles at The Longevity Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in companies developing therapeutics to treat aging. Halioua was a DPhil student at the University of Oxford in the U.K., studying the economics of gene therapeutics and holds a BSc of neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin.

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.