Valerie Daggett

Valerie Daggett is a University of Washington bioengineering professor turned biotech founder who spent three decades running the world's largest collection of protein-folding simulations, stumbled onto a structure nature was not supposed to make, and built a company around it. As founder and CEO of Seattle-based AltPep, she is commercializing the alpha-sheet: a strange protein geometry her lab predicted on a computer before anyone confirmed it in a test tube. Her SOBA-AD blood test, which spots toxic amyloid oligomers years before symptoms, earned FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and put her at the front of the race to catch Alzheimer's early.