Alec Ford is the chief executive of Karius, a Redwood City genomics-diagnostics company that reads microbial cell-free DNA from a single tube of blood to identify more than a thousand pathogens. He took the job in October 2020 and led the company through a $100M Series C in May 2024.
Vishwanath Lingappa is the CEO and CTO of Prosetta Biosciences, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company he founded in 2003 after 22 years as a faculty member at UCSF. An MD-PhD with a doctorate from The Rockefeller University under Nobel laureate Gunter Blobel, Lingappa developed a proprietary Cell-Free Protein Synthesis System (CFPSS) drug discovery platform that targets transient multi-protein complexes - a class of drug targets largely ignored by traditional pharma. His company is pursuing small-molecule therapeutics across neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's), oncology, and infectious diseases (COVID-19, HIV, influenza), and won an ARPA-H Dash competition for a pan-cancer drug candidate. With over 157 publications and 12,800+ citations, Lingappa bridges rigorous academia with commercial biotech ambition.