Charles R. Bridges, M.D., Sc.D., is Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at CorVista Health, where he leads the science behind a machine-learning cardiac diagnostic platform. A cardiac surgeon turned engineer-executive, he holds an A.B. in applied physics from Harvard, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School (which he entered at 18), and both an M.S. in electrical engineering and a D.Sc. in chemical engineering from MIT. He was the first African American full professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, served as a technology chief at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen, and in 2022 was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. His record spans 175 peer-reviewed publications, 15 patents, and more than $10 million in continuous NIH funding.
Dan Baker is a physician-scientist turned biotech founder who spent two decades at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen division helping bring immunology blockbusters Remicade, Simponi and Stelara to patients, before launching Brisbane-based Kira Biotech in 2019 as its founding CEO. Kira is developing KB312, a first-in-class antibody designed to selectively retrain the immune system rather than broadly suppress it, aimed at autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and type 1 diabetes. A rheumatologist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania for 18 years, Baker also advises drug-development organisations and serves as a healthcare venture partner.
Mathai Mammen is the Chairman, CEO and President of Parabilis Medicines (formerly FogPharma), a Cambridge biotech going after cancer targets long written off as undruggable. A trained physician-chemist who co-founded Theravance out of grad school and later ran R&D at Merck and Johnson & Johnson, he has had a hand in the discovery or development of roughly 19 approved medicines. At Parabilis he is betting on Helicon peptides - engineered molecules that slip inside cells to hit protein-protein interfaces small molecules and antibodies cannot reach.