molecular-biology
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Craig Rouskey Came Home to Build the Next Version
After labs, startups, a 110-person company and a hard shutdown, the molecular scientist returned to Joliet to rebuild Flore. His career is a study in what happens when open-science idealism meets operating reality.
Nawah Scientific
Nawah Scientific is an Egyptian deep-tech company that runs a 'cloud lab' - a network of advanced laboratories that researchers, universities and companies can access remotely by shipping in samples and receiving results online. Founded in Cairo in 2015 by Omar Shoukry Sakr, it consolidates expensive scientific equipment in central facilities so clients across life sciences, pharma, food and agriculture can run analytical testing without owning the instruments. After a decade it has tested more than a million samples for clients in 30+ countries and, in December 2025, closed a $23 million Series A to build a regional research center in Rwanda and double lab capacity in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Wei-Wu He
Wei-Wu He is a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and investor who serves as Executive Chairman and CEO of Human Longevity, Inc., the San Francisco Bay Area precision-health company that pairs whole-genome sequencing with advanced imaging and blood analytics to catch age-related disease early. Trained as a molecular biologist at Baylor College of Medicine with an MBA from Wharton, he was among the first scientists at Human Genome Sciences before building OriGene Technologies into a major research-tools business. Over three decades he has founded or funded dozens of biotech companies through his venture fund Emerging Technology Partners, and he now channels that experience into the science of extending healthy human lifespan.
Sanavia Oncology Inc.
Sanavia Oncology is a New York-based biotech company developing next-generation cancer immunotherapies for patients who don't benefit from existing treatments. Its proprietary platform pairs high-throughput sequencing, single-molecule super-resolution microscopy, 3D protein modeling and artificial intelligence to discover novel, clinically relevant cancer-specific epitopes in drug-resistant tumors, then generates antibodies with atomic-level specificity to those targets. The company is building antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific T cell engagers (TCEs) and CAR-T therapies - led by its SANA-01 ADC - and is backed by Two Bear Capital.
DNA Script
DNA Script is a French life-sciences technology company that pioneered Enzymatic DNA Synthesis (EDS) and built the SYNTAX System, the first benchtop DNA printer that lets researchers make custom DNA oligonucleotides on-site in hours instead of waiting days for outsourced orders. Founded in 2014 in Le Kremlin-Bicetre near Paris, the company aims to make biology programmable by putting rapid, template-free DNA production directly on the lab bench.
Paul Eccles
Paul Eccles is a molecular biologist turned healthcare strategy consultant who leads Basis Health, the New York-based life sciences division of London-headquartered insight consultancy Basis Global. He joined Basis in September 2022 as Managing Partner after a career spanning Trinity Life Sciences, BluePrint Research Group, Cello Health, and Opinion Health, and has spent more than fifteen years advising pharma, biotech, and clinical incubators on commercialization, licensing, forecasting, and portfolio positioning.
TeselaGen Biotechnology
TeselaGen Biotechnology builds an AI-powered, cloud-based operating system for biological R&D. Spun out of the Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute and founded by Stanford and Berkeley scientists, its platform - organized around the Design-Build-Test-Learn cycle with DESIGN, BUILD, TEST and DISCOVER modules - lets researchers design DNA libraries, generate lab-robot assembly protocols, capture experimental data and apply machine learning to converge on better biological products faster. Customers span industrial biotech, biopharma and academia, including Amgen, LanzaTech, Twist Bioscience, Arzeda and Stanford.
Eduardo Abeliuk
Eduardo Abeliuk is the founder and CEO of TeselaGen Biotechnology, a Silicon Valley company building AI agents and enterprise software for biological R&D. A Chilean-born physicist and electrical engineer with a Stanford PhD, he sits at the intersection of biology, artificial intelligence, and software - treating DNA as data and lab work as something that ought to be automated. Before biotech he built a Facebook app that hit a million users in weeks and an edtech platform across Latin America. He holds multiple US patents in computational biology and synthetic biology and his academic work has been cited more than a thousand times.
Eric Abbate
Eric Abbate is a synthetic-biology scientist turned CEO who led Solar Biotech, a Virginia-based startup building solar-powered, water-neutral fermentation plants to make biodesigned cosmetics, food ingredients and bioelectronic components. A UC Berkeley-trained molecular and cell biologist, he ran high-throughput genome-engineering and analytical biochemistry teams at Inscripta and was corresponding author on a widely cited paper on optimizing strain engineering for industrial-scale production. He steered Solar Biotech from lab science toward a modular 'BioNodes' manufacturing model before the company entered Chapter 11 in 2024 with plans to sell its assets and reboot.
Mike Nohaile
Mike Nohaile is the CEO of Prellis Biologics, a Berkeley biotech using two-photon holographic 3D bioprinting to grow lymph node organoids and pull antibody candidates straight from the human immune repertoire. A molecular biologist by training (PhD from UC Berkeley, postdoc at MIT), he spent decades operating at the top of the pharma industry - partner at McKinsey, Global Head of Molecular Diagnostics at Novartis, Senior VP of Strategy, Commercialization & Innovation at Amgen, and Chief Scientific Officer at Generate Biomedicines - before taking the helm at Prellis in 2022 alongside a $35M Series C. He is a vocal skeptic of AI drug-discovery hype, insisting AI optimizes proteins but does not yet invent medicines.
Benchling
Benchling is a cloud platform built for biotech R&D - a single, biology-first system of record where scientists design experiments, track samples, manage molecular data, and collaborate. Founded in 2012 out of MIT, it has grown into the operating system for modern life science, used by hundreds of thousands of scientists at companies ranging from startups to the largest biopharma firms, and is now embedding AI agents and predictive models directly into the lab workflow.
Tom Willis
Tom Willis, PhD, is a genomics entrepreneur with more than 20 years of company-building experience who became CEO of Arima Genomics in June 2025. A Yale and Stanford physicist turned biotech serial founder, he co-invented Molecular Inversion Probe technology, built two genomics companies from the ground up - ParAllele BioScience (acquired by Affymetrix) and Sequenta (whose ClonoSEQ assay became NCCN-standard for leukemia and lymphoma residual disease testing) - then spent a decade as Venture Partner at Illumina Ventures before stepping in to lead Arima, a company pioneering 3D genomics for cancer diagnostics.
Sandra Pérez Baos
Sandra Pérez Baos, Ph.D. is a Senior Associate at 2048 Ventures, a NYC- and Boston-based thesis-driven early-stage VC firm that closed an oversubscribed $82M Fund III in January 2026. A scientist turned investor, she brings a decade of hands-on experience in translational immunology and molecular biology research - first as a postdoctoral researcher at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, then as a founding leader at Nucleate New York, and later as a fellow with NYU's technology commercialization office. At 2048 Ventures she leads biotech and health investments at pre-seed and seed stages, writing checks from $500K to $3M into companies building the next generation of platform biology, drug delivery, diagnostics, and digital health.