women-in-science
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J. Jean Cui and the art of starting again
A chemistry education took J. Jean Cui from China to Ohio, Berkeley, and San Diego. Two companies later, the BlossomHill co-founder is still finding reasons to begin.
Joan Huaqiong Shen and the art of starting again
After leading I-Mab through its Nasdaq debut, Joan Huaqiong Shen founded NeuShen Therapeutics. Her route to the corner office began with an interest in the arts and became a career spent learning how people and institutions work across borders.
Pamela Conley and the long apprenticeship of a founder
Before Pamela Conley cofounded Nuvig Therapeutics, she spent decades building research teams. Her route from biochemistry to the executive suite offers a less hurried account of how a founder is made.
Nancy Stagliano and the art of starting again
Eight employees and a plan to move north: Nancy Stagliano’s early CytomX years offer a window into a career built across engineering, science, and the business of getting a company off the ground.
Dalia Alfi and the Quiet Work of Catching Trouble Early
Before the network of more than 100 locations, there was a Seattle lab, a report on a desk, and a research technician learning how evidence can stop a crisis before it spreads.
Jean Cui
J. Jean Cui is a medicinal chemist who has invented three FDA-approved cancer medicines and now runs the biotech she founded to do it again. As scientific founder, President and CEO of BlossomHill Therapeutics in San Diego, she designs small molecules built to outmaneuver the resistance mutations that defeat earlier drugs. Her crizotinib, lorlatinib and repotrectinib all began as chemistry problems she solved at the molecular level. In 2024 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Her track record includes co-founding Turning Point Therapeutics, which Bristol Myers Squibb bought for $4.1 billion.
Sarah Lamaison
Sarah Lamaison is the co-founder and CEO of Dioxycle, a Paris- and Bay Area-based climate-tech company building electrolyzers that turn industrial CO2 into ethylene and other chemicals using only water, electricity, and waste carbon. A chemist trained at Ecole Polytechnique, Cambridge, College de France, and Stanford, she turned her PhD on artificial photosynthesis into a company aiming to decarbonize one of the planet's dirtiest industries while staying cost-competitive with fossil feedstocks. She raised $17M in Series A funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, won the L'Oreal-UNESCO Young Talent award, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30.