Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D. is a life sciences inventor and entrepreneur. As President of Flagship Labs, Flagship Pioneering’s innovation engine, Avak leads multidisciplinary teams that originate, test, and scale breakthrough scientific ideas with the potential to transform human health and sustainability, spanning AI-based biology platforms, generative AI platforms for multiple therapeutic modalities, first-in-kind gene and cell therapies, and high-throughput enabling technologies.

Since joining Flagship in 2011, he has co-founded more than ten high-value public and private companies, including Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), Ring Therapeutics, Cellarity, Sail Biomedicines, Generate:Biomedicines (NASDAQ: GENB), ProFound Therapeutics, Ampersand Biomedicines, Abiologics, Etiome, Rubius Therapeutics, and Codiak BioSciences. Avak has served as founding President and CEO of Rubius Therapeutics, co-CEO of Generate Biomedicines, and founding CEO of several Flagship-founded companies, including Cellarity, Laronde, Ring, ProFound, Ampersand, Abiologics, and Etiome. He currently serves on the boards of Cellarity, Sail, Ring, and Etiome, and is Chairman of Ampersand, ProFound, and Abiologics.

Prior to joining Flagship, Avak was Vice President of Business Development at Helicos BioSciences, where he helped develop and commercialize the world’s first single-molecule DNA sequencing technology.

Avak currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the International Institute of New England, an institution which creates opportunities for refugees and immigrants to succeed through resettlement, education, career advancement and pathways to citizenship. He is also on the Board of Genome Canada, the Advisory Board of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), and the McGill University Regional Advisory Board US.

He earned his Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Maria-Chiara (Chiara) Magnone is Chief Scientific Officer at Abiologics. Chiara has extensive experience across various stages of drug development and a wide range of therapeutic areas.

Chiara joins Abiologics from Johnson & Johnson (J&J), where she was initially Vice President of Kidney Disease Research and Boston Site Head, and more recently Vice President, Head of Discovery for the Cardiovascular, Metabolic, Retina and Pulmonary Hypertension therapeutic area. During her time at J&J, she led efforts to develop the kidney disease area strategy and pipeline through internal programs and external asset acquisition, and played a key role in advancing several programs to clinical candidate selection. Prior to J&J, she served as Head of Translational Sciences at AstraZeneca, where she led the establishment and implementation of the translational strategy across the cardiovascular, metabolism, and renal portfolio. Chiara began her career in drug discovery and early development and held positions of increasing responsibility at Roche, Novartis and Serono in discovery and development in metabolism and neuroscience.    

Chiara’s work has resulted in publications in Science Translational Medicine, Circulation, Cell Reports, Diabetes Care, and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Chiara is a biologist by training and completed her Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Neurophysiology at the University of Ferrara (IT) and her post-doc at the University of Fribourg (CH), working on neural and metabolic aspects of circadian rhythms.

Per Jr. Greisen, Ph.D., is the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at Abiologics, where he leads the company’s AI and machine learning strategy to advance its novel platform for de novo generation of Synteins™. He brings extensive experience that spans generative modeling, de novo protein design, and translational AI platforms, contributing to clinical- and commercial-stage protein therapeutics across multiple modalities.

Prior to Abiologics, Per was the Chief Scientist of AI Biology at BioMap, an AI-powered biotech company building foundation models and architecture for the life sciences, after serving as President and Head of Protein Design. At BioMap, he was responsible for U.S. operations and led a team of scientists and engineers integrating data-driven AI with computational protein design. He also pioneered a computational framework that pairs structure-conditioned AI with physics-informed refinement to solve light-chain pairing in bispecific antibodies.

Before BioMap, Per served as Vice President of Computational Drug Design at Novo Nordisk, where he built and scaled the company’s molecular AI, computational peptide, and computational protein design capabilities. Earlier, he was the Director of Computational Biology at enEvolv (acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks) and a guest researcher at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

Per is an inventor on over 10 patents and has authored numerous high-profile publications in top-tier journals, including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, and PNAS. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD) with David Baker, and holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

Mike is Chief Innovation Officer as well as Co-Founder and member of the Founding Team of Abiologics where he leads and oversees the organization’s efforts in identifying, developing, and implementing breakthrough innovations. He also serves as an Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering where works as part of a team of entrepreneurial scientists exploring innovative ideas, developing the science, intellectual property, and business strategy that form the foundation of breakthrough startups and providing operational leadership through their early stages.

Prior to Flagship, Mike was VP and Head of Research at Axcella Therapeutics, a clinical-stage Flagship Pioneering company that aimed to develop a new approach to treat complex diseases and improve health using endogenous metabolic modulator (EMM) compositions. He joined Axcella in 2011 as part of the founding scientific team and gained experience across R&D while assuming positions of increasing responsibility and leadership, including leading the platform's innovative development and the company's IPO in 2019. During his tenure at Axcella, Mike led the conception and design of multiple novel assets, two of which advanced to late-stage therapeutic development. Mike is also an author on several published scientific articles foundational to the Axcella platform and an inventor on over a dozen granted patents.

Prior to Axcella, Mike gained diverse technical experience, including in structural biology at MIT, analytical sciences at Virdante Pharmaceuticals, and synthetic chemistry at Scynexis.

Mike holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Boston University and a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Gettysburg College.

Kala Subramanian joined Flagship Pioneering in 2021 as an Operating Partner working with Flagship NewCos to increase value creation as well as drive operational and strategic initiatives. She brings broad expertise in strategic planning, operations, business development and licensing, and global program and portfolio management. Kala has held leadership positions in emerging biotech companies as well as large pharma.

Before joining Flagship, Kala was Chief of Staff, Head of Strategy and Business Development & Licensing at Ichnos Sciences. She led Ichnos’ separation from its parent company, developing the company’s corporate strategy and preparing for fundraising and due diligence necessary for external partnerships. Prior to Ichnos, Kala served as VP, Chief of Staff Oncology at Gilead Sciences/Kite Pharma and SVP, Head of Strategic Development and Operations at CRISPR Therapeutics. She spent 13 years at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in a variety of roles including VP, Global Head of Strategic Development, and Program Management in Oncology Global Development and Medical Affairs. She led the program and portfolio management, as well as strategic planning and budget management for a portfolio of over 25 compounds. Prior to Novartis, Kala worked at Accenture and Millennium.

Kala holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Cornell University, and completed postdoctoral research in cell biology at Duke University Medical Center.

Martin is Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at Abiologics, leading the medicinal chemistry strategy to advance Synteins from discovery to development candidate. Martin has over two decades of experience in discovery chemistry and early drug development.

Prior to Abiologics, Martin served as Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at Parabilis Medicines, where he built and led a team of scientists who designed and advanced a series of first-in-class TCF/beta-catenin inhibitors to IND in less than five years. Prior to Parabilis Medicines, Martin held increasing roles of responsibility at Tesaro, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Eisai, playing an integral role from discovery to early CMC development of investigational new drugs.

Martin holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Laval University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute.

Kevin Lai is Senior Director of Pharmacology at Abiologics, where he leads in vitro and in vivo biology efforts to advance Syntein™ candidates toward IND, while building Abiologics's growing pipeline. He brings broad experience in drug discovery and development across multiple therapeutic areas and modalities.

Prior to Abiologics, Kevin was Senior Director of Target Biology at Korro Bio, where he led target identification and validation across Korro's portfolio of RNA-editing oligonucleotides. At Sigilon Therapeutics, he built the Bioanalytical CMC team that enabled the company's first encapsulated cell therapy to enter the clinic. Kevin has also advanced small molecules for chronic liver disease at Intercept Pharmaceuticals and biologics and stem cell therapies at Fate Therapeutics. He was originally trained as a cancer biologist and started his career as a postdoctoral fellow in Oncology Drug Discovery at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.

Kevin holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA from the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Tufts University.