Dr. Paul K. Wotton received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Nottingham and is an experienced CEO, Board Member, named inventor and entrepreneur. He has extensive experience in strategic growth management, business transactions and product development. Dr. Wotton serves on the Board of Directors of Vericel Corporation (NASDAQ: VCEL), Cynata Therapeutics (ASX: CYP), Kytopen (Chairman), Combined Therapeutics and is a Co-Founder and Director of Avenge Bio., a clinical stage biotechnology company. Dr. Wotton was President and CEO of Ocata Therapeutics(NASDAQ:OCAT) until its acquisition by AstellasPharma in 2016. Paul was named as a “Top 100 Innovation CEO” by World Biz Magazine and won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Regional (NJ) Life Sciences award in 2014.
Dr. Omid Veiseh, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, where he leads a research program aimed at engineering next-generation treatments for a wide range of human diseases by leveraging the latest techniques in synthetic biology, immunoengineering, and materials science to develop innovative cell-based platforms for real-time production of biologics. He is also a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded Sigilon Therapeutics (Nasdaq: SGTX), Avenge Bio, Pana Bio, and Curada Bio. These companies collectively have attracted ~ $500M in private and public investment capital.
Dr. Veiseh received a dual Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering and Nanotechnology from the University of Washington. He completed his postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert Langer and Daniel G. Anderson at MIT and Harvard Medical School. Throughout his career, he has authored or co-authored more than 75 peer-reviewed publications, including those in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, and Nature Biomedical Engineering. He is an inventor of more than 40 pending or awarded patents.
Before joining RBL LLC and Sentinel BioTX as the CEO, Rima was a Partner at KdT Ventures where she invested in early-stage biotech spanning human health, climate technology, and synthetic biology. She sits on the board of multiple companies, including Dimension Inx, Cypris Materials, and Modulus Therapeutics. Prior to KdT, she directed the preclinical and clinical development of a portfolio of therapeutic assets at the Fannin Innovations Studio, a venture creation firm focused on technology commercialization in the life sciences.
Rima started her career as a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania and is a physician-scientist trained at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her research as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellow in the lab of Dr. Helen Hobbs focused on the development of bio-engineered assays to study lipid transport and metabolism in the context of cardiovascular disease.