Fabian Gerlinghaus is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cellares. He is driven by a strong sense of purpose and is passionate about meeting total patient demand for cell therapies globally. With 10+ years of experience as an innovator and a leader, Fabian has established a track record of assembling top-performing teams to successfully drive novel bioprocessing technologies from ideation to commercial readiness. Prior to co-founding Cellares, Fabian served as Chief Innovation Officer at Synthego, where he co-invented the company’s proprietary RNA synthesizer technology and helped grow the company from five to more than 230 employees. He successfully led the interdisciplinary team that took synthesizer technology from whiteboard sketch to production-ready instruments within two years, enabling the company to be the first to market with its CRISPR/Cas9 product portfolio. He earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Munich, and an honors degree in technology management from the Center for Digital Technology and Management, Munich.

Omar Kurdi is Co-Founder and President of Cellares. He has more than 18 years of biotechnology experience and has demonstrated his entrepreneurial ability by building and scaling successful organizations – from growing exceptional teams, to creating effective stakeholder relationships, and delivering on bottom-line growth. He leverages his engineering background and technical aptitude to drive operational excellence and has led operational teams that manufactured reagents, medical devices and capital equipment for the life sciences industry. Omar has held executive and leadership roles at a wide array of biotech companies. At Finesse Solutions, he led teams that manufactured bioprocessing equipment and helped grow the company from 10 to nearly 100 employees in a short span. At Synthego, which manufactures CRISPR/Cas9 kits and edits many types of cell lines, he oversaw the build-out of several facilities and helped grow the company from 10 to approximately 150 people. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, he led a large team that manufactured different types of LCMS systems, both research use only (RUO) and class 1 medical devices. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.

Justin is a Partner at Eclipse, where he collaborates with founders working at the intersection of multiple disciplines. He is particularly passionate about novel approaches to complex issues in infrastructure in healthcare and life sciences.

Justin works with companies building technologies, products, and services that enable the development and, ultimately, the foundation upon which the next generation of healthcare and life sciences advancements can thrive. His focus is on building the infrastructure of these industries, closing the gap between scientific development and clinical deployment.

Prior to joining Eclipse, Justin built and led the commercial operations at Misfit, a digital health company acquired by the Fossil Group for more than $250M. Before Misfit, Justin managed the commercialization efforts in the foods, fuels, and chemicals spaces at Synthetic Genomics (SGI), a leading synthetic biology company.

Justin received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCSB and his MBA from MIT Sloan. He sits on the Industry Alliance Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Commercial Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation Center for Cell Manufacturing Technology (CMat).

Victor Tong, Jr. is a Partner at Decheng Capital and has been with the firm since its inception. Victor focuses on investments in biotechnology and medical technology companies in both the U.S. and China. Currently, Victor serves on the boards of Cellares, CG Oncology, Hummingbird Bioscience, LevitasBio, Nalu Medical, Take2 and Watchmaker Genomics. Previously, Victor served as Chairman at ReadCoor before its acquisition by 10X Genomics. Additionally, he served on the boards of Cirina (acquired by GRAIL / Illumina) and GeneWEAVE Biosciences (acquired by Roche). Prior to joining Decheng, Victor was a Principal at Bay City Capital, a life sciences investment firm, and a member of the healthcare investment banking division at Morgan Stanley. Victor is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a BA degree in Molecular and Cell Biology and a BS degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business.

Byron Knight is President of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture and growth arm of Koch Industries. KDT’s role is to invest in technology companies that disrupt and transform Koch’s core businesses and expand into new platforms and capabilities. Byron is responsible for leading the organization’s capability development, operations, and investments across their prioritized themes. Since joining KDT, Byron has led roughly 20 investments across Industry 4.0, Cybersecurity, and FinTech companies. He currently sits on the boards of Trackonomy, Outrider, Automox, Ibotta and Cellares.

Prior to KDT, Byron was Vice President of eCommerce for the North America Consumer Business at Georgia-Pacific. Key responsibilities included digital transformation leadership, eCommerce sales (i.e. Amazon.com, Walmart.com), direct to consumer fulfillment services, and eCommerce capability development. Byron joined GP in 2005 and has held a variety of leadership roles in eBusiness, data management, customer solutions, supply chain, and eCommerce. Prior to joining Georgia-Pacific, Byron helped start TechDiscovery, a company focused on technical due diligence and custom software development.

Byron holds a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. In his free time, Byron enjoys outdoor activities with his wife and kids. He lives in Wichita, KS. Based in Wichita, Kansas, Koch Industries, Inc. is one of the largest private companies in America, with estimated annual revenues that have exceeded $125 billion. It owns a diverse group of companies involved in manufacturing, agriculture, pulp and paper, packaging, consumer products, building materials, glass, automotive components, refining, renewable energy, chemicals and polymers, electronics, enterprise software, data analytics, medical products, engineered technology, project services, recycling, supply chain and logistics, global commodities trading, and investments. Since 2003, Koch companies have invested nearly $150 billion in growth and improvements. With a presence in more than 70 countries, Koch companies employ more than 120,000 people worldwide, with about half of those in the United States. For more news and information, visit www.KOCHind.com.

Renowned oncology and immunotherapy pioneer, Carl June, M.D., is recognized in the oncology field for his groundbreaking work in the development and commercialization of gene therapy and T-cell therapies, including collaboration with Novartis AG on the first FDA approved CAR-T therapy Kymriah.

Dr. June has published more than 500 manuscripts on immunotherapy. He currently serves as the Richard W. Vague Professor in immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and as the Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, as well as the Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Christi Shaw is a life sciences leader and advocate for patients with more than 30 years of pharmaceutical industry experience across a broad range of therapeutic areas. Christi formerly served as Chief Executive Officer of Kite, a Gilead Company, where she led a global team dedicated exclusively to the research, commercialization, and manufacturing of cell therapy. Under Christi’s leadership, Kite became the global leader in potentially curative cell therapy with multiple approved blood cancer indications in over 20 countries and went from treating a few hundred patients to thousands of patients world-wide. Prior to Kite, Christi held senior executive positions at Lilly, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson.

Christi’s leadership skills have led her to receive the Healthcare Business Association’s Woman of the Year Award (2023) and be recognized on the Forbes 50 Over 50 list (2022). In 2016, while being a caregiver to her older sister, Christi and her younger sister co-founded the More Moments More Memories Foundation, an organization providing grants to help people access oncology clinical trials for potentially life-saving treatment.

Christi currently serves on the board of directors of Beam Therapeutics, Avantor, ReAlta Lifesciences and is an advisor to Ginkgo Bioworks. Christi holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Iowa State University and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin. Christi is active in sustainable farming and resides with her husband and son in Florida.

Megan (Suhoski) Davis, PhD is the Director of the Product Development Laboratory within the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA, USA. Dr. Davis received her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania, developing an artificial antigen presenting cell system used to generate cell-based therapies, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University assessing immunotherapeutic vaccination strategies.

Dr. Davis returned to the University of Pennsylvania to lead the scientific research operations at the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility and helped facilitate the successful transfer of the CAR T cell manufacturing process to Novartis, which led to the FDA approval of Kymriah®. With over 15 years of experience in cell and gene therapy, Dr. Davis currently leads a team of expert scientists who develop large scale processes and novel cell therapy products for IND-enabling packages, as well as evaluate new and emerging technologies for utility in advancing manufacturing and testing platforms to revolutionize the field of cellular therapy.

Tim Moore has more than three decades of leadership experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and operations. Mr. Moore was formerly Chief Technical Officer at Allogene Therapeutics. Prior to joining Allogene Therapeutics, he served as Executive Vice President, Technical Operations at Kite, a Gilead Company, since March of 2016. During this time Mr. Moore was responsible for overseeing the process development, manufacturing, quality and supply chain for the launch of Yescarta®, one of the first CAR-T therapies to be developed, manufactured and commercialized, as well as advancement of the Kite pipeline. In addition, Mr. Moore globally expanded the biopharmaceutical operations to serve and support the US, EU, as well as key partners in Asia.
Prior to Kite, Mr. Moore served as the Senior Vice President, Head of Global Technical Operations – Biologics of Genentech, Inc. and as a member of the Genentech Executive Committee since 2010. In this role, Mr. Moore oversaw global leadership for more than 7,500 professionals across 10 internal sites and over 37 contract manufacturing organizations, as well as global manufacturing and end-to-end quality supply performance of more than 20 biological product families. Prior to that, Mr. Moore was Genentech’s Senior Vice President, Global Supply Chain and Global Engineering from 2007 to 2010. Previously, Mr. Moore served as Vice President, Operations at ZLB Behring (formerly Aventis Behring).

He is currently a member of ISPE, PDA and has been a part of the Executive Committee of BioPhorum and serves as a Board member for Cerus. Mr. Moore received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Tulsa University and a master’s degree in Engineering Management from Northwestern University.

Dr. Rod Rietze is co-founder and CEO of iVexSol (intelligent Vector Solutions), Inc., a burgeoning viral vector manufacturer founded on a transformative technology that enables the production of stable lentiviral vectors at any scale. Prior to iVexSol, Rod was the Director of Strategic Development and Innovation at Novartis Cell and Gene Therapy (Cambridge, MA), where he supported the clinical development of a number of next-generation cell and gene therapies, including Kymriah™, the first FDA-approved CAR-T cell-based gene therapy.

Before joining Novartis, Rod led research and development teams of both small molecule and cell-based therapeutics at Pfizer Regenerative Medicine (Cambridge, UK) and TxCell SA (Sophia Antipolis, France). During his tenure in academia, Rod co-founded the 400-member Queensland Brain Institute (Brisbane, Australia), where his lab focused on harnessing the regenerative capacity of resident neural stem cells as a means to treat age-related cognitive decline. His work was featured on the front covers of Nature and Science, and received numerous awards including Science Magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year”.

With over two decades of technical, operational, and strategic leadership experience in the development of novel therapeutics, Rod remains passionate about discovering and delivering innovative technologies and medicines to transform the treatment of disease. He holds a BSc and MSc from the University of Calgary, Canada, and a Ph.D. from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (University of Melbourne, Australia).

Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor, and Co-Director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. From January 2009 to January 2011, Dr. Emanuel served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. Prior to that he was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health from 1997 to August of 2011. Dr. Emanuel received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. Dr. Emanuel served on President Clinton’s Health Care Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), and on the bioethics panel of the Pan- American Healthcare Organization. He has published over 300 articles mainly on health care reform, research ethics, and end of life care in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, JAMA, and many other medical journals. He has also authored or edited 15 books. His new book entitled Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care? was published in June 2020. Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history.