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.

Gary Lo is the Chief Financial Officer at Cellares. He has extensive experience in finance and IT. Prior to joining, Gary was the Vice President of Finance at Legrand Building Control Systems managing global finance functions including cash management, accounts payable/receivable, credit and collections, cost accounting, and general accounting. Previously, he was the Vice President of Business Development and IT at Sparta Systems spearheading Sparta’s M&A strategy, execution, and integration. He also served as CFO for 1WorldSync, a cloud-based product database company with over 15,000 customers across 50 countries.

Gary worked for 10 years at Johnson & Johnson as a Finance Director supporting numerous product lines and geographies. He has held management positions at Siebel Systems, Boston Scientific Corporation, and PWC as well. Gary earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and graduated magna cum laude with a BS from Boston College. He is a Certified Public Accountant.

Arturo Araya is Cellares’ Executive Vice President of Commercialization, currently leading and executing on the go-to-market strategy for the Cell Shuttle, an automated and closed end-to-end manufacturing solution for scaling cell therapies. He joined the company in 2023 with over a decade of executive experience commercializing cell and gene therapies. Notably, Araya served as Chief Commercial Officer for Novartis’ cell therapy unit during the early development of Kymriah, as well as Vice President for Global Commercial Strategy for several multi-billion dollar Novartis Oncology products and as Oncology General Manager over seven countries.  Previous roles also include Chief Commercial Officer of Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics an autologous, MSC-based, cell therapy developer, Chief Commercial Officer at cell and gene therapy COI/COC software developer TrakCel and various Marketing and Business Development roles at Bristol Myers Squibb. Araya has a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Antinea is the Vice President of Technical Operations at Cellares. She brings over a decade of experience in the Life Sciences industry, having held senior leadership responsibilities in Cell Manufacturing, Technical Operations, MSAT, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Program Management.

Prior to joining Cellares, Antinea oversaw the design, build, and deployment of Synthego’s High-Throughput Genome Engineering Technology, a cell-line agnostic platform accelerating researchers’ CRISPR-mediated target identification and validation initiatives. She led the commercial launch of CRISPR-edited iPSCs and Engineered Cell Libraries to upend mainstream therapeutic development approaches, enabling researchers to gain valuable diversity, toxicity, and efficacy insights in-situ, de-risking costly therapeutic endeavors far ahead of traditional patient trials. In partnership with the NIH, she led the generation of isogenic-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines to establish a national repository to characterize how individual mutations impact cellular pathways and contribute to Alzheimer’s and other neurological indications.

At Novartis, Antinea drove readiness and successful completion of FDA pre-approval inspections (PAI). She holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbial Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and has made it her mission to understand, optimize, and accelerate access to curative therapeutic modalities reinforced through years of innovative, customer-centric genomic advancements across all stages of the drug development process.

Meredith Daviou is the Vice President of Finance at Cellares.  Meredith has more than 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry as an accounting professional and is a licensed CPA, with a specialization in accounting in both her undergraduate degree and master’s of business administration.

Prior to joining Cellares and through the acquisition of Array BioPharma, she was finance lead over the BRAFTOVI & MEKTOVI franchise in Oncology at Pfizer (leading indications of Melanoma and Colorectal Cancer), a significant asset in Pfizer’s research and development budget in Oncology. As finance lead, she was responsible for all budgeting, forecasting and accounting for both early and late-stage clinical studies, including pharmaceutical sciences, supporting the franchise as well as other key programs in oncology.

Prior to the acquisition by Pfizer, Meredith was Assistant Controller at Array BioPharma and was responsible for leading all finance initiatives to support commercialization of Array’s first approved therapies.

Her prior role at Gilead as Collaborations Accounting Manager involved management of over 100 collaboration agreements in both research and development and commercialized therapies.  Meredith started her career in public accounting and served as Audit Manager at Grant Thornton serving a variety of both private and SEC clients in manufacturing, technology and life science industries.

Eric is the Vice President of Quality at Cellares. He brings over 25 years of experience in Biotechnology at companies both large and small, at drug innovators and CDMOs, in the US and overseas. He has held roles of increasing scope and accountability from Manufacturing Operator to Vice President, Quality with scope including blood products, clinical manufacturing, commercial manufacturing, biosafety, quality control, packaging, transportation, audits, inspection, and client relationships.

Prior to joining Cellares, Eric designed and implemented Quality at Bionova Scientific, a CDMO in Fremont, CA. While there, he contributed heavily to the design and construction of the state-of-the-art, end-to-end single-use GMP manufacturing facility for traditional cell culture products. Eric’s team deployed an integrated paperless clinical manufacturing quality system through electronic batch records, electronic documents, training, quality events, and laboratory execution. The Bionova Scientific facility was designed, constructed, and qualified to meet global standards.

At Samsung BioLogics, Eric led the Quality Operations team for two commercial plants and one clinical plant in Songdo, South Korea. His teams oversaw Raw Material Handling and Release, Facility, Utility, Equipment, Computer System, and Method Qualification, Drug Substance Manufacturing, Quality Systems, and Batch Release for Samsung BioLogics. In this role, Eric played a crucial part in Samsung’s Audit and Inspection management. He was directly involved in nearly 20 Inspections from FDA, EMA, JP, and other inspectorates for the purposes of PAI, PLI, Routine Surveillance, and PAS. Eric supported an intense schedule of client due diligence audits, client routine audits, and client pre-PAI audits. Additionally, he created and chaired several review boards to build consistency and improve quality on cross-functional topics such as environmental monitoring, raw material availability, and phase-appropriate new product introduction.

Prior to Samsung, Eric had several roles of increasing scope at Profile Diagnostics in Van Nuys, CA, and at Amgen in Thousand Oaks CA. Eric holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Utah.

Daniele Malleo is VP of Research and Development at Cellares.
He is an accomplished R&D leader with over 15 years of experience developing and commercializing analytical instruments and biomedical devices. He has led cross-functional teams through the full product lifecycle, from early-stage research to design, testing, and product launch, with a focus on regulated environments.
Daniele joined Cellares in March 2020 with a proven track record of building and growing successful R&D organizations, attracting top talent, and fostering a culture of agility and excellence.

Prior to joining Cellares, Daniele served as Chief Architect at Abbott Diagnostics, where he led the systems engineering efforts for the flagship Alinity Hq hematology analyzer through the complete product lifecycle. At BD Biosciences, Daniele built and managed the systems engineering team driving the development of multiple clinical and RUO flow cytometry platforms. Daniele was also part of the founding engineering team at Berkeley Lights that successfully designed and commercialized the pioneering Beacon optoelectronic platform for single-cell analysis. He earned Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southampton, UK.

John Tomtishen is Vice President of Operations at Cellares. He has more than 10 years of experience in cell and gene therapies, biologics, and vaccines, with diverse roles in Business Operations, CMC/Technical Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering/Facilities, and Operational Excellence. Prior to joining Cellares, John served as the Site Managing Director of Legend Biotech’s corporate headquarters, where he was responsible for Legend’s U.S. Manufacturing and Technical Operations teams and the development of robust global CMC strategies for Legend’s cell and gene therapy product portfolio. He also supported the clinical development and BLA filing of Ciltacabtagene autoleucel (Cilta-cel) in collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to joining Legend, John worked for Novartis Pharmaceuticals within Cell and Gene Technical Development & Manufacturing where he drove and oversaw CMC activities for cell and gene therapy products from late-stage clinical development through commercial lifecycle management. John also had an integral role in the filing and approval of the first CAR-T BLA (Kymriah™-tisagenlecleucel). Previous experience included roles at Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories, and Fox Chase Cancer Center. John earned a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors in Cell Biology/Biochemistry from Bucknell University.

Wilson is the VP of Technology at Cellares. He has over 25 years of engineering experience in creating innovative, cutting-edge analytical systems for bioresearch and medical device industries. His portfolio includes leading roles in systems design and mechanical engineering at several Bay Area companies such as Molecular Devices, Fluxion Biosciences, and Cutera. He excels in merging the fields of fluidics, optics, electronics, and precision injection-molding to create innovative systems for clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, and medical devices. His talents extend beyond just development of robust platforms as Wilson has successfully launched and commercialized 5 products over the past 10 years. Wilson’s passion is creating elegant solutions that meet challenging design criteria from customer’s needs, R&D, Sales and Marketing, and Manufacturing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

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 is currently the 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.

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.

David is a Managing Director at Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), where he leads KDT’s investment efforts across the major sectors in the healthcare arena.

David has over 25 years of experience in healthcare operations, fundraising, and investing. Prior to KDT, David worked at several healthcare venture financed companies, as well as serving as co-founder and Managing Director of two venture capital entities. He co-founded De Novo Ventures, a life science venture capital firm that managed more than $700 million across three funds with a combined portfolio of over 70 companies. He was also a co-founder and Managing Director of the Harvest Intrexon Enterprise Fund, a $245 million fund focused on tools that edit biological systems. David also served as President of the publicly traded biopharmaceutical company Ziopharm Oncology.

David holds a BA from Duke University and an MD from Dartmouth School of Medicine. In his free time David enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, golfing, and doing other outdoor activities.