The full list of external stakeholders participating in meetings with the HELIX Initiatives is available in the 'Daily Schedule' tab.
No personal information will appear, for privacy reasons
Speakers & Guests
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Rabbi Marc Baker
CEO
Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP)
As President and CEO of Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP), Marc leads the organization in its mission to inspire Jewish life and ignite positive change in Greater Boston, in Israel, and across the globe. He champions CJP’s efforts to build partnerships, develop resources, mobilize volunteers, and put innovative philanthropy into practice.
Founded over 125 years ago, CJP is ranked by the Boston Business Journal as Massachusetts’ largest nonprofit organization, investing and managing philanthropic assets valued at $2.4 billion. Under Marc’s leadership over the last four years, CJP has raised more than $200 million in annual support and $17 million in emergency funds for COVID-19 relief, humanitarian support for Ukraine, and immigrant and refugee crises.
Leading with compassion and integrity, Marc welcomes and encourages the inclusion of diverse voices and perspectives. He collaborates with leaders, volunteers, and community partners to advance CJP’s strategic priorities of caring for the most vulnerable, creating broad and deep engagement with Jewish life, enhancing connections to Israel and the Jewish People, and ensuring a thriving and sustainable Boston Jewish community. Marc regularly writes, speaks, and teaches about leadership, community, and civic life, bringing the voice of Jewish tradition to contemporary issues.
Marc graduated from Yale University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies and received his Master’s in Jewish education from The Hebrew University in 2002. He was ordained by Rabbi Daniel Landes, former Director of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Before coming to CJP, Marc served as Head of School at Gann Academy, in Waltham. In 2011, he received The Pomegranate Prize from The Covenant Foundation which honors and nurtures exceptional, emerging Jewish educators. Born in Lynnfield, Marc currently resides in Brookline with his wife, Jill, and their four children.
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Mr. Imran Nasrullah
Chief Business Officer
Grove Biopharma
Imran is Chief Business Officer at Grove Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. He possesses over 25 years of business development & licensing, strategy, economic development and technology transfer experience. Prior to Grove Biopharma, Imran was Vice President and US Head of BD&L/Open Innovation at Bayer Pharmaceuticals where he was responsible for forging new business relationships with academia, biotech and venture capital for early access to technologies. Imran also led lates stage and in-market licensing deals across Bayer’s US portfolio; he also created & led several programs at Bayer centered on mentoring and partnering with early-stage life science companies.
Prior to Bayer, Imran worked for Boehringer Ingelheim in BD&L leading scouting and evaluation in the US. He holds a proven track record track record at blue-chip organizations like Boehringer Ingelheim, Genzyme Genetics (now LabCorp), Millennium Pharmaceuticals (Takeda), Dana Farber Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic. In the diversity of his experiences, Imran was also the Chief Business Officer for Massbio, where he successfully turned around Massbio into the most successful biotechnology state trade-association in the country; and launched several ground breaking mentoring and partnering programs.
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Ms. Liyam Chitayat
MIT PhD Candidate & Hertz Fellow
Liyam is a Hertz Fellow and PhD student in the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT, where she works on symbiogenesis—how biological systems use symbiosis as an engine for innovation.
She was born in New York and grew up in Israel, where she completed a double major in chemistry and biology and earned a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering at Tel Aviv University. Her research focused on developing tools for universal microbiome engineering and earned her the Baruch Zinger Award. She served in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, where she was selected for a scientific prodigy role, leading computational biology efforts and DARPA programs. Her work earned her the 2022 Accelerator Prize for innovation, as well as recognition in Forbes 30 Under 30 and TheMarker 40 Under 40. She continues her work at the intersection of biodefense and biosecurity as a fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks.
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Prof. Isaac Kohane
Professor & Chair, Dept of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School. Editor-in-Chief, NEJM AI
Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, is the inaugural chair of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, whose mission is to develop the methods, tools, and infrastructure required for a new generation of scientists and care providers to move biomedicine rapidly forward through the insight and precision offered by big data. Kohane develops and applies computational techniques to address disease at multiple scales, from whole health care systems to the functional genomics of neurodevelopment. He also has worked on AI applications in medicine since the 1990’s, including automated ventilator control, pediatric growth monitoring, detection of domestic abuse, diagnosing autism from multimodal data and assisting clinicians using whole genome sequence and clinical histories to diagnose rare disease patients. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American College of Medical Informatics. He is the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of NEJM AI and co-author of a recent book "The AI Revolution in Medicine."
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Ms. Nancy Brown
General Partner
Oak HC/FT
Nancy Brown is a General Partner at Oak HC/FT, where she serves on the Boards of Firefly Health, Groups Recover Together, InterWell Health, Maven, Oshi Health, Regard and Unite US.
Prior to joining Oak HC/FT, Nancy was Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for McKesson Corporation Technology Solutions. Previously, Nancy was Chief Growth Officer at MedVentive, which was acquired by McKesson in 2012. Before joining MedVentive, she served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development as well as Senior Vice President of Clinical Service of athenahealth.
Nancy is also a member of the Dean’s Executive Council at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University and the Future of Healthcare Founder Residency program at the Roux Institute in Portland, Maine.
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Mr. Dan Lynch
Executive Venture Partner
Google Ventures
Since 2007, Dan has advised and served as an executive chair or member of the boards for multiple biopharmaceutical companies, including Stromedix (acquired by Biogen), Avila Therapeutics (acquired by Celgene Corporation), Nimbus Discovery, Edimer Pharmaceuticals, Ember Therapeutics, Proclara Biosciences, Surface Oncology, Sesen Bio (formerly Eleven Biotherapeutics), Xilio Therapeutics, eGenesis Bio, BIND Biosciences, and Blueprint Medicines.
Dan currently serves on the boards of SpringWorks Therapeutics, 2Seventy Bio, and Alpha Omega SPAC. Dan also served as an entrepreneur in residence and venture partner at Third Rock Ventures and was a senior advisor at the firm until 2021. Previously, Dan served as CEO and CFO of ImClone Systems Corporation. As CEO, he led the company through a significant turnaround, helping to restore its reputation and secure FDA approval of the novel cancer treatment ERBITUX® (Cetuximab). As CFO, Dan led negotiations to form a major partnership between ImClone and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Earlier in his career, he held several financial positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb for over 15 years. For five years, he served on the board of directors and the audit committee at U.S. Oncology, Inc. until its acquisition by McKesson in 2010.
Dan received his B.A. in mathematics from Wesleyan University and his M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at The University of Virginia.
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Ms. Moran Cabilli
Associate Director of Business Development at The Office of Technology Development,
Harvard University
Trained as a computational biologist, Moran brings nearly a decade of experience in product management. In her current role at the Office at Technology Development, she specializes in commercializing technologies and forging industry partnerships. Previously, Moran led Data Strategy and Product Development at Foundation Medicine and played a key role in developing a biomedical research cloud platform at the Broad Institute, in collaboration with Verily.
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Ms. Justine Allehand- Levin
Executive Partner, Origination and Corporate Development,
Flagship Pioneering
Justine Levin-Allerhand, Ph.D., is Executive Partner, Origination and Corporate Development, at Flagship Pioneering. In this capacity, she works to advance strategic, scientific, and operational priorities that span the Flagship ecosystem.
Justine serves as Flagship’s Origination Lead, responsible for maximizing the impact of Flagship’s company origination teams and otherwise advancing early-stage company creation, working in close collaboration with the Pioneering Business Units and Flagship’s Chief Scientist. In addition, Justine leads Flagship’s corporate development activities, establishing and cultivating institutional partnerships to advance Flagship’s priorities. She oversees Flagship’s Enabling Technologies Initiative, which works with internal and external partners to create new technologies to accelerate the development of therapeutic breakthroughs, and the Flagship Fellowship, a summer program for innovative early-career scientists and entrepreneurs.
Justine joined Flagship in 2021 as Senior Partner. In this role she was responsible for cultivation and engagement with the boards of directors of 40+ Flagship companies, including developing, leading, and implementing best practices in board governance and board member recruitment, selection, and onboarding. She also worked to expand and foster new relationships and partnerships for Flagship including internationally.
A scientist by training, Justine has diverse experience in raising funds for basic science and biomedicine. Prior to joining Flagship, she was Executive Vice President of Development, Business, and External Relations at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where she led efforts to develop and steward philanthropic and industry partnerships. In that role she also oversaw communications and government relations and was the clerk of the Board of Directors. Previously, Justine held several roles in fundraising at Yale University including Deputy Director for International Fundraising, Director of Science and Engineering Fundraising, and Development Officer in Corporate and Foundation Relations for the Yale School of Medicine. She was also Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Justine graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College with a B.A. in biology and received her Ph.D. in biology from Rockefeller University.
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Dr. Todd Golub
Director and Founding Core Institute Member,
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Todd Golub is director and a founding core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Golub is a world leader in using genomics tools to understand the basis of cancer. He also pioneered the development of new cell-based approaches to drug discovery for cancer and other diseases.
Golub is also the Charles A. Dana Investigator in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, and the Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society. Golub is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.
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Mr. Alexis Borisy
Founder and Operating Chairman,
Curie
Alexis Borisy is a leading biotechnology entrepreneur and investor with 30 years of experience building, operating and investing in innovative science-based companies to make a positive difference in the world. Alexis is the co-founder and operating Chairman of Curie.Bio, a new founder-focused model for venture in biotech. Through his Borisy Labs Productions, LLC, Alexis continues to found and participate in the initial build of innovative biotech companies, such as IDRx, Inc. and Sesame Therapeutics. Alexis serves on multiple boards, both public and private, of companies that he helped to found or build, and he also serves as Chairman of Nextech Invest, a Swiss-American venture firm. He is currently chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Museum of Science, has served on the board of BIO, and as the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.
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Dr. Jeremy Levin
Chairman and CEO at Ovid Therapeutics Inc
Dr. Levin has held leadership roles in major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contributing significantly to the industry. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and Chairman of Opthea. Previously, he served as President and CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and was on Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Executive Committee, where he led the transformative “String of Pearls” strategy in immuno-oncology. He has also been Global Head of Strategic Alliances at Novartis and holds numerous board positions. Dr. Levin serves on the Board and Executive Committee of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization(BIO) as Emeritus Chairman.
He earned a BA in Zoology, an MA, and a DPhil in Chromatin Structure from Oxford University, followed by medical degrees from Cambridge University, where he won the Kermode Prize for his work on Captopril. In 2019, he published Biotechnology in the Time of COVID-19, detailing the industry's early efforts to create vaccines and treatments for the
pandemic. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Scrip Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023, being named by Endpoints as one of 60 living pioneers of the industry, one of the 25 most influential biotechnology leaders by Fierce Biotech, and one of the top 3 biotech CEOs by The Healthcare Technology Report. Among his other honors are
the Albert Einstein Award for Leadership in Life Sciences and the B’nai B’rith Award for Distinguished Achievement.
Dr. Levin has lived in South Africa, Israel, Switzerland, the UK, and now resides in the US.
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Dr. Eric Perakslis
Chief Science & Data Officer at Pluto Health
Eric Perakslis, PhD, is Chief Science and Data Officer at Pluto Health. He has held leadership roles at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Takeda, the U.S. FDA, Johnson & Johnson, and Harvard Medical School. His work spans biomedical informatics, cybersecurity, data science, regulatory science, and global health.
At Takeda, Eric led a 165-person R&D data science institute. At the FDA, he served as CIO and Chief Scientist for Informatics, where he developed the agency’s first IT strategic plan. While at Johnson & Johnson, he created and open-sourced the tranSMART clinical data platform, now widely adopted globally.
Eric has supported global health initiatives with Médecins Sans Frontières and contributed to Ebola response programs. He’s held academic roles at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and advisory roles with ASCO, the AACR, and international biotech efforts.
He holds a PhD in chemical and biochemical engineering from Drexel University and additional degrees in chemical engineering.
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Prof. Cigall Kadoch
Academic Investigator & Entrepreneur in the Biomedical Sciences
Cigall Kadoch, Ph.D., is an academic investigator as well as entrepreneur in the biomedical sciences. She is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Institute Member and Co-Director of the Epigenomics Program at the Broad Institute, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Dr. Kadoch established her independent laboratory in 2014, at age 28 and immediately following completion of her Ph.D. studies at Stanford University (absent any postdoctoral training), making her one of the youngest scientists ever appointed to the Harvard Medical School faculty. She is a leading expert in chromatin and gene regulation and is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking studies in these areas and their now their clinical translation. Specifically, her laboratory studies the structure and function of nuclear protein complexes called chromatin remodeling complexes that govern DNA architecture and gene expression, perturbations in which are implicated in over 50% of human cancers. Based on her seminal work, Dr. Kadoch is also the Scientific Founder of Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), a company advancing a new class of medicines in oncology and beyond.
Dr. Kadoch is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Forbes magazine 30 Under 30, Popular Science Brilliant 10, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the AAAS Wachtel Cancer Research Prize, the AACR Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research Award, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, and most recently, the Blavatnik National Awards National Laureate in the Life Sciences, among many others.

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