Alice Zhang is the CEO and Co-founder of Verge Genomics. Verge Genomics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop better drugs, faster for diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Alice has been recognized for her work as a recipient of Insider’s 30 Under 40 in Healthcare, Fortune 40 Under 40, Fierce Pharma Fiercest Women in Life Sciences, Forbes 30 Under 30 Featured Honoree, MIT Technology Review’s Innovator Under 35, and SF Business Times’ 40 Under 40. She currently sits on the board of directors at the California Life Sciences Association. Prior to Verge, she spent five years in the UCLA-Caltech MD/PhD program and received her BA degree from Princeton University in Molecular Biology. In her spare time, Alice is also an angel investor and advisor for tech-enabled bio startups.
Jane Rhodes, PhD, MBA is Chief Business Officer at Verge Genomics. Jane brings more than 25 years of drug discovery, company building and strategic leadership in the biotech industry, including 18 years at Biogen. Jane’s passion lies at the intersection of technology and life science. Based on her work in the digital health space, she co-founded Qr8 Health, a software development company pioneering the development of clinically validated patient assessment tools. Jane currently serves as Executive Chair of the Board at Pheno Therapeutics.
Dr. Cadavid is the Chief Medical Officer at Verge Genomics where he leads the Development Organization. He is a Physician-Scientist with more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and academic research having worked with small molecules and biologics in both common and rare diseases from first-in-human through registration and post-approval studies. Before joining Verge in November 2022, Dr. Cadavid spent over 6 years in small cap companies as Chief Medical Officer at X4 Pharmaceuticals and Chief Development Officer at Fulcrum Therapeutics. He worked with their leadership teams on successful financing via Series B, an IPO, and several private investments in public equity. He led the Development
Organizations at both X4 and Fulcrum and successfully advanced several small molecules into the clinic and through all phases of drug development.
Dr. Cadavid began his Drug Development career at Biogen as the Medical Director for the CNS remyelination and Progressive MS programs. Before Biogen, he spent nearly 9 years at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School as an Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and ran his own basic science laboratory studying neurological infections with NIH funding. He was also a research faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is an active clinician at the University of Massachusetts University Hospital in Worcester.
Dr. Cadavid earned his medical degree from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. He has published over 120 peer reviewed publications, review papers, and book chapters; his work has been cited more than seven thousand times, has an H-impact factor of
44, and is an inventor in 7 patent applications.
Dr. Scannevin serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at Verge Genomics, spearheading all research initiatives from CONVERGE®-enabled target discovery and validation to transitioning therapeutic candidates into clinical development. With over 24 years of leadership experience spanning large pharmaceutical companies and innovative biotech ventures, Dr. Scannevin has played an integral role in guiding multiple drugs from initial discovery to FDA approval.
Before joining Verge, Dr. Scannevin was the Head of Research at Yumanity Therapeutics, where he established and led a high-performing drug discovery team that built robust preclinical and clinical pipelines. Under his scientific leadership, Yumanity successfully secured multiple private financing rounds, forged a strategic collaboration with a major pharmaceutical company, and achieved a notable public debut.
Dr. Scannevin’s career is marked by influential leadership roles at Biogen, Johnson & Johnson, and Wyeth. During his tenure at Biogen, he had a pivotal role in the development and global marketing approval of Tecfidera® (dimethyl fumarate), a groundbreaking oral therapy for multiple sclerosis, serving as the Global Research Lead for this first-in-class treatment.
Dr. Scannevin earned his Ph.D. at SUNY Stony Brook and completed his postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A recognized authority in his field, he has co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed research publications and is credited as an inventor on more than a dozen issued patents and patent applications.
Brian is a synthetic organic/medicinal chemist and has 20 years of drug discovery experience leading chemistry and project teams in both large pharma and biotech. He brings a broad range of experience across a number of therapeutic areas including neuroscience, oncology, infectious disease, and rare genetic disease. Most recently, Brian was the Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Epizyme. He also led the chemistry efforts for the rare genetic disease portfolio at Agios, for the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) project at Enanta, and for many projects during his time at Johnson and Johnson (now Janssen). Brian earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duquesne University and received his postdoctoral training at the University of Rochester. He is a co-author on more than 25 scientific publications and an inventor on more than 35 issued patents and patent applications.
Dr. Anil Tarachandani joins Verge Genomics from Pfizer where he led multifunctional teams to bring novel, specific and quantitative endpoints to clinical research while interacting with FDA for their recognition and endorsement. His experience in the biopharmaceutical industry includes small, medium, and large companies in multiple therapeutic areas. In a decade-long career at Merck, he grew from a research scientist in the immunology group to leading a cardiovascular sub team that helped bring cholesterol modulating drugs to market. Anil’s leadership in the use of innovative high throughput automated technologies, led to a global business development role with dedicated budget for bringing innovation to Merck.
Anil’s passion is to evaluate drug efficacy and he founded an innovative digital diagnostics company to develop POWERjar, a simple yet powerful device to measure changes in muscle strength. He joined Biogen with a goal of combining such novel technologies, with others in the Experimental Medicine group, to bring precise, quantitative, and decision-making assessments to late-stage programs.
Anil’s PhD is in oncology with post-doctoral training at the University of Massachusetts. He spent the initial years of his career in academia at Carnegie Mellon developing automated, fast, AI / ML based methods of acquiring and analyzing thousands of microscopic images to determine drug efficacy and identify drugs that showed unique characteristics.
Christopher Woelk, known as Topher, heads our Translational Genomics team and has over 18 years experience managing cross-disciplinary teams focused on reverse translation from clinical data for target and biomarker identification across a range of indications (infections disease, oncology, respiratory disease and neurological disorders). Before joining Verge, Topher was Head of Systems Biology at Merck’s Exploratory Science Center in Cambridge, where he built a team of computational biologists, provided leadership around the portfolio of projects and platforms with a number of deliveries into therapeutic areas, and oversaw a data science cluster of over 80 data scientists in early discovery.
Prior to Merck, Topher held a number of academic roles, the last of which was Professor of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. He was also the director of the Bioinformatics Core for the University of Southampton and served as the Director of the Genomics Core for the Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication, one of the first collaborations set up with the aim of curing HIV.
Topher earned his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford and conducted his postdoctoral training at the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California San Diego. He is an author on over 80 peer-reviewed journal publications and an inventor on a number of patents.
Irene has over 15 years of experience leading multiple neuroscience drug discovery programs from idea to clinic. As the first hire with industry experience at Verge, she led the PIKfyve drug discovery program from target-validation to clinic, resulting in a successful Phase 1 trial in 2023. Prior to Verge, she led early discovery, pharmacology, and program teams at Nektar Therapeutics. There, she helped bring several drugs to the clinic, including NKTR-181, a first-in-class mu-opioid analgesic, filed for an NDA. Irene completed her post-doctoral training in Catherine Rivier's group at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Science with a focus in Neurosciences from the University of New Mexico.
Thomas heads our Exploratory Biology and Target Validation team. Thomas brings more than 15 years of expertise in genomics and drug discovery research in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.
As Research Associate Professor at Tufts University his research focused on understanding brain disorders using stem cell, bioengineering, organoid and ‘omics’ profiling technology. His PhD training in Chemical Biology was done at Harvard University and MIT, with a degree awarded from the VUUniversity of Amsterdam. He previously worked at Johns Hopkins University, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Merck Research Laboratories. Thomas founded Verge Genomics’ Target Validation and iPSC Disease modeling department
Victor Hanson-Smith,
PhD
Distinguished Computational Scientist, Head of Computational Biology
Victor is a world leader in mathematical modeling of eukaryotic genome evolution and function, and has 18 years experience working at the intersection of computer science and biology. He has authored groundbreaking publications in top journals including Nature and Science; his work has been featured in popular press, including the NYTimes and Washington Post. Victor received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Oregon, and he completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in evolutionary genomics at UCSF. Additionally, Victor is a full-stack software engineer with extensive experience building genomics pipelines, scalable databases, and supercomputing simulations. Victor joined Verge Genomics in February 2016.
Applegate joins Verge from Valo Health, an AI-powered drug discovery company, where he was a member of the founding leadership team and helped grow the company from seed stage to a valuation greater than $1B. Prior to Valo, he spent 14 years at Biogen, where he served as the head of global R&D finance, leading a 19 person team supporting nearly 100 R&D programs and a $2B annual budget.
Applegate joins Verge after 24 years of finance leadership in both the biotech and technology industries. As a member of the Biogen R&D Leadership Team, Applegate advised senior management on capital allocation decisions that spanned 11 business units, 14 collaborations, and 32 clinical development programs across 25 indications. He supported major business development transactions, including the $3.25B purchase of TYSABRI® (natalizumab) rights from Elan. Applegate also managed critical alliances on Biogen’s behalf that included collaborations with Eisai on developing and commercializing drug candidates to treat Alzheimer’s disease, and Genentech for developing and commercializing RITUXAN® (rituximab). He held leadership roles on multiple late-stage and commercial programs at Biogen, including as program director of lecanemab, one of the first treatments of its kind to show positive Phase 3 results for Alzheimer’s Disease.
Applegate received his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.
Dr. Hoffmann has over 20 years of experience in clinical operations and R&D programs. Over her career, she has worked at several small and medium-sized biotechnology companies, with increasing responsibility to lead small and more significant teams to deliver complex worldwide Phase I-III clinical trials. Ines has experience in diverse therapeutic areas, including Neurology, including indications such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, as well as Oncology, Audiology, and Rare Diseases. Her last positions were Director of Clinical Operations at Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Clinical Trial Management at Xencor.
Dr. Hoffmann earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from The University of Munich and Max-Planck Institute of Immunobiology Freiburg, Germany, and received her postdoctoral and research training at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.
Effie Bruzik is the VP of Operations at Verge Genomics, providing internal leadership and overseeing key business functions. Effie has over three decades of progressive experience, working in complex academic medical centers and the biotechnology industry, with an emphasis on strategic program planning and execution, building organizational and physical infrastructure, and driving operational and financial excellence. She spent 22 years at the Cleveland Clinic in various hospital and clinical research administration roles, including serving as the Administrative Director in establishing and leading the Center for Clinical Research. Prior to joining Verge Genomics, Effie spent 7 years at Biogen, leading program management and optimizing operating models in several capacities. Effie has an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and a Master’s degree in Public Health, with a concentration in Hospital Administration from Yale University.
Michelle brings over 12 years of biotech experience, including strategic leadership, business development, and corporate development. Prior to joining Verge, she provided consulting in corporate strategy and development for biotech and Medtech startups. She previously spearheaded the largest human brain bank in the world and led strategic growth and operations as Head of West Coast Development for the Lieber Institute, in addition to leading several multi-million dollar collaborations. Michelle’s proven scientific expertise spans neuroscience and genetics, with more than 15 peer-reviewed publications and 3 patent filings. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and an MS in Human & Medical Genetics from Johns Hopkins.