Alex Capano
Matthew Henn
Matthew Henn is the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Seres Therapeutics. He has over 20 years of combined research experience in microbial ecology, genomics and bioinformatics that spans both environmental and human disease applications. He has been involved in the discovery and clinical development of multiple microbiome therapeutics including all of Seres’ product candidates and has authored over 65 peer-reviewed publications. His research has focused on microbial physiology and the functional role of microbes in both environmental and human disease applications, and on the development of genomic and functional tools to study microbial systems. Prior to helping launch Seres in 2012, he was the Director of Viral Genomics and Assistant Director of the Genome Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He has served on various NIH working groups on antimicrobial resistance and microbiome research, as a scientific advisor for NIH’s Viral Pathogen Bioinformatics Resource Center, and as an ad-hoc reviewer and editor of various peer-reviewed journals. He currently serves on the scientific advisory board of Growcentia, Inc., an agricultural microbiome company. Dr. Henn earned his B.S. in ecology and evolutionary sciences from the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a NASA Earth Systems Sciences Fellow, and trained as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University.
Gokul Swaminathan
Gokul Swaminathan received his Ph.D. degree in microbiology & immunology from Drexel University. At Drexel, he uncovered the interplay between innate immune receptors, non-coding RNAs, HIV-1 infection. For his post-doctoral work, Dr. Swaminathan joined Merck Research Laboratories and trained at the vaccines division at Merck & Co. Inc, West Point, PA. After 2 years of post-doc work, he accepted a senior scientist position within the same group at Merck, West Point. While at Merck WP, Gokul was focused on uncovering the mode-of-action of novel lipid nanoparticle (LNP) based vaccine formulations in the context of viral infections and immuno-oncology. In 2016, Gokul transitioned into a new role at the new Merck Exploratory Science Center (ESC) in Cambridge, MA, where he is currently a principal scientist in the investigational biology group. At the Cambridge ESC, he leads innovative clinical & pre-clinical programs aimed at understanding the influence of the microbiome on the host immune system.
Erick Pierstaff
Erick Pierstaff joined the NSF as Program Director in November 2019. Prior to NSF, he was Chief of Operations and led Research and Development at O-Ray Pharma, where he focused on integrating biology and biomedical engineering for the goal of drug development and sustained drug delivery for the treatment of hearing loss and other ear disorders. During his time working at early stage companies, he helped secure both Angel investment and non-dilutive funding in the form of licensing and co-development deals. Additionally, he served as Principal Investigator on several Phase I, II and IIB SBIR grants from the National Institutes of Health and NSF. His research interests have focused on the intersection of the biotic and abiotic, spanning molecular and cell biology, materials science, gene therapy, nanomaterials and drug delivery. Erik has a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in Biology from Emory University.
Colleen Cutliffe
Susan Nicholson
Scott Jackson
Sara Naseri
Dirk Gevers
Dirk Gevers, Ph.D., is Global Head of the Microbiome Solutions team. As a team, we combine our pioneering expertise in the microbiome with the drug discovery, product development, and commercialization know-how of a leading global healthcare company. Together with our colleagues across Janssen and Johnson & Johnson, we have the knowledge and resources to identify the most promising innovations taking place across the microbiome ecosystem and help our partners translate early-stage innovations into product concepts and, ultimately, new solutions with the power to impact human health. Dirk joined from his previous role as Senior Group Leader of Microbial Systems and Communities at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In this position, Dirk served as a scientific liaison between different organizational components, including the Broad Institute’s data generation platforms and both clinical and analytical collaborators on a number of microbiome-related projects. Dirk’s research efforts at the Broad Institute included the characterization of the microbial imbalance associated with diseases such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes and colorectal cancer. He was also involved with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Project (HMP), holding a leading role in the Data Analysis Working Group, consisting of over 50 investigators focused on human microbiome research. Dirk received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ghent University (UGent), Belgium, and completed postdoctoral training at UGent and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in bioinformatics, comparative and evolutionary genome analysis and microbial ecolog
