Ashraf Hanna is the Chief Executive Officer at Genalyte. 

Ashraf joined Genalyte as Chief Executive Officer from Verily, an Alphabet company, where he was Chief Operating Officer.  Among other activities, he helped lead the company to obtain its first 510k approval and expand Covid testing sites during the pandemic.  Prior to Verily, Ashraf was the CEO at ORIC Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing drugs for resistant cancers.   Ashraf led the company from concept through preclinical and the beginning of Phase 1 clinical trials.  ORIC had an IPO at approximately $1B valuation while still in Phase 1.   Ashraf spent over a decade at Genentech as Vice President and head of Alliance Management, Portfolio Prioritization, and head of Commercial and Medical Affairs Finance.  He started his work career at McKinsey and Company. 

Ashraf has a PhD in Physics from Harvard, and an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts and studied Physics and Economics as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.  

Sam Rutten oversees all aspects of financial operations at Genalyte. He brings more than 15 years of finance and accounting experience with public and private companies in the life science and technology industries. Sam also leads administration operations and plays a major leadership role in the Company’s business strategy. 

Sam has extensive operational leadership experience raising venture capital and developing strategic financial plans. He most recently served as Head of Finance and Controller at Roswell Biotechnologies where he led financial operations and was responsible for the IPO and commercialization readiness planning. Prior to that, Sam was with Fate Therapeutics where he led SEC reporting and SOX 404b implementation during the company’s rapid growth.

Before transitioning in-house, Sam worked as a senior business assurance associate at Moss Adams and Baker Tilly, where he worked with private and public life science clients. He holds a certified public accounting license and received a B.S. degree in corporate finance and accounting from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

David joined Genalyte from Lucira Health, a diagnostic test developer, where he served as their Vice President of Regulatory and Clinical Affairs where successfully obtained the FDA’s first emergency use authorization for an at-home COVID-19 & Flu test, as well securing the first approval for their combination COVID & Flu Test by Health Canada and TGA (Australia).

Prior to joining Lucira Health, Davd spent the last 15 years in the Medical Device industry leading the Quality & Regulatory teams at companies such as Philips, DJO Global, Alphatec Spine and Henry Schein Orthodontics.  Prior to his medical industry experience, David spent 16 years in the automotive and aerospace industries at Ford Motor Company, General Dynamics and Northup Grumman.

David received a B.S. from San Diego State University in Electrical Engineering, a Masters of Science in Reliability Engineering from the University of Maryland, and is a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt.

Kevan brings nearly 25 years experience in life sciences technology research, development and commercialization. He started his career at Pacific Biosciences, a small, venture backed genomics startup and grew with the company through its first customer shipment and IPO.  While there his work included basic research, manufacturing process development, enterprise IT system implementation and program management of multiple new product development programs. After PacBio, Kevan spent more than a decade in a variety of leadership roles at Illumina where he led multiple new product development programs and supervised research and engineering teams across the life sciences disciplines. Most recently, Kevan was responsible for a custom products, application development and partnerships team driving more than $300M in annual revenue.

Kevan holds a PhD in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University and an MBA from The Wharton School, and was an undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana where he earned a BS in Physics and a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics. 

Alexah Boyer is the Director of Communications and Government Affairs at Genalyte, leading grant efforts, communications, and investor relations.

Alexah joined Genalyte from Capitol Hill where she worked for several Members of Congress as Communications Director and Policy Advisor on biotech, cybersecurity, and national defense policy. 

In addition to her time in the public sector, Alexah started a political consulting firm, advising clientele from elected Members of Congress to presidential candidates on communications and fundraising strategies. 

Alexah attended National Defense University in Washington, D.C along with CSU, Sacramento where she studied Government & International Affairs while working for former Governor Jerry Brown.

Ashraf joined Genalyte as Chief Executive Officer from Verily, an Alphabet company, where he was Chief Operating Officer. Among other activities, he helped lead the company to obtain its first 510k approval and expand Covid testing sites during the pandemic. Prior to Verily, Ashraf was the CEO at ORIC Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing drugs for resistant cancers. Ashraf led the company from concept through preclinical and the beginning of Phase 1 clinical trials. ORIC had an IPO at approximately $1B valuation while still in Phase 1. Ashraf spent over a decade at Genentech as Vice President and head of Alliance Management, Portfolio Prioritization, and head of Commercial and Medical Affairs Finance. He started his work career at McKinsey and Company. Ashraf has a PhD in Physics from Harvard, and an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts and studied Physics and Economics as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.

Andrew Conrad, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and Founder of Verily where he oversees an integrated team of engineers, scientists, designers, and medical experts working on a wide spectrum of healthcare-related projects.
Previously, he was Chief Scientific Officer of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp). Dr. Conrad co-founded the National Genetics Institute, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer. He is a Working Group Member on the Precision Medicine Initiative and a member of the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) Scientific Advisory Board.

Rajesh is a Partner at Khosla Ventures. Rajesh brings with him two decades of experience assisting and investing in deeptech/ hardware startups across many industries including Cleantech and Healthcare.
Before joining Khosla Ventures, Rajesh served as the Head of Applied Ventures LLC, the Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of over 85 hardware startups across 13 countries. Rajesh also drove the establishment of an $850M Materials Engineering Technology Accelerator (META) facility in NY, to enable access of semiconductor fabs for startups. Rajesh received Global Corporate Venturing’s (GCV) Powerlist award in 2019.

Before joining Applied Ventures, Rajesh worked at the venture arm of Third Point LLC. Previously, at Lucent’s Bell Labs, he drove the technical assessment & partnerships with several Photonics, MEMS and RF startups. Rajesh also led the design for reliability program for Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s telecommunication systems and supported the successful deployment of these systems globally.

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, Rajesh interned at Deutsche Bank’s cleantech investment banking group. Rajesh completed his M.S. at the University of Maryland at College Park, and received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.

Saeid is the Managing Director at HBM Genomics investing in world-class entrepreneurs in life sciences companies.

He has more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur building successful biotech companies from scratch. Saeid is an active investor/advisor in leading life sciences companies, including Genalyte, Clear Labs, Convergent Genomics, Encoded Therapeutics, Haystack Biosciences, Seer Biosciences, Trace Genomics, and Xcell Biosciences.

Prior to HBM Genomics, Saeid was the founder, President & CEO of NextBio which was acquired by Illumina in 2013. Prior to founding NextBio, he was the President & CEO of Silicon Genetics which was acquired by Agilent in 2004. Mr. Akhtari has also held executive management positions at several other life sciences companies.

Joe Markee Managing Director at Express Ventures

Joe brings extensive experience in early stage company formation, capital raising, corporate management, and public and private corporate governance. Joe’s startup experience encompasses Primary Access as a founder and senior manager, Copper Mountain Networks as founding CEO, CTO and Chairman, Figure 8 Wireless as CEO and StackIQ as CEO and Chairman.

Joe was also a founder and served as President of the San Diego Telecommunications Council (renamed CommNexus). He has been honored with awards for his contributions to San Diego’s high-tech business community, including Master Entrepreneur.