Introducing Machine Bio
David Marash
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, & Head of Scientific Development
David Marash graduated from Claremont Mckenna College with dual degrees in Biology and Government. He then spent three years in various industry positions including roles at Stanford School of Medicine, NASA, and Oncomed Pharmaceuticals. After this, David returned to Claremont to obtain a Masters of Science in Biopharmaceutical Processing at Keck Graduate Institute. During this time he worked on projects with industry leading pharmaceutical companies including the most clinically advanced cell-free therapeutics company, Sutro Biopharma, where he delivered a disruptive process improvement that was adopted by Sutro for further development. David leverages his passion for radical innovation and collaboration to inspire buy-in to Machine Bio's vision from inside and outside the company and leads the development of the company's core technology.
Alexander Hilbert
Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer & Head of Business Development
Alexander Hilbert has a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Arizona State University and a Masters of Business and Science in Biotech Management from Keck Graduate Institute. He has worked on multiple strategic product planning and market research projects for various major pharma and biotech companies in areas including therapeutics, diagnostics, and research tools. Drawing from his hybrid science-business background, he takes the technical, science-based work and translates it into specific business objectives and outcomes. Alex brings experience in market research, new product planning, and financial modeling to the team.
Naman Shah
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer
Naman Shah has a B.S. in Computer Information Systems and Business Data Analytics from Arizona State University and an MBA in Project Management from Louisiana State University. His experience is in consulting project management where he has successfully managed multimillion-dollar budgets, large teams of over twenty members, and increased revenue growth by several million dollars over two years in his previous role. In addition to his managerial experience he has a background in non-profit fundraising. Naman oversees the company’s strategies and translates them into actionable, achievable milestones to lead Machine Bio to operational excellence.
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Phillip Tam
Head of R&D
Phillip Tam graduated from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) with degrees in Chemistry and Biology. Following the completion of his B.S. he went on to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCI. He has worked in a variety of R&D roles for Biotech companies in areas that span therapeutics and diagnostics. He is always up to the challenge of learning new processes and has found approaches to challenge the status quo and lead teams to improve both throughput and project success. He brings experience from several early-stage startups and has an innovative and collaborative approach to move ideas from conception to reality.
Karuel Osada
Senior Research Associate
Karuel has over 4 years experience in various research positions and is an important contributor to Machine Bio's scientific team. His role is focused on the execution of the research.
Tom Boone
Drug Development Expert
Tom Boone has more than 34 years of accomplishments in the discovery and development of protein therapeutics. Tom worked at Amgen for 28 years and served in positions of increasing responsibility in growing Amgen Protein Sciences to an organization of over 300 researchers across five different sites while maintaining a long tradition of industry excellence. His career at Amgen began in 1981 as a bench scientist with the isolation and cDNA cloning of novel cytokines and growth factors including G-CSF. He was also responsible for purifying many of Amgen’s recombinant proteins. Tom’s responsibilities grew from Scientist to Director and he developed proprietary processes used to produce recombinant G-CSF and other therapeutic candidates for clinical applications. His continuing success led to leadership of all research protein technologies, and the evolution of Protein Sciences as an independent organization. Tom was the first Vice President of Amgen Protein Science and his teams were responsible for the majority of the current Amgen product portfolio and late stage clinical programs. Tom was the lead scientist in the development of Nplate®, a treatment of thrombocytopenia. His critical role in the discovery and process development of G-CSF (Neupogen) is widely recognized. Tom has recently helped start several companies and has helped them license in clinical stage molecules. He is also currently a consultant or scientific advisor for more than 20 companies.
Matt Croughan
Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing & Process Development Expert
For over 20 years, Dr. Croughan has worked as an independent consultant providing expert guidance on biopharmaceutical, cell therapy, and biofuels process development and manufacturing to more than 80 firms. He and his consulting colleagues often oversee all development issues for many smaller firms bringing new therapies from research to market. From June 2013 to August 2014, he was Chief Technology Officer at Sapphire Energy, Inc., where he lead the R & D effort, with a staff of up to 90 scientists and engineers, to invent, develop, and commercialize methods to economically produce renewable crude oil and animal feed from algae. From January 2006 to August 2013, Dr. Croughan served as the George B. and Joy Rathmann Professor and Director of the Amgen Bioprocessing Center at Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) in Claremont, CA. He founded the KGI bioprocessing program and served as an advisor to over a hundred Master and Doctoral graduates, many of whom were hired by his consulting clients. Prior to 1998, Dr. Croughan worked at Genentech for 10 years, in process development and manufacturing sciences, where he developed the first licensed, high density, fed batch animal cell culture process, a core technology now used for dozens of commercial products with around $100 billion in total annual sales. Dr. Croughan has two chemical engineering degrees, a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.S. from University of California, Berkeley.
Nat Brinn
Fundraising Advisor
Nat Brinn has a successful track record over 30 years of private investments, acquisitions and business management. He has been a partner of Vital Venture Capital since founding the firm in 2007. Vital invested in 22 early-stage biotechnology and software companies including Ginkgo Bioworks, Twist Bioscience, and 10X Genomics, and he served on the boards of many of these companies.
Prior to his venture capital career, Nat was CEO of HSA Bank, a division of Webster Bank. He led the acquisition of HSA Bank for Webster and grew the operation starting from $95 million in deposits. HSA Bank now has over $6 billion of deposits and is the largest specialty bank in the United States focused on health savings accounts. While he was Executive Vice President of Corporate Development at Webster Bank, Nat was responsible for mergers and acquisitions as well as strategic initiatives. Prior to his tenure at Webster Bank, Nat held various positions in M&A and private placement institutional investments.
Nat has an MBA in finance and accounting from Duke University and did his undergraduate work at University of Delaware in Economics and Mathematics. His volunteer work includes the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, mission projects and other activities.
Oren Beske
Biotech Commercialization Advisor
Dr. Oren Beske serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development (a.k.a. Amalgamator of Business and Biology) at ATUM, where he joined the team in 2019 with nearly 20 years of industry experience. Notably, Dr. Beske was President of Aragen Biosciences, Inc. where he led a multidisciplinary team to bring value added services to the biologics industry. Most recently, he served as the CEO of Alloy Therapeutics, Inc. a start up antibody discovery platform company. Dr. Beske received a BS in Physiology and Biochemistry from CSULB and his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from UC San Francisco.
Susan Daniel
Scientific Advisor
Dr. Susan Daniel is the Department Chair at the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She leads a research group of biomolecular engineers working to understand cell membrane functions and the biological processes that happen within them. Her group pioneered the use of “cell-free” biomembrane platforms for re-creating cellular processes on chip. Her group’s recent work leverages biomembrane chips for synthetic cellular biomanufacturing in “organelles-on-a-chip” to produce therapeutic biomolecules. She is one of the few experts in both cell free systems and supported lipid bilayers. Susan and her group’s research has garnered a number of scientific recognitions. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2011, the Schwartz Life Sciences award in 2016, and in 2017, Susan was honored with the College of Engineering’s Research Excellence Award.
Linda Randall
Scientific Advisor
Linda Randall is a Professor Emerita of Biochemistry and Wurdack Chair Emerita of Biological Chemistry at the University of Missouri. Her research has shown unexpected and complex details of the movement of newly made proteins from the cytosol across membranes into the organelles of the cell. In particular, she found that the entire protein was kept unfolded by association with a chaperone and not just directed to cross membranes by its terminal leader sequence. In 1997, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA because of the excellence of this work. She has received a number of other honors and awards.
Skip Sanzeri
Strategic Advisor
Skip Sanzeri is a venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur. He is a founder and partner at Multiverse Capital and also recently founded two quantum computing companies, QuSecure and Quantum Thought. Skip has had five successful exits, including one IPO. Skip also co-authored The Quantum Design Sprint, a book which outlines methodologies to develop quantum computing applications. Earlier in his career, he helped grow the IAC division of Ziff-Davis publishing to $250 million, after which he helped sell IAC to Thomson Publishing. Skip continued his entrepreneurial career with Sequoia Capital-backed Quote.com, which was acquired by Lycos. He then founded and funded the first open-source strategy firm – Open Source Group, which sold to Olliance, Inc, and invented Alersense the world's first air quality sensor for people with allergies and asthma. Skip earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics from Claremont McKenna College and a Master’s in Public Administration from the College of Notre Dame.
Edward Graham-Brown
Marketing and Business Development Advisor
Edward is a highly experienced life sciences and medical technology strategic leader with core expertise in marketing and business development, strategy, and product management. He has domain knowledge across multiple modalities in life sciences and medical applications through more than 20 years of management and executive level experience in these markets. He has breadth and depth in B2B strategic and tactical marketing, including product life cycle management, and go to market planning and execution. His transactional expertise ranges from the sale and positioning of technical solutions to the pharma/biotech and medical markets to leading the completion of numerous strategic deals in the life sciences sector, including contract manufacturing, IP licensing, commercial distribution, co-development, M&A and joint ventures. He was directly involved in the annual strategic planning process at three public companies (Amersham plc, General Electric Company and Millipore Corp.), including project leadership of strategic planning from start to finish, strategy development, BOD presentations and subsequent execution of BOD endorsed plans. Edward earned his BPharm degree from Kings College London and an MBA from McGill University. He currently resides in the Boston area.
