Alumni Profiles

Dr. Michele Park (Ph.D. ’01) sees her role as life sciences investor and partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) as a bridge over a gap — connecting the critical discoveries made in the lab with funding and investor guidance and expertise to help bring them to patients.

“It’s very exciting because you’re taking new ideas and discoveries and helping turn them into potential therapeutics that could impact the lives of so many,” Dr. Park says. “I was at the bench doing basic science research, and now I see what you can do with the right people, the right team, and the right investor support.”

While studying molecular biology at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Dr. Park quickly grew interested in the translation of basic research in the field to drugs in the growing pipelines of early-stage, emerging biotech companies.

Though she had never taken a finance course, she found she could learn those skills on the job. After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Park became an equity research analyst covering the biotech sector for Credit Suisse and Piper Jaffray, and then moved into an investing role at the venture capital firm Clarus Ventures. There, she led a novel hybrid philanthropy/investment initiative, the Clarus Cancer Fund, which would commit the firm and investors to donating significant shares of their profits toward cancer research.

After joining NEA last year, Dr. Park is again working with early-stage innovators and lauds the company’s commitment — with a portfolio of over 80 women founders and CEOs — to female entrepreneurs. Having been the only female investing professional in other firms prior to joining the NEA team, Dr. Park is dedicated to supporting women as innovators, entrepreneurs, and co-investors.

Still in touch with mentor Dr. Andy Koff, whose lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering she studied in, her current role also returns her to her science roots. “The identification of these breakthroughs that can become novel medicines, being part of that is very exciting for me,” she says. “Being able to help navigate a company’s path while growing value and ultimately bringing novel and effective medicines to patients makes this job incredibly rewarding.”

—Tracy Vogel

Dr. Dave Lennon (Ph.D. ’01) still gets emails from parents of children with the rare
disease spinal muscular atrophy who were treated with a new, regenerative gene therapy produced while he was at the helm of Novartis Gene Therapies. Approximately 2,000 children received treatment, he notes.

“They send me videos of their kids growing up whose lives were saved and changed forever, and that ability — that direct impact on patients — is what primarily drew me out of academia to the business side of the equation,” Dr. Lennon says.

His career at the intersection between research, development and commercialization of medicines for patients is an outgrowth of his time studying molecular biology at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. “One of the advantages of Weill Cornell Medicine is being in a place with strong hospital programs around you always,” he says. “I took that opportunity to think about applied biology and applied medicine in a translational setting, which really sparked my interest.”

Last year, Dr. Lennon became CEO of startup Satellite Bio, which is developing a new approach to generating synthetic tissues for use as therapeutics. The process involves creating living tissue by putting cells into a biomaterial scaffold, which can then be implanted into patients to take on the roles of injured, damaged cells.

The first target of the technique is liver disease. “I’ve always enjoyed working on the frontiers of applied biology that allow us to think about how to apply all the learning over the past couple decades to actually treating patients,” Dr. Lennon says. “I’ve done that a couple times over my career and I’m excited to try to do it now with this more advanced technology.”

After beginning his career in a laboratory of human genetics, Dr. Lennon quickly made what he saw as a natural transition to business.

“I always preach that the foundations of the scientific method are excellent for solving any kinds of problems, including business problems and leadership problems,” he says. “Understanding context, setting a hypothesis and testing that, reaching conclusions and iterating on that process works — whether you’re trying to solve a deep scientific problem or a business problem.”

—Tracy Vogel

Photo: Michael Cogliantry; Illustrated Portraits: Matthew Cook