Philip Ashton-Rickardt, Ph.D., has served as our Chief Scientific Officer since 2021. Previously, Dr. Ashton-Rickardt served as Senior Vice President for Immunology at AZTherapies, Inc., where he was responsible for preclinical development of cell therapies, biologic and small molecule platform technologies to treat neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Ashton-Rickardt joined AZTherapies in 2019 in connection with its acquisition of Smith Therapeutics, a private company founded by Dr. Ashton-Rickardt to develop a cutting-edge technology platform that he invented using modified T cells to restore a healthy balance of inflammatory and regulatory cells in the brain. Prior to launching Smith Therapeutics in 2017, Dr. Ashton-Rickardt was Chair in Immunology at Imperial College London, Visiting Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Chicago. His work has been recognized by his peers through the award of tenure from The University of Chicago and by his fellow citizens as a recipient of the Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Bill Clinton. He has published more than 65 peer-reviewed papers in more than 30 academic journals (including Cell, Science, Immunity, and Nature Immunology), has served as an editor for several academic journals, and has been a member of grant review boards globally. Dr. Ashton-Rickardt earned a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of London, King’s College and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh.

Sarah Yuan, Ph.D., brings more than 20 years of experience in process development, manufacturing sciences and CMC strategies from a broad range of leading biopharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Sigilon Therapeutics, Dr. Yuan served as Vice President of Process and Analytical Development at 2seventy bio, the oncology spinoff of bluebird bio. At 2seventy bio, she was instrumental in getting three cell therapy products approved, in addition to advancing a preclinical product through IND clearance. Previously, Dr. Yuan led the External Manufacturing Organization for the Rare Blood Disorders Franchise at Sanofi. She also served as the Head of Technical Development and Manufacturing Sciences at Bioverativ, prior to its acquisition by Sanofi. At Bioverativ, she built and developed high functioning teams responsible for overseeing external manufacturing operations, developing and executing CMC strategies, delivering manufacturing processes, analytical methods and driving life cycle management initiatives for all clinical and commercial products. Earlier in her career, Dr. Yuan held various roles with increasing responsibilities in Biogen’s Manufacturing Sciences department, led Process Development at Agenus, and spent several years developing novel resins and membranes at Millipore. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley.

Matthew Kowalsky, J.D., currently serves as our Chief Legal Officer. Prior to joining Sigilon, he served as Vice President of Legal and Corporate Secretary at Proteon Therapeutics, Inc. from 2016 to 2019. Prior to that, he served as Senior Corporate Counsel at Sanofi Genzyme from 2015 to 2016, supporting business development activities and marketed products for rare diseases. Mr. Kowalsky held the position of Associate General Counsel at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from 2013 to 2015. He has also held similar roles at ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc. (formerly Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging, Inc.). Mr. Kowalsky began his legal career in the corporate and intellectual property groups of Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP. He holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the Notre Dame Law School. Before attending law school, he served as a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.

Olivia G. Kelly, Ph.D., has over 13 years of experience in the biotechnology industry developing cell therapies. Prior to joining Sigilon, Dr. Kelly served as the Senior Director of Cell Biology at ViaCyte, a clinical stage company focused on developing stem cell-derived therapies for diabetes, where she led efforts in stem cell differentiation, assay development, quality control and tumorigenicity studies which supported multiple IND/CTA filings and achieved multiple research grant and licensing milestones. Dr. Kelly has coauthored a number of high-profile journal publications and is a co-inventor on multiple patents. Dr. Kelly earned a B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and then pursued a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University, where her research focused on molecular mechanisms of early embryonic patterning and pancreas development. Dr. Kelly’s postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley/San Francisco and Baylor College of Medicine focused on signaling mechanisms that regulate the development of various tissues and stem cell differentiation.

Melodie Henderson, J.D., is a registered U.S. patent attorney with over 20 years of legal, management and R&D experience with life science companies. Prior to joining Sigilon, Ms. Henderson was the first in-house IP counsel at Minerva Neurosciences. Previously, Ms. Henderson served as a Legal Director for 11 years at Schering Pough/Merck, where her responsibilities included building and managing the patent portfolio for several pre-clinical and clinical biologics programs as well as five marketed products. Ms. Henderson’s first in-house legal role was at Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, where she established the IP function and managed a team of patent professionals. Before going in-house, Ms. Henderson began her legal career as an associate attorney at two IP boutique law firms. Ms. Henderson holds a B.A. degree in biochemistry from the University of Kansas, an M.S. degree in biochemistry from St. Louis University and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut

Ying Jing, Ph.D., has over 17 years of industry experience in developing innovative, scalable, productive, and robust biomanufacturing processes to support clinical trials and commercial supply of biotherapeutics for patients. She has worked on over 15 molecular entities in a wide range of therapeutic modalities including small molecules, proteins, viral vectors, mRNA and cell therapy in different bio/pharma companies. Prior to joining Sigilon, Dr. Jing worked at 2seventy bio as a Sr. Director of Process Science, responsible for leading viral vector, mRNA and cell therapy process development, manufacturing support and process life cycle management. Previously, Dr. Jing served as a Sr. Strategy and Technology Leader at Novartis leading the high-density perfusion process platform development and manufacturing implementation. Before Novartis, she was the head of upstream process development at Dimension Therapeutics, later acquired by Ultragenyx. At Dimension, she built the process development team responsible for Adeno-associated virus (AAV) platform process development and manufacturing implementation. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jing worked in Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb and AbbVie with increasing responsibilities in the areas of protein biologics process development, tech transfer and process validation. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Ohio State University and a M.S. in Analytical Chemistry from Nankai University, China.

Bernd Kullmann, M.B.A., brings over 15 years of supply chain and operations experience to the company.  Before joining Sigilon, he held Head of Supply Chain positions at BeiGene, Ltd. and Medivation, Inc.  Mr. Kullmann’s career in the life sciences industry began at Biogen Idec (now Biogen) where he held various management positions in clinical supply.  Prior to working in life sciences, Mr. Kullmann was in turnaround consulting at KPMG and Mesirow Financial Consulting working with companies to diagnose and address operational causes of underperformance.  He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Norwich University and an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jamie Murphy, CPA and M.B.A., brings more than 10 years of financial experience in the biotechnology and life sciences to his role at Sigilon. Before joining Sigilon, he served as the controller of Zafgen Inc. where he played an integral role in the completion of Zafgen’s reverse merger with Larimar Therapeutics. Following the completion of the merger he served as a financial consultant at Larimar Therapeutics where he led the accounting groups transition to being a publicly traded company. He began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP where he was a manager in their Boston office’s health industry practice and provided accounting and auditing services to a range of public and private biotech and life science companies. He is a Certified Public Accountant, received his BS in business and history from Wake Forest University and also received his Masters of Accounting and Masters of Business Administration from Northeastern University.

Joseph Tumang, Ph.D., joins Sigilon as VP, Head of Immune Mediated Diseases. Previously, Dr. Tumang was Director of the Cancer Immunology department at Boehringer-Ingelheim, where he led the in vitro, the in vivo and most recently the oncology translational sciences teams. Prior to this, he led drug discovery projects at EMD Serono, Pfizer and Compass Therapeutics. Dr. Tumang graduated from Cornell University as a card-carrying immunologist and has published papers on both autoimmune diseases and cancer immunology.

Jiang Wu, Ph.D., has over 20 years of industry experience in implementing bioanalytical/biomarker strategy, managing preclinical and clinical trials, and developing biologics. Prior to joining Sigilon, Dr. Wu worked at Takeda as a director of preclinical and translational sciences. He was responsible for bioanalytical, biomarker and in vitro diagnostic strategy and assay implementation to support early and late stage programs across multiple therapeutic areas. Previously, Dr. Wu served as an Associate Research Fellow and Lab Head at Pfizer/Wyeth where his team utilized a variety of techniques to identify novel targets and biomarkers and elucidate drug MOAs in support of drug discovery and translational medicine. Before joining Wyeth, he was a biomarker group lead at Millennium Pharma and a senior scientist at Abbott Lab.