Board of directors

Dr. Colón brings over 25 years’ experience in biopharma, genomics, diagnostics, health care, drug delivery and industrial biotechnology.

In addition to her role at ProterixBio, Dr. Colón has been a member of Voyager Therapeutics’ board of directors since 2023. She also currently serves as a member of the boards of directors of CareDx, Inc.; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Corporation (MIT’s Board of Trustees); and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO).

She previously served as President, CEO and Director of InCarda Therapeutics, Inc., where she led the company’s growth from seed stage to late-clinical stage and oversaw strategy, commercial planning and pipeline growth. Prior to InCarda, Dr. Colón served as President and CEO of ProterixBio, and before that as a partner and senior advisor to New Science Ventures LLC.

Prior to New Science Ventures, she was founding President of the Industrial Products Division and Senior Vice President at Intrexon Corporation (NYSE:XON) where she established a new division focused on leveraging synthetic biology for bioindustrial applications such as biofuels and renewable chemicals and was a key contributor to the company’s $100M Series E raise.

Prior to Intrexon, she was head of Clinical Operations for Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq:GILD), where she was responsible for global execution of clinical trials. At Gilead, she also created and led both the Alliance Management and Commercial Strategic Planning groups. Prior to Gilead, she was VP, Corporate Planning at Affymetrix (acquired by ThermoFisher (NYSE:TMO), where she was responsible for strategic planning and project management and where she also served as COO for the International Genomics Consortium, a non-profit medical research organization focused on cancer genomics.

Earlier in her career, Grace was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she served clients in healthcare, high tech, consumer goods and venture capital. She was also an engineer with Merck & Co. in France and in Rahway, NJ.

Dr. Colón received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was an NSF Fellow and recipient of multiple NIH training grants. She also holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar.

Andrew Abrams is a Partner at New Science Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on building companies that address large unmet needs in the Life Sciences and Information Technology sectors.

Prior to joining New Science Ventures, Andrew was an Associate in J.P. Morgan’s healthcare investment banking practice where he focused on mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity transactions in Europe and the U.S. He advised a wide array of clients spanning the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic and healthcare service sub-sectors. He has also served as an analytical laboratory manager at Monsanto and as business development lead at an early-stage life science tools business, miniPCR bio.

Andrew received his B.A., M.A. and M.Sci. degrees in Natural Sciences and Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge where he was awarded the Richard Perham Scholarship for the most distinguished performance. He also participated in Cambridge’s year-long exchange program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, he holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Billings is a board-certified internist and clinical geneticist with more than 30 years of experience in genomics and molecular medicine. He is the author of nearly 200 publications on genomic medicine and has held academic and research appointments at Harvard University, UC San Francisco, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. Dr. Billings is currently the Chief Medical Officer at Natera. He previously held the position of Chief Medical Officer at Life Technologies, Inc., and consulting CMO of the Genetic Sciences Division of Thermo Fisher Scientific. He previously was SVP and Senior Physician at Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Food and Drug Administration, the Genomic Medicine Advisory Committee at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the HHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genomics, Health and Society. His work formed the basis of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA).

Mark is a serial cross-industry entrepreneur, having co-founded companies in material science, satellite communications, software, and bioscience. In 2002, Mark founded BioScale, which has developed some of the world’s most sensitive scales for nanotechnology measurement of proteins, cells, viral load, hormones, bacteria, and small molecules for research and diagnostic applications. Prior to BioScale, Mark co-founded Active Control eXperts, Inc. (ACX), which designed and manufactured piezoelectric systems used to control vibrations. ACX was acquired by Cymer, but their products are still found in a wide variety of equipment such as skis, baseball bats, and machine tools. In the software industry, Mark founded Ripcord Systems which created wireless products to arm on-the-road employees with anytime, anywhere access to critical information from corporate enterprise systems. He was also on the start-up team at Teledesic LLC, building the world’s first global, broadband Internet-in-the-SkyTM network using advanced satellite technology, and was in engineering and management at NASA (JPL) and Boeing. Mark served on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves as Chairman and Founder of SkiAble, a charity dedicated to providing skiing and other athletic opportunities to disabled children. Mark has been a “Young Leader” on the National Committee for US-China Relations and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his earlier years, Mark spent several years as a competitive ski racer, he holds a pilot’s license, and has 16 patents in diverse industries. Mark earned his M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management as a Leaders for Manufacturing Fellow. He earned both a BS and MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. He is a 2013 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Edward Crawley is the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT, where he has been on the faculty since 1980. From 2011 to 2016 he served simultaneously as the founding President and CEO of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow Russia, a new science-based university dedicated to driving innovation in the Russian economy. In the US he has participated in the founding of four technology-based entrepreneurial companies (ACX, Bisoscale, DataXu and Ekotrope), and for nine years was a member of the board of the Orbital Science Corporation (now merged into Orbital ATK).

At MIT, his research has focused recently on the domain of the architecture, design and decision support in complex technical systems, summarized in his recent book – System Architecture: the strategy and design of complex products (Pearson 2015).

Dr. Crawley is a member of four national academies of engineering: the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, the (UK) Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the US National Academy of Engineering.