Advancing human health through evolutionary insights

Ashley Zehnder is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fauna Bio. Ashley has been recognized for her work by the SF Business Times Women Who Lead in Life Sciences, an Emerging Woman Founder in Bio by the Wave Summit, as well as representing Fauna Bio for the Fortune AI Minute. She has spoken at numerous events promoting the use of AI and novel genomics in drug discovery and mentors early stage founders through her work with On Deck Longevity Biotech and Nucleate Bio. She is a boarded avian veterinarian and her prior research focused on translational science, earning a PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford. Her research works span >20 peer-reviewed publications, including Cell, Nature and Nature Medicine.

Katie earned her PhD in Human Medical Genetics at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. She next trained as a postdoctoral scholar in computational biology in Dr. Carlos Bustamante’s lab as Stanford. Her research has focused on utilizing proteomic, transcriptomic and genomic approaches to identify the molecular components underlying the highly dynamic phenotype of hibernation.

Linda earned an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge and her Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics from Harvard University. She previously held positions at the Broad Institute and Stanford University studying comparative mammalian genomics and human disease genetics.

Jacqueline joined Fauna Bio in 2021 and brings with her nearly 20 years experience in a broad range of molecular biology techniques including cell culture of a wide range of cell types. She has worked both in academia as well as in industry and has managed research labs working in a variety of disciplines. Her skilled hands are advancing our cell experiments and extending our capabilities to quickly validate new therapeutics using data from hibernating mammals.

Dr. Rui Song is an expert in cell-based and in-vivo models used to assess gene function. He completed a postdoc at UC Berkeley studying the function of novel miRNAs in mouse embryonic stem cells and as a Senior Research Scientist at Fauna Bio, he is in charge of our target discovery and target validation programs. His goal is to use his research expertise to decode hibernation biology and he is driven by a desire to help patients which currently have no good treatment options.

Ben earned his PhD in the Neuroscience Doctoral Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he developed expertise in translational biomedical imaging of patients and many animal species. He has helped launch innovative cross-disciplinary research divisions at each stage of his academic career. He is passionate about exploring naturally evolved solutions to health problems in model organisms and aspires to unlock similar disease resistance strategies in humans.

Bryan F. Burkey Ph.D. is an experienced drug discovery and development professional who has led and contributed to efforts from target discovery through NDA filing. He is a biologist with 23 years at Novartis Research, 5 years at the Boston biotech Zafgen Inc. leading biology and translational pharmacology efforts and most recently was the Head of Systems Biology at Walden Biosciences. Over this time, he developed expertise in metabolic and cardiovascular pharmacology and safety assessment and enjoys integrating information across in vitro target/pathway to in vivo physiology/pharmacology to enable drug development.

Phil received his MS degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Oregon and recently finished a stint at Johannes Gutenberg University working on RIP-seq and RNA-seq datasets analyzing inheritance patterns in unisexual Aspidoscelis whiptail lizards. He’s joined the Fauna Bio team as a Bioinformatics Platform Developer. He’s excited to contribute to improved patient health and developing new therapeutics based on his prior clinical research while building on his experience working in whiptail lizards, an uncommon model organism.

Dr. Tran brings with her close to a decade of cell biology experience isolating, maintaining, and immortalizing primary human epithelial cells. She completed her BS degree at UCLA, then worked as a laboratory technician at UC Santa Cruz for a year, before attending University of Southern California for her PhD in Genetic, Molecular, and Cell Biology, where she remained for two years as a postdoc fellow optimizing 2D and 3D in vitro cell models to study lung biology and disease. Dr. Tran will contribute to the Fauna Bio team by leading the development of unique cell models derived from animal hibernators for use in therapeutic screenings and discovery.

Poornima received her MS degree in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University. She has over 10 years of experience in Molecular Biology and wet lab techniques. She is also a budding programmer and is very excited about automating laborious lab tasks to accelerate the pace of life science research and bridge the gap between the wet and dry labs. Poornima will help to streamline the feedback cycle between the target prediction and target validation arms of the Fauna Bio platform while her vast experience with human cell culture will help us expand into new disease areas.

Kacey received her undergraduate degree in Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Master's Degree in Evolutionary Medicine at UCLA. She has 8 years of experience in a mix of basic, clinical and translational research spanning cardiology, endocrinology, neurology and wine science. She enjoys using an interdisciplinary approach and looking phylogenetically to solve human diseases.

Ryan earned his PhD in the Zoology doctoral program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada where he developed expertise in the maintenance of pulmonary and cardiac function in various conditions in which these systems are stressed. This includes development, environmental extremes such as altitude, and changes in state such as entrance into hibernation. He then expanded into diseases that stress the pulmonary system such as Alzheimer’s disease during his postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin. Ryan brings over a decade of experience in hibernation physiology, and nearly a decade of experience in pulmonary and cardiovascular physiology research in a wide variety of species and conditions in which these systems are challenged.

Manashvi is a data engineer at Fauna. She received her undergraduate degree in Molecular & Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. Since then, she has worked in the biotech and biopharma industries helping out in both the manufacturing side as well as research and development to display data in a meaningful way. She is fascinated by the similarities and differences between human and hibernating animals’ physiologies, and is excited to contribute to discovering targets and developing therapeutics for better human health.

Carlos is an Assistant Research Scientist at Fauna. He received his undergraduate degree in Microbial Biology from UC Berkeley. He has over 4 years of experience in the biotech startup scene and joined Fauna to assist in the target discovery and target validation programs. Proficient in Python programming, Carlos is actively engaged in automating lab tasks and optimizing wet lab data organization for seamless downstream processing.

Gennady received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, where his research in the Pachter laboratory unified the fields of bioinformatics, stochastic processes, and biophysics. He is excited to bring a physical perspective to the biology of non-model organisms and drug discovery.

Natalie earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences and Bioinformatics from the University of California San Diego where she developed expertise analyzing large-scale genetic data and high-dimensional genomic datasets to understand and treat prevalent metabolic diseases. She is passionate about using cutting-edge bioinformatic and computational approaches to investigate human disease and identify novel therapeutic targets.

Ashley received her Bachelor's in Neuroscience from Carthage College in 2020. Her past research experience includes working with both rat and zebrafish animal models. Most of her experience was focused on using optokinetic response to measure the optic nerve regeneration in zebrafish after optic nerve injury. Ashley is amazed at how different animals have solutions for recovery from injury or have resistance to diseases that ail humans today. She is excited to expand upon that idea with the 13-lined ground squirrel at Fauna Bio and how it may lead to human solutions.