Our team comes together
to explore new possibilities while appreciating culture, diversity and new ideas for medicine and modern technology.
OUR CULTURE
Mission-driven
We are a multidisciplinary group who are taking the task of innovation and improving patient’s lives at the end of the day.
Diversity
Envisagenics is a woman and minority-led company. Diversity ensures that all points of view are considered and nurtured.
Family is first
Envisagenics policies are designed to provide our employees with a healthy work-life balance.
Maria Luisa Pineda, PhD
Co-founder & CEO
Dr. Maria Luisa Pineda started as a high school Intel International Science Fair winner. For her undergraduate studies, Dr. Pineda was awarded an endowment of $2 million dollars from the Goizueta Foundation and an NIH fellowship with the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC U*STAR) program. Dr. Pineda received her Doctorate from the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences as an Arnold and Mabel Beckman graduate student and a William Randolph Hearst foundation scholar. After graduating, she acquired investment experience in technology and life-sciences startup companies at Canrock Ventures and Golden Seeds, LLC. Under her leadership, Envisagenics has received non-dilutive SBIR grants from the National Institutes of Health, raised capital from investors, won several prestigious artificial intelligence competitions, and formed multiple research collaboration partnerships with Biopharma.
Martin Akerman, PhD
Co-founder & CTO
Dr. Martin Akerman is the inventor of SpliceCore®, Envisagenics’ flagship platform born of his vision of applying machine learning to RNA information and discovering new drug targets in areas of unmet need. Martin trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Adrian Krainer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he helped in the development of Spinraza®, the first FDA-approved RNA therapeutic for treating Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Dr. Akerman received his PhD in Bioinformatics from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he studied how RNA splicing can boost functionality of the human genome and trigger diseases.
Board Members
Maria Luisa Pineda, PhD
Co-founder & CEO
Martin Akerman, PhD
Co-founder & CTO
Michael Grissinger, MBA
Executive BD, Johnson & Johnson
Grant Verstandig
Co-Founder, Red Cell Partners
Founder, Rally Health
Scientific and Business Advisory Board
Adrian Krainer, PhD
Professor & Program Chair
Cancer Center Deputy Director of Research Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Michael Q Zhang, PhD
Professor & Director
Center for Systems Biology University of Texas at Dallas
Guest Professor
Tsinghua University
Omar I. Abdel-Wahab, MD
Hematologic Oncologist
Edward P. Evans Chair in MDS, Director, Memorial Sloan Kettering Center for Hematologic Malignancies
Sudhir Agrawal, D.Phil, FRSC
Founding Scientist
Idera Pharmaceuticals
Visiting Professor
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Our History
Envisagenics is a spinout of the world-renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) from the laboratory of Dr. Adrian R. Krainer, a leading expert in the field of splicing. The Krainer laboratory was the first to perform in-vitro splicing studies, identify the regulatory proteins of alternative splicing, and discover their involvement in cancer and genetic diseases, all of which led to proving the efficacy of RNA therapeutics to cure disease with the FDA approval of Spinraza for treating Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Under the leadership of Dr. Maria Luisa Pineda, Envisagenics Co-founder and CEO, and Dr. Martin Akerman, Co-founder and CTO, the company has continued to further develop its machine learning drug discovery platform, and has validated its capabilities through publications, proof-of-concept studies with academia and biopharma partners, and acquisition of private and non-dilutive funding.