Team
Ryan Pawell
Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director
Ryan Pawell is a Y Combinator alumnus, published author and subject matter expert in the areas of fluid dynamics, advanced manufacturing, and biomicrofluidics. He completed a BSci in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara prior to producing 7 peer-reviewed publications, receiving multiple granted patents across 3 patent families. He left grad school and went to raise seed-stage funding from various sources in the United States (SOSV/IndieBio, Y Combinator, Social Capital and Founders Fund's FF Science) and Australia (Jobs for NSW, AusIndustry, Main Sequence Ventures, MTP Connect BioMedTech Horizons, Australian Research Council and NSW Health Medical Device Fund). Ryan has also been invited to present his work by the Australian National Fabrication Facility, White House Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Research Laboratory, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic, QB3, Stanford and the Economist among others.
Brandy Myrah
Operations Associate
Brandy Myrah has always been a leader no matter her job classification. As a teenager, she started in customer service and quickly advanced to management. She studied at American Public University, earning her bachelor’s degree in Business Management, focusing on Leadership and Human Resources. Brandy’s hard work and studies maintained her place on the Dean’s list as well as earning her a spot on The National Honors Society, and graduating with the top of her class. Brandy provides operational support for Indee Labs and enjoys helping the scientific team in any way possible to help their continued growth and study.
Brandon Systma
Scientist
Brandon Sytsma is a graduate student from the University of San Francisco's Professional Science Masters in Biotechnology program. He previously graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Brandon has over three years of experience working in immunology labs in both academic and industry settings. First in Dr. Megan Prosser's lab at Azusa Pacific University, Brandon worked to develop a novel 3rd generation CAR T cell. More recently he worked at a cell therapy startup based out of South San Francisco, which is developing phagocytic T cells for use against solid tumors.
Fong L. Pan
Simulations Engineer
Fong "Peter" Pan earned his BS and MS degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering from Purdue University with 15 years of extensive experience in applied fluid mechanics and computational fluid dynamics. His past working experience spans various industries including Temasek Laboratories, Rolls-Royce, Navistar, United Technologies Research Center, Caterpillar and Honda R&D America. He has served in many positions including associate aerothermal engineer, senior CFD engineer, research acoustics engineer, fluid system technical team lead and product management. He is the author of 8 published technical papers and was awarded 4 US patents. He serves as a technical paper reviewer for SAE conference publication in aerodynamics, thermal management and aeroacoustics sessions. He was awarded Research Symposium Series Best Presentations Award for outstanding technical communication and excellent in research achievement and Magoon Teaching Award received from the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University in 2003 and 2004.
Struan Bourke, PhD
Senior Scientist
Struan Bourke earned his PhD in Biophysics and Nanotechnology from King’s College London and spent 3 years as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Professor Bo Huang’s lab at University of California, San Francisco working on a modular live-cell barcode system. He decided to move into the biotech sector as a Senior Scientist with CellFE Biotech, focusing on providing a better DNA delivery platform utilizing CRISPR-Cas9. Prior to his PhD, he worked as a Senior Scientist in the Cardiovascular Pathology Lab at St. George’s University, London, as well as at Porton down, focusing on designing rapid testing for a variety of human pathogens. He has several publications in the field of nanoparticles for use in biological imaging, and brings years of experience in molecular cloning, experimental design and CRISPR Knock-In knowledge and troubleshooting.
Partners
Advisors
Everett Meyer
Everett Meyer, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Pediatrics at Stanford University Medical Center, co-director for the Stanford Diabetes Research Center Immune Monitoring Core, and Medical and Scientific Director of the Stanford Health Care Cellular Therapy Facility. His research is on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and Treg cell immunotherapy, with a focus on treatment of graft-versus-host disease and immune-related conditions for transplantation. Everett is an author of more than 30 publications in leading scientific journals, and has a keen interest in helping to facilitate the cost efficiency of immunotherapeutics and their manufacture. This includes pre-clinical development of novel cellular therapy approaches with T regulatory cells, invariant NKT cells and modulation of immune receptors. Everett's laboratory performs immune monitoring of hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients with techniques including flow cytometry, high throughput immune repertoire sequencing and RNA-Seq. He is a PI for two clinical trials to prevent or treat GVHD using T regulatory cells, and has also run three trials to prevent or treat GVHD with pharmacologic agents including JAK inhibitors.
Heidi M. Hagen
Heidi M. Hagen, MBA (Advisor) is Co-Founder of, and Advisor to, Vineti, Inc., a privately‑held company that develops and commercializes cloud‑based software platforms for ordering, manufacturing and delivering personalized medicines. Previously, Ms. Hagen served as interim Chief Commercial Officer at ZappRx, Inc. from January 2015 to June 2015. Ms. Hagen also served as Global Chief Operating Officer at Sotio LLC, a biotechnology company developing new therapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases using its immunotherapy platform and proprietary cell‑based technologies, from March 2013 to April 2014. Before joining Sotio, Ms. Hagen served for ten years as Senior Vice President of Operations at Dendreon Corporation, where she was responsible for manufacturing and supply chain operations. Prior to joining Dendreon, Ms. Hagen spent nearly ten years at Immunex Corporation, where she held several positions in drug development and supply chain and operations management. Since June 2019, Ms. Hagen has served as a member of the boards of directors of Ziopharm Corporation, a publicly held company focused on developing the next generation of immuno-oncology gene and cell therapies, and Lykan Biosciences, a privately-held company focused on cell and gene manufacturing. Ms. Hagen earned a B.S. in cell and molecular biology, M.S. in bioengineering, and MBA from the University of Washington.
Dino Di Carlo
Dino Di Carlo (Advisor) is a Professor, inventor, and entrepreneur with >50 issued patents. He is the Armond and Elena Hairapetian endowed chair in Engineering and Medicine at UCLA. His academic research has focused at the interface of micro & nanosystems, data science, and the ultimate limits of biology (single cells and molecules). Over the last 10 years, Dr. Di Carlo co-founded seven startup companies in life science research tools, diagnostics, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries.
Geoff Facer, PhD
Geoff Facer, PhD (Advisor) currently leads engineering of Levitas’ novel LeviCell magnetic levitation technology for cell separation. He received his doctorate in nano-scale devices in 1998 and worked on integrating electronic sensors with microfluidics at Princeton University. He is a holder of over 22 granted US and international patents in fields relating to biotechnology and an author on over 20 peer-reviewed publications. Geoff has a successful track record in the development of instruments and analytical systems across multiple industries. His industry roles in the U.S. and Australia include developing microfluidic devices and instrument systems for applications ranging from protein crystallization to quantitative PCR at Fluidigm Corp., leading production scale-up of ground-breaking ROADM devices at Finisar Australia (formerly Engana), and instrumentation and molded consumable development for massively parallel gene expression analysis at Cellular Research Inc. (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2015).
In The News
