Joanne has broad life sciences experience in research, business, and operations. She helped formulate the initial scientific strategy for Jnana, and has led the business and operations of the company since its launch. She has served as Jnana’s president since December 2017. Prior to Jnana, she was assistant director of the F-Prime Biomedical Research Initiative, whose mission is to advance the discovery of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease by funding early-stage research in academia and biotech companies. Before F-Prime, Joanne was a director at the Broad Institute, where she played a leadership role in creating and guiding partnerships to advance drug discovery efforts, including the Broad-Bayer collaboration in oncology that resulted in the identification of multiple drug candidates. At Broad, Joanne also developed a model for rare disease research that directly involved patients in the research team.

Joanne received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral research at the Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris and Genentech. Following Genentech, she was at Nature Publishing Group, including as founding editor of the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Joel came to Jnana from Achillion Pharmaceuticals, where he served as CSO. Most of Joel’s career was spent as a medicinal chemist in pharma, where he capped a 28-year career at Bristol-Myers Squibb by spending the last 5 years as Vice President and Head of Discovery Chemistry, working across all therapeutic areas. During his BMS career, Joel worked with teams responsible for advancing more than 40 compounds into clinical development, including Sprycel (dasatinib), which he co-invented.  While at BMS, Joel and his colleagues made notable advances in the area of kinase inhibitor drug discovery, particularly in immunology and oncology. He is a co-author on over 130 peer reviewed publications and is a co-inventor on 40 issued U.S. patents.

Joel received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Columbia University working with Professor W. Clark Still. He spent 5 years at Hoffmann La-Roche prior to moving to BMS.

Lyn joined Jnana from Pfizer, where he led medicinal chemistry teams and chemical biology efforts across multiple disease indications. Lyn joined Pfizer’s Sandwich, UK site in 2001 as a medicinal chemistry team leader focusing on pulmonary and anti-infective diseases. In 2011, Lyn moved to the Cambridge, MA site to become head of Rare Disease Chemistry and to lead the Chemical Biology Group, where he focused on developing novel technologies for target discovery and target engagement. He is an author or inventor on over 100 publications and patents, and in 2009 won the inaugural Royal Society of Chemistry Young Industrialist of the Year Award for his contributions to HIV and COPD research and clinical candidate delivery.

Lyn completed his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, before starting postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in chemical biology.

Heather brings to Jnana over 18 years of drug discovery experience working in pharma and biotech on pre-clinical and clinical development programs.  Prior to Jnana, Heather served as Director of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics at Nimbus Therapeutics focused on Immunology, Oncology, and Metabolic Disease.   She was a member of the clinical group working on Nimbus’ allosteric ACC inhibitor for NASH, as well as the preclinical team advancing their TYK2 allosteric inhibitor and STING discovery programs.  Previously, Heather led the DMPK group at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, a position in which she served from 2010 until the company’s acquisition by Merck in 2015. In her time at Cubist, Heather’s work was focused on acute care therapies for pain, and antibiotics developed for the treatment of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria including the clinical development of more than 6 programs including Cubicin and Zerbaxa.

Heather received a BS in chemistry from the University of New Hampshire and a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Oregon prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry.

Kenneth DiPietro serves as a Senior Advisor to Jnana, where he brings deep expertise in building company leadership and culture. Ken was previously at Biogen, a biotech company, where he served as Chief Human Resources Officer from 2012-2017. 

From 2005 to 2011, Ken served as Senior Vice President, Human Resources Lenovo Group, a technology company. From 2003 to 2005, he served as Corporate Vice President, Human Resources at Microsoft Corporation. From 1999 to 2002, Ken worked as Vice President, Human Resources at Dell Inc. Prior to that, he spent 17 years at PepsiCo, serving in a range of human resource positions within that company’s beverage, snack food and corporate groups. Ken serves on the board of directors of InVivo Therapeutics Corporation, a medical device company in Cambridge Massachusetts as well the Posse Foundation, Boston Advisory Board. Ken received his B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.