Amir brings extensive company building experience to Jnana. He is a Managing Partner at Polaris Partners. In addition to serving as a Director and Chief Executive at Jnana, Amir currently represents Polaris as a Director of numerous companies including AgBiome, aTyr Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LIFE), Marauder Therapeutics, Morphic Therapeutic, and Scholar Rock. He has served as a Director of Adnexus Therapeutics (Bristol Myers Squibb), Athenix Corporation (Bayer), Avila Therapeutics (Celgene), Living Proof (Unilever), Pervasis Therapeutics (Shire Pharmaceuticals), Receptos (Celgene), and Sun Catalytix (Lockheed Martin). At Living Proof, Sun Catalytix, and Olivo Labs Amir served as the company’s initial CEO. Amir also serves on the Partners Innovation Fund, the Investment Advisory Committee for The Engine at MIT, and helped launch the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund. He has been named to the Forbes Midas List of “Top 100 Venture Capitalists.”

Prior to joining Polaris, Amir completed his PhD as a Hertz Fellow in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a minor in Biology under the guidance of Dr. Robert Langer. Amir also earned both his MS and BS in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Joanne brings to Jnana broad life sciences experience in chemical biology and disease biology, operations, business and partnerships. Joanne came to Jnana from F-Prime, where she was assistant director of the F-Prime Biomedical Research Initiative, an effort focused on advancing the discovery of novel therapeutic treatments neurodegenerative diseases. Prior to this, Joanne was a director at the Broad Institute, where she was involved in creating and guiding project teams and partnerships to advance chemical probe and drug discovery efforts, including serving as alliance manager for the Broad-Bayer collaborations in oncology and cardiovascular disease.

Joanne received a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral research at Genentech and the Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris. Before Broad, she was at Nature Publishing Group, first as a founding editor of the journal Nature Chemical Biology and later as a senior editor at the translational newsletter SciBX.

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.