Igor Khandros co-founded Nutcracker Therapeutics, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. In founding Nutcracker Therapeutics, Igor is driven by his belief that high technology engineering, coupled with winning biochemistry, will make RNA immuno-therapies a critical component in emerging standard of care for a wide variety of human diseases. Prior to Nutcracker, Igor was the founding CEO of Berkeley Lights, Inc. and presently serves on its Board of Directors. Prior to Berkeley Lights, Igor founded two publicly traded companies: FormFactor, Inc, where he was the founding CEO and later Executive Chairman and Tessera Technologies, Inc, where he served in the role of Vice President of Development. Earlier in his career, Igor served as Manager at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. Igor holds over 200 US patents.

Ben Eldridge co-founded Nutcracker Therapeutics, Inc. and serves as its Chief Technology Officer. As Nutcracker’s systems architect, Ben leads the development of a device-based platform for large scale synthesis of nucleic acids. Prior to Nutcracker, Ben served in executive management roles at FormFactor, Inc., most recently as Chief Information Officer, previously as Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining FormFactor, Ben held engineering positions at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. Ben was awarded a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Union College and an M.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Ben holds over 200 US patents covering inventions in Electrical, Mechanical and Micro Systems Engineering.

As Chief Operating Officer, John oversees Nutcracker’s operational functions including manufacturing, supply, quality, and product technical operations.  Prior to Nutcracker, John was Vice President Biologics Commercial Operations at Gilead Sciences following the acquisition of Immunomedics where he was Sr. Vice President of Manufacturing, where his organization led the development and commercialization of immuno-oncology, Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) product.  John has 25 years of experience in the BioPharma industry in leadership positions to support business strategy execution across various product modalities including ADC, Biologics, Vaccines, and synthetic peptides/molecules.  Prior to Immunomedics, he was a site General Manager at AstraZeneca and held various positions at Merck Manufacturing Division in support of new product launches and supply early in his career.  John was awarded a PhD in Chemical Engineering from The University of Pennsylvania and a MBA from The Wharton School of Business.

As chief human resources officer, Angela oversees employee engagement, workplace culture
along with the growing need for meaningful retention and recruitment.

Prior to Nutcracker, she was chief human resources officer for Standard BioTools (formerly
Fluidigm). During her 5+ year tenure at the company, Angela led major initiatives that included
the global, digital transformation of HR services and functions, as well as significant cultural
programs reinforcing organizational values related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier in
her career, Angela held senior HR roles at such companies as Pfizer (previously Medivation),
Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Life Technologies.

Angela holds a bachelor’s in marketing and management from Notre Dame de Namur
University, and completed a continuing education certificate program at the University of
California Berkeley Extension for the development of chief HR officers. Her volunteer work has
included service as an advisor to Art in Action, a national Bay Area-based nonprofit dedicated to
empowering children through visual arts education.

Sam Deutsch is Chief Scientific Officer at Nutcracker Therapeutics, leading biological research and development. Sam orchestrates the advancements of Nutcracker’s therapeutics pipeline through close interactions between internal R&D, scientific advisors and clinical collaborators. Prior to Nutcracker, Sam led the DNA synthesis platform at the Joint Genome Institute part of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Sam’s experience also includes research in molecular hematology at the Geneva University Hospital, and cancer genomics at the World Health Organization.

Sam was awarded a B.Sc. in Genetics from University of Nottingham and received his Ph.D. from the University of Geneva. Sam is the author of over 75 peer reviewed papers.

As Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Ian Wiener leads Nutcracker’s legal function and advises the board and management on legal, business and policy matters. Prior to joining Nutcracker, Ian was a partner at the law firm of Irell & Manella LLP, representing corporate, private equity and other clients in a wide variety of business law matters and complex business transactions. Ian was awarded a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Guna Kannan is responsible for leading the Protein teams at Nutcracker Therapeutics. In this role, Guna supports the protein engineering/discovery, protein sciences, and analytical teams. He has more than 20 years of protein engineering, antibody engineering/discovery, and developability assessment experiences and has helped develop several novel biotherapeutic platforms and molecules. Prior to joining Nutcracker, Guna was Vice President, Head of Biotherapeutics, at Denali Therapeutics where he helped coordinate activities ranging from target validation to IND-enabling studies with a team of ~40 scientists. He was also Principal Scientist and Protein Engineering and Optimization group head at Amgen Inc where he spent nearly 10 years. Guna has co-authored 60+ peer-reviewed research articles and is a listed patent co-inventor of both clinical molecules and novel platform technologies. He earned his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, a Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Science, and completed Post-Doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.

Chuck joins Nutcracker Therapeutics with nearly 30 years of IP experience representing clients in both law firm and corporate settings. Prior to Nutcracker, Chuck was a Director at Genentech, leading a team of IP agents/attorneys supporting Genentech’s manufacturing organization.  Before Genentech, Chuck served as Vice President, Intellectual Property at Coherus Biosciences, a biosimilars company.  Chuck also spent 8 years as an IP attorney at Amgen in a number of roles, including Neuroscience Therapeutic Area IP Team Lead. Chuck earned B.S. and B.S.E. degrees from the University of Michigan, an M.A. degree from Yale University, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law.

Dr. Peter Carroll is Professor and former Chair of Urology at UCSF, consistently ranked as one of the top urology Departments in the country by U.S. News and World Report and the NIH. He is a member of the UCSF – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Carroll received his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and MD degree from Georgetown University, followed by his general surgery training and urology residency at UCSF. He completed a fellowship in urologic oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before joining the faculty of the UCSF Department of Urology. Dr. Carroll holds The Ken and Donna Derr-Chevron and Taube Family Distinguished Professorships and added an MPH from UC Berkeley to his academic credentials in 2008.

Medical Advisor, Dr. Lawrence Fong is Professor of Medicine and Leader of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the UCSF Medical Center where he pursues interests in tumor immunology and developing immune-based treatments of cancer. Dr. Fong was awarded his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his medical degree from Stanford University. After completing an oncology fellowship at Stanford, he joined their medical staff in 1999. He later joined the UCSF Medical Center in 2001. Currently, he is Co-Leader, Cancer Immunity Program in the UCSF Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and holds The Efim Guzik Distinguished Professorship in Cancer Biology.

W. Martin Kast, PhD, is a Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Urology and Otolaryngology at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCC) of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He holds the Walter A. Richter Cancer Research Chair and is the co-director of the NCCC Tumor Micro-environment program, the Director of the USC Medical Biology and Infectious Diseases, Immunology & Pathogenesis PhD Graduate Programs, the Director of the Beckman Center for Immune Monitoring, the Director of the K-12 Cancer Education Program for underrepresented minorities and the Associate Dean of Academic Integrity.

A native of the Netherlands, he earned his BS, MS, and PhD summa cum laude, from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has and is serving on multiple Study Sections including the National Institute of Health and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. His research involves the design of therapeutic cancer vaccines directed against human papilloma virus (HPV) and prostate cancer. Several of his therapeutic HPV vaccines have or are currently been tried out in clinical trials. He studies how HPV enters cells and also studies the interaction of HPV with the human immune system to find out how HPV escapes immune detection and how to reverse that. He has published over 280 articles that have been quoted almost 25,000 times and lead to a publication h-index of 83. He is also the inventor on 18 patents. His research is supported by NIH grants. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Translational Medicine, Cancers, and Papillomavirus research. He also served as the secretary/treasurer of the International Papillomavirus Society from 2012-2019 and serves on the advisory board of 6 biotechnology companies. In his free time he is a Scoutmaster and an actor.

Dr. Adam Arkin is Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor, Bioengineering, UC Berkeley, Senior Faculty Scientist, Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Director, Berkeley Synthetic Biology Institute. CEO/CSO DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase. PI and Co-Director, ENIGMA SFA. Dr. Arkin was awarded his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Carleton College and his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Phil Baran is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and Member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. He received his BS in chemistry in 1997 (NYU), his PhD at The Scripps Research Institute in 2001, and from 2001-2003 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.

Dr. Baran has published over 220 scientific articles, several patents, and has been the recipient of several ACS awards such as the Corey (2015), Pure Chemistry (2010), Fresenius (2006), and Nobel Laureate Signature (2003), and several international distinctions such as the Hirata Gold Medal and Mukaiyama Prize (Japan), the RSC award in Synthesis (UK), the Sackler Prize (Israel), and the Janssen Prize (Belgium). In 2013 he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, in 2015 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2016 he was awarded the Blavatnik National Award, and in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Dr. Better is a biotechnology professional with more than 25 years’ experience in cell therapy and biologics CMC. He is currently a principal consultant at Pharmefex Biopharma Consulting. Prior to Pharmefex, Dr. Better was Senior Vice President, Product Sciences at Kite, a Gilead Company, where he led process and analytical development, process characterization and process validation activities leading to the successful US licensure of Yescarta^®, a first in class anti-CD19 CAR T cell therapy. Prior to Kite, Dr. Better held leadership roles in biologics process development and manufacturing at Boehringer Ingelheim, Amgen/Abgenix, and Xoma.