We’re a Team with a Common Mission

Robert Bowden

Prior to joining QLS, Rob was finishing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Harvard University. For his dissertation, he expanded on ideas from the field of natural language processing and applied them to computer program repair, developing new representations and algorithms for machine learning on source code. His research culminated in a tool that is able to automatically debug introductory programming assignments and provide students with directed feedback to fix their code. Prior to his Ph.D., he received his B.A. and M.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University.

Shomesh E. Chaudhuri

Prior to QLS, Sho was a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he helped design new funding vehicles and business models to access previously untapped pools of capital to support biomedical innovation. He has published articles in top finance and biotech journals including JAMA Oncology, Drug Discovery Today, and Management Science. His research includes simulating the financial performance of securitized biomedical research, designing clinical trials using Bayesian decision analysis, and building machine learning models for predicting drug approvals. He received a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Harvard University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.

John Frishkopf

Prior to QLS, John Frishkopf was a founder of NewStar Financial, Inc. As the Treasurer and Head of Asset Management he developed NewStar’s risk management and securitization platform, issuing pioneering middle market collateralized loan obligations. Before NewStar, Mr. Frishkopf co-founded Benson Oak, a boutique investment bank focused on innovative international debt capital markets solutions for clients. Mr. Frishkopf has participated in research applying asset securitization techniques to drug development since 2013, is a director
of the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research, the sponsor of an adaptive clinical trial for glioblastoma, and a former member of the board of directors of the National Brain Tumor Society. He is also a co-founder of the Brain Tumor Investment Fund and serves on its investment committee. He holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.M.S. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Sarah King

Sarah King

Prior to QLS, Sarah completed her B.A. in Applied Mathematics at Harvard University with a focus in Data Science. Her thesis concentrated on quantitative solutions to climate change in Madagascar by modeling the relationship between land use, soil moisture, and crop health values derived from remote sensing data products. This tool improves agricultural information critical to addressing food insecurity and can theoretically be applied anywhere in the world. Prior to her thesis, she researched wind patterns related to El Niño using global climate models.

Alan Kwan

Alan Kwan

Alan Kwan joined QLS Advisors (“QLS”) in 2022 as the Head of Fundamental Research with responsibility for trading strategies innovation and the optimized integration of fundamental analysis into those strategies, where appropriate. Dr. Kwan previously served as an Analyst at Millennium Management, LLC where he designed, managed, and implemented semi-automated infrastructure to support several fundamentals-based trading strategies for his coverage in both large and SMID cap biopharma US equities. Prior to joining Millennium, Dr. Kwan served as a Vice President of Research at Tekla Capital Management where he covered both public and private healthcare investments. His public coverage spanned SMID cap biotechnology, all cap life-science tools, all cap diagnostics, and all cap medical devices. In private investments, he was responsible for the evaluating opportunities in biotechnology, life-science tools and diagnostics, and medical devices and served as a board observer on select portfolio companies. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, his M.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, his Ph.D. in Computational Genomics from Washington University School of Medicine, and his MBA from MIT. 

Andrew W. Lo

Prior to QLS, Andrew W. Lo was Chairman and Chief Investment Strategist of AlphaSimplex Group. Andrew co-founded QLS Advisors in 2019 and currently serves as the Firm’s Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Strategist. He is also the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, and principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His healthcare-related research interests include new financial and business models for drug and device development and healthcare delivery, statistical methods for incorporating patient preferences into the drug approval process, and predicting clinical trial outcomes via machine learning techniques. He is a co-founder and director of BridgeBio Pharma and a member of the NIH/NCATS advisory board and the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Impact Fund. Andrew received his B.A. in economics from Yale University and his A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Kim Nassar

Kimberly S. Nassar

Prior to QLS, Kim served as a Senior Principal Consultant for ACA Group in their investment adviser regulatory consulting practice. Prior to joining ACA, Kim served as a Director for Affiliated Managers Group, a publicly traded asset management company with equity investments in affiliated boutique investment advisory firms. In this role, Kim was responsible for assisting affiliates with a variety of regulatory compliance matters. Overall, Kim has over 30 years of experience with investment management compliance, holding positions with companies such as Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management Company, LLP, and Deutsche Bank (formerly Scudder Kemper Investments). Kim earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Simmons College and her Master of Science degree in Training and Development from Lesley University.

Lena Ngor

Lena Ngor

Prior to QLS, Lena served as a Senior Administrative Assistant assisting faculty with their course-related portfolios within the academic areas at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Prior to MIT, Lena was the Administrative Manager at NV5 for their Boston office and served as the main consult and liaison for project administration for their northeast offices. Lena earned her B.A. in political science with a focus in international relations from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Lotus Xia

Lotus Xia

Prior to QLS, Lotus worked as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research where she helped analyze and improve the efficiency of the organ allocation system in the U.S. Before that, Lotus was an analyst at Cornerstone Research, where she focused on litigation cases related to pharmaceutical marketing. Lotus received an M.S. in Data Science from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics and Psychology from Wellesley College.

Scientific and Financial Advisory Council

Peter Hancock

Peter Hancock

Mr. Peter Hancock joined QLS Advisors in 2019 as a Principal and is a member of the Advisory Committee. Mr. Hancock is the former President and CEO of AIG. Prior to leading AIG, Mr. Hancock spent 20 years at J.P. Morgan where he founded the global derivatives business, restructured and managed the fixed income and credit businesses, and served as group CFO and Chief Risk Officer. After J.P. Morgan, Mr. Hancock co-founded Integrated Finance Limited, where he served as President for seven years, and then served as Vice Chairman of Keycorp. He currently serves on the board of two private insure-tech companies, is an advisor to Canadian VC fund and a number of early-stage companies. He holds a B.A. in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University.

Robert S. Langer

Dr. Robert S. Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written over 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 368,000 times; his h-index of 301 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 3rd highest of any individual in any field. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies; he is a cofounder of a number of companies including Moderna. Dr Langer served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 3 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Hoover Medal, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine. He holds 39 honorary doctorates, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Northwestern, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.

Robert C. Merton

Dr. Robert C. Merton joined QLS Advisors in 2020 as a Principal and is a member of the Advisory Committee. Dr. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He is Resident Scientist at Dimensional Holdings, Inc. Dr. Merton’s research focuses on finance theory, including lifecycle and retirement finance, optimal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of derivative securities, credit risk, loan guarantees, financial innovation, the dynamics of institutional change, and improving the methods of measuring and managing macro-financial risk. In 1997, Dr. Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives. He is past president of the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Merton received a B.S. in Engineering Mathematics from Columbia University, a M.S. in Applied Mathematics from California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds numerous honorary degrees from US and foreign universities.

Lita Nelsen

Ms. Lita Nelsen spent 30 years in the Technology Licensing Office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25 of them as director of the office. During that time, the MIT TLO licensed over 500 startup companies based on MIT research technology. She is the author of many articles and book chapters on technology transfer. During her tenure at the MIT TLO she was invited to lecture and consult in tech transfer and university-based entrepreneurship in over 20 countries around the world. She was a co-founder of Praxis (now Praxis-Auril) a UK non-profit company for training tech transfer professionals, or which she was awarded a Member of the British Empire (MBE) by the UK government. Other awards include Lifetime Achievement awards from Xconomy and from the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council Having retired from MIT, Ms. Nelsen is now a consultant for startups licensing technology from universities and an advisor to Good Growth Capital’s venture funds, and sits on several biotechnology company scientific advisory boards. She volunteers as a mentor in the MIT Sandbox Program, mentoring student entrepreneurs.

Ms. Nelsen’s education includes B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering, and an MBA as a Sloan Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of management. Prior to joining MIT’s Technology Licensing Office she worked in R&D, consulting and venture management in medical devices and membrane separations companies.

Larry Norton

Dr. Larry Norton, M.D. is the Norna S. Sarofim Chair of Clinical Oncology, Senior Vice President in the Office of the President, and Deputy Director for Clinical and Translational Science in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He is also the Medical Director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at MSK and is a founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, serving as Scientific Director and then Founding Scientific Director since the foundation’s inception in 1993. Dr. Norton has served on or chaired numerous committees of the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the National Academy of Medicine and has served as President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology among other leadership roles in that and other organizations. He is also a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Norton has dedicated his life to the eradication of cancer by activities in medical care, laboratory and clinical research, advocacy and government. His research is broad, but he is best known for mathematical modeling in therapeutic development. He has been involved in the development of several effective agents including paclitaxel and trastuzumab. He co-invented the Norton-Simon Model of cancer growth which has broadly influenced cancer therapy, and more recently the self-seeding concept of cancer metastasis and growth. He is the Principal Investigator of the BCRF-Simons Mathematical Oncology Initiative and an author of more than 400 published articles and many book chapters.

Among many honors, he received ASCO’s Karnofsky and Bonadonna Awards, the McGuire Lectureship at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, MSKCC’s Whitmore Award for Clinical Excellence, the Columbia University’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Research, The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Double Helix Award as well as the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher Certificate.

Richard H. Scheller

Dr. Richard H. Scheller joined BridgeBio Pharma as chairman of R&D in 2019, having served as a member of the board since 2018. In addition, he serves on the board of directors at 23andMe, Alector, Maze Therapeutics, DiCE Molecules, and Aarvik Therapeutics, and on the board of trustees at Caltech and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. From 2015 to 2019, Dr. Scheller was head of therapeutics and chief scientific officer at 23andMe. At Genentech from 2001 to 2014, he was executive vice president of research and early development and served on the executive committees of Roche and Genentech focusing on research strategy, drug discovery, business development and early drug development activities.

From 1982 to 2001, Dr. Scheller was a professor at Stanford in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Stanford University Medical Center. Since 2004, Dr. Scheller has served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.

He holds a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech. Scheller’s research elucidating the molecular machinery and regulatory mechanism that underlies neurotransmitter release earned him the 2013 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, and the 1997 U.S. National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Phillip A. Sharp

Dr. Sharp is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He joined the Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute) in 1974 and served as its director for six years, from 1985 to 1991, before taking over as head of the Department of Biology, a position he held for the next eight years. He was founding director of the McGovern Institute, a position he held from 2000 to 2004. His research interests have centered on the molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of RNA splicing.

His landmark work in 1977 provided the first indications of “discontinuous genes” in mammalian cells. The discovery fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of gene structure and earned Dr. Sharp the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Sharp has authored over 430 papers. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society, UK. Among his many awards are the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and the National Medal of Science. His long list of service includes the presidency of the AAAS (2013) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the SU2C Project, AACR. A native of Kentucky, Dr. Sharp earned a B.A. degree from Union College, Barbourville, KY, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Sharp is a co-founder of Biogen (1978) and served as a member of the Board of Directors (1982-2009) and as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. He is also a co-founder of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (2002) and continues to serve as a member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board.

Cheng Chih Sung

Cheng Chih Sung

Dr. Cheng Chih Sung started his investment career at GIC in 1993 and retired as MD and Chief Risk Officer in 2011. Subsequently, he took on advisory and board positions with the finance ministries of Norway and Singapore; central banks of Singapore and Thailand; Markit Group; endowments of MIT and SUTD; Hassana Investment Company in Saudi Arabia; Ministry of Health, Wealth Management Institute, and NTUC Income Insurance in Singapore; as well as short-term advisory roles with Singapore Exchange, Bank of Korea and International Monetary Fund. In 2015, he co-founded Avanda Investment Management, a Singapore-based global asset manager. During his tenure as CEO, Avanda’s AUM grew to over US$9 billion. Since retiring from Avanda in 2021, Sung has been working with start-ups in diverse fields including sustainable investing, digital infrastructure, renewable energy, blockchain technology, long/short equity investing and healthcare finance. Sung earned his B.Math and M.Math degrees from the University of Waterloo and a Ph.D degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota.

Advisors

Michael Goldberg

Michael Goldberg is Founder and CEO of Surge Therapeutics. Previously, he was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Goldberg’s research has been published in Cell, Nature, Science, Nature Biotechnology, and Science Translational Medicine. Dr. Goldberg received his Hon. B.Sc. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Toronto, his M.Phil. in BioScience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge, and his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also completed his post-doctoral training.

Neil Kumar

Neil Kumar

Dr. Neil Kumar, Ph.D., is the CEO and Founder of BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. a company working to create life-altering medicines that target well-characterized genetic diseases at their source. Before founding BridgeBio in 2015, Dr. Kumar was a principal at Third Rock Ventures, supporting and managing portfolio companies, while also focusing on new company formation and due diligence. During his time at Third Rock, Dr. Kumar served as the interim vice president of business development and operations for MyoKardia. Prior to joining Third Rock, Dr. Kumar was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company, where he developed strategies for pharmaceutical and medical device companies and helped lead McKinsey’s personalized medicine efforts. Dr. Kumar holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also a Member of the Board for the Global Genes organization.

Steve Prewitt

Steve Prewitt

Steve Prewitt is the Global Head of Digital Innovation at Sumitovant Biopharma, Inc. He leads a team of data scientists and engineers to build novel machine learning pipelines and automation solutions to address problems in the biotech space. Prior to this, Mr. Prewitt was the Chief Analytics Officer at Healthfirst where he built the cloud analytics environment and data science capabilities from the ground up. Mr. Prewitt advises several startups in the healthcare tech space on how to transform healthcare at the intersection of data and technology. Prior to Healthfirst, he served in a variety of tech and analytics roles at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Charles River Labs, and Pfizer. He received his B.S. from Avila University in Computer Science and his MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Parag Mallick

Dr. Parag Mallick is an Associate Professor at Stanford University. Originally trained as an engineer and biochemist, his research spans computational and experimental systems biology, cancer biology and nanotechnology. Dr. Mallick received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in Chemistry & Biochemistry, where he worked with Dr. David Eisenberg. He completed Post-Doctoral studies at The Institute for Systems Biology, in Seattle, WA with Dr. Ruedi Aebersold. Beyond studying fundamental disease mechanisms, his group has been pioneering novel multi-scale approaches for enabling personalized and predictive medicine. Most recently, his group has been developing model-based and physics-based approaches to machine learning that enable learning over domains that span a wide range of time and length scales. Outside of his academic interests, he founded Nautilus Biotechnology, a next generation proteomics company. He also actively advises numerous biotechnology companies and VC funds.

Richard T. Thakor

Richard T. Thakor is an Assistant Professor of Finance at University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management. He is also a Research Affiliate at the MIT. Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE). He joined the finance department at University of Minnesota after earning his PhD in Financial Economics from MIT. He also holds an M.S. in Management Research from MIT, an MSc in Finance and Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE), and a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Economics and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to earning his PhD, he worked in investment management as a Derivatives Trading Analyst. His research consists of empirical and theoretical work in the areas of corporate finance, financial institutions, R&D investments, healthcare finance, and the economics of the drug development industry.

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