CBE Seminar: The Story of Resilience

Non-UCI people- please use this registration link: https://forms.gle/FTsSorMpWoDPU8Bd9 

Abstract: Resilience was founded in 2020 as a technology-focused company with an ambitious goal to reinvent biomanufacturing by bringing new processes and technologies to an industry that hasn’t kept pace with the explosive innovation in drug discovery. It currently focuses on biomanufacturing five types of medicines: biologics, vaccines, nucleic acids, and cell and gene therapies. In this seminar, I will share with you the story of building Resilience, which is predicated on both technical and business concepts that is driving the creation of our entrepreneurial organization. What emerges is a case that defies conventional notions of what most people think of when building a business. I hope to communicate principles that inspire young researchers to build similar companies that take advantage of their technical foundation.

Bio: Rahul Singhvi is a global leader in the life sciences industry and serves as the chief executive officer of Resilience. He graduated as the top ranked chemical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and obtained both a master's degree and doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT.  He received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar. Most recently, Singhvi was an operating partner at Flagship Pioneering, a Boston-based life sciences innovation firm where he was responsible for founding and operating companies launched from Flagship’s innovation foundry, Flagship labs. Before joining Flagship, Singhvi was the chief operating officer of Takeda’s Vaccine Business Unit where he was responsible for worldwide vaccine CMC and manufacturing operations. During his six-year tenure at Takeda, the vaccine business grew to over 500 employees and created an industry leading late-stage pipeline of vaccine candidates against dengue, norovirus and zika.  Before Takeda, Singhvi was president and CEO of Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX) where he transformed the company from a specialty pharmaceutical business to a vaccine development company with vaccine candidates against influenza (funded by BARDA) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Singhvi’s professional career began at Merck & Co in 1994, where he held several positions in R&D and manufacturing. He serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the antimicrobial resistance research group at the Singapore MIT Advance Research and Technology program. He is a mentor instructor in the Undergraduate Projects Opportunity Program (UPOP) at MIT and is a visiting lecturer at the University College London (UCL).

Host: Professor Vasan Venugopalan